tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70218241872131205362024-02-20T03:04:58.800-08:00poetry on dialysis continuedvidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-9453870214491941012009-07-22T02:34:00.001-07:002009-07-22T02:34:31.168-07:00sucesoEn las afueras de la pequeña ciudad de L., si se camina por la carretera comarcal en dirección norte, se halla una construcción caída en desuso, ruinosa, plagada de hiedra, y, sin embargo, imponente. A la hora del crepúsculo, la arruinada mansión, con su alta torre quebrada y gárgolas roidas por las lluvias, cobra un aspecto, si cabe, aún más lúgubre y raro. Al contemplarla se tiene la impresión de que se ha quedado estancada en un tiempo perdido, y que cualquiera que se demore en sus cercanías es tambien atrapado por un pasado que interfiere poderosamente con la actualidad. Dicho de otra manera, en aquel lugar parecen existir todavía presencias de gente ya muerta y secuelas de hechos ya olvidados. No es de extrañar que se perciban allí tan intensas vibraciones sobrenaturales, puesto que la casona fue escena de un crímen tan horrendo que aún se recuerda y se menciona en la región. Ocurrió durante la última guerra. Las víctimas fueron unos soldados que habían tomado allí refugio durante la noche, y su masacre fue perpetrada por un grupo de campesinas que los emboscaron y degollaron, echando luego los cadáveres a una barranca que hay por allí cerca. Los soldados se habían emborrachado y dormían cuando las mujeres les asaltaron, empuñando sus hoces, en sigílo.Es el caso que desde aquel suceso la gente cuenta que por allí, en horas nocturnas, se ve de vez en cuando una figura que parece buscar, frenéticamente, algo entre los bardiales y a lo largo de las base de los muros de piedra. No es difícil imaginar que lo que busca es su propia cabeza, ya que no la lleva sobre los hombros. Esta historia era causa del miedo que yo sentía cada vez que pasaba frente a la casona haciendo jogging, lo cual ocurría tres veces por semana. Incluso, al pensar en ella, me arrepentía de haberme mudado a aquella población, aunque por otra parte lo había hecho llevado por circunstancias de empleo. Lo cierto es que durante los primeros meses de mi residencia en la coqueta ciudad, nunca había tenido motivo para pensar que nada extraño fuera a sucederme en los alrededores de aquella casa medio desmoronada, por lo cual no tomé desvío alguno cuando hacía jogging. Una tarde de otoño, sin embargo, cuando la niebla se levantó de repente y me impedía ver lo que había a un metro de istancia mientras corría, algo, una enorme figura negra y pesada, se interpuso ante mi, ocasionando un choque que me hizo caer al suelo. Al punto comenzó a dolerme la cabeza, y cuando alcé los ojos hacia la forma contra la que había chocado, ví que se trataba de un hombre grande. Este se deslizó inmediatamente hacia la izquierda y lo perdi de vista, ya que se hundió en la espesa niebla, pero no sin notar, con un escalofrío, que le faltaba la cabeza: incluso me pareció ver que allí donde ésta debería haberse hallado, no había sino una mancha color negro, como de sangre vieja coagulada y podrida. Me puse en pie, temblando de frio y de miedo, sintiendome incapaz de moverme de aquel sitio, aunque lo más indicado era echar a correr. La niebla se volvía más espesa según pasaban los minutos, y mi imaginación empezaba a jugarme malas pasadas. Escuchaba gritos de dolor que venían de algún lugar indefinido y cercano, y risotadas de mujeres que parecían haber enloquecido. Tuve que reconocer que, oculta por la espesa niebla, se repetía en torno mío la escena de la masacre de los soldados, de la que tanto había oído hablar. De pronto escuché claramente la voz de una mujer que decía algo a voz en grito, en un paroxismo de violencia. Lo que decía era que una de las cabezas se había perdido y había que buscarla para enterrarla con los otros despojos. Entonces sentí la presión que unos brazos invisibles ejercían en torno a mi propia cabeza, como si trataran de arrancarmela. Alguien me tiraba de los pelos. Grité de dolor cuando unas uñas afiladas me rasgaron la piel del rostro. En aquella vorágine de espanto, reconocía que los fantasmas de las mujeres no querían dejar huella de su crimen, y no podían, por lo tanto, permitirse el lujo de olvidarse una cabeza cercenada sin enterrar. Sin embargo, se confundían de cabeza y trataban de arrancarme la mia. Grité que yo no era uno de los soldados a quienes habían asesinado, sino un hombre del futuro, y que se confundían de época porque eran fantasmas y no tenían ni idea de los limites que existen entre época y época, dimensión y dimensión.Al final la niebla comenzó a disiparse, y con ella todas aquellas formas que me acosaban, y todos los alaridos que rasgaban el aire. Pronto pude ver las cosas que me rodeaban, y me sentí normal de nuevo. Me hallaba sobre la carretera comarcal, rodeado de bucólicos paísajes. Las luces de la ciudad se encendían a lo lejos. Respiré profundamente antes de empezar a correr otra vez. Despues de haber avanzado casi un quilometro, me pregunté que clase de alucinación había padecido, y me asombré de lo poderosamente que puede engañarnos nuestra propia mente. Riendo, sin dejar de correr, volví la vista hacia la vieja casona, que ya quedaba muy detrás de mi. Y entoces ví, sin lugar a dudas, una figura: era el cuerpo sin cabeza de un hombre que me llamaba agitando los brazos en el aire.