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I ran the first few lines of Whitman's Song of Myself through all the possible combinations of Google Translate. From English I went to French, from French to Spanish, from Spanish to Chinese, Corean, Japanese, Malayan, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. Then I translated it back to English. This is what turned out:

I am this song
Therefore,
You are very good, you can hear me.

Welcome to spiritual food
In summer, the grass on the basis that I sit

My language, my blood, plastic, earth, air, all the atoms
After their parents or grandparents were born, born
Parents
A healthy start 37 years ago,

Sinceramente,
NMMP

Holes (Guest Post by Haider Shahbaz)

For your reading pleasure, the writing of Haider Shahbaz, dear friend of both your hosts NMMP and SEMV. This was originally published in 3quarksdaily, and can be found here: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/04/holes.html#more

HOLES

“On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.” Gabriel Garcia Marques, Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

“Before we had religion and other nonsense. Now for everyone there should be someone to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valour that one could have one becomes very alone.” Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Our lives are but the chronicles of a death foretold. Day to day, from birth, there is only one certainty: we will die. And so, like Marquez’s narrative, begins our journey; from the first sentence we know the end – the certainty of our death. Yet, the narrative is gripping. Life is compelling – in its own many small and mysterious ways. And what, after all, is compelling? How does Marquez make us read when he has whispered the end into our ears, casually, like the news of our death?

There are some things in life that they do not talk about in the classroom. One of them is holes. Not just any holes – bodily holes: assholes, vaginas, noses, sweat pores, mouths, ears, penises. Because of my friends, I became obsessed with holes. They liked peering in their assholes. At least, Martin did. He tried to write a poem about his asshole. The poem, well enough, made him fall in love with his asshole. Its darkness, its depth, its wrinkles and curves, the small pieces of shit stuck all over it. How manly, he said, he thought. Whenever he came out to drink whiskey in his ill-fitted plaid shirts, ginger hair, armed with an accent and a childish smile, he talked of his asshole. We all knew his asshole intimately and adored it as intensely as him. It became his muse. And we all peered into our assholes. Deep down, and smiled, privately.

Then, Nadia and her sari. I woke up to her putting it on. Round and round and round. All six yards of it, as she told me. All six yards. All of it to hide two little holes? All the mysteries, answers, that lie there, waiting. Her vagina was tasty. It smelled, strongly. A little mole, to the side, a reward for the curious. Soft, powerful, sad, funny: wholly hers to give, whomever she wanted to connect with. Her way to connect. Her way to speak. But before I started becoming aware of these bodily holes, I had completely forgotten about them.

I hadn’t been aware of my holes for a long time. I must have been aware at some point, maybe in the lost memories of my childhood, but I only remembered forgetting them. Slowly but surely, forgetting completely that I had holes in my body. When I was twelve, I started praying the Islamic prayer five times a day. I did not want to go to hell. Later, I found mysticism. Hell was not transcendence, god himself was. Later still, I found anarchism. I rejected all messiahs, all transcendence. I only needed truth, and it was in the utopia. But, I never gave up Truth. And it never pointed me to life. Truth never pointed me to my holes. There was always something higher to achieve. My body could not be the end. This world, my existence, these all too heavy molecules: surely, this could not be all. I became alone; I wanted to get to my inside, to my soul, my heart, my consciousness that would join me to the consciousness of all existence and all history and to the Truth.

But, finally, it was the trick of light midnight springtime floating air that reminded me of my holes, the holes that connected me to all existence. My friend, Carmen, told me to lie down, to close my eyes, to breath. And breath I did, with a stupid smile. But she shook her head. Breathe. Breathe. BREATHE. She said. She told me to feel the air as it went inside and came out. She told me to imagine it filling up my lungs, filling up my body, to feel it beat against my skin. Little by little, I did. I realized I had forgotten to breathe, forgotten my connection to the world: the writing process itself, the life of the narrative, the narrative of life. The air was beating inside of me. And I realize, only now, how stupid to talk of an inside, of a boundary, a barrier. That air I shared with all life and the world. A connection, so physical, so material, so present, it cannot be refused. There is no beginning and end to my body, only porous holes, reaching out to all else that exists. I am part of the world, so meticulously connected and mutually constructed. I had it: I keep living and I keep reading because I want to feel these connections. The pleasure is that of existence itself, of the narrative, of the word. Never of the end. I want to feel the world around me, breathing it in and out, asserting my existence but only through those of others. I had nothing more to look for; who needs a soul? I shared the gentle caresses and hedonistic orgies of existence with the physical world itself. It was the trick of light midnight springtime floating air. And, it was, the most satisfying trick of them all: to know that there is no trick, not even a magician.

