It´s almost midnight. I turn on the tv and switch from one channel to another. I don´t remember in which one they were interviewing a woman. A woman with a young complexion but withered. With clear, open eyes and honey-colored eyes. Speaking serenely. 

She’s a mother, wife and daughter, and has been raped by several men with submachine guns that they bought from an honest manufacture in the Western  or Asian company. 

When the journalist asks her to recount the rape, she turns her gaze aside… and I can feel her shame. 

With a face distorted by the pain that only fear produces, with a weariness built up over months of suffering, with her vulnerability stamped on her skin, she implores, in a voice that trembles, not to talk about that.  

Her husband, her children and her parents have all rejected her for allowing it to happen. The most painful is that she herself, with that expression, has also rejected herself. 

She sleeps in the street, all alone, in the most abject state of defenselessness. 

I feel ashamed. 

Shame.

The picture is framed in the ancestral violence of man against the feminine. Cowardly and miserable beings, spoils of the worst that humanity is capable of producing. The violence of the macho in a perpetual vicious circle that breeds more and more violence. The victim can turn into an executioner in an endless sequence.

Sometimes it becomes unbearable to see what we have created.

 You walk through a narrow and ancestral space,

rocky and hard,

of bushes that rips the flesh,

aliagas,

brambles,

dense undergrowth that allows no possibility of a detour. 

There are no crossroads,

nor bridges

nor watchtowers from which the horizon can be glimpsed.

You wander aimlessly like a sleepwalker,

with a heavy gait,

like in a quagmire, 

you make the effort to lift your heavy feet 

and you find that you can’t,

they are leaden.

Made of lead and clay. 

It’s a lonely route, 

naked in its nature,

devoid of tenderness,

isolated and cold, 

without moments to breath,

where time loses its value because it can be bought, 

where “Nothing is Enough”,

where you have to be the “Only One”,

the very first

the very best,

your value measured by the weight of your pocketbook, 

and for a forgotten minute in the Eden.

This is the world that they have created for you,

for us,

fantasies of unlimited power,

delusions out of all proportion,

local anesthesia,

I have what I am,

I am what I have,

But, what am I?

Who am I? 

And if you could get off this path?

Escape from those knots?

The tedious destiny of the everyday?

What would you do without clothes?

What would you do each morning without those voices which exhort you,

which oblige you,

which use you?

How would you fill your time?

And do you know?

You know!

you know your strength,

your fortitude,

the limits of your determination,

your limitless curiosity,

the power you have when you are handed a challenge,

your inner spirit creative and free,

your courage.

Because you can bend like the wheat,

be pious and indulgent,

you can plant instead of reaping,

give in stead of robbing,

smile,

embrace,

forgive,

you can love,

vanquishing fear

You can choose.

Yes!  we can choose 

Me!

A unique being, 

capable of posing unimaginable challenges, 

indivisible and eternal. 

I am the product of the perfect, 

of the unrepeatable, 

with rights. 

I have the right to be avaricious 

this is our nature and I like it,

the greed of power, of success, of sex, of money, of having more and more, 

because “never is enough”.

If I want something and am able to get it, have it, that much is simple. 

I observe the steps that I take and it delights me,

I begin to ascend the stairs,

step by step, tread by tread, 

ascending  and a troubling satisfaction fills me,  

intoxicates me.  

I look out from the heights of the world, 

sometimes with condescension,

at other times with scorn and contempt,

at all that lies at my feet: above all at the humans.

The first men looked for gods to serve them, 

promising them vassalage, subjection and servitude.

Me! … I have stopped being a subject to god.

I have ceased to pursue him and I’ve become Him. 

I am God! 

My arrogance and haughtiness are unquestionable aspects of my character, 

of my vigor,

of my fortitude.

An implacable sun beats down on a parched, cracked soil,

scrubland inert and dry covers the pine grove,

hundreds of cicadas, thousands,

ants busily wandering around with no apparent direction, 

a turtledove unfurls its monotonous cooing.

Empty tin cans and broken bottles decorate some turns of the path,

small thirsty ravines descend the mountain,

the scent of the sweet resin fills the air, 

enveloping the child that I was.

The sea is near,

I can perceive it, 

I can feel it,

the perfume of the Mediterranean fuels my belonging, 

revives my past,

nostalgic.

I arrive to the line of gray, of black,

suddenly the green comes to an end,

accompanied by a stony silence,

a sour smell takes over the fragrance of the pines,

my heart breaks,

screams and cries.

The impudent ignorance speaks with tongues of fire,

walks capriciously to its free will,

destroying, annihilating,

burning up all hope,

all beauty. 

I search for something alive,

for something to redeem us,

a probability. 

I walk amid ashes and burnt blackened earth,

the Tramontana moans,

an endless sob is heard,

the desperation has passed but not the pain. 