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-34777303339164705382009-07-04T05:48:00.000-07:002009-07-04T06:06:08.975-07:00It was...vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-89023593713267053482009-06-20T07:16:00.001-07:002009-06-20T07:16:56.803-07:00short thoughtsIN SOME REGION<br />UNIMAGINABLE TO YOU,<br />HIGH, SNOW-VEILED,<br />A FACE BEHIND THE COLD,<br />EYES SHUT, IS DREAMING OF ME,<br />OF MY RETURN<br />TO ITS ETERNITIY.<br />--------------<br /><br /> Friend: one day, you<br />opened that black door<br />behind which I imagine<br />there can be only terror.<br /><br /> You opened it, and then fled<br />along the chill corridors<br />beyond madness: I remember<br />it with a shiver.<br /><br />How is it that when I shut my eyes<br />I can see you<br />in some joyful spot, smiling, just like then,<br />when it all was perfectly simple?<br /><span> --------------------------</span><div><wbr><span class="word_break"></span>----------<br /><br />It´s raining buckets,<br />time is crumbling,<br />I´m looking at some kids smoking cigarettes<br />against a dirty white wall.<br /><br />I am thinking about something<br />which can be discerned in dreams:<br />the voices of the past,<br />the quiet of the grave.<br /><br /> My heart<br />of coal<br />weeps<br />with the rain<br />on the soft, deep<br />grass.</div>vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-64436954600482173292009-06-06T06:42:00.000-07:002009-06-06T07:00:19.376-07:00One who was...I am one of those who<br />came and went noiselessly, having affected little,<br />having agitated nothing in this world, gaze<br />still young. Few remember me: I lived.<br />In some way I am still there leaning<br />against that corner, some distant summer,<br />some imprecise day of summer, looking at you...<br />You´re coming nearer to me but don´t know it.<br />You watched the sea so often, after I had already disappeared...<br />you travelled to places I never had the time to visit,<br />no matter how I dreamed of doing so. I was<br />your unlikely friend, leaning one summer day against the corner,<br />looking at you. A long time ago. You may have forgotten.<br />Yet you´re coming nearer to me,<br />although you don´t know it. But don´t be afraid:<br />the day, the place, my face<br />are still as you knew them, just a little less<br />mortal.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-69349392762765868712009-06-06T06:33:00.000-07:002009-06-06T06:42:12.701-07:00outsideThere is the beauty of all things loved as they receed and then<br />the absolute beauty of actual oblivion-<br />vague murmur, brisk light, thin breeze combing wheat still green.<br /><br />All there was dissolved gently in the warm mist that rose up from the river.<br />Nobody whistles softly behind me, no one calls my name.<br />Narrow silence, visceral void.<br /><br />There is no history, mine or anyone´s. My eyes are fixed<br />on Death´s gaze.<br />An invisible crane ruffles the air slightly.<br /><br />I am so well here, away from memory. My mind is light. All is new.<br />I do not love, I do not wish, I merely wait.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-86036390495543283372009-05-09T07:56:00.000-07:002009-05-09T08:21:04.397-07:00Adressing you my lovethe pain alloted me is none of your concern<br /><br />stand there just looking at me from the sunny silence<br /><br />the summer whistles about your lusty young head and there is no history<br /><br />Europe is merely beautiful and you don´t see its dead rising nor the echoes of the cries<br /><br />I love you we live in a place where nobody dies and in spite of the rest of the earth<br /><br />we can be two happy stupid intellectuals so sure of themselves and with a garden to<br />drink martinis in.<br /><br />Don´t fall drunk on your face in the garden or I´ll kick you out of the house and you´ll never see me again.<br /><br />Here it´s perfect. The birds chirp in classical Italian.<br /><br />The city of Toledo is surrounded by a river with bridges with magnificent battlements. Here<br /><br />El Greco painted saints while the Inquistion burnt heretics.<br /><br />At a little stand in a plaza overlooking the river we had what you cannot deny was<br />the best lemonade ever...<br /><br />Franco had a bad rap, but he´s still got a lot of fans.