Sinceramente,

Haider Syed Shahbaz

El Mal En La Semilla

Barcelona, abril de 2011. En la plaza de Sant Jaume, un grupo de mexicanos se reúne para protestar la muerte de 40 000 personas en la Guerra contra el Narcotráfico. Se lee la carta escrita por Javier Sicilia, poeta y padre de una de las víctimas quien ha convocado esta y otras manifestaciones. Después se leen textos de los voluntarios presentes. Entre el ruido de los turistas y las obras en una tienda de ropa cercana, escuchar las lecturas es casi imposible. Los policías miran sin entender muy bien que esta pasando, los mexicanos siguen leyendo aunque casi nadie los pueda escuchar. En el suelo hay un intento de altar de muertos con un curioso diseño que incluye papel picado. Personas se saludan y hablan en voz baja, como para no interrumpir al inaudible declamador. Turistas variopintos se acercan a sacar fotografías. Cuando ya no hay mas textos que leer, alguien propone un minuto de silencio. Todos se sientan en el suelo, y aun cuando el silencio es imposible, ahí están cuarenta o sesenta mexicanos sentados con la boca cerrada. Al final alguien empieza a gritar “¡No mas muertes!” o “¡No mas sangre!” Los presentes corean unas cuantas veces, hasta que el canto común empieza a menguar y se produce un extraño momento de incomodidad. Es obligado dudar sobre la razón de ser de este tipo de eventos, especialmente en el extranjero. Al final siempre queda la dignidad del símbolo, pero la impotencia experimentada cuando el encuentro concluye es una representación elocuente de la experiencia del grueso de los mexicanos ante la Guerra: la impotencia, la incertidumbre, la espera.

Cinco años después de su toma de posesión Felipe Calderón puede firmar la etapa mas sangrienta de la historia reciente de México. Algunos lo acusan directamente, otros defienden su coraje. Una cosa es cierta: nuestro país está en Guerra. Ahora bien, si se esta haciendo de un modo inteligente o no, es otro tema. Si en ciertas partes de la republica el crimen organizado y el gobierno son parte de la misma institución, también es otro tema. Si el político es un narco que se esconde o el narco es un político que sale en la tele, todos podemos discutir, especular, pelear. El único hecho certero es que México esta en Guerra y hasta el momento 40 000 personas han fallecido en consecuencia. No se puede vivir en un estado en Guerra sin tener una posición política ante esta, pero esta posición inescapable no significa que necesariamente tengamos consciencia sobre la ubicación real de nuestras acciones en relación a la Guerra.

José López Portillo, nuestro trágico y particular Citizen Kane, fue muy atinado cuando dijo que México corría el riesgo de convertirse en un país de cínicos. Al hacer de su vida el máximo ejemplo de ese mismo cinismo, firmó una profecía terrible. El problema nacional de hoy reside precisamente en esto. Si el país está roto es por que todos pensamos que ante el desastre se podía mirar al otro lado y que no iba pasar nada. Durante décadas abusamos de este extraño privilegio y las consecuencias, tormentas de cadáveres encarrerados desde el pasado, empiezan a revolcarnos hoy. Y sin embargo, todos estamos indignados, como si el problema no fuera nuestro, como tuviera evidente solución.

Ser Presidente es un trabajo sucio, en México y en todo el mundo. Los políticos han de pagar un precio para llegar a cualquier sitio de poder, ellos lo saben, nosotros lo sabemos. El poder es necesario para intentar cualquier cambio de gran alcance. Cuando se elige a un candidato, se le concede –por las razones que sean- una posición de poder para enfrentar los problemas que afligen a las mismas personas que lo votaron (y muchas más).

