One of Bukowski's poems

Consummation Of Grief



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I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .

it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life

what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

Charles Bukowski

Exposed

I went to visit him. Every time I promise myself it will be the last, but I can’t help coming back, looking for him. He usually makes me wait a bit before coming to greet me, but this time it was special: I had been so nervous about this visit, regretting it on every step I gave. It was like if he knew it. He smiled at me and said with a soft voice

“ So finally, you came. Are you ready?”

He pulled the chair so I could sit down, and made sure I felt comfortable in the dim light, while a kind of soft music played in the background He knew that, even when you wouldn’t tell at the beginning, I am shy, so he was gentle and polite.

He held my head and made my body lay down while he smiled at me. Very carefully, he took my glasses off and put them in a safe place, so I would not worry about them.

I felt the warmth coming from his body next to mine, the familiar smell of his parfume, once again, the shape and color of his eyes so close to mine, avoiding staring at me.

As he leaned over me, I slightly opened my mouth trembling inside, knowing what was coming next.

-Don´t worry, this is going to hurt a little bit, but it is the worst part. Everything will be fine after it.

I nodded in an obedient way, opened my mouth widely and closed my eyes. He then took out a huge syringe with an even bigger needle and stabbed my cheek inside, and my gums. The bitter taste of the liquid inside invaded my mouth. The acute pain stopped, then he took the needle and stabbed another part of my gum. Little by little, part of my mouth, and even my nose went numb.

Then he started using drills and other strange tools in my mouth, for a long time. He dug, and pulled, and pushed with his whole body. And finally, he got a needle and a thread, and saw the hole he had opened back together. It did not hurt, but I could feel the needle going through my gums, and the thread pulling them together. He tied a couple of little knots, sat up, looked at me and smiled.

“That’s it: It was not that bad, was it”

I looked at him, feeling sweaty and tired, tasting the smell of his hands in mouth, with a strange feeling of pain and unwanted exposure.

With a kind of strange embarrassment and feeling of loss I stood up. Fixed my skirt, my shirt…my hair…He gave me my glasses back. Slowly I put them back. Looking at the floor, I picked my things up, said thank you and rushed out of the room.

The mermaid´s dance

"I know what you want," said the sea witch; "it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess (..)Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.(…)”

She had never danced so elegantly before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart.(…)


Hans Christian Andersen


Today I went back to a dancing class, after a year of not being able to do any sports. The doctors said it is fine to go back to do whatever I want, and I just want to believe it. But it is not their back that hurts.

I joined a beginners contemporary dance class. After a year my body has changed, I have put weight on, my joints ache and my back keeps killing me, every day, every moment of the day.

I did contact for three years and contemporary dance for one. I was not particularly good or amazing. But now that I am back, every single little movement hurts. Even the simplest of the movements feels so much harder and difficult, more difficult than when I took a dancing lesson for the first time a few years ago. And I suddenly remember Andersen´s little mermaid, not the Disney version, but the real one. And I realise that the words he wrote a hundred years ago, that I read maybe 20 years ago, had remained somewhere in my brain, waiting to come alive.

I lie down and feel where my body gets in contact with the floor. And I feel the pain, radiating from the centre of my back, following my ribs, wrapping around my chest like a big long cuddle of a hurtful lover. We move around on the floor, moving in ways very different to normal life movements, and my joints start complaining, sending me silent messages through the nerves only I know about.

We stand up, we bent and allow our upper body to hang, and the spine breathes and the air comes in between the vertebrae in a painful kind of relieve. We keep bending and straightening up. I am familiar with this pain, when I bend to pick things up from the floor or I get up in the morning.

Then I lift my arms and we start moving them around. And different parts of my back muscles complains depending if they go up in circles, or straight, or around, or if they stay up on the side…

Working with the feet is such a relieve, and then we move on to a beginner choreography. And we have the music, and we dance a bit, mixing together all the elements with the different parts of the body, and we roll on the floor, and then stand up, and bend, and move our arms and bend our upper body and go down on the floor again and jump…And joint after joint complains, and all the muscles in my back find a moment to remind me of their existence.

Suddenly I can visualise the Little Mermaid dancing along this very same music, floating on cutting sharp knives. And I know exactly how she feels. I might not be the prettiest human being, or move as lightly as a dancer…but I know how it hurts and I am an expert at setting my heart on the wrong person. And something inside me moves with the music, and my dancing, and her dancing, and the sharp knives on her feet, and the huge axe across my waist, and the pang that pierces your heart and the blood that only you can see.

