Emergency On Planet Earth

I must be one of the luckiest people alive and these days that isn't easy: because all across our fantastic plantet, "the most dangerous animal in the world" continues to kill his brother and his "mother" and anyone else who gets in the way of his maniacal urgency for that paper picture of some incredibly generous monarch or extra cheerful dictator on each side. You know, the paper that you think if you had piles of it you'd be really happy, yet it destroys so many, the paper which some people have so much of that they don't even know how much they got (I think thay call thoses poeple adnan!). Don't get me wrong, currency is a necessary and useful thing when used properly, when it's used to feed children and starving people, save what little rainforest there is, not just Brazil, but across the globe, protect and respect the wondrous creatures we should share the space with, when it's in the hands of organisations which fight political muscle and expose corrupt individuals. You see, we can't win and reclaim the morals and values which have been lost in the hands of greedy fools unless we play them at their own game: a poor man could never help a poor man (whatever happened to Robin Hood). I bet if we all gave Greenpeace, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth the money that we give to the government in tax each year, which they use for charming buffet lunches with equally useless puppets from some other country to talk about a "manifesto", the situation would certainly "manifest" itself.

We must finance the people who are going to try and save the world, not sell arms and weapons to starving, dying people so they can die a bit quicker. What's the idea? Population, our biggest problem, will be contro9lled when all the "little" unimportant people in the "Third World" (nice way of saying "shithole" and not being part of it) are dead. It's got ot be a piss take hasn't it? no. The answer to all of our problems is for us not to be the wasteful, ignorant people we can often be. (I know, it's not our fault, we were told it was a pinnacle of achievement to be that) but show compassion and righteoussness by wiping senseless foreign debts which not only cause the death of people but the whole planet because theses countries then have to raise cash in any way they can to pay and invariably that means chopping down trees, beautiful majestic trees, which are the life giver of the earth, helping the process which gives us life, creating shade, softening buildings and urban environments, de-stressing everyone from the rigours of living today, one tree containing more spirit than a thousand humans.

If only people had been given a real higher education, then we might understand the fringes of the laws of karma. Natural law, what goes around comes around: Columbus might have reached South America and taken all the gold and made slaves of the Indians, but look what they gave him and his boys (us), which is only just getting a grip now but it's here and it's picking off the weak and unfortunate, rich, useless and bored. Work it out. It seems to be time for the big payback. Natural law. Try and read a book one day, everyone's got it.

At the rate we're going we've got 10 years to turn this world's head around. I can only thinki of the worst if we don't. But somehow inside I know we can. I for one have faith in people like you. Know which side you're standing on, don't let people tell you you're wrong when you know you're right. If you do, we may all regret it, because it will be all over. I thin k it's time we had a revolution...

JAY K.

This was written in 1993, in the album Emergency on Planet Earth. We are now almost in 2006, nothing's changed.

Kerouac's 211th chorus from Mexico City Blues

211th Chorus

The wheel of the quivering meat conception

Turns in the void expelling human beings,

Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,

Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan

Racinghorses, poxy bubolic pigtics,

Horrible, unnameable lice of vultures,

Murderous attacking dog-armies

Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle,

Vast boars and huge gigantic bull

Elephants, rams, eagles, condors,

Pones and Porcupines and Pills

-All the endless conception of living beings

Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness

Throughout the ten directions of space

Occupying all the quarters in & out,

From super-microscopic no-bug

To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell

Illuminating the sky of one Mind-

Poor! I wish I was free

of that slaving meat wheeland safe in heaven dead.

Poemita de Girondo

No se me importa un pito

No se me importa un pito que las mujeres

tengan los senos como magnolias o como pasas de higo;

un cutis de durazno o de papel de lija.

Le doy una importancia igual a cero,

al hecho de que amanezcan con un aliento afrodisíaco

o con un aliento insecticida.

Soy perfectamente capaz de sorportarles

una nariz que sacaría el primer premio en una exposición de zanahorias;

¡pero eso sí! -y en esto soy irreductible- no les perdono,

bajo ningún pretexto, que no sepan volar.

Si no saben volar ¡pierden el tiempo las que pretendan seducirme!

Ésta fue -y no otra- la razón de que me enamorase,

tan locamente, de María Luisa.

¿Qué me importaban sus labios por entregas y sus encelos sulfurosos?

¿Qué me importaban sus extremidades de palmípedo

y sus miradas de pronóstico reservado?

¡María Luisa era una verdadera pluma!

Desde el amanecer volaba del dormitorio a la cocina,

volaba del comedor a la despensa.

Volando me preparaba el baño, la camisa.

Volando realizaba sus compras, sus quehaceres...

¡Con qué impaciencia yo esperaba que volviese,

volando, de algún paseo por los alrededores!

Allí lejos, perdido entre las nubes, un puntito rosado.

"¡María Luisa! ¡María Luisa!"... y a los pocos segundos,

ya me abrazaba con sus piernas de pluma,

para llevarme, volando, a cualquier parte.

Durante kilómetros de silencio planeábamos una caricia

que nos aproximaba al paraíso;

durante horas enteras nos anidábamos en una nube,

como dos ángeles, y de repente,

en tirabuzón, en hoja muerta,

el aterrizaje forzoso de un espasmo.

¡Qué delicia la de tener una mujer tan ligera...,

aunque nos haga ver, de vez en cuando, las estrellas!

¡Que voluptuosidad la de pasarse los días entre las nubes...

la de pasarse las noches de un solo vuelo!

Después de conocer una mujer etérea,

¿puede brindarnos alguna clase de atractivos una mujer terrestre?

¿Verdad que no hay diferencia sustancial

entre vivir con una vaca o con una mujer

que tenga las nalgas a setenta y ocho centímetros del suelo?

Yo, por lo menos, soy incapaz de comprender

la seducción de una mujer pedestre,

y por más empeño que ponga en concebirlo,

no me es posible ni tan siquiera imaginar

que pueda hacerse el amor más que volando.

Oliverio Girondo

La cucharada estrecha

Un fama descubrió que la virtud era un microbio redondo y lleno de patas. Instantáneamente dio a beber una gran cucharada de virtud a su suegra. El resultado fue horrible: esta señora renunció a sus comentarios mordaces, fundó un club para la protección de alpinistas extraviados, y en menos de dos meses se condujo de manera tan ejemplar que los defectos de su hija, hasta entonces inadvertidos, pasaron a primer plano con gran sobresalto y estupefacción del fama. No le quedó más remedio que dar una cucharada de virtud a su mujer, la cual lo abandonó esa misma noche por encontrarlo grosero, insignificante, y en un todo diferente de los arquetipos morales que flotaban rutilando ante sus ojos.

El fama lo pensó largamente, y al final se tomó un frasco de virtud. Pero lo mismo sigue viviendo solo y triste. Cuando se cruza en la calle con su suegra o su mujer, ambos se saludan respetuosamente y desde lejos. No se atreven ni siquiera a hablarse, tanta es su respectiva perfección y el miedo que tienen de contaminarse.

Cortázar, Julio; Historias de cronopios y de famas, Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1994