A wisp of a breeze blows from the east,

a rosemary plant, timidly, appears in a tiny crack,

a burnt bird’s nest at the end of a branch,

perhaps it will shelter life next spring.

26 of July, 2013. The biggest fire of the Balears. Zone: between Andratx and Estellens. 2.335 hectares were burnt. The fire lasted for three weeks and burned with great force. The cause: a neighbor threw the live coals from a barbecue into the forest.   

My name is Diuuris, which means in Ganame: son of the rain. I’m four  hundred and thirty-four years old; practically all my adolescence is behind me. Those beings on the other side of the curtain call us gnomes or imps, but we are from Ganam, an island alive, surrounded by an insurmountable but invisible curtain that isolates us from the outside, where the beings of garbage and noise inhabit.

When my parents were young you could cross the big curtain if you were a certain age and certain days of the year. But before I was born, leaving Ganam became very risky, and even reckless, and the group of the seven old women decided that, due to the high danger that this implied, it was necessary that the whole island should be made aware. Then the various dispersed ethnic groups decided to close the communication channels with the other beings to avoid the discovery and later destruction of our world. So I have not been there and I will never be able to know it.

[...]

 night

He put his hand in his pocket and took out his last bill, old and wrinkled. He asked for another tequila, which he drank down at one gulp; there still remained some beer at the bottom of his glass: he looked at it with a sense of loss. Sam Mendes, another “espalda mojada” in the immensity of the land of abundance, alone. One more day in this city of promises that he now knew would never be kept. He looked around him: a den dirty and dark. “Blue in Green” by Miles Davis was playing; listening to it produced in him a kind of emptiness, of loneliness. Melancholy; behind him were left so many things… so many faces known and none of them present.

He finished the overlywarm beer, he paid and went out into the street nearly deserted. He had nowhere to go so he made his way back to his mattress in the room that he shared with other illegals who shared his fate.

[...]

day........Utopia

It’s nine, almost a quarter past, and he stretches before getting up. He has slept like a child. It’s Saturday and he’s going to reward himself. He thinks of having breakfast – and he hurries. Still somewhat sleepy, he grinds the coffee; the smell penetrates all of the kitchen, he breathes in its aroma. Now to heat the milk very foamy… ‘E voila’!  A splendid capuchino! He drinks it in small sips, savouring the delicious liquid, and he whisks together three eggs, adding a small amount of grated cheese from Mahon, making an omelette, under-cooked and succulent. He slices a tomato and adds a little fresh oregano and a sprinkle of olive oil, he toasts a slice of bread bought from a bakery which still bakes with wood-fire. And he prepares himself another capuchino. It’s incredible! And before putting an end to it all, he sliced a piece of banana and mixed it into a kefir with honey for a final touch. 

[...]

[...]

Throughout history we men have reinvented ourselves time and time again to continue being practically equals.

All of us live in and have lived in a “machista” universe. We all have conformed to it and although it would seem an exaggeration, it forms part of the “I” that is deepest in us. We think, we feel (emotionally and physically) and act according to an unconscious machista world.  

We are told that we live in the best possible world. It is true that in a small part of the world, we have the great good fortune to enjoy the greatest opportunities that our species has had throughout its existence. But it is equally true, that within the opportunities afforded to us, we live in one of the worst of realities. 

Practically all that surrounds us, that determines who we are, has its roots in the patriarchy. The great emotional, affective shortcomings that fathers have passed on to their sons, throughout the long history of our species, are the great responsibility, and not the only ones, of who we are now. 

The woman can be cruel, manipulative, competitive, violent, egoistic, a compulsive consumer, depredatory, hedonistic, capricious and enormously destructive – if we educate her to be so. Nevertheless, what she has been noted for throughout time has been her enormous shortcomings. The patriarchal world, governed by the need for servants and slaves, never really loved the woman, never gave her a secure bond where she could grow and mature. It’s just as true that men were also not loved neither, that homophobia always was with us, always accompanied us. 

And today, in our modern, developed world, women who aspire to have some rights, have to either play football, climb Everest, be predatory sharks in business and politics; they have to build up their muscles, learn to box, become referees, to lie – in short, transform themselves into a “Male Model”. Ah!, and besides that, they have to give birth, take care of the house, be attractive, fill their bodies with silicon and botox, wear erotic underwear, paint themselves everyday and take off their make-up every night; wear impossible high-heels and play at being dumb, because what matters is the container, not the contents. They have to be prizes to satisfy the vanity of men. Everything is as it has always been, with the same measurement pattern.

But despite having breathed, to have felt in their very depths the lack of love, despite having been raised and educated in environments that have  limited their worth and have disallowed their dignity, nevertheless they continue to preserve their Essence.

[...]