Independientemente de las dudosas condiciones bajo las que se resolvieron las ultimas elecciones presidenciales, el crimen organizado era un mal que ya afligía a la sociedad civil, por lo tanto, era un mal que se tenía combatir. Perderse en argumentos que delegitimicen al actual gobierno por los probables fraudes electorales del 2006 es mirar a otro lado, peor aun, es politiqueo. La Guerra que se está peleando hoy es mucho mas que partidísimo, el mal que la originó es mucho más viejo que el auge de sus muertes, el daño que el enemigo puede causar es irreversible y amenaza con la destrucción del Estado. Ante un problema así, las soluciones no pueden ser sistematizadas con argumentos solamente políticos. La culpa no es sólo de Calderón. La culpa no es sólo de los narcos. La culpa no es sólo del PRI. La culpa no es solo del Chapo. Nosotros somos la culpa.

Si el problema ha de enfrentarse no sólo se puede hacer desde el flanco militar, de esto no cabe duda. Sin embargo, debemos preguntarnos que podemos aspirar a lograr con estas movilizaciones sociales, declamaciones, cánticos y minutos de silencio. Si bien las marchas no pueden hacer mucho contra las dinámicas económicas, históricas y sociales que son el fondo de este conflicto, es importante reconocer que pueden tener un impacto enorme sobre la mentalidad de nuestra sociedad. Este movimiento —llamémosle como queramos: hastalamadrismo, nomasangrismo— tiene la capacidad de iniciar un proceso mental que puede llevarnos a un consenso, a una cierta cohesión de la sociedad que es precisamente la costura necesaria para componer la rotura que desangra al país. Es esta falta de cohesión, que está detrás de la tradición de saqueo impresa en el genoma nacional. Es esta idea de “yo y ellos,” “nosotros y ustedes,” que tiene a dos razas separadas entre ricos y pobres —grupos radicalmente separados y autoexcluyentes que, por cierto, comparten y viven de un modo diferente e injusto la misma Guerra. Si el gobierno fuese inteligente colaboraría con un presupuesto inusitado en la historia del país destinado a la prevención y rehabilitación, así como el apoyo incondicional que merece cualquier iniciativa ciudadana para ayudar a resolver este problema.

Cada uno de nosotros debe asumir su responsabilidad ética —que es, al mismo tiempo, una responsabilidad política— ante la tormenta que vivimos, y actuar de manera congruente. Si no, los minutos de silencio son solamente un montón de personas sentadas en el suelo, con la boca cerrada, esperando —y así no se ganan las guerras.

Sinceramente,

SEMV

And yet, Not Even (An Afterword to the Epilogue to Fear and Trembling).

"One must go further, one must go further." This impulse to go further is an ancient thing in the world. Heraclitus the obscure, who deposited his thoughts in his writings and his writings in the Temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armor during his life, and therefore he hung them up in the temple of the goddess), Heraclitus the obscure said, "One cannot pass twice through the same stream." Heraclitus the obscure had a disciple who did not stop with that, he went further and added, "One cannot do it even once." Poor Heraclitus, to have such a disciple! By this amendment the thesis of Heraclitus was so improved that it became an Eleatic thesis which denies movement, and yet that disciple desired only to be a disciple of Heraclitus … and to go further–not back to the position Heraclitus had abandoned"

From the Epilogue to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.

1

And why add yet another word —is this not going further? Why not let the text fall silent? Any explication would do violence to the text explained, especially in this case, when the text refuses and rejects explication, when obscurity is the essence of the text. And yet only a naïve interpretation would require silence from us —because that would imply that the text contains some esoteric truth that can only be reached through an individual encounter with its mystery, and that is not the case. The message of Fear and Trembling is not a positive assertion nor a secret, but a declaration of ignorance. It follows that an attempt at theoretical clarification is harmless, if not terribly useful: it will simply confirm the honest reader’s suspicion that he did not understand. The only understanding that can be taken from a theoretical assertion of ignorance —be it the text itself or its afterword— is a negative one: the humbling realization that we are not being honest when we say we have understood, and that if we wish to be honest the task that lies ahead of us is daunting.

