The Agony and The Ecstasy

In September, I’ll see Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Capella Sistina. No work of art has produced a longer lasting effect on me, ever since my Drawing classes some 12 years ago.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

(A Thing of Beauty, John Keats)

The Dangers of Chocolate

Every Nestle chocolate bar now features the following warning: to better enjoy your chocolate, eat moderately. Or: Chocolate should be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Or, better yet: 25g of chocolate provides you with energy for a 20-minute swim, SO, eat moderately.

It all started with the French brand Casino, I believe. And 25g of chocolate are well worth a 20-minute swim. The problem being that 25g are not quite enough…

One Art

For the one person I couldn’t lose:

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch.  And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Weighty Souls

Two days ago, the writer Guillermo Arriaga participated in a debate, in Sao Paulo, with Uruguayan writer Diego Bracco. Someone in the audience asked him to tell, once again, an African tribe story concerning alma ligera y alma pesada, which can be (badly) translated into light soul and heavy soul. That’s pretty much what he said (in Español, translation will come later). I love this tale.

Hay una tribu africana que considera que nosotros tenemos dos almas: un alma ligera y un alma pesada. El alma ligera es un alma que anda por ahí. Te desmayas y se salió el alma ligera. Sueñas y se salió el alma ligera. Se sale el alma ligera y te vuelves loco. El déjà vu es el alma ligera que salió, vio algo y después regresó. Cuando se sale el alma pesada se acaba todo. El alma ligera sale del cuerpo tres años antes de la muerte para guiar al alma pesada en el momento final, y va a dos lugares: al árbol guaguau o gogú, que es el primer árbol de la creación, para contemplar el horizonte y ver cómo es el camino que debe seguir, y a preguntarles a las mujeres menstruando qué hay en la frontera de la vida con la muerte. Las mujeres menstruando están situadas en esa frontera: entre sangre y dolor, sale de entre sus piernas la posibilidad de aquello que pudo ser y no fue, así que se encuentra en un momento de sabiduría. Cuando ha ido a esos dos lugares, el alma ligera emprende el camino hacia el abismo exacto donde va a caer el alma pesada. Yo creo que un escritor tiene que actuar como esa alma ligera: ir, asomarse al abismo y regresar a chismearle al alma pesada. Ir a un horizonte donde nadie ha ido, situarse ahí y ver el vértigo de la caída. Yo quisiera ser ese escritor, lo que no significa que lo sea.

Retinae continued

There were three other men in the hall, all dressed in the same suit.

- Gentlemen, please…

Dr. Pavek approached them with a smile, then pointed to a table where there were exactly three glasses filled with some extraordinarily colorful drink.

The three men, who in every way were very much alike, sat down on three upholstered chairs and, almost at the same time, raised their eyes to Dr. Pavek. He smiled back at them, then smiled at Mr. Schaw, who held another glass of the same drink and had just been back from someplace else. With a click on his minimal remote control, Dr. Pavek made the walls close behind Mr. Schaw and the five gentlemen now shared a much smaller room.

- Well – commenced the Dr, with an accent that was either Polish or English.

- Julius, I don’t know if the news about the murders have reached you… – Mr. Schaw now seemed deprived of all the joy the lab had given him earlier.

Dr. Pavek’s expression grew darker.

- I believe someone has been murdering many of my clients by removing their substitute eyes.

- Yes, that one.

- Of course I’ve heard of him.

Then he looked at his watch, a broad tech device whose display seemed to be in unstoppable movement.

- And if I’m not mistaken, he has just striked again, while you gentlemen were talking to me.

- Who’s the new victim? – asked one of the three.

- An Elisa Baltimore, 22, used to be pretty.

- Julius, this is very serious business.

- Yes, I know. But I have no idea of how I could possibly be of any help if not by giving a 1 billion name list of everyone who’s seeing through the glasses I’ve invented 20 years ago.

The three men sat still. Mr. Schaw went along.

- We were expecting you’d tell us something the murders could have in common.

