The Coca Cola can

‘I never asked myself what freedom meant until the day I hugged Stalin.’

This is how Lea Ypi's magnificent book begins.

The first thing I thought was that the author was really hugging, physically and in the flesh, the Soviet dictator, when in reality she was hugging a statue of the man made of steel.

The first part of the book, its 150 pages with which the story starts, describes the life of a family and a girl, Leushka, in the death throes of the communist regime in Albania.

A bright eleven-year-old girl that didn't understand why the statues of Stalin and Uncle Enver were being torn down. But the most painful thing for the protagonist is that, with the monuments, secrets and lies also fall; words are put to the silences and the whispers gain volume until they become clearly audible in the living room of the house... And she begins to distrust her family.

By the way, the fifth chapter describes a situation that I would say has a mix of surreal with a slight touch of magical realism that I leave to the reader's free interpretation. The spotlight goes to a disputed can of Coca Cola.

From my Borstal

LDR

Lea Ypi.- Free. Coming of Age at the End of History. Allen Lane. London 2021

 

 

Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas

 

A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my mind…

 

   Disappointment

   Dear Fran,

   I hope the same thing happens to all artists, including the best of all time.

 

     Of old painters

     Dear Fran,

     Young artists have their whole lives ahead of them. They can take a small brush and take two or three months to paint a multitude of emotions. At my age all emotions come together at the edge of a broad brush and I have very little time to put them on canvas.

     Y. a.

     Mary

 

     Ocaña

     ‘Yo no soy un pintor naif, desde luego, eso no es verdad. Yo soy un pintor entre expresionista y fauvista. No sé muy bien dibujar. Dibujo a mi manera, pero si supiera dibujar bien, creo que no dibujaría tampoco perfecto porque no me gusta.’

OCAÑA. José Luis Pérez Ocaña (1947- 1983). Besançon, 1984

 

     Dear Fran,

     This past weekend the painting exhibition I told you about not long ago was inaugurated, do you remember? I have had the honor of being a finalist.

     In the church of the old convent of Cantillana you can find works by very good artists, so I was surrounded by people like Magdalena Bachiller, José Carlos Naranjo and Francisco J. Romero, who were the winners, as well as Norberto Gil, Alba Cortés, Isabel Valle Ayllón, Israel Tirado, Federico Jaime, Francisca Martín...

     My painting shows a place that I discovered in Posadas, where there were some albercas and mangueras scattered on the ground. Neither the albercas nor the mangueras were carrying water and a young lemon tree had died because it could not bear the drought that has settled in these lands.

In ictu oculi

     Fran, there are two painting contests that are held on behalf of two important artists: one is in Oliva de la Frontera, the 'Timoteo Pérez Rubio', in homage to the man who during the Spanish Civil War dedicated himself to saving the paintings of the Prado Museum. The other is 'José Pérez Ocaña' who suffered from the misunderstanding of society in the 1960s and 1970s due to his homosexuality.

     Last Thursday, the night of the opening of the exhibition and awards ceremony, Ocaña's artistic career was recalled and words were heard warning of the direction that things are taking by some groups against the gay community.

     Fran, seeing my painting in the nave of the church made me very proud.

     Y. a.

     Mary

 

 

Dove l´Abate si mostra fiero delle ricchezze della sua abbazzia…  

Until now I had never read anything by Umberto Eco, but a trip to Tuscany gave me the opportunity to buy, in a well-stocked and cozy bookshop in Pisa, Il nome della rosa.

Today I have started the chapter dedicated to the second day, nona hour, and in the third paragraph I have found another example of the subtlety and kindness with which the Piedmontese treats his attributed atheism. Ecco, in said paragraph and through the mouth of the abbot, Eco describes the riches of the abbey: topaz, ruby, sapphire, emerald, onyx, agate... and with total cleanliness, I would say asepsis, the author convinces us, at least he has convinced me, that the best way to glorify the name of God and to magnify the sacrifice he made for men is to receive and offer blood in those wonderful chalices of gold and precious stones.

I already assumed that this book was going to be one of those that you cannot stop reading, because having watched the film by J. Annaud, since then I had the lively desire to get hold of the work and see if reading it would fill me with so much satisfaction like the movie.

It´s true that it shouldn´t be, that one thing cannot be compared with the other one. That the books have to be compared, if the case arises, with the books and the movies with the movies because they are two different arts.

