Jul 27

He estado out of the loop por algunas semanas ya. No he visto a mi madre en dos semanas y no he hablado con mi padre en el mismo tiempo. La mayoría del tiempo lo he pasado enconada en mi casa, en un estado de estupor entre dormida y despierta, con un dolor de espalda que probablemente trae el nombre “Colchón Viejo” tallado en su origen, celebrando a media potencia cumpleaños y aniversarios…

Una de las razones para este comportamiento de hibernación en pleno verano es La Monografía. La Monografía, que me ha venido quitando el sueño desde principios de semestre, cuando (a mí nada más) se me ocurrió transar con la profesora: a cambio del primer examen parcial, mejor hago una monografía. Sonaba a “¡excelente idea, Diana Campo!”, especialmente porque quería ir acostumbrándome nuevamente a ese tipo de tarea académica para cuando me empiece el martirio de la maestría (ya falta poco, falta muy poco).

Lo que no me esperaba era la infatuación (rayando en adoración)  que iba a desarrollarse con la profesora: su nivel de conocimiento y erudición, especialmente acerca del tema que había escogido para la monografía, era intimidante. ¿A quién rayos se le ocurre ponerse a hablarle a la prof. Luce Lopez-Baralt acerca de Don Quijote?

A esta guanaja que está aquí.

Tras mi mamá haberme pagado (tan generosamente)  un cursillo de 10 horas contacto acerca del Quijote – con la propia profesora, en la Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española, – yo estaba cada vez menos y menos segura de mí misma. De lo que estaba segura era de que no había NADA que yo pudiera decir del Quijote que Luce no hubiese escuchado ya como 300 veces… ni aún cuando se trataba de un paralelo entre Don Quijote y The Neverending Story.

Yep! Pasar un verano torturándome con lecturas obligadas: best summer evah!

Esa ansiedad se convirtió en una fuerza paralizante: no importa cuánto leía o dejaba de leer, no me sentí apropiada en ningún momento. Ni James Parr, ni Ruth El-Saffar ni Jorge Luis Borges me ayudaron a sentirme en mayor confianza con el tema. La extensión del semestre por la huelga tampoco hizo mucho por mi bienestar emocional: tenía más tiempo pero, en vez de escribir o leer, era más tiempo para atormentarme con la tarea que me esperaba.

Lo que me sacudió fue mucho más pueril: un sueño. Mejor dicho: una pesadilla. Sin entrar en los detalles más absurdos de lo que vi, Luce me tenía reunida para hablar acerca de la monografía y comenzó a hacerme preguntas acerca de lo que yo pensaba acerca del Quijote. En resumen, la Luce de mi sueño estaba negándome la dualidad maravillosa de la locura de Don Quijote, cosa que me parecía absurda porque Luce es la primera en quedar deleitada con los juegos mágicos que Cervantes se gasta en su mejor novela.

...también había un cojonal de dulces y helado en el sueño, pero eso no viene al caso.

En fin, con ese sueño quedé asegurada de que lo que sabía del Quijote, lo sabía bien. Y me puse a escribir.

Y lo comparto con mis lectores porque no es justo que no actualice mi blog en una eternidad y luego no tenga nada que mostrar como resultado:

Monografia_DianaMCampo

Read the rest of this entry »

Share
Jun 30
The night before last, I don’t know exactly how or why, I got into small banter with Verónica, our roommate: suddenly, out of nowhere, she started squealing like a pre-pubescent girl in front of her computer screen… and then she started showing me pictures of these dudes:

Backstreet Boys liked the back ways, eh!!! ;-D Saucy wenches!

… and I was like :-S “wait, whaaaaaat?”. Boy bands. They were one of the things most hated by me when they suddenly exploded in a flurry of tribal tattoos and hair-gel in the mid-90s. (That only serves to highlight the age difference between Vero and I). I brushed by The New Kids on the Block, but only while their new-ness lasted. As soon as the New Kids were more like Old News, I kissed them “Bye bye bye”…

Did you see what I did there? No? That's 'cuz you're STUPID, Jordan!

Not much time passed before I started squealing about other dudes… the bad-ass dudes:

Not much better for the show, though

…   I don’t know if deep down my lust after ”rough”-looking guys was just my way of rebelling (yeah, as rough as you can get while dressing up in pleather and satin shirts), but I honestly liked the music *sigh*… and I honestly developed huge crushes on these guys. 

