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Tag Archives: Borges

WALDO AND I

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in Short Stories

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Tags

Ariosto, Avelino Arrendondo, Aveoes, Borges, Delia Elana San Marco, Dreams, Juan Moreira, Martin Fierro, monster, Pierre Menard, Susana Soca

A Short Story

“It is all his fault. I am the way I am because of him. Things happen to me that are the result of his actions. I feel people staring at me as I walk the railroad tracks in Johnson City, looking at the hulks of old shoe factories.”

No sooner had I began with the above title and first paragraph of a new short story when someone clapped the front doorknocker; which was very large, brassy and pretentious. It had “TOMOSKY” engraved on it as if to announce something. I, absentmindedly, placed my writing tablet on the kitchen table. At the door was a relative, a talkative one, who consumed the remainder of my evening. I was tired and went immediately to bed after she departed.

That night I slept without rest. Rarely do I dream and even more rarely can I capture what I dreamt about. It was different that night.

A man appeared to me with a writing tablet very similar to mine. He had several friends with him, or rather, standing behind him. The friends were all in black silhouette most of the time. As they stood there, non-menacingly, one or two of them, taking turns, would change from silhouette to full three dimensional people; albeit, in black and white. I soon recognized a few of them.

There was Averoes, the Arab philosopher of Andalusia. There was Susana Soca, Ariosto, Delia Elana San Marco, Martin Fierro, and Avelino Arredondo. Twice that number stood in the background; still in silhouette, still in mystery.

The labyrinthine dream became clear. These were friends and characters of Jorge Luis Borges, that master of fantasy and confusion. The man holding the tablet had to be Jorge Luis Borges himself. What a thrill to actually see the man who had inspired me so many times.

It came as no surprise that Jorge Luis Borges was standing in front of me. I had been reading several of his books recently; looking for the usual mental excitement that only Borges could bestow. Don’t get me wrong. Borges never made my heart leap or my frame freeze; however, he sure could make my mind stumble, trip, do summersaults, triple-axles and other mistakes or feats; you never knew which one Borges had in mind.

I attempted to converse with him but nothing would exit my mouth. It was like one of those dreams I had as a child; those dreams where I could fly just high enough to stay out of the reach of the monster. It was that same monster that was always jumping up trying to grab me. It would take all of my energy just to stay out of reach; but never enough energy to fly higher or, better yet, to get away.

There I stood. An incredible opportunity to talk to a master story teller and I was able to ask nothing. The period of time that we faced each other was interminable. Borges kept on holding out the tablet to me but I could not reach it. During some periods, it was obvious to him that I was exhausted from trying to speak. Only then would he lower the writing tablet to his side. He would just stand there; expressionless but patient.

This offering by Borges and my inability to accept it went on all night. I promised myself I would write all this down as soon as I awoke. It was too priceless an experience to let fade away.

I had already squandered so many other dreams.

Upon awakening I went directly to the table. I required my writing tablet to record the “traum.” Opening it to where I had left off the previous evening I experienced an enigma. There was something on the page but it was not written. I could see it in my mind but there were no words on the page other than what I had written the previous evening. YET, there was something there that I could see with my mind if not with my eyes. I now tell my story (and record it for the first time) so that others may see (or feel) it. This is what was not written on that page.

Note from Luis:        Wally. Too self serving. Try something like this:

“Borges and I

It’s the other one, it’s Borges, that things happen to. I stroll about Buenos Aires and stop, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the  arch of an entrance or an iron gate. News of Borges reaches me through the mail and I see his name on an academic ballot or in a biographical dictionary.

JLB”

It was brilliant. It was pure Borges. How could I have missed the point?

That evening I sat down with this new advice and continued the story of myself and I. The words came hard and I had to re-write and scratch some out. Other phrases were misplaced and I had to move them from one location to another. The goal of what I was creating had to be    –     –     –    “sometimes I am not me.”

I was dead tired from attempting something that I had no right to attempt. I went to bed.

