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No Dreams

oh shi~

What the fuck's wrong with me? O h yeah... Mental instability... Insane...

Am I?

I am "functioning" properly. I guess. I woke up early (despite being up late, yesterday). I woke up my daughter early too. She's with me this weekend. I wanted to get McDees Deluxe Breakfast for both of us. So we did that. But wait, before that she didn't want to brush her teeth. So I performed fatherly duties and looked all stern-faced and commanded her to go brush her teeth...

So we went through the drive-tru... Hehehe... And as always they fuck something up with the order. I kind of expect it nowadays. I didn't even get angry. I just thought, "Well, they only charged me for one 32 oz. orange juice so when I get home I'll split it up with the Lil miss. Everything will be hunky dory..." Is that how it's spelled? "Hunky dory"?

We had breakfast...

While watching Family Guy...

Thank goodness my daughter didn't understand the more mature jokes.

We finish breakfast and she gets her Nintendo DS right away... I keep on browsing the Internet...

And right then I feel this sudden urge to cry...

And all I can guess is, "Well, that is it. My mind finally snapped. They are gonna carry you away and put you in the looney bin. Wooo wooo wooo!"

But I quell the urge to cry. I bark orders at the brain to stop this insanity immediately! Or else!

Or else, what?

Well, the daughter is here. Do you want her to see you cry? She worries about you you know? You may think she doesn't notice, but she does. Yes, she does.

Tears are gone. Tears were never really there, in fact.

I start writing this up. Trying to capture the essence of the moment. Trying to... Let the steam escape in another way.

I am almost finished writing. I look at the other tabs in the browser and realize what I read that almost made me cry:

"Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me"

And I realized what my brain was thinking without me even consciously realizing it:

I no longer dream about being loved...

Mi Primo Pirulo

La Bestia

Mi primo Pirulo tenia un Nova del '76 que le llamaba La Bestia.

Aquel Nova alguna vez había sido negro, pero ahora el Bondo™ le rondaba rojo, chinita y rosita por todos lados. Aquel Nova había cogido además de moho muchos cantazos en la calle. Quien se le hacia un corte de pastelillo a aquel Nova lo hacia solo una vez. Aquel Nova injurioso fue el primer carro que yo guié en una calle oficial del estado de Puerto Rico.

Pirulo me enseñó que aquel armatoste de carro que pesaba una tonelada y estaba hecho de acero era

"... fácil de controlar. Los carros tu los controlas igual que tu controlas a las mujeres... Con un dedo."

Claro, el Nova tenía power steering.

Pirulo era una bestia. Un mastodonte de hombre que aparte de la barriga cervecera era todo musculo; producto de poca escuela y muchos años de trabajos de construcción pese a ser poco mas viejo que yo. El que fuera poco educado no significa que comandara poca admiración de mi parte. Yo ya me había convertido en un mama's boy que poco despegaba la vista de libros, enciclopedias, periódicos; y ya tenia un interés marcado en el mundo virtual de las computadoras. Pirulo era uno de mis pocos enlaces con el mundo "real". Pirulo había corrido bastante, bebía y fumaba y sabrá dios que mas, había ido a los niuyores y había tenido par de jevas... or so he said.

Pirulo me ayudo a conseguir mi primer trabajo "real". También, otro día, Pirulo, mi hermano, y yo, por poco nos montamos en La Bestia para ir a matar a la mujer de mi hermano. Pero esas son historias para otro día.

Pirulo me dijo un día:

"Te quiero."

Y yo que ya para aquel entonces sabía lo que era un gay (especialmente porque algunos de mis primos estaban declaraos y otros estaban en el closet) le dije:

"Cabrón, vete pa'l carajo!"

Y el me contestó:

"Tu eres familia. Familia es amor. No matter what... Por eso te quiero."

Su lógica era innegable. Aun así yo no pude entender sus palabras por muchos muchos años.

Y hace muchos años que no veo a mi primo Pirulo. Indudablemente, mi notoria incapacidad de mantener lazos afectivos ha tenido algo que ver en eso. Pero cuando lo vea lo primero que le diré sera...







— the information soldier sometimes learns slowly

Something Profoundly Cynical

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusitive. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.

I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness. the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.”

Changing A Rod Into A Serpent

“Changing a rod into a serpent and the serpent back into a rod may be clever magic, but how does such a demonstration prove that Moses spoke to God? If the only thing necessary to prove the truth of an extraordinary claim were to demonstrate an ability to bewilder, there would be no more mysteries to solve. If a person claims that he can bring the dead back to life, and in proof of that power pulls a rabbit out of a hat, that is hardly a demonstration of the truth of his claim; it is merely an example of his ability in the art of deception. If he claims that he can fly without wings and without the use of mechanical help of any kind, and in proof of his ability pulls another rabbit out of another hat, that is not proof of his ability to fly, but of his ability to lie, and he will without much hesitation be condemned as a faker. The demonstration of one thing has absolutely no bearing in proving the truth of the other, when there is no relationship between them. ”