Letter to all the things I've lost

To: All the things I've lost over the years
at a random Lost and Found or maybe, the magical land where rogue socks escape to be free from their evil twins

From: Your former owner who misses you terribly

I hope you are well when this message reaches you. I thought about sending a letter when M's black school shoe went missing. We looked everywhere, but we couldn't find it, so we sent the kid to school in sparkly leopard print flats.

Retainer, I thought of you first, you were, perhaps, the one I was the sorriest to lose. Not only I missed you (I know we didn't have the best of relationships), but I was terrified to let my parents know I needed a replacement.

Books I lent and never got back, I hope you found good homes, I imagine all of you in beautiful dark wood home libraries, next to first editions. Or maybe in the hands of a young kid passionate about reading. I just hope you didn't end up as kindle.

Glasses I left on a plane. You were my favorite, and I have not replaced you, I can't. I rather have blurry sight.

My late grandfather's magnifying glass. Your departure was violent. It was my second grade teacher's fault. I believe now, looking back, that she had mental problems. That year was bad. She would tell seven-year-olds scary stories (that later I found out where Horacio Quiroga's and horrible apocalyptic movies,) and she told us about life just plain sucking. She took you away even though you were a family heirloom, along with one of my favorite books. But I'm better, I hope you are too.

And dear, dear old socks.

Rock on.

Reading on a plane

Travel Literature

On a plane you can only read celebrity magazines, tabloids, sensationalism media (only if they don't cover air disasters), bad crossword puzzle and sudoku magazines.

Read anything that doesn't take itself too seriously, the one par excellence is the in-flight magazine, What would you expect of a publication whose readers have nothing else at hand?

Little travel novels bought (at an inflated price) in a tiny stand crammed between the duty free and the public restrooms at the terminal.

Read anything than might prevent you from thinking, from remembering your phobias and terrors, nothing intellectual, not high literature, nothing introspective. And no chaotic narratives either, no Rushdie, no Goytisolo, no Donoso, no Lispector, no Bret Easton Ellis.

In the claustrophobic reality of a plane cabin there is no place for the embarrassment of being caught reading Vanity Fair, Cosmo or a romantic best-seller.

Lately I prefer historical fiction for plane rides, exotic tales of by-gone eras, fictitious romancing.

On a plane, no one would believe, by seeing me, that I'm capable of good reads.

It doesn't matter.

I only want to hypnotize myself and forget about the terror of imagining me on a free fall.

Literary dogmas apply only on firm ground.

In defense of the native interpreter

In the height of British Colonies a term was coined for the native women who lived with the colonialists: sleeping dictionary.

A sleeping dictionary because they provided a very useful service.

Through their foreign and voluptuous flesh the foreigner could learn the native language.

Their bodies rich and spilling with lexicon, with meaning, with knowledge.

A knowledge locked away, unreachable for them.

A sleeping dictionary always in need of the mighty pen of the other.

A treacherous body.

But more than a sleeping dictionary, a woman's flesh is a savage glossary.

A huntress patiently at prowl.

Of a translated me

A friend made a comment about translation.

And that comment took me back to a day when we talked for hours at Tanglewood, and a skeptical me worried that you liked only a translated version me, but not the "me" I knew, not the one that gave me meaning.

I asked you that day if you thought personality was translatable. I don't know what you answered, but you probably laughed it off as a pseudo-intellectual snobism of mine.

The question haunts me.

I worry you'll never read me raw as I am.