2

So do not accuse me of going further, for I am only taking a step back. After all, every advance in understanding, if it is truly an advance, constitutes a recession. This conclusion should not surprise us, diligent readers of these beautiful cacophonies, for if Ethics are to collapse upon a paradox, why should Epistemology or any other branch of philosophy be spared? If our thoughts are honest —which is to say: if our thoughts are not merely thoughts but the very substance of our lives— then the only understanding we can ever hope to reach is that we cannot understand. And yet the philistines somehow believe they have made progress! To unmask their dishonesty we need only picture the physiological effects that actual radical doubt would have on someone unfortunate enough to be cursed with such a thought. If doubt is not merely a position assumed like an actor assumes a role, if it is something more than a mere a thought experiment conducted in the safety of an isolated laboratory, it could only result in paralyzing anxiety. Doubt that is something other than hypocrisy could only lead to fear and trembling —and no further. Not that I claim this from personal experience —I confess myself a hypocrite, and offer this afterword as evidence— but this I can say: to speak of doubt as if it were ground solid enough to support the crystal palace of reason implies either enormous naïveté or unfathomable perversity.

3

But do not accuse me, or Johannes, of going further, because the Greeks already understood. If one is good enough an archeologist to discern the Socratic ruins from among the Platonic restoration, the traces of a sublime and self-conscious mis-understanding begin to emerge. The story is well known: a group of beautiful young men kidnap the old teacher and sit him down in the beachfront condo of one of their fathers; for although the beloved begetter may have lost all traces of virility he still needs some kind of entertainment and the teacher is a famed conversationalist. Laughing, the teacher takes his revenge: one by one they try to go further —the theme at hand is Justice, but it could have been anything— and each time he gently pushes them back. The answer that comes at the end of the night, that ridiculous myth that the beautiful young men are to tell to the people, is plaster spread over the cracks of the ruins by the next generation —a sad attempt at going further forwards, the result of perishing to the temptation of providing a positive answer instead of a further question. More than two thousand years ago, the honest spirit of Socrates already knew that the only knowledge he could aspire to was non-knowledge. Such was his honesty that he refused to write anything down: irony could only be learnt through personal experience; it could only be lived.

4

And yet it is possible, even desirable, to take yet another step back, and in a sense go further than Socrates —for irony may be a high passion indeed, but it is not the highest. This is what Johannes de Silentio is describing, with enough courage to admit that he could not perform it. Knowing that we cannot know is still knowing, understanding that we cannot understand is still understanding —and perhaps, just perhaps, there are some spirits who are strong enough to renounce even that renunciation. But make no mistake: behind irony there is more than nothingness and nihilism. Behind irony there is faith, a miraculous reconciliation of the paradox. He who has gone further than Socrates can only live on the basis of faith, which amounts to living without any basis. And yet the crowds of philistines think they can believe! Faith, honest faith, is even more difficult than honest doubt —so difficult that it approaches the impossible. Understanding that contradiction is a step back, but in this paradoxical world that means a step forward.

5

As such, Johannes can only write about faith by pointing out its deficiency, and for that same reason I can add yet another word to the cacophony without contradicting the task. The text forces the reader to take a step back. This is what is meant with the dictum that no generation can learn what is essential from the previous one: no one, not Socrates, not Johannes —certainly not Hegel— can live in place of the individual, and the truly essential is to be lived, not only thought. Therefore the only honest philosopher is he who replies to every question with a “not even that” —which perhaps explains the constant repetition of I cannot understand that runs through Johannes’ text.

6

Heraclitus’ disciple was being honest when he tried to go further —and not back— to what his teacher had already abandoned. He understood the paradox that the only advance possible was a recession. As such, his twisting of the teacher’s sentence was an attempt at removing one more level from the crystal palace. The next step back —the next step forwards— would have been to go ahead and step in the river anyway. That would have been faith. But the next generation did not stay true to their task —which was to live— and tried to make the disciple’s taking-a-step back into a going-forwards Hence the Eleatic denial of motion. The fact that they went on walking around and talking and laughing is proof enough of their dishonesty.

7

So what is this task that we are to bring back to life and make beautiful for honest and earnest spirits? Perhaps it is the Examined Life, which cannot be taught but only learnt. If it is an honest examination, it will inevitably result in fear and trembling. A lucky few will go back further enough and reach the bittersweet laughter of irony. The blessed fewer will go back as far as it is possible and arrive at miracle of faith. Though stating it like that, in such schematic fashion, may already be a foolish going further.

Sinceramente,

NMMP

On the Drug War (Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta)

Ve, pensamiento, con alas doradas,

pósate en las praderas y en las cimas

donde exhala su suave fragancia

el dulce aire de la tierra natal!

¡Saluda las orillas del Jordán

y las destruidas torres de Sión!

