Jardín desértico

Este es el primer sketch que hice utilizando las acuarelas de winsor and newton. la composición es de nuestro jardín desértico que fue diseñado por mi y realizado un paisajista. El dibujo esta fechado el dia 01 de marzo del 2021.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

        RIEDENSCHNEIDER
                         ...They got this guy, in Germany. 
                         Fritz something-or-other. Or is it. 
                         Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got 
                         this theory, you wanna test something, 
                         you know, scientifically--how the 
                         planets  go round the sun, what 
                         sunspots are made of, why the water 
                         comes out of the tap--well, you gotta 
                         look at it. But sometimes, you look 
                         at it, your looking *changes* it. Ya 
                         can't know the reality of what 
                         happened, or what *would've* happened 
                         if you hadden a stuck in your goddamn 
                         schnozz. So there *is* no 'what 
                         happened.' Not in any sense that we 
                         can grasp with our puny minds. Because 
                         our minds... out minds get in the 
                         way. Looking at something changes 
                         it. They call it the 'Uncertainty 
                         Principle.' Sure, it sounds screwy, 
                         but even Einstein says the guy's on 
                         to something.

               His gaze up at the window breaks. He strolls around the room, 
               still smiling.

                                     RIEDENSCHNEIDER
                         ...Science. Perception. Reality. 
                         Doubt...

               He stops to examine a bur on his fingernail.

                                     RIEDENSCHNEIDER
                         ...Reasonable doubt. I'm sayin', 
                         sometimes, the more you look, the 
                         less you really know. It's a fact. A 
                         proved fact. In a way, it's the only 
                         fact there is. This heinie even wrote 
                         it out in numbers.

Torture Dehumanize a Human Being

In 1992 Quentin Tarantino, now a famous filmmaker, directed his opera prima called “Reservoir Dogs”. One of the most remembered quotes from that movie is “Listen kid, I’m not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don’t give a good fuck what you know, or don’t know, but I’m gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It’s amusing, to me, to torture a cop.” In this particular movie, torture is used to get a sadistic gratification, but torture can be also used to obtain certain information from soldiers who are fighting a war. In 2008, Christopher Hitchens wrote “Believe Me, It’s Torture” an essay in which he pushes himself to try from first hand a torture method called “waterboarding.” This method consist of putting a man on a table with his head covered with a cloth while somebody pours water over his face. The essay narrates the whole procedure while Hitchens had to resists as much as possible as he could of this torture method. The rest of the essay relies on questioning about if this practice should or shouldn’t be called torture, and at the end he finally claims that “waterboarding” is a method of torture. It is interesting that he needed to actually try the process in order to completely convinced that “waterboarding” should be considered torture. The solely fact of putting a person under that extreme psychological pressure it is for definition an act of torture and it shouldn’t be allowed of being practice because torture dehumanize us.

If we talk about torture, first we need to define the term in the context of present time. The Geneva Convention defines torture as “means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession…” (Convention). This legal definition seems to be very accurate, however we should analyze the reasons why humans have to come to the point of creating laws to defends us against ourselves. Probably this currently method of torture, waterboarding, is used to get information from terrorist groups or used by this terrorists groups to get information from soldiers that are part of the army of powerful countries such as USA. Corporate interest hidden behind a country and warfare can also push under certain circumstances the use of this torture method. Finally, political interests can also lead to the use of torture. The World War I, The World War II, the big conquest of Charlemagne, The expansion of Romans, even the discovery of America were about political interests. We cannot say the same about the origin of the torture in the middle ages. During the middle age for example, a way of torture was “dunking”. This method consisted in sitting the victim on a chair and lowering down the chair into a river so the victim starts to drown. They used this method on scolding woman in England in the early 18th century. The Greeks had the “Brazen Bull” to execute criminals and the Chinese used a variation of the “Iron Maiden” during the Ming Dynasty to punish the non loyal citizens to their king. Many of this torture methods existed as a way of punishment, in order to get a confession or to make and example of others. Therefore, we can conclude that we haven’t showed the most ethical behavior as a human race. There is a barbaric instinct that pushes us to commit these horrible acts without judgment, or at least until the Geneva Convention. Now we have limits and they have been enforced since 1949.

 

Some people who actually don’t know how torture is practiced are advocates of it. They think that in order to get peace or to liberate a country of terrorism, Torture is something that can be tolerated. In terms of ethics, this is totally wrong. It’s unacceptable to put another human being under torture because it is a way to dehumanize him while we are dehumanizing ourselves. The mere act of infringe torture in someone else, means we are not giving any meaning to our own life, it is like to losing respect of our most precious gift, our existence. Hitchens states “when contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay.”(6) This seems to undervalue the real problem behind a torture technique, torture is torture no matter what, it can’t be softener, it can’t be diminished. It just can’t. How can somebody agree to allow torture when you hear a testimony of Ms. Ayress, a Chilean woman tortured by the regime of Augusto Pinochet during the 70’s? Here is part of her testimony:

