viernes, 22 de enero de 2010

Sabines en español

Me ha entrado una nostalgia idiota por el idioma español. Digo idiota porque el idioma no se ha ido a ningún lado y no hay nada que extrañarle. Lo uso todo el tiempo, en LA si no fuera a la escuela no hablaría inglés nunca, e incluso en la escuela la banda se ha descarado y lo habla frente a los gringos como si fuera su deber entendernos.

Como sea me la paso encontrando momentos en los que el idioma sería la perfección y no viene al caso. Ayer un gringo dijo una estupidez y yo dije entre risas - "What a moron" - y pensé, tirándome al drama loco, lo bonito que hubiera sido llamarlo "mentecato". En Navidad me contaron que la mamá de una amiga vio su tanga asomarse por encima de sus jeans y dijo - "¡Hija, eso ya no es ropa interior, eso es un elástico!" - semanas después sigo soltando carcajadas fuera de contexto y lamentando no poder poner eso en el guión gringo que no termino y no termino.

Total que estoy de pinche dramas, buscándome piedras en los zapatos. Y ayer que me enfermé y no estaba mi mamá, decidí ponerme pendejísima y regodearme en el extrañamiento: me acosté en mi camita cual paciente del psiquiátrico, le di play a Jaime Sabines y a llorar calladita se ha dicho.

Lo tengo leyendo sus poemas en una grabación que se hizo en Bellas Artes cuando cumplió setenta años. Su voz se quiebra en los momentos justos y el auditorio le aplaude como si fuera Tom Yorke. Leer a Sabines es bueno, pero escucharlo es demasiado para soportarse.

Jaimito... es políticamente incorrecto que a uno le guste Jaimito. Ni siquiera eso, es predecible y evidente y por lo tanto, para la banda académica cool we... despreciable. Me vale. Yo me rindo frente a su voz tersa, frente a sus frases limpias que se clavan en el centro del cuerpo como si ahí hubieran estado siempre y sólo encontraran su lugar. Se quedan sonando todo el tiempo, se recuerdan en desorden.

"Uno es el agua de la sed que tiene." / "Si yo tuviera un perro podría acariciarlo, si yo tuviera un hijo le enseñaría mi retrato o le diría un cuento que no dijera nada, pero que fuera largo" / "Uno es el hombre que en el duro saberlo de este mundo halla el milagro en actitud primera" / "Qué nostalgia de ti cuando no estás ausente."/ "Cantar es derramarse en gotas de aire, en hilos de aire, temblar" / "Este cielo de México es obscuro, lleno de gatos, con estrellas miedosas y con el aire apretado." / "Cuando estés madura, te vas a desprender de ti misma; y lo que seas de fruta se alegrará y lo que seas de rama quedará temblando" / "Algo he de andar buscando en ti. Algo mio que tú eres y que no has de darme nunca" / "¡Qué claridad tu rostro! ¡Qué ternura de luz ensimismada!" / "¿Ya ves? ¿Quién podría quererte menos que yo, amor mio?" / "Nos morimos amor y nada hacemos ya sino morirnos. Y ecribirnos. Y hablarnos. Y morirnos." / "Se ríen de las gentes que lo saben todo, de las que aman a perpetuidad verídicamente, de las que creen en el amor como en un lámpara de inagotable aceite" / "¿Por qué rendija se cuela el aire de la muerte? ¿Qué hongo de las paredes, qué sustancia ascendente del corazón de la tierra es la muerte?" / "Nadie ha de resignarse, dicen que nadie ha de resignarse, los amorosos de avenguenzan de toda conformación"/ "¡Levántame! de entre tus pies levántame, recógeme del suelo, de la sombra que pisas, del rincón de tu cuarto que nunca ves en sueños ¡Levántame! porque he caído de tus manos y quiero vivir, vivir, vivir."

Ustedes perdonen los muchos errores y el caos, pero así se acuerda uno de las cosas buenas.

Jaime, Jaime. Qué bonitas las palabras. Me voy a escibir en inglés.



viernes, 8 de enero de 2010

Travel

She had been sitting inside a grounded plane for three hours. There was fog over LAX so they had been forced to land in Ontario. Ontario, California is an actual place, she quickly learned but had a hard time believing.

They were waiting for the fog to lift so they could take them back to Los Angeles because there was no immigration personnel on site in Ontario and so an international flight should never actually land there, let alone let people off.

This apparently black and white argument flew for about an hour and a half, at which point everyone holding a blue American passport began to shout civil rights at the flight attendants and was eventually let off the damn thing.

So she was left with a couple of other Mexicans, about twenty five Irish frat boys who had been winter breaking it in Puerto Vallarta and a Japanese family who looked ready to burst into tears from confusion alone. She tried to read but they shut down the lights to make everything seem less horrible. The Irish boys attempted a whispered version of 101 bottles of beer on the wall (apparently they thought it was sacrilege to begin the count below 100), but they had barely reached 98 when they were viciously persuaded to stop.

It felt like a decade later that she was in LA showing her visa to the sweetest immigration officer she would ever encounter.

-Where are you going? – she asked her.

-Home. I go to school here.

-And how long where you in Mexico?

-Two weeks. I went home for the holidays.

The officer stared at her. Yeah, she had said it and it sounded just as weird to her, so she really hoped she wouldn’t be asked to expand on it.

Her DS form had the wrong date on it because she had diligently filled it out the second she boarded in Mexico city and now her travelling time had amassed so many hours that it had reached the next day. She looked at it and began to resign herself to the fact that she was gonna have to go fill a new effing form and go back to the end of the line. But the sweetest immigration officer she would ever encounter took one look at her disheveled face, corrected the date with a fantastically heavy marker and waved her by without scanning her fingerprints. So much for homeland security, god bless her.

An hour later her bag came and she was boarding a cab outside LAX. It seemed impossible to her to remember that she had begun that same day having breakfast in her house with her parents and brother; a little later, lunch with her sister’s blissfully curly hair.

It had become too late to do anything: unpack, write, think. Ralph's would be closed by now. She had been craving something sweet since forever, something like watermelon or someone else’s mouth. But now it was too late and she was going to go to bed with nothing but stale airplane air hovering around her tongue.

She was heading downtown, driven by an African cab driver who had the whitest teeth in La La land (which really is something to have). He spoke two or three undecipherable sentences into his cell phone and then turned to her.

-How are you doing tonight?

-Great – she answered. Because she really was too exhausted to tell the truth.

-Where are you from?

-Mexico.

He took a while to process this incredibly common fact, then went right on.

-Where in Mexico?

-Mexico city.

-Uh-huh, big city – he said. And he used that tone people use to comment on things they will never have the urge to experience.

- Biggest city in the world – she answered.

The words hung in the air for a long while. And for some reason (she couldn't find one) they made her cry.