Argentina @ MindSay 
soccer
Não é sempre que podemos acompanhar um autor lendo seu próprio texto. Daí a importância do lançamento do audiobook “Viva Voz de América Latina – Volume 9”. Editado pela Universidade Autônoma do México em 1997, o CD de 36 minutos (e cinco faixas) traz Julio Cortázar declamando os contos “Conducta en los Velorios” e “Casa Tomada”; além da leitura de trechos dos romances “Rayela” (publicado em 1963) e “El Perseguidor” (de 1967).
O encarte contém um prefácio de Carlos Monsiváis e o texto incluso nas gravações. Este é apenas um dos discos aonde podemos ouvir a voz do escritor argentino. O primeiro LP dedicado a ele foi lançado em 1967, com o título de “Cortázar Lee a Cortázar”. Seu trabalho já serviu como fonte de inspiração para diversos músicos; que transformaram os textos de Cortázar em canções.
Gabriel García Márquez também gravou alguns trechos de sua obra para a mesma coleção aqui citada.
LEIA:
Julio Cortázar – Conducta en los Velorios
OUÇA:
Julio Cortázar – Conducta en los Velorios
ASSISTA:
Adaptação Visual de Conducta en los Velorios
and I don't know...it was just what I needed to see. That Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo are still active, that people are still hunting for the truth, that the issue didn't just die with time. It was a terrible thing that happened, but we never talk about it.
Much more shallowly, in the cool category, I got my computer the summer before freshman year of college, so summer 2003. Never ONE TIME has he played a DVD. He's a good boy, and he puts up with A LOT of stuff I put him thru, but Palmero (DUH he has a name!) has always had that flaw. Plays CDs just fine, and I can watch things online or DL a video, but put something into one of the drives, and nada. So I ordered a New Found Glory DVD recently, and it arrived last night. For giggles, I put it into my computer this morning to see if there was a plain audio component before I asked my roommate if I could put it into her computer to be sure it worked...and it started playing. My 5-year old and heaving computer has suddenly decided it is capable of technology. Way to go, Palmero. I love you more everyday :)
Also kind of amazing, two BLS videos on the internet. And by videos, I mean...20-minute clips. <33
I sure wish I had something to write about. Yo, I promised you all a blog about Argentina. I little thought Argentina would provide so little material.
No. Just kidding. I haven’t had a bad trip here, either as that statement will be understood by a general readership, or in the sense that a user of hallucinogens would understand it. (Truthfully, in the latter sense, I haven’t taken any trip at all. That day will come.) Actually I haven't had a single solitary boring day here. It’s just hard to convey what’s so great about a place to people who aren’t seeing it. Sigh. OK, I shall try.
Here we go: I went to Córdoba province, you guys. With the group, you know, ‘cuz I’ve been too lazy to organize any of my own trips so far. THAT was cool. I can’t remember ever having had a more relaxing weekend. We were all out in a resort on the Sierra, with more horses living in the vicinity than people. I rode one of said horses to the top of a hill to take in the view, and it was a bit of a bitch, truth be told. Motherfucker wouldn’t stop trotting. I hate trotting. Especially when I can’t figure out how to lengthen my right stirrup, and my foot bounces out of it every goddamn time my mount’s hooves hit the ground. I would rather have cantered (fewer knocks on the ass per minute, you know?), but this prick of a horse wasn’t having it.
So what else can I tell you about Córdoba? Well, we all took part in this weird sacrificial ritual called an asado (I understand it translates to “barbecue” in English), at which I ate an entire goat’s leg. Actually, it was a baby goat, but it was still five times the size of a drumstick. Bitch.
It was a lot like chicken, come to think of it, but oilier. And I was expecting it to be like lamb, dammit. Still, I wasn’t too disappointed. I ate some fuckin’ goat meat. Who could complain? I felt like I was a Bedouin in a desert tent or an enthusiast in an ancient Orphic rite. But only until the meat was gone.
What else? Oh, Córdoba would have been wonderful indeed, O my reader, if you had accompanied me thither. But since you couldn’t, I despair of doing justice to the charm of the province with my poor words. I can only say that one of the greatest joys of traveling outside your home continent is seeing birds, little animals, trees, and suchlike things of sizes, shapes, and colors differing from any you would see back home. It is almost enough to make me say, “Fuck this Poli Sci shit, I’m starting over and becoming a field biologist.”
I am too lazy and busy to find the specific names of these trees and birds and little beasts (apart from, you know, herds of goats. Even they look different here) if you were wondering. But even if I told you, I doubt you would feel the same rush of bliss upon seeing photos of them in a google search as I did standing in a sunlit landscape full of them.
And I can’t post pictures either (like they’d be any help… come on. Really.) because my camera has gone all wonky, and will no longer take photographs. Oh, f*dge. Drat and bother.
You will just have to take my word for it that you would have felt the same delight in the change of scenery if you had been at my side to enjoy it with me. I wish you had been.
Yes, it was pretty, but I hear Jujuy, where I’m going next, is even prettier. It’s in the Andes basically, right near Bolivia. I’ll have to watch out for them Bolivian hillbillies. Then I’ll write another post about Jujuy.
To me, Jujuy is a HILARIOUS name for a province for anyone who’s studied Russian. You see, any speaker of Russian who’s worth his salt knows what Хуй means. It’s even on Википедии (ru.wikipedia.org!): Хуй — ненормативное, бранное название мужского полового члена в русском и некоторых других славянских языках.