<br /><br />I don´t care if Hitler was walking around not far from here just a little while ago<br /><br />A lot of Germans say sure he was bad but he gave us the autobahn and you have to appreciate it<br /><br />the whole of Europe now is one country full of very efficient autobahns<br /><br />it doesn´t take a long time to go from one historically impressive, monumental city<br />to another<br /><br />bypassing the cemeteries.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-54866724286103030762009-05-09T07:36:00.000-07:002009-05-09T07:55:12.357-07:00WELLI stopped to watch a bird in flight. It was flying, yet I knew it had died. The spirit had gone out of it.<br /> In the place where the cathedral stood there had been once a living thing, so that there was no art to the cathedral, in spite of its beauty. It was empty of soul, merely form. There is no art in a dead monument standing where there was a wood once.<br /> And in the place where a great city expanded over great streches of earth, rising to the sun and blocking its light, all that the senses could perceive amounted to nothing but a great roaring less meaningful than silence. And to all that construction there was no art, but the inkling of an idea. How can there be art in what is dead? Nor can an idea be other than imperfect by realising itself in materiality.<br /> To that little amounted the cavilations and endeavours of men. The voices of angels are heard, and lead to vision, but they may not be projected into the world by visionaries, without becoming cacophony.<br /> And all that your hand has done until now, rather than an expression of the splendour within you, is a pathetic projection of the unreachable. With your art, eroded by time, eaten by the wind, perish your prejudices, your vanity, everything you thought was meaningful and wasn´t.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-25685309818384735142009-03-18T02:45:00.000-07:002009-03-18T02:53:19.246-07:00cantinelaI am waiting for you.<br />I am waiting for the rain.<br /><br />I am standing under the archway.<br />I am waiting for a river.<br /><br />I am waiting for life.<br />I am waiting for a feeling.<br /><br />Waiting for the song to emerge<br />from the great tree of birds.<br /><br />I am waiting for you.<br />I am waiting for death, also.<br /><br />I wait for a kiss and a fire.<br />I am waiting for a child.<br /><br />I am waiting for a child.<br />I am waiting for death, also.<br /><br />I am between the wind and the water.<br />I am between the light and the foam.<br /><br />I am written upon a cloud<br />like a living shape without organs.<br /><br />I am laid out across a bed of metal<br />waiting for the pain to cease.<br /><br />I am nailed upon your eyelids<br />like any old, useless Christ.<br /><br />I am waiting for a child.<br />I am waiting for death, also.<br /><br />I am waiting for oblivion<br />and the return of spring.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-56402419939221190022009-03-07T06:17:00.000-08:002009-03-07T06:39:17.713-08:00another placeWhen I am tired of being ill, of being afraid of being ill, of being away from the person I used to know as myself, I close my eyes and pretend that I have already died.<br /> I have already died. Time no longer signifies. The cruel needles, their recent memory, become unreal. Lost love, friends gone, become suddenly a kind of quiet sound, like a low wind in the forest, dancing around me, in the darkness. The faces and bodies transform: they turn into huge birds fying silently over restful silvery lakes, into swift creatures whose shapes I can barely discern moving among the trees in the snowed in woods of my mind.<br /> There is an island in the middle of one of those lakes so hidden in the wilderness that they are akin to secret thoughts. A long time ago I stood on the shore and looked at it rise in the mist across the water. I had an inkling there, a premonition, of something that would happen to me in the future. It had to do with loss and distance, longing and impossibility. I felt something like a living spirit waver in the air around that island, and had a revelation. There were many worlds within the world, and countless ways in which the soul might feel each one of them. I recognised that when the pain became too great, when the void became too real, I would be able to go to that island. It is a wild place, away from all the expectations, lies and fear we have created. It is perhaps a mad place, inhabited by an old, humorous god who never gets too serious about anything, who drinks and laughs a lot. I told about this palce to many people who really cared about me, and they all insisted I should never go there, and liked me less for mentioning it. It was really like something they would never think, much less talk about for fear of looking ridiculous or undignified.<br /> But I close my eyes now and I see the island, in the distance, behind a veil of snow...<br /> It puts a smile on my face.