I got SO pissed when the buys from school pointed out Tom Keifer looked like Ednita Nazario ... mostly because they were right!

 

 It was all very honest… and a little bit too obsessive. I papered my walls from bottom to ceiling with posters of Slaughter, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison, Nelson Nelson, etc etc etc. All long-haired dudes, all over my walls.

I guess my mother felt like parents from the 60′s felt when their girls went apeshit over  The Beatles, with the difference that the objects of my affection were not all that wholesome-looking and had a reputation of being “the spawns of the devil” (a myth my mother bought into all too easily). I only did what any self-respecting teen would: I moved onto darker, uglier shit:

He's so dreamy!

I eventually stopped developing crushes on strangers based only on their photographs and finished products of corporate  music. My fangirl days were over … until I saw this dude:

..oooh, that sunken chest! ...

… and then I became so dangerously close to being a paedophile that I just simply not talk about my crushes anymore. End of story.

Share
Jun 9

I fell in love back in 1992: Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released, and I became a fervorous fan immediately. I was awed by Gary Oldman’s performance as Dracula / Vlad Tepes, I swooned at the sexually charged tension in the film, Winona Ryder charmed me with her feverish portrayal of Mina, I even forgot to be bothered by Keanu Reeve’s unchangeable face of  “Whoa!”. Had they made a whole line of eyeliners / body glitter / rubber bracelets stamped with Dracula’s face and name, I would have been all over that shit (and broken my parents’ bank accounts).

I swear: I swooned for Gary in this getup. John Lennon shades included. LOL

The film also sparked an interest in all things vampire: books that ranged in quality from the classics (Bram Stoker’s Dracula itself) to the inane, fan-fiction-like dreg (I Am Dracula comes to mind), movies that gave way to other horror films (it started with Tale of a Vampire, but it gave way to other subgenres like zombies and demonic possessions), the best goth attire I could muster (which wasn’t much, given my budget and my permanent location on a tropical island), etc. Suffice it to say: I breathed, ate and lived on vampires. Big fan. BIG.

Then I outgrew that phase (sort of) and became interested in other things, but vampires held a special place in my heart.

Later came the onslaught that killed that little place in my heart: Underworld disenchanted me of the possibilities of bringing vampires to the modern world … Twilight simply did it in. Suddenly vampires were nothing to be feared or revered: they became sullen girls and moody teenagers with the odd craving for blood – a perfect ad for Hot Topic. The hordes of teenagers grasping at the shreds of the last XS-sized t-shirt of Edward Cullen were the nail on the coffin. Working at Hot Topic did no good to my perception of vampires as a literary figure of legend. Having Edward, Bella and Jacob peering out of the Twilight merchandise for hours at a time was nothing short of unnerving and nauseating.

..having to fold all the shirts every night and fix the merch display every 20 minutes didn't help either..

I eventually watched Twilight out of sheer morbid curiosity: that’s two hours I’ll never get back. It had its salvage points. They will never be enough to salvage the whole movie. Nor the series. Much less the book dynasty. Fuck you, Steph Meyer!

So it was with mild trepidation that I sat down to watch Let the Right One In, a 2008 film from Norway. From the get-go, you realize this is not the Teen Movie, Vampire® Edition crap that Twilight has been able to pull. The mood sets itself slowly on you: it’s dark and soft and gentle, yet terrible in all of its horror. Being a vampire here is not a matter of beauty, sexuality or glamour. The vampire in this story is a 12-year-old girl that travels around with an adult companion everyone believes to be her father (later on we realize he’s not). She’s not breathtakingly beautiful, nor does she prance around in stylish clothes and trendy accessories (yeah, Alix, I’m looking at you and your crappy crushed velvet choker, you stupid, vapid twat!). She’s a 12-year-old girl who got caught with this “disease”, a curse to bind her forever to a crippling hunger for living blood. She’s enlisted the help from an older lover / companion who kills and collects the blood for her so she won’t have to go out and get it herself. When he fails, she reacts like any child would: bratty, petulant, childish. There’s no infinite benevolence to her, just as there’s no abyss of evil in her soul. She’s just what she is: an eternal little girl.