So I can say things like Я в среду еду на Ху-Хуй. And if you were here and pissing me off, I could tell you Иди на Ху-Хуй! That would keep you busy for a while, since it’s ovr 1000 km from Buenos Aires. (Actually, “в Хухуй” would be more correct, but I don’t care.)
But apart from its sounding similar to the Russian word for dick, and its location, I know nothing of Jujuy. I’m sure there will be plenty of distinctively South American flora and fauna to admire there… but if not I’ll be sure to let you know in the next post.
So I was at the St. Petersburg zoo w/ Titus on my birthday and a lioness started roaring. Only the sounds she was making weren’t so much roars as deeply frustrated, grunting bellows straight from her colossal diaphragm, like she was despairing of life and begging whoever had the courage, the mercy, and the means to end her miserable existence now… It was unpleasant to hear, so it didn’t surprise me to see the people around her cage getting a little uncomfortable at the sounds… they were grinning and giggling nervously and casting sidelong glances at each other.
So whatever… I looked over at Titus, somewhere nearby, and caught him laughing so hard at something that he couldn’t stop to explain the joke.
“Eugggghhhh!” bawled the lioness. “Ghhhrrrooouuuughhhh!!!”
Her roars gradually subsided into quieter -- but still clearly audible -- throaty sighs of resignation. I felt my heart breaking. But Titus still couldn’t control his laughter.
I was about to ask him what was so funny, when he rolled his eyes heavenward and groaned, as if in the throes of passion, “Oh God! Oh yeeeaaaaahh!!”, accompanying the lioness’s last heaving moans… and it hit me that every teenager and adult at the damn zoo (the kids, like me, hadn’t been laughing) had been in on a joke that had gone right by me:
That lioness’s solo had been a perfect imitation of a man’s climax, only it would have to have been a particularly large, deep-voiced, and especially lucky man to have made sounds like she was making.
Funny, I thought, that almost everyone except me in that zoo old enough to make the comparison, whether Russian or *other*, had instantly registered the likeness of the frustrated, caged lioness’s solo to the equally passionate roars of a man having an orgasm. And that everyone had found it equally hilarious: I saw a girl laughing as hard as Titus, (but more self-consciously) and smacking her friend on the arm for saying something lewd during one of the lioness’s several operatic performances that afternoon.
And I thanked the lioness for reaffirming my faith in the underlying connection of all of mankind’s consciousness. Bryan and Ljudmila Petrovna had both told me sex was still more of a taboo subject for most Russians than it was for most Americans, Russia being a more traditional society and all that. I thought male orgasms would have been a little more, y’know, <out of Russian sight (or discourse), out of Russian mind…>
And I wondered: was there any zoo in the world where people (or at least, most gay men and straight women) wouldn’t have immediately noticed and permitted themselves to laugh publicly at the resemblance between a lioness’s roars and a man’s moans of pleasure?? In Bolivia, that Catholic backwater (ya don’t get much more “traditional” than Bolivia, lemme tell ya) where everyone is still probably as shy about publicly acknowledging the existence of sex as our Bolivian Araceli… Would such a pious young Catholic maiden as Araceli, upon hearing an analogously angry lioness in her own hometown zoo, have thought to herself, “I say, that frustrated lioness sounds just like a man whose partner really knows what she’s doing!”? (Most Bolivians’ thoughts still run, I believe, in traditionally heteronormative grooves.) And had she thus reflected, would she have then permitted herself a sheepish chuckle in full view of the zoo’s other patrons, or stifled it in shame for having allowed such a sinful notion to occur to her?? I hope she reads this some day, and will oblige me by letting me know.
A FINAL NOTE: The reason this blog entry is about St. Petersburg and not Buenos Aires is 'cuz I ain't in Argentina yet keep your shirt on. Jesus. I think Annie is the only one reading this blog anyway, so she and I will have to fix that by letting other people know it exists. Like Araceli, Valentin, and other worthies. The problem is finding people who'd CARE enough to read it... Any ideas Annie? I don't have to mention... never mind you know who I'm talking about. And he's planning to read this, too.
First up, at 2pm, was England vs Paraguay, in what was a rather dull and frustrating match, at least in the second half. The final score:
England - 1 (Gamarra OG)
Paraguay - 0
Something of note is that FIFA will be looking at the goal, and will decide whether it took enough of a deflection for it to be classed as an own goal, or whether it should actually be awarded to David Beckham, who hit the free kick which led to the goal. More on this tomorrow.
5pm saw the second game of Group B, which was infinately better than the England game. It was Trinidad & Tobago vs Sweden, the final score:
Trinidad & Tobago - 0 (Avery John Sent Off)
Sweden - 0
So, after those games, the Group B table looks like this:
1 - England
2 - Sweden
----
3 - Trinidad & Tobago
4 - Paraguay.
The last game of today's programme, which has not long finished, was Argentina vs Ivory Coast, from Group C. The final score for this game was:
Argentina - 2 (Crespo, Saviola)
Ivory Coast - 1 (Drogba)
I won't bother with the table, because there's still a game to play. And that brings us to tomorrow's games.
At 2pm, on BBC1, it's Serbia & Montenegro vs Holland, the last game from Group C. Then, at 5pm, also on BBC1, from Group D it's Mexico vs Iran, which sounds really thrilling. [/sarcasm] At 8pm, on ITV1, it's the second game from Group D, which is Angola vs Portugal.
So, until tomorrow.
-=Gav=-
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