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-57041654818292940982009-02-24T06:55:00.000-08:002009-02-24T07:06:33.563-08:00speakSay it now<br /> I saw a face behind a veil of snow<br /> There was nothing to it but silence<br />A silence like death, which took away all of its beauty<br />And made it akin to a stone, a wall, something without emotion, without<br />anything to say.<br />I saw your beloved face and it was suddenly too late<br />To understand that it willed to communicate nothing<br />Just a silence which you mistook for harmony<br />And which rammed my own shout of pain<br />Right back into my throat.<br />So this is the bloodless beauty I was tought to seek and take<br />as my soul companion...<br />Oh say it now for you are living and nothing that lives can be that empty<br />Don´t you know humans were given a voice which makes them more tender<br />And vulnerable than the trees or the animals?<br />Oh you must know Silence is not a retort but an act of cruelty.<br />Silence is arrogant: it is what the cold gods give back<br />when you look up in fear to ask them a question.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-42294865542729406672009-02-21T06:10:00.000-08:002009-02-21T07:10:22.076-08:00A FINE CROWDThe Red Cross building where I go for dialysis looks like one of those old, solid European hospitals you see in movies about World War II, but the actual dialysis room is very nice, ample, airy, with light green walls and huge windows through which you can see the street, a mountain in the distance, etc... The lobby is not so ample, but it is still very clean and it doesn´t really drive it home to you that you are a sick guy. Before going in for the blood cleansing, all the patiens sit around waiting for the anaesthetic cream to sip into their skin, or just looking at each other, or hiding their eyes in a book or magazine. Most of them are old and don´t say much except the run of the mill comments about the lousy weather we are having, although it never is that lousy, really. I happen to be the youngest one of the lot, and I know they are curious about me. The last thing I want to do is get familiar with them, because I´m still pretending that my case of kidney failure is somehow different from theirs, more mystical, something that makes me lees hopeless, less pathetic. There is a sixty or so years old lady with red hair and a bird-like face whose legs and arms are swollen and purple because the blood vessels break as soon as she bumps into anything, however lightly. She smiled the other day and said, to everybody: " We´re like a family here who get together three times a week" Another patient, a little older tan the lady and who looks a lot like Graham Sutherland´s portrait of Somerset Maugham at his bitchiest, replied: " No, thank you. I don´t think we are family. I choose not to be family. We have been thrown together by misfortune and I don´t mind if I say that I hate you all". The lady was too tough to weep, but made a clear gesture of disdain. Another old man was cutting an apple with a knife and sticking the pieces into his mouth in the way peasants do, holding the blade of the knife against his thumb. He swallowed the piece of fruit and then, spittle coming out of his mouth, he said something brilliant: " we couldn´t be family here, because there are two black people who come for dialysis, and the rest are white" I hate racists so I couldn´t restrain myself: " you´re yellow, that´s what you are. And stupid to boot" He looked at me in what I thought was disbelief. In the European hinterlands it is not understood how a comment like the one he had made could be considered racist. This part of Spain, at the tail end of the Pyrenees, looks like Transylvania, and there are so many hillbillies, so many cross eyes and harelips in tne mountain towns, you could be in the middle of the Ozarcs. In the small cities around here, because of recent immigration from Africa and Latin America, people think they´re becoming cosmopolitan.<br />At any rate, what I mean to say is that in a dialysis facility you can find the nastiest people in the world. It is understandable, in a way. Anyone who has to experience a bee sting every other day and then be tied to a bed for four hours is bound to become a real bad ass in time. I can only hope it doesn´t happen to me, but it may already have begun to happen. I fee very irritable sometimes, and don´t have as much patience with people as used to. I must try to remain level headed, though, because one can live a very long time on dialysis, and I wouldn´t want to be an asshole for the rest of my life. Will I be able to avoid it? The other day I was sitting in a bar having a glass of wine in honour of an old friend of mine, an Englishman whom I met in Canada and who died around this time last year. Funnily enough, as I lifted the glass to my mouth, the radio began to play Amazing Graze, a