Still Life with Potatoes, Pearls, Raw Meat, Rhinestones, Lard, and Horse Hooves

In Spanish it's naturaleza muerta and not life at all.
But certainly not natural. What's natural?
You and me. I'll buy you a drink.
To a woman who doesn't act like a woman.
To a man who doesn't act like a man.
Death is natural, at least in Spanish, I think.
Life? I'm not so sure.
Consider the Cont?ssa, who in her time was lovely
and now sports a wart the size of this diamond.
So, ragazzo, you're Venice.
To you. To Venice.
Not the one of Casanova.
The other one of cheap pensiones by the railway station.
I recommend a narrow bed stained with semen, pee, and sorrow facing the wall.
Stain and decay are romantic.
You're positively Pasolini.
Likely to dangle and fandango yourself to death.
If we let you. I won't let you!
Not to be outdone I'm Piazzolla.
I'll tango for you in a lace G-string
stained with my first-day flow
and one slopply tit leaping lika Niagara from my dress.
Did you say duress or dress?
Let's sing a Puccini duet--I like La Traviesa.
I'll be your trained monkey.
I'll be sequin and bangle.
I'll be Mae, Joan, Bette, Marlene for you--
I'll be anything you ask. But ask me something glamorous.
Only make me laugh.
Another?
What I want to say, querido, is
hunger is not romantic to the hungry.
What I want to say is
fear is not so thrilling if you're the one afraid.
What I want to say is
poverty's not quaint when it's your house you can't escape from.
Decay's not beautiful to the decayed.
What's beauty?
Lipstick on a penis.
A kiss on a running sore.
A reptile stiletto that could puncture a heart.
A brick through the windshield that means I love you.
A hurt that bangs on the door.
Look, I hate to break this to you, but this isn't Venice or Buenos Aires.
This is San Antonio.
That mirror isn't a yard sale.
It's a fire. And these are remnants
of what could be carried out and saved.
The pearls? I bought them at Winn's.
My mink? Genuine acrylic.
Another drink?
Bartender, another bottle, but--
?Ay caray and oh dear!--
The pretty blonde boy is no longer serving us.
To the death camps! To the death camps!
How rude! How vulgar!
Drink up, honey. I've got money.
Doesn't he know who we are?
Que vivan los de abajo de los de abajo,
los de rienda suelta, the witches, the women,
the dangerous, the queer.
Que vivan las perras.
"Qye me sirvan otro trago..."
I know a bar where they'll buy us drinks
if I wear my skirt on my head and you in wearing nothing
but my black brassiere.


--Sandra Cisneros


~~~~~~~

Cisneros is a superstar of a writer, weaving vivid imagery with raw emotion seemingly extracted directly from the soul.

Latin American racing and literature - but mostly literature

Fans of the game know there is a grand tradition of horse racing in many Latin American countries. Even if not specifically, racing fans have a sense of it. We see who gets the work done on the backstretch. We see South American horses win major stakes and titles in the States. In many Spanish speaking countries (and in Brazil, for that matter) racing is far more a part of the fabric of the culture than it is in the U.S. today.

To prepare for an annealing into Latin American racing, I was inclined to lop every book off the shelf about racing and thoroughbreds set in any of our neighbors to the south. But before I could execute on this strategy, Jorge Borges convinced me otherwise.

In his essay The Argentine Writer and Tradition, the great Argentine man of letters responded to criticism that he was not adequately advancing a distinctly Argentine literary school due to his failure to bludgeon all his works with tangos and gauchos. Mark Frisch in You Might be Able to Get There from Here distills the point well.

"El escritor argentino y la tradición" (The Argentine Writer and Tradition) most clearly and distinctly portrays how Borges views his role in regard to dominant Western culture, and illustrates his purposes in dealing with the Western cultural heritage. That essay, along with a number of his stories, highlights that he not only sought to create a space where Argentine and Latin American Cultures could define their distinct qualities, but that he also viewed Latin American writers as playing a significant role in the redefinition of Western culture. Taking issue with those who claim that Argentine writers should focus on their indigenous material and their gaucho tradition, he argues that self-reflexive attitude is limiting and artificial. He refers to Gibbon's remark that there are no camels mentioned in the Koran....

In his essay, Borges says "there is no reason to emphasize camels in the Arabian work; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page."

Similarly, racing is part of the backdrop, part and parcel, first coronet in life's score in Latin America. I'd do better to watch the whole film, listen to the full ensemble, and not carve out one integral thread in the grand tapestry.

If you will indulge me, I will post a passage or two that strike me from Latin American writers over the next few weeks, regardless of whether they address racing directly. The context may even be more valuable than a surgical snapshot of racing in a vacuum.

MERRY CRIMBO! [obligatory holiday post, Kingdom of Loathing edition]

A RACING FAN IS YOU!



My stick figure was supposed to have a santa hat on him, but it fell off, and i'm fresh out of meat paste, so you'll have to use your imagination. All the best of the holidays to you and yours!