Yesterday in the terrace

Yesterday my friends

and I

sat around the table

talking laughing

drinking discussing

Chavy taking pictures

of us around the table

Marjan explaining

the many years

we have known each other

we all agreed on the view

from the terrace

and on the terrace itself

welcoming in Summer

an ideal get together place

Godeke and Schelto

left early as announced

they had tickets

for the opera

at the Concertgebouw

Yvonne was quiet

during our discussion

of political affairs

in Argentina

she would have

rather discussed

European affairs

the why and because

of Greece’s misadventures

Chavy and I traced

what we understood

to be

the origin of political

mismanagement in Argentina

the silence today

echoes yesterday’s voices

the laughter

the well being

and our missing

Monique and Lucas

who were not present

but were with us

all the same.

Llueve en Amsterdam

las gotas de agua

golpean las ventanas

el viento sacude

las plantas en la terraza

se cuela aire frío

por la ventana abierta

del dormitorio

se cuela por las rendijas

de las ventanas cerradas

la lluvia diluye el calor

de los últimos días

habrá que ponerse impermeable

para recorrer la ciudad

quizá el Rijks Museum hoy

el Rembrandt tardío

ayer fueron el FOAM

fotos de los 1960

y fotos de Caio Resiewitz

florestas favelas y falcatruas

en Huis Marseille

caminata al Spui

Athenaeum Boekhandl

leer títulos de libros

hojearlos

y volver a casa

a tiempo para tomar

una copa de Merlot

leer correos y whataqsapp

las noticias políticas

de ultramar

y escribir algo.

On thinking

to think thinking

is knowing

what one thinks

may be a misconception

it may might

be knowing

or not knowing

to surmise wonder stall

is thinking

not leading to knowing

necessarily

for doesn’t everybody

think

and yet can we say

everybody knows

concrete thoughts

vapid and disperse

mental processes

may be or may be not

creative

shall we assume

we are thinkers

who dabble

in useless perusals

some do

some don’t

so what is

and what is not

who knows

who think they know

and ignore

many and most

so be it

a few may

know

and not know

they know

Celebrando a Flor Rubio y a mis otros amigos uruguayos

Vivo en Uruguay desde el 2008.  Quiere decir que paso la mayor parte del año en Pan de Azúcar, Uruguay, cortas estadías en Buenos Aires cada mes o mes y medio y durante los últimos tres años algún viaje a Lima Perú, a visitar a mi hermana y su familia, y algunas semanas a Europa. Pasé muchos años sin viajar más allá de Uruguay y Buenos Aires.

¿Por qué escribo sobre esto ahora?  Porque ayer fue el cumpleaños de Flor Rubio, una de mis amigas uruguayas y pensé en lo que aprendí de Flor y de otros amigos uruguayos.  Me expreso mal, no es lo que aprendí de ellos, porque aún no le he aprendido, si no lo que aprecio de la manera como se relacionan entre ellos y conmigo.

Soy porteña, y si bien no adhiero al criterio bastante difundido de que los porteños son mal educados, lo que puesto así se traduce como que todos los porteños son mal educados, si veo que mis amigos uruguayos bien educados son mucho más tolerantes con las limitaciones y las actitudes de los demás que los porteños bien educados, grupo al que considero que pertenezco.  Son más comprensivos y menos críticos.  

Gracias Flor, Joannie, Patrizia, Gastón, Teresa, Eduardo –Jorgin, In Memoriam – y muchos más.

Autobiogardens and other poems

My latest book:

Joanni Zozaya  Urrestarazu on Autobiogardens and other poems

 From the garden poems, with their touching, lingering quality,  emerges a richness  of perception and nostalgia that thrusts me right  back to my childhood.

The thought and language poems are deep and poignant. I was specially taken by the way the author  expresses the mysterious ways of language and thought in One can write.

Her delight in words is beautifully put forth in e.g. Smithereens and Let us think hope. She helps us to dive into the words to explore and enjoy them.

 The "self" poems (I try to identify them somehow and also apologize for doing so) dig deep and express in many cases thoughts and instances I identify with, to a point  I feel I could have written them myself - if I knew how!

At the end of There is this silence the author rightfully celebrates her talent by asserting, "...I am a writer."

She certainly is.

And an excellent one.

The mist blurs the landscape

The mist
blurs the landscape
in the distance
posing as a lake.

On Elena Ferrante's published trilogy and what comes next

More on Elena Ferrante:

On Elena Ferrante's published trilogy and what comes next:

"Ferrante bewitches with her tiny intricately drawn world,,,'My Brilliant Friend' journeys fearlessly into some of the murkier psychological territory where questions of individual identity are inextricable from circumstance and ever-changing identities."  The Melbourne Review.

After reading 'My Brilliant Friend', 'The Story of a New Name' and 'Those Who Leave and Those who Stay', what several articles mentioned as a trilogy, there will be "an the as yet untittled fourth volume in the series, to be published in September 2015."   So I wonder, will it be a quartet or a saga.