fiddling while Rome burns

Joel Sternfeld from his book American Prospects

"Science has eliminated distance," Melquíades proclaimed. "In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in every part of the world without leaving his own house."—Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

From the New York Times:

Emergency Cooling Effort at Reactor is Failing, Deepening Japanese Crisis

Fiddling While Libya Burns

food stall- part I

The Cantegrill Restaurant, at 111 Nazas where my grandparents' house once stood in Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City

A small bite of ropy, liposuctioned pork chop purchased from the newly remodeled Emilio’s (no longer run by Emilio) outside the California El takes me back to dinner at my grandparents’ in Mexico City circa 1968.

I am the last one at the table. The grown ups sip coffee in the living room and my sisters and cousins are watching Astro Boy take on another slew of alien invaders in the small TV room across the hall. An unsavory piece of meat with the consistency of cud is lodged between my gum and cheek. Every so often I squeeze and suction the saliva that accumulates, but I can’t bring myself to swallow the sinewy ball. My grandmother and the servant girl swish in and out clearing the table. My grandmother monitors the lump in my cheek with amusement. In her Depression era influenced version of the world, there is no connection between bad food and dysphagia.

Before every meal we bring palms together, bow our heads and regurgitate, “Thank you, Papa Dios, for this food we are about to receive even though we are undeserving. Amen.” Food is a cold, scientific fact of life for for my grandmother. You need it to live and you can't allow taste buds to jeopardize your chances for nourishment. This very instant, there are children in other parts of the world that would give anything for that piece of meat clumped in your mouth. Yes, even for that cold, wet, insipid wad of flesh. Here, as at home, the rule stands: no one leaves the table without cleaning the plate. That includes swallowing. My grandmother sees the bulge still in my cheek and cackles; the servant girl smiles compassionately.

My parents must be out of town; we’re sleeping over. From the bed I share with my sister, I spy on my grandmother as she undresses in the dark with her back turned to us. The gleaming white slip is replaced by a cotton nightgown with a speed not even Astro Boy could match. I hear the oceanic roar of the city, a car turning from Poo onto Nazas, the hurried steps of a woman on heels. I can’t remember ever swallowing that ball of meat. The last sound as I drift off is the calliope of a sweet potato vendor heading south towards Reforma Avenue.

art hoarders face the music ... reluctantly

Andy Warhol

5 Coca Cola Bottles, 1962

Today’s NYT’s story “’This Space for Rent’: Arts Must Now Woo Commerce” reports on the crisis European museums face as government subsidies and corporate contributions dry up. To remain viable, European museums are now renting their facades and facilities to advertisers and corporate sponsors.

The sellout hasn’t gone without an outcry. Famous architects and museum directors petitioned Italy’s Minister of Culture last summer to remove huge ads that detract from Venice’s classic views. And, at least in one instance of the unseemly coupling, the aesthetic yardstick was levered against the commercial barbarians. The Musée d’Orsay may have sold out to Chanel No. 5, but drew a line when it came to Coca Cola. “The flacon of Chanel is beautiful because it is made in three dimensions and moves with the wind,” said an insider at d’Orsay. Take that, Andy Warhol!

Link: The New York Times

Heriberto Yépez makes me go coastal!

Sir Francis Drake Circumnavigation World Map

It’s been a long time (maybe never) that I felt this euphoric with a writer. I mean, like sighting new land, unapologetically Columbian in my discovery. And cocky, too, amid familiar landmarks. That is, until I brush the shores of otherness. Tijuana. Matamoros. True, my hybrid gear, my half-ass ability to code-switch, my dubious passport got me invited to a dinner of chicken flautas and toothpaste flavored cool whip pie in the kitchen of an undocumented family in the southwest side of Chicago more than once. I enjoyed the cozy satisfaction of the insider, even as I knew damn well I never really left the “simulated sky” of my “indestructible egg”.

“Soy parte del deslinde. Solamente que no soy uno más de los migrantes hacia el norteamiento. Todo rumbo es autoritario. El zig zag que llevo todavía no tiene nombre. Y al que se lo ponga: balazo. No lo olviden: soy francotirador, a.k.a., tu paranoia.”

--Heriberto Yépez
La Bifurcación de las Cosas