sermosensumvomere

[sermosensumvomere]

August 14, 2016

-Nevermind Triskaidekaphobia, Here's Colombia-

or “how some waste of sperm and eggs on a motorcycle assassinated part of our hopes and soul”

(well yeah I guess I’m puking again. Before you waste your time going through any of this semi-coherent messy chaos of a rant I really verily can’t stress enough that you should know there’s nothing for you to gain or profit by doing so as much as it was just something that came out because it had to. Having said that, if you’re going to waste a bit of your day with this out of excessive boredom, lack of a better thing to do or maybe fucking stupid curiosity, the cinema-school dropout in me would strongly suggest to listen to “A Orillas Del Magdalena – Cumbias from Discos Fuentes” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJbFJOzuYxM) as background music. you know, for a more immersive “experience”, I guess. But there’s probably a billion zillion trillion better ways of spending your time. IMOfuckingHO.

...holy shit I can already feel this is going to be a fucking long one. Hold on to your assholes)

-THE STORY- August 13 1999 was a Friday.

We were living with my dad's aunt in a room of her apartment; our house in Pinos de Marsella was being renovated to then be rented while my parents were making the last preparations to immigrate to the oh so glorious and perfect land of opportunity that was Canada, that couple-long dream they'd been chasing and which would soon become a reality, yippee fucking hurray. Little did they know that I was actually plotting my very own perfect little scheme which would hopefully result in me not having to leave with them, as there was nothing that I wanted to do less than having to leave my family and my country and everything I loved and knew aFUCKINGgain, regardless of all the abundance and providence that settling in another country could/would represent. The plan was to ask my Papa Señor (grandfather) if I could stay/live in Muzu (the name we use to refer to my grandparents’ house, which is in the neighborhood of Muzu, Bogota), in exchange I would work and help out whichever way I could around the factory (he has a textile factory, Tejidos y Confecciones Kathy, the “family business” in some ways I guess) until I was old or experienced enough to get my very own job in the grown-up world, or maybe I could start making and selling chocolates at school like that family friend of ours to “pay for my needs” I guess? I would of course swear and promise to stay in school and get an education and stuff. I would pull it off. I was going to do it. I was going to get away with it. I was 7 years old and I had a pretty bad case of denial even back then.

oh yeah, school. Since we’d been moving around from place to place to place to place since ummm gee, I dunno, for fucking ever, I was always "the new kid" (you know, the very cool and outspoken outgoing interesting type with the cool toys and the nice house that you totally want to be friends with? not that one. nervewrecky goodytwoshoes little spaz, conditioned to try and stay put and in control of evil and hyperactive impulses) and I'd have to catch up to whatever it was that the class was being taught. We had just come back from spending '98 in Portugal and their school calendar is different than in Colombia, where my classmates had been learning the multiplication tables for a couple of months by the time I joined the class. At that point I don't think I had yet experienced such amounts of pure hatred and absolute anger, but these concepts were sort of unfamiliar or unknown to me so I had no fucking clue what it was that I was feeling and just knew/felt that I did not like it at all. Math was hard for many reasons. The pressure and embarrassment to be at a lesser level than the other kids, which is weird as I didn't really bond with nor looked up to them since I had somewhat realized that any new friend I'd make could/would also involve the very painful and fun-less process of having to sever yet another relationship which for some reason seemed to affect me way much more than it did for other people. Or maybe everyone else was better at hiding it than I was back then, I didn't really know. Math also meant having to sit down and focus on the single task of cramming all this knowledge and numbers into my brain for extended periods of time, which is an almost impossible thing to do, even more so at the time. The reason being that my mind is constantly racing in a million different directions (NOT IN A SMART WAY EITHER. just fucking fractions and flashes of everything which come and go and are not profitable in any way and just splice your every single thought) hence it'd be extremely tedious to just abstract myself from the intensity of everything and concentrate on a single task. Sometimes at night I'd dream about being surrounded by endless waves of numbers and multiplication signs that would fight and ultimately beat me to a bloody messy pulp and then carry me to distant lands far away from whatever it was I had come to love or cherish, while I kicked and screamed and wept helplessly, before waking up out of breath completely terrified and asking mom and dad if they could move just a bit so I could sleep in their bed again, please, oh no reason at all I just really like you guys. (at the time I was sure that it was a common thing for people to have excruciatingly intense and draining dreams and I didn't want to needlessly worry anyone so I never really said anything; I would much later learn that it was certainly not a common thing, at all. oh well BFD ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ right? hahahaha)