Her counterpart in this movie is Oskar, a little kid who’s bullied constantly at school and has issues of his own at home. He’s got no friends at all, and has an intense desire to strike back at his tormentors. He is, by all means, a regular 12-year-old kid. When he meets vampire girl Eli, he finds in her the uncomparable comfort of kinship: someone who might understand, who seems like she’s been there, someone to keep him company. Their relationship evolves slowly and sweetly – nothing like the “Ooooh I can smell your twat from here! I wanna eat you!” stint from Edward Cullen. Keep your pants on boy! Just as slowly as the relationship evolves, Oskar starts suspecting Eli is a vampire through observation and clues from her odd lifestyle.

I swear this is the way it really went!

Another thing that caught my attention was the feeding process. At first Eli has her food delivered to her, but as her companion fails more and more often, she’s forced to get her food herself. I’ve seen a whole myriad of vampire attacks on screen: most of them are sexy and lustful, or macabre and cruel, maybe even funny. All of them have one thing in common: the vampire is mostly relentless and gains 100% satisfaction from sucking the lifeblood off another. Eli shares none of this with them: she’s overwhelmed time and again by the murder she’s committing. On one hand, she’s satisfying a hunger that, if left unbridled, affects her to the point of changing her physical appearance (the hungrier Eli is, the more sickly she becomes); on the other hand, she’s incredibly aware that she’s sinking her teeth into another life. The first kill scene is heart-wrenching at portraying this ambivalence. However, little by little, kill after kill, she becomes more comfortable with what she has to do.

Let the Right One In stayed with me long after the credits rolled. It had been a while since I had been haunted by a movie such as this. The film’s greatest value and strongest asset is that the figure of the vampire isn’t portrayed as a monster or as a sexual predator (much less as a high school heartthrob). Vampirism isn’t glamorized the way we’re used to see it; we see first and foremost the little girl in relation to the little boy – all that awkwardness of the first relationship, the sweetness, the intensity, – and then we see the vampire: a sickly girl who has no choice but to feed on others to keep herself alive. Human relations take a front seat in this film: leave the glitter to the idiots, the kids in LTROI will pull your heart through the wringer.

…and you may have noticed, but I couldn’t stop thinking of how crappy Twilight was in comparison. Wait, no, there is no comparison. Let the Right One In is a movie that will most likely prove to be a timeless classic. Twilight is like a shitty version of Sixteen Candles (all respect to Mr. Hughes), but with fangs … wait, no! Scratch that …

Share
May 29

This is a story about a tiny little stovetop of an island...

I went to one of the most accesible gas stations in Hato Rey this morning for my car’s yearly inspection. Since it’s a station sitting smack in the middle of a main avenue, I wasn’t surprised to find a queue of people waiting for their inspection too. I made #7, I got lucky. It was a hotter-than-hell morning, and we were expecting it to rain cats and dogs any minute (the weather here changes from one moment to the next with ease).

Since I wasn’t in the mood to sit in a waiting area with other random people – sit in a waiting area in Puerto Rico, and eventually someone will pull you into a conversation you don’t want to have, – I went to wait in my car, enjoy my tag-along coffee mug and a cigarette. Not the best option to fight the heat, but definitely the best option to avoid socialization.

I eventually got called into the inspection area, which is mainly the same as the waiting area: the waiting area is comprised by a small group of outdoor plastic chairs placed alongside the inspection area. Spared no expense on that one!

While the tests were being run, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation held by two other people sitting at their chairs, and it was mainly this:

30-something dweeb who’s apparently a family man: “Ooooh the heat, yadda yadda yadda!  And you can’t even go to the beach like this, you don’t want the rain to catch up to you at the beach! [Ed. note: It's not like you're not gonna get wet anyway, you moron!] That’s why these days are great to go to the movie theatre…”

20-something girl that’s heading into the same sorry destination as her interloper: “Yeah, or to the bowling alley!”

.. uh-oh! here we go!..

30-sDWAFM: “Ah, yes! I went to the bowling alley in Caguas the other day. It was great. They have these sofas that are so comfy, really cozy, not like other bowling alleys. And it was empty, it only started getting full as we were leaving. And they have food and all sorts of stuff… Only $60, I spent! We had pizza, which was like $10, and 2 or 3 Pecsi pitchers, and a tray of mozzarella estís, which was really cheap, about $9-something [Ed. note: WTF, dude! NINE DOLLARS for a fucking mozzarella stick tray that probably had like 6 sticks? You got duped!]. It’s worth it”

Taste the fake cheese!