The class is over and I change. It is frustrating to have to start not from the beginning, but from a point before the beginning. I mix a couple of pain killers with some water and can’t find my little mermaid any more. She is probably back to being a daughter of the air. She still has two hundred years to go to find her soul. She still has hope, and so do I. After three fractures in my back, I might not float around like she did, but I am still dancing. And I smile, for her to count one year less of her three hundred.

Click here to read The Little Mermaid

Gay wedding/ Boday gay

Last weekend I went to a wedding in the middle of Spain, in Cáceres, where you can find one of the most beautiful historical towns.

I went there four days after comig back from New York, not knowing where I was or what for. I met some friends I had not seen for a year, and I danced and cried and ate and drank and flirt, in an outdoor night wedding next to a medieval castle, with flowers scattered all around, and a fountain, and lovely live music, and a great video that my brother made for the grooms, and beautiful speeches . The theme was The wizard of Oz and on every table there was the name of a movie to identify yours. Even when I still hate weddings in general, framing myself in the usual affected wedding mood, it was a great wedding. Despite the fact of it being a very expensive posh one. ( I told you, I don't like weddings)

I asked my friends if it was going to happen what usually happens to me in the gay weddings of my male gay friends: all guys are gay, all girls are straight...In the end it was a mixture of people, and I was more interested in sharing time with my friends, who I left here last August,than in anything else. However, when my brother was booking a room for me in the very posh hotel I told him to put somebody in the room with me to share the cost, and his answer was "Sorry, we all come in couples". And I said " Excue ME"

So there I was, for two nights... no, for one night and a half, in the big room of a posh hotel, on my own. I never go to posh hotels, unless I am with the band, and then there is two or three of us in each room. I told my brother I wanted to change the hotel for the youth hostel in town: it was 50 euros difference and, at least, you can go to the main hall and there is always somebody wanting to chat, but he persuaded me to stay there with the rest of the group. The group that shared a room with their partners in their expensive rooms next to my lonely bed.

I am used to go places on my own, particularly after NY. And I go places and I meet people. I am not obssesed about finding a partner, it somehting that happens, but I think about true love. My brother says I am just naive and stupidly innocent. Not so long ago, I developed a crash on a teacher, and it was great, because it was just a simple naive innocent honest thing with no intention of anything beyond, and it reminded me that sometimes, you meet somebody and something tickles inside you; it reminded me that there is always the chance that you might still meet that person that makes your eyes sparkle. It reminded me that love is something different from the guy that you pick up on a bar one night or the silly chats you have when you flirt with somebody that is ok and could be something, but who does not really matter.

I could not avoid feeling a bit odd. The odd number in between the even group of happy couples. An odd person in an odd place with odd clothes. I don´t have the type of clothes you wear in a posh wedding where people wore exclusive designer clothes. My concert clothes are winter clothes and are not so flashy and desginer like. I have a much better time in a burningman event, sleeping in a tent where my cajon and me don´t fit together, or at a BM party dressed like Isis wearing a couple of wings. I should have gone there with my Isis wings. But, instead a wore this old-fashioned top that my mum had made for me 15 years ago and fixed for me, and this nice skirt that is elegant but did not quite go with the top., and sandals because my nice concert shoes were coming from NY in a box...

So there I was, dressed a bit odd and not caring about it, which was also odd; feeling a bit odd; looking at places in an odd way like if I had just arrived from another planet...And then I realised that the oddity really came from inside, from something that was struggling not to die, like a big odd fat warm biting big chunks of something in my stomach.

And it´s all because, even when I am absolutely over the moon sharing time whith my friends and the people I love, NY hurts.

Back from New York / De vuelta de Nueva York

I feel so much older. Not just two years older...but much older.

Maybe I am just more mature.Maybe I just see thigs differently.
All the struggle, all the great things, all the struggle, all the challenges, all the struggle, all the dissapointments, all the struggle...
What an amazing place, what a lot of incredible things happening, what a lonely ride in the city.

Now I am back, and it seems I just slept for two years and I opened my eyes to my old life. But something is different.
And I could sit down and cry. I could cry for hours and hours, about all the things that happened in the last 15 years, about all the things that could have happened, but never did. But they are just old tired tears over an old story.