- I don’t quite know much about them, I’m afraid, Richard. They came to me long ago, as new born babies or children. Which reminds me that I should be getting back to my See-All class. Don’t you think those children should learn a little about the human eye, the one they’ve had for years now, without giving it the slightest thought?

- Oh, certainly – replied one of the three – and what is this drink?

- It’s vodka and chocolate with a little of my eye soup. Oh, you don’t have to worry. If anything, it’ll make you see better.

Dr. Pavek stood up and walked to the wall, where he pressed one of three red buttons. The three gentlemen left him, each with a short bow exactly like the one before. Then he came back to the room, where Mr. Schaw awaited him with another glass of the same drink.

- Richard, I should like to tell that if you drink up to 3 of those, instead of seeing better, you’ll lose awareness of your whereabouts.

Mr. Schaw laughed heartily. Dr. Pavek smiled.

- Let’s check on these victims.

Miss Arlena, the Victim

My favorite Agatha Christie’s novel is Evil Under the Sun. It’s definitely not her best work — Witness for the Prosecution is perfect, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is fabulous, and The Mousetrap is good enough — but it’s got something else: Arlena Stuart Marshall.

As The Observer pointed out when the book was first released (back in 1941):

Evil Under the Sun has luxury summer hotel, closed-circle setting, Poirot in white trousers. Victim: redhead actress man-mad. Smashing solution, after clouds of dust thrown in your eyes, ought to catch you right out. Light as a soufflé.

At the beginning, when she comes out of the water, slim and beautiful in a white swimsuit, and she glances at someone else’s husband, everyone believes that she is the evil implied by the title. But Hercule Poirot unveils the truth: what if the effect she caused in men, albeit strong, was almost insignificant compared to the attraction men had upon her?

But that is a completely different story.

Promenade au Champagne

L´idée etait parfaite. A late-afternoon stroll around the city’s charm blocks. You go inside each one of the high profile stores, drink a little champagne and try some of their delicious appetizers (or, as it was with Louis Vuitton, an amazing, squared, praline chocolate!). All this surrounded by Sao Paulo’s beautiful society. And, as it starts getting a little late, you watch people going through a very unusual shop-alcoholism.

With a little champagne, even the tiniest and tighest little white dress will look just amazing on you.

Daring Young Women on the Flying Trapeze

“You are the same age as my character”, he said in a solid, pleasant, 60-year-old voice. And then he looked at me with blue, liquid, serene eyes. He could have said that we had the exact same background, or that she and I lived in the same city or that we shared the habit of sleeping with older men. But he was right. We were both 26 and we were not young anymore.

I looked at him and his impossibly thin and chic wife. And how he talked in a gentle, amicable way. And that soon, very soon, I’d be too old to portray some foreigner’s main character in a foreign novel.

If it were a drink…

If The Garden of Eden were a drink, it would be a Lemon Drop Martini:

Lemon Drop Martini

1 1/2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce Triple Sec
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
Ice cubes
Superfine sugar for dipping
Twisted peel of lemon

Mix the vodka, Triple Sec, sugar, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice; shake well (supposedly the cocktail is to be shaken 40 times to make sure the sugar is well blended). Pour strained liquor into sugar-rimmed martini glass and garnish with a twisted peel of lemon.

NOTE: To create a sugar-rimmed glass, take a lemon wedge and rub the drinking surface of the glass so it is barely moist. Dip the edge of the glass into sugar.

Makes 1 serving.

Why Fiction Characters Should Drink More

Because we can’t.

One of the most delicious books I ever read was Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden. All the characters ever do is swim in the morning, then drink a little champagne, make love, then drink some whisky or absinthe or cognac, swim again, and then make love again. And all this in the French Riviera, in the Côte d’Azur.

I found myself terribly envious of Catherine — a very tanned blonde who has her hair cut a la garçon and still looks impossibly beautiful. And she never, ever, experiences any kind of 5-Pound-Bloat (with all that alcohol, one would imagine…).

Even though heavy drinking is one of the author’s signature marks (The Sun Also Rises, For Whom The Bell Tolls — all feature a great deal of absinthe), the book was considered an erotic drama and a more effeminate Hemingway.