Tejas Verdes was the place where they trained people to be torturer, there I suffered the   most brutal tortures. They forced me to have sex with a trained dog for tortures. They put rats inside my vagina and then electric shocks. With the electric shocks the rats sink their claws in my vagina. They urinated and defecated in my vagina, introducing me the       toxic virus of toxo plasmosis. Torturers raped me repeatedly and touched me in sexual  ways, cursing and forcing me to have oral sex with them. They cut me with knives; once   they cut the first layers of my belly with a knife and I lost a lot of blood…

Victor Jara, a famous songwriter in Chile, suffered one of the most horrific tortures that someone could imagine. One of the officers crushed his hand and said “you’ll never be able to play the guitar again.” Later he was executed and his body was found with 44 bullets. This horrors can’t be tolerated, in our modern society torture must be banned forever, because torture simple and clearly dehumanize us.

 

Work Cited

“Convention Against Torture.” Convention Against Torture, United Nations Human Rights, 26    June 1987

Hitchens, Christopher. «Believe Me, It’s Torture.» Vanity Fair. N.p., 02 July 2008. Web. 07 Oct.             2016.

Wadler, Joyce. “Years After Torture, a Cry Against Pinochet.” The New York Times, The New    York Times, 2 Feb. 1999

Three treasures hidden in a celluloid frame.

Close your eyes for a second and imagine a lone highway in the Midwest. Moving at a slow pace there is a small lawn-mover tractor driven by an old guy, old enough to be in his seventies or even eighties. The tractor is not cutting the grass of a beautiful house, it is not taking care of a golf course or anything close to that, this old man is driving that tractor down a highway to see his ill brother, who lives in another state. People felt very confused when they saw this old man driving that tractor like it was a real car. ”What is he doing?        -They thought. Where is he heading? They didn’t have a clue. Well, the last time he saw his brother was about 40 years ago, they had a big fight and they never talked to each other again. But here he was, driving more than 260 miles from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin to see his brother. How do you do you mend your relationship with an ill brother you haven’t seen in decades? Do people really do this things like this? What does this act mean? Let me give the answer. The answer is Love.

A poor Italian family moves to Milan, a bigger city, trying to succeed and leave behind the poverty that surrounds them. They are looking for jobs, but one of the brothers decided to study in order to get a better job, while Rocco, His older brother, thought it would be easier to become a boxing star and avoid the boring studies he just can’t stand. Everything seems normal until a woman makes her appearance. Both brother have feelings for her and she has to decide whether she will choose the fighter or the student. Rejection, violence, love and desire get combined in a storm that show both the best and the worst of the human race. Do you think two brothers should feel hate for each other? Is it their fault or the society’s?

An elderly couple embarks on a journey to visit their children who are living in Tokyo. When they get there, the only thing they found was the indifference of their children. Neither their daughter nor their son were even kind to them. It seems for them, their parents were just a rock in their shoes, something annoying that you want to get rid of as soon as possible. So the parents felt very ashamed about the circumstances and left the children alone taking the next train back to their city. Do you think this is the way we should treat elderly people? Have you ever treated someone badly who only wanted to give you love? Is it right to depend our whole lives on our parents and just when we don’t need them anymore, forget them in the closet like an old suit you are not going to wear anymore?

I will tell you what these three stories have in common, if you have not guessed yet. All of them are the basic storyline of great movies from three totally different directors. The “Straight Story” by David Lynch, “Rocco and his brothers” by Luchino Visconti and “Tokyo Story” by Yasujirō Ozu.

I believe you can learn a lot from movies. I believe movies can inspire us in so many ways that some of them are a form of art by themselves. I believe cinema is the 7^th art.

Lilja 4-ever

Lilja 4-ever is one of those films that keep going around your head for a long time. We all know there are different kinds of movies that we enjoy but there are some movies that are not made for anyone because they show us directly things that we don’t want to see or hear, and this is one of them. Lilja is a 16 years old girl left alone by her mother who run away with her boyfriend to USA. Lilja doesn’t know how to deal with her new situation and she try the best way she can to survive, but life turns back on her so often that she is tired to fight.

Lilja 4-ever show us a hidden world, selfish and destructive, a world without love, without good people, without hope. How can a beautiful soul can survive all the evil that surrounds her? How can you possible fight back against such a disheartening place? Those are question floating around without no one who could give us an answer. Looks like some things are meant to be and there is nothing we can do about. That is a sad statement you can learn from this movie, but also a true one.