And I just look out of the window, when everybody is sleeping, and feel a tiny summer breeze breaking the heat coming from the tar in the street. And I remember, and I wish, and I hope...
I hope for the things that will happen, and for the things that will never happen. And I dream


Me siento mucho más mayor. No dos años más mayor... sino mucho más mayor.
Tal vez solo soy más madura. Tal vez solo vea las cosas de manera diferente
Toda la lucha, las cosas maravillosas, la lucha, los desafíos, la lucha, las decepciones, la lucha...
Que sitio tan increíble, cuántas cosas pasando, qué pedazo de viaje solitario por la ciudad.

Ahora he vuelto, y parece que he estado durmiendo durante dos años y acabase de abrir los ojos en mi antigua vida. Pero algo es distinto.

Y me podría sentar y llorar durante horas. Podría llorar durante horas y horas, por todas las cosas que han pasado en los últimos quince años, por todas las cosas que podrían haber pasado pero nunca pasaron. Pero son sólo lágrimas antiguas por una historia antigua.

Y simplemente miro por la ventana, cuando todo el mundo duerme, y siento la brisa de verano que rompe el calor que viene del asfalto de la calle. Y recuerdo, y deseo, y espero...
Y pienso con esperanza en las cosas que pasarán, y pienso con esperanza,en las cosas que nunca pasarán. Y sueño.

LGBAC en Abril Gods and Monsters/ LGBAC in April: God and Monsters

A couple of the pieces we played in April. LGBAC...and me among them :D Can you find me like if i was Wally?

Un par de obras que tocamos en Abril. LGAC... y yo con ellos :D ¿Me podéis enconctrar, como si fuera Wally?

Colposcopy and Edward Scissorhands/ De colposcopias y Eduardo Manostijeras

(This post is for those women who are going to undergo a colposcopy and a biop[sy for the first time. Do not worry...it's awful, but not as bad as it seems.)

There is something in the tranquilizing words of a physician that is kind of uneasy. For example, when you are happyily at h ome, watching TV having a beer and the cell phone rings. You answer and it is the doctor , who says:

-How are you?

-Fine, thank you
-We got the results of you pap smear, and it is not clear. You need to have a colposcopy and a bipsy done. You have a displasia.But don't worry, it is not cancer
Worried? Who was worried? I was happily surfing the net until you called.And I never said anything about cancer.
While your brain is thinking this, the guy lkeeps talking at the other side of the phone, saying something you quite not get.

And after that, you get to the gyn clinic andyou have to sign a paper confirming that you have been explained the whole procedure and you agree with it. But you have been explained the whole proced

ure, in a shock state in perfect English, which is not your language, through the phone. So you sign you agree to something you did not really completely understand

Then you sit there, waiting for the doctor, wrapped in a huge paper sheet, looking at an enormous massive chocker-block microscope. And you think " Hey,. the doctor uses this to observe whatever he takes out. Because there is not way that can fit in there"So the gay arrives, you slide down and he puts the speculum in. In fact, I have never seen the speculum at the gyn's, because you can't see with the sheet they put around you. It looks like this, on the right. So the gay puts it in and you hear " wricki, wricki, wricki", and it is the thing opening. It does not really hurt, but it is uncomfortable. And because you stay with that in for a while during this test, at the end you get like period pains, because your body tries to get rid of it. But it is not really painful, do not panic.

Then the guy says, " Ok, I am going to put some vinegar in" And you think " Vinegar? I have had strange requests from guys on the internet like wine, or chocolate o icecream...But vinegar?" .
And just when you are there, feeling like a lettuce, the guy gets the microscope, you feel something warm, which is probably the light, and suddenly realize that, yes, the big massive chocker-block microscope fits in there. Again, it is not really painful.

Then he says," Ok, almost done" He puts something in with a cotton bud, which seems to be something like anesthesy, I think. And I think this because after this, he looks at the nurse who passes him an incredibly big pair of scissors, like the ones on the left, and he says " You are going to feel a pinch" And you think " A pinch??!!! Wait wait... what do you mean a pinch? ...what are you doing with those scissors... WAIT!!" And just when you have collected enough courage to say something, it is to late, because you hear the noise of the scissor closing " huich". I did not feel anything, not pinch, no pain, but I heard it, and this is why I think he had put some anesthesy.

Then he says "Ok, this is done" And you think " ok, ok, you keep saying ok, ok what? Take it out take it out" And he puts some more things inside with cotton buds, and finally takes the speculum out. You sit up and he sympathetically passes you a sanitary towel.