thousand fucken pipes wailing, and I had the feeling my old friend had actually sat on the stool next to me to have a drink together, as in the old days. (There are ghosts all over the place, for crying outloud). Well, I wanted to know what time it was so I turned around to a couple of girls nearby and asked them. One of them looked at me as if she thought I was making up an excuse to talk to them because I wanted to pick them up. I bellowed: " don´t you even think I have any interest in you, you vain little peacock!!!!!" The girls looked at me in surprise and left the bar right away. I felt awful. I could have cried in shame. Anyway: I will make an effort to remain the person I used to be, polite and considerate. I have begun to take a big piece of apple pie with me every time I go to dialysis. I eat it before going in and it makes me feel good and calm. Last time, one of the other patients who was sitting in the chair across from me wearing the blue pajamas they make us put on, saw me pull the pie out of a paper bag and said: " What the fuck is that you got there? Do you think we´re in a fucken cafeteria?" I thought about throwing the pie right at his face. But that would have been a waste. I just looked him straight in the eyes and said: " I heard the nurses say they were going to make you do an extra half hour because your last test results were lousy, you prick"vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-6740058772771593352009-02-18T02:14:00.000-08:002009-02-18T03:03:57.263-08:00Strange way to get thereThe thought that is bothering me this morning is not novel. It has been lurking at the back fo my mind for a while, but I haven´t really let it emerge in its full clarity. It is this: I have always been expelled from places.<br /> First, I was kicked out of the boarding school where my parents had placed me in order to deal with the inconvenience which I was. Perhaps that action on the part of the institution was justified. I don´t know. I was cought in the school yard smoking a Popeye style corn pipe which I myself had carved with a pocket knife. The priest who cought me was famous for the way he hit students with the back of his right hand. He had been given the nickname " The crow" because of his black clothes, and he was feared. He told me to throw away the pipe. But we were surrounded by many of my peers, some of whom ( I was thirteen years old) I wanted to impress, so instead of doing what he told me I told him to go to hell. When he raised his hand to hit me I punched him in the face. All the other students cheered. I was full of myself. But the result was that I was thrown out of the institution with a warning to other such establishments taht I was a troubled and perhaps dangerous young man. I wasn´t of course. Never before or after have I resorted to any kind of violence. But the dismissal was to affect me for the rest of my life.<br /> Later, when I was going to high school in Long island, New York, something happened which confirmed my destiny as a pariah: there was a mail strike in the state if New York and I did not receive the formI was supposed to fill out in order to extend my visa on time. I was told by the judge who kicked me out of the country that it was just a mere technicality. All I had to do was to go back to Torornto for a week and then return to the USA. I did go to Canada, but stayed there. It was really ironic, I thought, that just before the deportation I had won a short story writing contest which would have won me a scholarship in the land of HP Lovecraft, Rhode Island( it was a horror story that had won the writing contest). So once again I had been place outside of things by fate.<br /> Since then, I have gone through tree marriages, all of which ended up with me being told to get out. Invariably, by the time that happened there was nothing I wanted more than to get out. It took me so many years to realise that marriage is a result of conditioning and and the total loss of personal freedom, and the very death of love. But I am going through a separation right now. This time is a little different, because I have fallen ill and I am on dialysis. Also, I have had a child with the woman I am separating from, and I love that child more than anything in the universe. I am therefore tryin to understand what exactly hasn´t worked out. Her justification for asking me to leave the house is that when there is an argument I tend to raise my voice, which in her opinion constitutes some form of mental abuse( considering that other people get kicked out of thier marriage because they have cheated, or are violent, or drink too much, the measure seems a bit disproportionate). I accept that, and let her know in teturn of what I think she does that is not acceptable either. But she does not recognise anything other than my faults, and there is nothing doing. So for the good of all, I, I, not she, have to leave the apartment where we have been living for so long. Again I find myself walking around the streets pondering why I have been rejected, and in my horrible self pity I tell myself that I would never kick my wife out of the house if she was going through something like dialysis.