El Extranjero

 

Soy un extranjero en esta tierra. Llegué casi por casualidad, el destino me condujo por cielo, tierra y aquí conocí al amor de mi vida. En ese entonces no lo sabía, pero quería quedarme aquí. No por el lugar, sino porque ella vive aquí y yo quiero estar con ella. Desde entonces todo se conjugó para que yo terminase en estas tierras. Luchando con las barreras idiomáticas, con la cultura diferente, con las diversas formas de vivir la vida. Aquí soy un extranjero, en realidad todos lo somos. Este país creció gracias al asentamiento de colonos. Obviamente muchos indígenas vivían aquí desde hacia mucho tiempo, pero los colonos fueron los que trajeron los avances de la civilización. Los extranjero tenemos alma de cowboys. Tenemos el mismo sentimiento que esos jinetes experimentaban cuando llegaban a un pueblo nuevo y todos los miraban con ojos de «que hace este hombre aquí». Salir de tu país y aventurarte en el mundo es parte de entender el concepto de extranjero, de entender que el mundo es un lugar diseñado para ser conocido y visitado, para recorrerlo con los ojos abiertos y experimentar los aromas, colores y sonidos que te depara. Una catarata aquí, una tumba por allá, tres cuevas escondidas en el mar o bajo tierra. Esa es la elección. Aquella elección que nos hace ser diferentes de la gente del lugar que nos vio nacer, porque nosotros no pertenecemos a una nación, pertenecemos a un planeta.

Vivir lejos de tus seres queridos hace que valores más los pocos momentos que puedes compartir con ellos, hace que aprecies de mejor manera el tiempo que es siempre corto y que esta constantemente en contra. Los cowboys tenemos eso en común: sabemos que hay que apresurarse y moverse pronto al próximo lugar que nos llama.

Mi nuevo Samsung Galaxy 6

No me importa si el galaxy se me moja o si me habla o no. Yo quiero un Samsung Galaxy 6 que me diga las cantidades exactas de los condimentos de mi receta, que me avise para que no se me quemen los panqueques, quiero que tenga una batería que se cargue sola con el calor de mi cuerpo, quiero que intuya cuando debe permanecer en silencio y cuando la luz debe ser más baja de lo normal. Quiero que me lea un libro sin que suene a robot, quiero un Galaxy S6 que sepa cuando se me perdió y me busque, quiero que me avise donde deje mis cosas y que mande por mi mensajes aburridos de cumpleaños a personas que poco me importan. quiero que cuando sienta un mal olor lo elimine y que me avise exactamente cuando va a llover, cuando va a haber sol y si me hace falta vitamina E o tomarme la pastilla que me hace querer que mi Galaxy S6 haga todo esto y más.

La Amistad

Yo tenía un amigo. Lo quería como se quiere a alguien que es de tu familia. lo quería como un verdadero hermano, alguien que perfectamente podría haber compartido tu misma sangre. Alguien que podria haber tomado el mismo desayuno que tu, todas las mañanas del mundo. Yo tenía un amigo y un día lo perdí. Lo perdí como se pierden millones de llaves al día, como se pierden miles de vuelos por llegar tarde, como se pierde el celular que dejaste en el banco de alguna plaza de pueblo. Yo tenía un amigo y un día desapareció. Me dejó un agujero tan grande en el corazón que me ha llevado años poder remedarlo. Con el tiempo lo he ido perdonando, he ido perdonando el no entender como un día sin más me dejó de hablar, he ido entendiendo que los amigos a veces se pierden, que por un amigo que se va, a veces llegan otros dos, comprendí que no puedes comparar a tus amigos, que no existe tal cosa como «tal persona es mi mejor amigo». Un amigo es un amigo, es tu mejor amigo, puedes confiar en el ciegamente y por mucho que haya gente que te termine haciendo sufrir, esos amigos seguirán siendo siempre amigos para ti. Aunque ya no estén aquí para que puedas demostrárselos, aunque te hayan dejado solo en un desierto lleno de dudas.

The Suburbs – Arcade Fire

Hay algo especial, casi mágico diría yo, en este tremendo álbum de Arcade Fire. Criticas soterradas al sistema político, miedo al mundo que estamos creando y una fuerte resistencia a la generación que se ha creado a partir de las redes sociales y la tecnología de los celulares y computadores. Tal parece como si los recuerdos de los suburbios, aquellos lugares alejados de las grandes ciudades, traerán el confort de lo que se ha perdido y no volverá. De lo que se quebró y nunca podrá volver a repararse, lo que nunca volverá a ser lo que fue. Aún con todas estas lecturas, resalta un dejo de esperanza, quizás tal vez en saber que se esta haciendo un trabajo que va en contra de todo y de todos. Eso es lo que finalmente mantiene vivo al ser humano, eso es lo que mantiene vivo a Arcade Fire y su música única que es transgresora de tiempo y espacio.

Mujeres hipogríficas: Candice Swanepoel

Candice Swanepoel vino de una galaxia muy muy lejana a conquistar a este pequeño planeta azul con trozos de tierra llamados continentes. Es por eso que su belleza no la podemos comparar con nada que exista en este planeta. Su ojos son del azul claro de alguna supernova esquiva. El dorado de su cabellera brilla con la fuerza de soles vagando desnudos por océanos estelares. Ella lo sabe y está aquí para decirnos tan sólo una cosa: la belleza es para mantenerla en la retina y conservarla como el recuerdo más vívido que puedas tener.