And then, you wait until he has left the room and go to the bathroom where you take the sheet off and get your clothes again. He talks to you, and the you have to wait for two eweeks to know the results.

And life goes on, with one small difference. Suddenly, Edward Scissorhands has lost all his sex-appeal.



Hay algo en las palabras tranquilizadoras de un médico, que a veces resulta inquietante. Por ejemplo cuando estás tan tranquilamente en tu casa viendo la tele tomándote una cervecita y te suena el móvil. Lo coges y es el médico que te dice
-Hola como estás?

-Erm bien gracias.
- Hemos recibido los resultados de tu citolog'ia, y no ha salido bien. Tienes que volver. Hay una displasia, pero no te preocupes, no es c'ancer.

y piensas "Preocupada? Quien estaba preocupada? Yo estaba tranquilamente mirando el internete, hace tres minutos, y no estaba pensando en c'ancer"

Asi que en este momento, tu cerebro se cierra en banda a lo que te explican que viene despues,

Y despues de eso , cuando llegas al gine,tienes que firmar un papel confrimando que te han explicado el procedimiento completo y que estas de acuerdo con ‘el. Y te lo han explicado, en un estado de shock en un Ingl’es perfecto, que no es tu lengua, y por tel’efono. As’i que firmas que est’as de acuerdo con algo que en realidad nunca llegaste a comprender.

Y te sientas ah’i, esperando al m’edico, envuelta en una hoja de papel gigante, mirando a un microscopio enorme y gigante. Y piensas “ Hey, el m’edico utiliza este microscopio para observa las muestras que toma. Porque esto no puede caber ah’i dentro”

As’i que llega el hombre, te resbalas hacia abajo en la camilla y te pone el speculum. De hecho, nunca he visto un speculum en la clinica del gine, porque no puedes ver nada con la s’abana de papel que te ponen. Se parece a esto, a la derecha. Asi que el t’io lo mete y oyes “wricki, wricki,wricki”, y es la cosa que se abre. En realidad no duele, pero es muy molesto. Y como te quedas ah’i por un rato, al final te da como dolor de la regll, porque tu cuerpo intenta expulsarlo. Pero en realidad no duele, que no cunda el p’anico.

Entonces el hombre dice” Muy bien, voy a poner un poco de vinagre” Y t’u piensas “ Vinagre?? He tenido muchas peticiones extragnas por internet como vino, o choclate o helado…Pero vinagre?”

Y justo cuando est’as ah’i, sinti’endote como una lechuga, el t’io coge el microscopio y sientes algo c’alido, que es probablemente una luz, y te das cuenta de que , s’i, el microscopio gigante s’i que cabe. Pero, de Nuevo, no es doloroso, solo asquerosito.

Entonces dice “Muy bien, casi hemos terminado” , y pone algo con un palito de algod’on, que es como anestesia. Y digo que es como anestesia porque despu’es de esto, mira a la enfermera que le pasa unas yijeras incre’iblemente grandes, como las de la izquierda, y dice “ Vas a sentir un pellizquito” Y t’u piensas “ un pellizquito??!!!Espera, espera…que quiere decir un pellizquito?...que est’as hacienda con esas tijeras…ESPERA!!!” Y justo cuando has conseguido el valor suficiente para decir algo, es muy tarde, porque oyes el ruido de las tijeras cerr’andose “ jhuich” En realidad no sent’i nada, ni un pellizco , ni dolor, pero lo escuch’e claramente.Por eso creo que puso anestesia.

Y dice “ Muy bien, ya est’a” Y tu piensas “ Muy bien, muy bien, no haces m’as que decir muy bien. Muy bien qu’e? S’acalo , s’acalo” Y te pone algo m’as dentro con los palitos de algod’on, y finalmente saca el esp’eculo. Te sientas y el t'io te pasa una compresa con aire de que pena me das.
Y entonces esperas hasta que se va de la habitaci’on, y te vas al bagno donde te quitas la hoja de papel gigante y te vistes. Habla contigo y tienes que esperar dos semanas para saber los resultados

Y la vide sigue, con una pequegna diferencia. De repente, Eduardo Manostijeras ya no tiene ning'un atractivo.

(Este post es para aquellas mujeres que tiene que hacerse una colposcopia y una biopsioa por primera vez. No te precupes…es asquerosito,pero no tan malo como suena)