As anyone who follows me already knows, I am an unrecoverable atheist and I am not convinced by the abbot's argument. As a reader I applaud the elegance and resources used by U.E.

 

From my Borstal

LDR

Il nome della rosa.- Umberto Eco.- Tascabili Bompiani, LVII edizione marzo 2010. Milano

 

The birds of my town

     Last Friday I was in Fuentes de Andalucía, at the presentation of the book 'Las aves de mi pueblo', the work of Francisco Barcia and which focuses on the most representative birdlife of this beautiful place in the province of Seville.

     I had already been in Fuentes a couple of times, but on this occasion and on the occasion of the Book Fair that is held annually around this time, I traveled to the town due to the interest that a book dedicated to the birds of the Sevillian Campiña aroused to me.

     This is how I had the opportunity to greet and talk for a while with the author of the work and get hold of a copy of the publication that contains a hundred photographs —most of them taken by Paco—, beautiful images that accompany the small texts that help to identify each species.

     I enjoyed an afternoon with people who love what I love and that gave me a feeling of relaxation that I had needed for a long time.

     Y. a.

     Mary

 

If you put one color shape against another color shape, you´re making an illusion.

Philip Guston

 

     Dear Fran,

     I have submitted a painting to the Alcalá Landscape Contest (Alcalá de los Panaderos they called it) and most likely it will not pass the first screening. I'll tell you why.

     The image is the vision that I wanted to paint of the section of the Odiel river as it passes through Gibraleón, but, deliberately, on the plane of the canvas there is only one layer of color in each of the parts of the work. This is generally not well seen by the more orthodox masters of painting — the jury.

     The illusion that Philip Guston talks about is achieved by superimposing layer after layer of colors on the canvas and I — I don't know if I'm making a mistake or not — have not followed that rule. Have I risked presenting my 'Río Odiel IV' in a way that we could call superficial?

     The answer in a week.

     Y. a.

     Mary

 

Forbidden to get on the bus with that canvas!

     Dear Fran,

     my Fagin project is giving me a lot of satisfaction, but at the same time some troubles.

     Yesterday afternoon and despite the fact that five or six people were going to travel on the bus, the driver — as the captain of the ship — denied me entry because I was carrying a 89 x 116 cm canvas.

     It was the first time that this setback has happened to me, since on other occasions, even once I entered with a 130 cm canvas, I had not had to suffer this unpleasant situation.

     The driver did not know or did not want to tell me what the maximum measure was to be able to access the bus and he only repeated and repeated that the company's ‘normativa’ did not allow it. I told him that if the bus was full I understood that, but with five or six people I would go to the end of the vehicle, without bothering anyone, but no. The ‘normativa’ was him at that time and I couldn't get on the bus.

     What did I do? I let the impenetrable captain drive off with his boat, his bus, and boarded the next nº20 five minutes later, greeted this time by a pleasant smile from the new driver. There were no problems.

     Y. a.

     Mary

 

The Remains of the Day

     “That´s what we fought Hitler for,after all. If Hitler had had things his way, we´d just be slaves now. The whole world would be a few masters and millions upon millions of slaves. And I don´t need to remind anyone here, there´s no dignity to be had in being a slave. That´s what we fought for and that´s what we won. We won the right to be free citizens. And it´s one of the privileges of being born English that no matter who you are, no matter if you´re rich or por, you´re born free and you´re born so that you can express your opinión freely, and vote in your member of parliament or vote him out. That´s what dignity´s really about, if you´ll excuse me, sir.”

From Kazuo Ishiguro´s beautiful and haunting The Remains of the Day, page 196.

Today we are in a situation that could lead to a conflict similar to the one experienced in 1939.

With some frecuency, in history, events tend to repeat themselves, although with different protagonists.

The current tsar is acting in the same way as the Nazi Adolf. He started a few years ago changing laws and appointing puppets in the government to stay in power, imprisoning or poisoning dissidents and even invading nearby territories while we, condescendingly, waited for it to stop at some point…

Now we find ourselves with the encysted problema and on the verge of any unforeseeable outcome.

P.S.- Excuse me if I reserve what I think may happen in a couple of years.

From my Borstal

LDR

The Ramains of the Day.- Ishiguro, K. Faber and Faber, London, 1989

 

I haven´t picked up

     Dear Fran, I haven´t picked up the brushes for a month or more, but I haven´t stopped painting.

     Y. a.

     Mary