¡Oh, mi patria, tan bella y perdida!

¡Oh recuerdo tan caro y fatal!

Arpa de oro de fatídicos vates,

¿por qué cuelgas muda del sauce?

Revive en nuestros pechos el recuerdo,

¡Que hable del tiempo que fue!

Al igual que el destino de Sólima

Canta un aire de crudo lamento

que te inspire el Señor un aliento,

que al padecer infunda virtud,

que al padecer infunda virtud,

que al padecer infunda virtud,

al padecer, la virtud!.

Esta es la traducción de Wikipedia del Va Pensiero, uno de los coros del Nabucco de Verdi. El coro está compuesto de esclavos Hebreos —la ópera toma su anécdota del Éxodo— y se convirtió en el himno de la reunificación Italiana en el siglo XIX.

Una de las líneas, "Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta!" me hace pensar en México. Habitualmente hago el intento de olvidarme de mi país y de su triste suerte —en parte por cobardía, en parte porque el asunto está completamente fuera de mis manos, y no vale la pena sufrir por lo que no podemos corregir. Sin embargo, al leer hoy sobre las fosas comunes en Tamaulipas, la memoria de mi país regresa insidiosa y terrible.

Que quede claro: no soy en modo alguno patriota. El discurso público mexicano me causa nauseas, tanto en el lado de la política oficial como en el de los activistas, y nuestra tendencia colectiva al resentimiento —en el sentido Nietzscheano del término— me desagrada de sobremanera. Esta noche, pese a todo, no puedo contenerme, y pienso en México y en sus muertos, y me parte el alma. Perdónenme el sentimentalismo, perdónenme la pusilanimidad que en vez de a la rabia y a la acción me empuja a una tristeza contemplativa —pero como bien decía Montaigne, ante las verdaderas tragedias la única reacción apropiada es el silencio. O tal vez, solo tal vez, la música.

Sinceramente,
NMMP

Fragment (I can imagine another Odyssey)

In the Odyssey, as things stand, Odysseus and Penelope could never again be happy together. Perhaps that explains the poem’s unsettling and unsatisfying ending. After years of waiting and anxious expectation, they would find themselves the same, and the paradox that made Odysseus leave home in the first place —because only a very naïve reader would think that he actually cared about the whole Helen affair— has remained unresolved. Odysseus leaves home because Ithaca had become impossible, but if he always planned to return, then Ithaca would never become possible again. I can imagine another Odyssey, however, in which Odysseus leaves without knowing what will happen. Penelope too shares this not knowing, and as such she picks among the suitors the one —or the ones— she likes best, and spends her days in happiness sometimes and in sadness others, as she sees fit; never forgetting Odysseus but not consumed by his memory either. Odysseus fights in Troy and when he leaves he does not try to guide home his vessel, but rather lets the ship run free, like Zhuangzi’s sage. He too, forgets Penelope but does not forget her, and lives his days in happiness and sadness as they come, visiting many foreign cities and meeting wise men and sea-nymphs. Then one day, after one of his countless shipwrecks, he finds himself on a desert shore. It takes him a while to recognize that it is his Ithaca. He walks up to the palace in a daze, unrecognized by everyone. When he enters the Great Hall he finds Penelope alone: she has lived out the loves that she built with the suitors of her choice and now she is once again free. As he approaches her she recognizes him immediately —the scenes of the bed and the scars, of course, remain intact— but she does not throw herself at him, nor he at her. They are mature enough to know that instead they should greet each other as friends. As such, Odysseus asks the Queen —for when he left for Troy he had, by necessity, to renounce his kingdom— permission to stay as her guest. Penelope grants him this wish. Over the next few months —or the next few years: my Greeks have medical science comparable to that of our age— they spend time with each other, they talk until late at night, they go on long walks on the beach, they listen to the bard sing. Perhaps they even share a night or two in their well-rooted bed. And then one day, when they have gotten to know each other again, one day, when least expected, they find themselves lovers again. Ithaca has once again become possible. At the bottom of their hearts, they both always hoped for this, but this was a hope that included in itself a certain kind of renunciation: it wouldn’t have mattered if things had been otherwise. Friendship would have been enough, and it is precisely this understanding of the contingency of their love what allows it to flourish again. Only then, I think, could Odysseus and Penelope live out their years together.