20-sGTHISSDAHI: “Cool! The bowling alley in Ponce is just as nice.”

30-sDWAFM: “Where is that?”

LAWL! And I had to stop listening right there. He also mentioned a few movies worth watching at the theatre, such as Shrek Forever After and Prince of Persia, you know, good movies… kill me now!

..it’s up for an Oscar, I can SMELL it, even over Jake G’s spray tan!

And then it got me thinking: this is the way most people deal with either hot, rainy or simply uncomfortable days: we’re avoiding our own condition of living in a tropical island. We keep escaping the heat and the rain and essentially just everything that makes our tropical paradise into something less-than-perfect. We’re native Puerto Ricans, and we just bought into the image sold by the Tourism Company of Puerto Rico. I don’t know how they did it, but they can apparently sell an imported ice bag to an eskimo. As soon as we break into the smallest sweat, well, it’s time to go to the mall! And if it rains? Oh, to the mall too! Apparently, people in Puerto Rico don’t like staying home (then why pay $1500 in a fucking mortgage, dude! if you’re not gonna be living in it?!), but they also don’t like being outside, at least not in Puerto Rico.

We're also convinced that we can bring any experience to the mall... Plaza Food Fest: how delightful!

You know the Puerto Rican’s true image of paradise?

Ahhh, this is the life!

Share
Jul 23
The 1-Day Week
Posted by Diana in friends, life, movies on 07 23rd, 2007| icon32 Comments »

Well, it’s almost Day Zero (in which my closest friends and I lift off to the Pacific zone), and I just had a pretty interesting weekend.

Eze and Pepe twisted the planned schedule for Saturday upside down, and we ended up handing in a pre-recorded program of Frecuencias Alternas in exchange for the freedom to spend the rest of the evening at Rebeca’s and Tatiana’s birthday. It was one of those huge, folkloric affairs, with two birthday cakes (more than enough to pass around twice and then serve in doggy bags for family and friends), confetti strewn all over the floor and a random mix of merengue, reggaetón and (gulp!) Gunther. We (Eze, Pepe, Maricarmen and I) spent most of the time sitting on a huge metal box perilously perched on the parking curb (and identified by graffiti as the “Skate Box”). We talked a lot, planned some more details of our upcoming trip, and had the kind of easy-going fun you only get to have with tried-and-true friends. We’re the Clerks (see: Kevin Smith) generation, and we love it!

Sunday kicked off with rain and thunder, but we carried on with our plan anyway: to spend the afternoon with my Mom and brother. We picked them up and went to lunch at El Hipopótamo (a small, old Spanish-style restaurant, or tasca, as we like to call it ‘cuz then we feel a bit more cosmopolitan when we go there). After a nice, thorough lunch (serrano ham was to be had, as well as milhojas, and that makes me very happy), we went to JC Penney in Plaza Carolina (so as to avoid Plaza las Américas, which gets hellishly crowded on weekends). I had spotted a few covetable items in the JC Penney shopper, and for the first time in a long while, I acted on the whim. Most of said covetable items were not so pretty up close, or were not available, but I got away from it all with a new pair of (gasp!) Mary Janes. How odd of me ¬_¬ …


Later on we had dinner with Pepe at Dennys, and after another brief visit to Mom’s (to help move a futon outside, where it will probably be carried off by someone desperate and very strong), we capped off the evening by watching Bridge to Terabithia. It was much better than I thought it would be and affected me more than I predicted. It’s fully recommendable, but be prepared for the unexpected.

Oh! Eze also bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for me, and I just started reading it. NO FUCKING SPOILERS, you read me!?

So, it’s nearly 5PM, a bit over an hour to go before quitting time, and tomorrow we depart at 4:52PM. In 24 hours I’ll most likely be strapped to a plane seat, looking out of the nearest window and bracing myself for the emotional orgasm liftoff always brings. I’ll keep posting as much as our daily activities let me, and I’ll definitely take as many pictures as I can.

I’m giddy! I can hardly wait!

Share

« Previous Entries