<br /> Three years ago I had decided to change my life and brought all my family from Canada to Spain, my mother´s country. I was fed up with the bussines character of Toronto and my paintings weren´t really getting me anywhere, since, typically, I had had a disagreement with my agent and he, in retaliation for something I had done against his already puny ego, decided to cut me out of the gallery. I felt that everything about that city, Toronto, was detrimental to the artistic mind. I had seen so may talented people be ignored to death, literally, so many wonderful creators fall into depression and self destruction, that I decided it was time to go. So I moved to Nothern Spain. I gor a job which I did with some sense of responsibility for two years, we had a child, I was painting, and then... KIDNEY FAILURE.<br /> Once again, in the worst way possible, I was being expelled from the world of the normal.<br /> Now I am living alone in an apartment. I take care of my child four days a week, while my wife works, and I have just bought a canvas on which plan to paint a couple of cherry trees in bloom I saw last night while taking a walk on a pathway that cuts across the fields in the periphery of the<br />town where I live. It was cold, but the spring is pushing in already nonetheless. Over the cherry trees, whose myriad little petals looked like pink flames agaist the ultramarine sky, there was a striking array of stars glowing coldly, like ice crystals. An hey, this may sound wird, but I thing i´m happy.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-35514182542884967952009-02-14T07:04:00.000-08:002009-02-14T07:20:10.415-08:00on dialysisi remember a tall black tree<br />that stoode in the centre of a snow storm<br />and how it slowly became a beautiful face<br />behind a veil of whiteness, eyes closed,<br />and the the voice of someone i had loved<br />long ago, far far away<br /><br />and i remember having been a wanderer<br />in a country i cannot name<br />and meeting people, living with them,<br />burying some in black earth, wishing<br />time woul unfold backwards and they arose again<br />from that hard, frosty oblivion.<br /><br />a long time ago, in some beginning or other,<br />i knew the language of birds and walked<br />through the yellow woods being spoken to<br />by winged creatures flying overhead.<br />the seasons passed and came around again<br />and i did not miss my people nor my origins.<br /><br />now i stand before a wide green river, dark<br />green as obsidian, and i have been here before, i know.<br />but perhaps this is not real. i might be dreaming.<br />i have shut my eyes against the world and my blood<br />is returning form a remote place where<br />it has gathered some nameless, terrifying beauty.<br /><br />i just went over a thin thread and became part<br />of the world of broken things. you stood on the other side<br />looking at me as if you had never known me.<br />i shall forget you as i go sinking in the sickly afternoon<br />scented with languishing tulips, my blood reaching<br />out of myself, searching for health.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-84318316045333437102009-02-14T06:54:00.000-08:002009-02-14T07:03:34.043-08:00walkinglight rain moves through the neighbourhood<br />like someone who just won the lottery<br /><br />are you walking to any place normal?<br />where will you end up this afternoon?<br />i´ll stop for a coffee on the way no matter what...<br /><br />i think it´s nice to know somewhere around here<br />there´s somebody whose job is to stick me with needles<br /><br />is that the only love making you practice nowadays?<br />it´s not so bad: my hair isn´t falling<br />and everyone should try some sort of martyrdom<br />as it is good to refine the soul<br /><br />what i mean is no i´m not giving you any money<br />i´m on my way to dialysis and why the fuck should i give you any money?<br /><br />sorry, man, i didn´t know. Dialysis, eh? i heard<br />that´s tough. i heard it´s even tougher than begging.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-17461663818642223422009-02-14T06:38:00.000-08:002009-02-14T06:53:54.651-08:00the clog poemyesterday it didn´t go alright<br />the blood had thickened in the vein<br />so it wasn´t flowing through the needle<br /><br />the nurse was apologetic- but twice<br />she hit nerves and i howled in pain<br />she didn´t seem affected at all<br /><br />more nurses came around the bed<br />to look at the grotesquerie, the needle<br />prodding deeper and deeper into the arm<br /><br />and the blood didn´t come out<br />i felt fallow, a horse´s carcass<br />under a layer of frost<br /><br />to the youngest nurse, who was watching it all<br />with an amused smile on her lips<br />i said it is a show for sadists and there is a price:<br /><br />a little piece of your pretty earlobe.