Joropo

We cannot talk about El joropo without bringing El Fandango to term.

According to Alejo Carpentier, El Fandango is “a black-African fertilizing dance, originating from Guinea, which arrived in the Antilles after the dispersal of slaves brought by force to America for the harsh tasks of…

December 30 — morning

[…] I have been accumulating knowledge, with greed, it has not been in a systematic way, rather disorganised, scattered notes, some essays but above all in my memory, which is a disaster […] “where your treasure is, there is your heart” My treasure is in my memory, there is nothing more fragile and…

“ El Universo es una estepa donde corren las cosas que no tienen peso”

December 28 afternoon

Today I finished a pending story, with this one a book of a man named Rubén Tenorio, is taking shape […] there was a time when the art of writing was considered one of the fine arts, the convergence of its genres with a sort of journalism, made prose a profane subject […] The novel is an expression of…

The God Of Livia (El Dios de Livia)

December 27 noon

A spotless sun, behind the clouds, on this spring-like winter day. The earth gives unmistakable signs and so do dreams. Last night I dreamed something important that I have forgotten. In the dream, a voice told me, you haven’t kept your word to keep a dream journal. It is difficult to keep a dream journal…

December 25

[….] I spent the day with a still image, a villa and a blacksmith. I din’t see the blacksmith, I saw his hand holding the mallet, hitting the iron on the yoke, over and over again. The image does not depart from me [……] yesterday was a warm day, with no cold extremes. It was not a white Christmas except for the…

December 24, morning

Yesterday I was getting out of my car from grocery shopping and I saw Osama Alomar. He is a Syrian writer, one of City of Asylum Pittsburgh’s writers-in-residency. I met Osama for the first time at the New York City book fair organized by PEN America in Brooklyn. Back then we exchanged a few words. He…

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December 31

[…] I have a month and a half waking up in this room, with this big rectangular window, framing my body in the open space. […] A visit with the doctor, it’s like reading the cards or the I Ching, he will certainly tell me the medicines I should take, the tests I have to do in the…

December 29

I had one restless night, one nightmare after another. I was visited in my sleep by friends and the mother of friends who are no longer alive. I woke up and when I went back to sleep and I found them again. Someone told me that nightmares are conversations that we don’t dare to hold, denial and cowardice at hand…