So yeah basically just another fat little cheerful geeky brown kid whose favorite things in the whole wide world were climbing trees, Cuentilandia’s “Los Tres Cerditos”, Spider-Man (El Hombre Araña), Dragon Ball (Dragon Ball), music, monkeys/primates, making little stories and movies with my toys and imagination, The Empire Strikes Back (La guerra de las galaxias: El Imperio contraataca), ancient cultures, St John Bosco, Terminator 2 (FUN FACT: that great unforgettable catchphrase was actually "Sayonara, Baby" since um "Hasta la vista" was already in spanish so it didn't really make much sense in the spanish-dubbed world I grew up in), running, my younger sibling, my older cousin who was pretty much the coolest person to ever live, COMPUTER GAMES, etc etc etc (...)

His name was Jaime Garzón and he was one of my favoritestest grown-ups in the whole wide universe. Even though we never met personally him and I, my fellow country-people and I all knew and loved/cherished (or so I thought; I was wrong) this most amazing of human beings, by far truly and sincerely the truest of mensch to ever hail from Colombia, if there ever was one. Wikipedia says he “was a Colombian journalist, a comedian, lawyer, peace activist and political satirist. He was popular on Colombian television during the 1990s for his political satire. In addition to his work on television, he also had roles as a peace negotiator in the release of FARC guerrillas' hostages.” I was way too young to understand most of these things, so my vision was that he was a very smart talented man who was incredibly hilarious, played all these characters on TV that mainly talked about politics and the state of things in our country and managed to make everyone laugh and think regardless of age which was nice because it was a way to share a moment with grown-ups that wasn’t completely boring or filled with some stupid fucking moral religious lesson at the end. He also had the same given name than I did, which for some reason made me feel special and quite cool, and he was an entertainer, which I guess was something I felt I wanted/enjoyed to be too, in my very own intricate ways.

back then I was attending a school that my dad’s aunt was a teacher at, so every morning we’d wake up very early (4:30AM-5ish? I dunno man but I remember school schedules in the old country were kind of intense compared to NorthAmerican establishments), pick up another aunt on the way and drive to school. This was pretty neato for a ridiculously sensitive anxious little socially-unfit Pisces kid because it meant I wouldn’t get fucked with or bullied or whatever by taking the schoolbus (known as “la ruta” which was non-yellow and also very different from the ones here) with the other kids, so yeah, cool.

We left home and went to pick up my aunt and before she got in the car she had that look that grown-ups have when something was about to be hidden from you, the very same I trained myself to recognize once I realized that all those who taught me about the importance of honesty and transparency were actually liars themselves and that I should really avoid naively trusting every single thing that was thrown my way because sometimes the truth I was fed was but a modified watered-down kids version of the actual facts. (I was always constantly being told I was “very mature for my age” so at some point I had started taking for granted that grown-ups considered me smart or worthy enough not to have to lie to me and that I was on some sort of equal grounds of understanding, which was not the case at all.) “Have you heard?” she asked my other aunt, as the radio stations were changed. News fresher than that morning’s bread. For a moment you’re ready to complain, please don’t change the music, please don’t put boring grown-up stuff that I won’t understand. You don’t complain. You don’t want to listen, but you do. Each word cuts through your insides. This isn’t kid’s stuff, but you understand every single thing that it means.