<br />she looked revolted. Now the other nurse went frantic<br />with the needle, loosing her patience.<br /><br />i knew i was´t going to die from that<br />but it was like someone had placed<br />a black garbage bag over my head<br /><br />and i was in a panic. Then i stopped<br />believing in god for a second. but maybe<br />i had never really believed anyways.<br /><br />i thought of little children somewhere palying,<br />somewhere, laughing: they who knew nothing<br />of what can happen to the poor flesh in this world,<br /><br />to the soul... suddenly the blood came. it spurted<br />from the tube into the bed sheets as if somebody<br />has sucked it out of me through a straw<br /><br />everybody breathed more easilyvidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021824187213120536.post-37723892309698979172009-01-31T06:44:00.000-08:002009-01-31T07:28:45.946-08:00the peripheral manThe diagnosis of chronic renal insufficiency marks the beginning of a clear divisory line between one way of living and a totally different one, experienced by the same person. Hemodialysis, the standard treatment for that, shall we say, condition, is a procedure which changes the very biochemistry of the individual who undergoes it. Let alone his personality. For, once on dialysis, philosophical outlooks and ways of undesrstanding reality which applied before, cease to have much import. Being dependant on a blood cleansing machine for survival, makes a person feel like he is looking into a black chasm from the edge of a cliff, and sort of swaying to and fro with a whimsical wind. The solidity which the world tended to present before the disease appeared, is all but gone. The sky is now full of sinister symbols of fire foretelling the end of the world and the uselessness of willing positive outcomes, recovery, mercy, regeneration. Something is stubbornly working against the body within its very blood. And, what is more, something is insidiously sapping the strength of the mind, and leading it to a dark place, to panic. So that the dialysis patient has to learn how to live with panic without collapsing into anguish and irreparable sadness.<br /> What I write I never make prints of, because I write it quickly and in despair. I only write when the sorrow of being ill and seeing the world with the eyes of someone touched by the shadow gives me the necessary anger. And I don´t care who read or what they think. My aim is merely to convey the strange mixture of sadness, fear and BEAUTY which my disease has caused me to feel constantly. A lot of what is written here, therefore, is spontaneous to the point that it might lack sense at times. The great poet went to the seashore to get rid " Of the great sorrow that is in my mind" I go to the computer and start pounding on the keyboard, actually wishing it was a piano. The inability of writing machines to make loud,even deafening sounds, is disturbing. They can be like people, filtering all the pain in the world without uttering a sound, keeping an expresionless, frozen countenance. But as I write, inevitable thoughts about the way life was before dialysis come to me, and i see myself in the place where i used to live, with the people I used to know. One day I moved away from the place I knew and ended up in a desolate world where everybody was faceless and tongueless and moved silently among beautiful old, silvery buildings, under a shiny, steely, sunless sky which seemed painted by UTRILLO during a bad hangover . Many times I told myself that if Iwere to be found dead in that world there would be no one to give the news to, no one to phone anyone about it. An oblique light sometimes breaks through the clouds in the early afternoon, as I walk to dialysis, and engulfs the walls, the strees, the trees along the streets, in dreamy golden tints . Everything is distant and a little false, like a backdrop in a theater. And i am watching this cold place full of beauty and regret from a spot where no one can see me. I don´t mean anything. I´m just an observer and I won´t be looking for too long a time. Also, I will leave without passing judgement and without critizising, because I am the peripheral man, whose life, whose reality, continues only because of a machine. In such circumstances, it would be silly to speak of historical memory, religious fervour, progress, or the possibility of being loved by one of those healthy people ever again. The only thing that makes sense is to ponder about this strange loneliness which is in itself beautiful and terrible, and which surrounds the unhealthy like a spell.vidal alcoleahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417390041289811227noreply@blogger.com0