Now I want to share a report written by Mark Danner, who has covered, apart of the civil war in El Salvador, wars at The Balcanes -Bosnia- and Haiti. In this link that now I share with all of you, is the complete report about the massacre in El Mozote, one of the worst during the civil war in my country, which lasted 12 years.
I hope it helps to see the truth and how many people has suffered because of the selfishness of others. I can't say more, because it isn't something supposed to like, it's supossed to be known.
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz01.html
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
A castle in Bretagne
I don't know much about Bretagne, except that it is a french province located in the Northwest, in normand territory. Different from porvenzal landscapes, maybe with a little more sun, normand landscapes tend to be simple, with not-so-many elements in them. Even if it's summer and sunlight is intense, always I can perceive some "coldness" -sorry I couldn't find a better word- in the pictures I see, like a distance between the place and the spectator, as if that landscape belonged to a dream or any other memory already lost in the past, in a different time.
That was the impression a picture with a little castle in Bretagne, next to the sea, left in me. Priceless. Not just because of the picture itself, but the images that it suggests to anyone who looks at it. When I see it, I feel like I was in 1200, or earlier, and I imagine a sunset that tries to reflects its colors in the waters of the sea, overwhelmingly blue. From that castle I look at the beautiful landscape, and at that moment the only thing I listen is the wind coming from the sea. The only thing I smell is a "mixing" of grass and salt, and then just the sky, the sea, the castle and me give life to that little piece of time that has been lended to us.
A friend that lives in France says that for him Bretagne is the "real France". Far away from the metro, countless advertisements and piles of tourists. Maybe. I should have to go personally, get that moment out of my imagination and give it life, and enlighten it and make it breath, because reality has a special way to overcome fiction -even if sometimes it just can't.
That was the impression a picture with a little castle in Bretagne, next to the sea, left in me. Priceless. Not just because of the picture itself, but the images that it suggests to anyone who looks at it. When I see it, I feel like I was in 1200, or earlier, and I imagine a sunset that tries to reflects its colors in the waters of the sea, overwhelmingly blue. From that castle I look at the beautiful landscape, and at that moment the only thing I listen is the wind coming from the sea. The only thing I smell is a "mixing" of grass and salt, and then just the sky, the sea, the castle and me give life to that little piece of time that has been lended to us.
A friend that lives in France says that for him Bretagne is the "real France". Far away from the metro, countless advertisements and piles of tourists. Maybe. I should have to go personally, get that moment out of my imagination and give it life, and enlighten it and make it breath, because reality has a special way to overcome fiction -even if sometimes it just can't.
About blogging
This is my first blog in english. Honestly, I never thought I would have a blog in english, because it's much easier to express ourselves in our first language. Also, given that english is so different from spanish, any idea that may come in spanish could lose something at the moment of translation; of course, with this I am not saying which language is better, nobody could, but is widely known that it's better to read an author in his/her original language. This is a topic for another blog.
A lot is being said lately about why people like, want or even need a blog to make their lives "public". It may be very similar to having a journal, but the difference is that a journal is only read by us, and a blog can be read by the millions and millions of people that every minute, every hour, every day is conected to the Internet. But I don't think blogs can be clasified as "public": how high is the probability to one, two, three or one hundred people find and read your blog, if there are millions of people and millions of blogs? Today's world have different kind of solitude, one that is based in many people at the same place and the same time, but nobody want to look at each other and have a real conversation, a real encounter. Like Cortazar said: "El colmo de la soledad es el colmo del gregarismo".
Maybe a blog fulfills that need of contact with the world, but with a different approach. Our lives aren't just what actually happens to us everyday, but also what we say about them, how we see it and if it doesn't satisfy us -this is more common than we are willing to admit openly-, how we would like it to be. Writing what happens to us, what we think about a topic in particular, what we want or whatever is in our mind is a way to put all that in a mirror and look at and even judge it from a different angle.
A lot is being said lately about why people like, want or even need a blog to make their lives "public". It may be very similar to having a journal, but the difference is that a journal is only read by us, and a blog can be read by the millions and millions of people that every minute, every hour, every day is conected to the Internet. But I don't think blogs can be clasified as "public": how high is the probability to one, two, three or one hundred people find and read your blog, if there are millions of people and millions of blogs? Today's world have different kind of solitude, one that is based in many people at the same place and the same time, but nobody want to look at each other and have a real conversation, a real encounter. Like Cortazar said: "El colmo de la soledad es el colmo del gregarismo".
Maybe a blog fulfills that need of contact with the world, but with a different approach. Our lives aren't just what actually happens to us everyday, but also what we say about them, how we see it and if it doesn't satisfy us -this is more common than we are willing to admit openly-, how we would like it to be. Writing what happens to us, what we think about a topic in particular, what we want or whatever is in our mind is a way to put all that in a mirror and look at and even judge it from a different angle.
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