“On Friday, August 13, at 5:45, local time, Garzón was approaching the Radionet station in his gray Jeep Cherokee. When he was turning toward the south coming from 26th Street in the Barrio Quinta Paredes sector, in front of Corferias, two men riding a high velocity white motorcycle with hidden plates approached the car and called his name, then shot him five times. He was 38 years old. The word quickly spread as his own colleagues at Radionet were the first to give the news to Colombia. Hundreds of people went out into the streets. The vehicular traffic worsened when a pedestrian bridge fell onto the North Highway, near 122nd Street, because a group of people thought wrongly that the funeral would pass by the site. Three people died and 30 were injured.”

They took him away when for once we had someone who was willing to stand up to the fucking corruption and the unfairness and change things because some/most of our people are nice and beautiful and deserve so much better. Nothing makes sense anymore; no matter how hard you force your stupid fucking little kid brain to wrap around these things that overwhelm you. You’re submerged by the true meaning of concepts such as injustice and unfairness. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair at all. Here was a great man that had the best intentions and they fucking murdered him. Every gunshot cuts through the very fabric of our “beautiful” country. You want to run away and hide and drown in yells until you implode and don’t have to deal with anything anymore. Your nights don’t get better. You start falling asleep in school. You can concentrate even less. You’re completely and absolutely full of anger and belligerence but you don’t even know what the fuck that means. You feel as if you finally truly and deeply learn about life and the world we live in. Not as beautiful as you were led to believe. You don’t understand how you’re still supposed to believe in a friendly loving compassionate God that would ever allow something like this to happen. You swear never to trust anything or anyone ever again, at least not before a thorough over-analysis of every single detail. Hope is evil and you should always expect the worst out of everything and everyone, especially yourself. You swear to avoid attachment at all costs because the cost of healing from it is far too much for your stupid fucking little feeble self.

It feels impossible to find anything funny or amusing anymore. You feel that you learn the meaning of giving up. You know you’re not going to be able to stay. You know you’re going to have to go with them and that you’re not at all special or unique, just a little fucking kid like any other fucking kid in a grownup world so ultimately your opinions or plans or whatever mean absolutely nothing at all. You learn about “acceptance”, but most importantly, how much you’re going to fucking hate it for as far as you live. You know that it’s going to be a long fucking time until you’re actually “in control” (you never will be) and until then there is nothing you can do but wait as you’re carried around from place to place without any saying.

“On that Friday night, sports presenter César Augusto Londoño for Noticiero CM& had to introduce a memorial note to Heriberto de la Calle, one of the characters of his murdered companion. He introduced the note saying: "that's all for sports ... f***king country!"” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-5cPRSY0_8) (...)

WELL GEEZ as far as childhood stories go this is probably one of the most “raw/dark” ones I can think of ever sharing. Well, I mean, I probably wasn’t as much of a fucked up little intense spaz as I remember. Or maybe I was. BUT YEAH NO most of my memories about earlier years are actually super happy and not all like this one, I probably had one of the greatest happiest most certainly undeserved childhoods one could ever ask for and I hold very fond memories of these “simpler” times so don’t go thinking that everything was misery and doom and gloom all the fucking time because, heck, in all honesty, it probably really wasn’t. If you got this far and you’re expecting some kind of meaningful statement or personal insight or artsy-fartsy lesson then I’m sorry to say I don’t have anything for you, as I have even less for myself.

mhmhmh. recently a “ceasefire” was negotiated between the government and the FARC (i.e. between the corrupted bad guys and the other corrupted bad guys), a long awaited step towards the end of the armed/social conflict that has been going on in Colombia since the early 60’s. now, I don’t know much or anything about the state of things (not as much as I should or want to) and anyways everything has changed since the last time I breathed the air of the mountains I was born in.

My country is a beautiful country, regardless of spilled blood or corruption or complete injustice.

heck, you may someday get to meet some funny little mix of absolute cynicism and blind naiveté always ready to dance and jump around and have a good time until the nostalgia hits when you’ve had too much to drink. or if you’re lucky enough someone sincere and loveable like Jaime Garzón. Que En Paz Descanse.