It was not long after I drifted off when the dream re-occurred. There was Borges and his group of friends (once again behind him, once again in black silhouette). As we stood there one of the silhouettes took the position of feet together, ramrod straight and hands on his hips. In the silhouette he looked like a dagger stuck in the floor. His hands on his hips made his elbows stick out as if his arms were the hilt. His round head formed the ball at the end of the handle. The dagger then changed from black to bright red, as if he (or it) had just been removed from the blacksmith’s coals. Another color change; this time from that brilliant red to the straw color of tempered steel, then finally to the cold hard color of chrome. He, the image, then became human. There stood Juan Moreira;  the knife fighter, in person.

Borges (once more) began offering me the writing tablet. Once more I could not take it or speak. The dream no longer had that frightening aspect; like my other repetitive dream of the monster. It was as if Borges and I were on the verge of familiarity (if not friendship).

Like the night before, there was his continual offering of the writing tablet and my continual inability to speak. Time after time the scene repeated itself; to disgrace me. I was the only one who simply stood there. Even the silhouettes moved around from time to time. I finally awoke to the cacophony of morning bird sounds singing through my window.

Running to the writing table I found my tablet in the same place that it had been left. “Thank God.” I thought to myself “I am not going mad.” I quickly opened the tablet to where I had left off the night before. Once again, nothing was written on the page other than what I had created. Once again, there was something on the page that I could not see with my eyes but could only perceive with my mind. Maybe I was going mad after all. This is what (again, for the second time) was not written on the page:

Note From Luis;      Wally, it does not create the depth of feeling that you are looking for. Put some of ‘your self, –his being’ into it. May I suggest something in the vein of the following?

“I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee, and Stevenson’s prose. The other one shares these preferences with me, but in a vain way that converts them into the attributes of an actor. It would be too much to say that our relations are hostile; I live, I allow myself to live, so that Borges may contrive his literature and that literature justifies my existence.”

JLB”

Once again I missed the mark and Borges brought me back to where I needed to be.

That evening I made my third  attempt at the story; however only the second one with Borges assistance.

I woke up as the mantle clock struck midnight; my face flat on he table. Knowing that I had only written part of what I had intended I was somewhat disappointed. I thought of how disappointed Borges would be if he were here. I closed my writing tablet and went to bed almost hoping that Borges would appear, yet, on the other hand, hoping that he would not be too critical of me.

Like clockwork the re-occurring dream commenced; Borges in front with the writing tablet, his friendly silhouettes in back moving to-and-fro ever so slightly. Like clockwork I could not speak, like clockwork I could not take his tablet.

Upon awakening I rushed for my writing tablet to see what Borges had left for me that morning. One again, nothing was written on the tablet but something appeared in my mind. I could see it clearly. Even if I covered it with the next page it remained clearly written there; for no one to read (as follows);

Note from Luis:      Waldo (I hate to get formal with you but that appears to be the only way you will take my advice – – – literally). You need to write more firmly. Your prose is soft, not unlike the breasts of an old woman (interesting but unarousing). Make the reader believe what you are saying.  I was quite pleased with myself when I used the following text;

“Little by little I am yielding him everything, although I am well aware of his perverse habit of falsifying and exaggerating. Spinosa held that all things long to preserve their own nature; the rock wants to be rock forever and the tiger, a tiger. But I must live on in Borges, not in myself — if indeed I am anyone—though I recognize myself less in his books than in many others, or than in the laborious strumming of a guitar.”

JLB” 

There it was, not written in my notebook, yet there for all (or possibly only I) to see. That day, at my employment, time moved very slowly. I could not wait to get back to my writing tablet and my re-occurring dream.

Skipping supper and taking the phone off the hook allowed me the piece and quiet that was required for such a heavy assignment. I hoped that I had at least one more meeting with Borges; yet, I felt that I had already been offered all the help I could possibly ask for. I wrote feverishly, long into the night, purposefully exhausting myself with two hopes; first, to re-enter the dream once more, and second, to receive Borges’ approval for the work I was doing. I yearned for that opportunity to find my voice and have a long conversation with the master.

Satisfied that I had reached my goal, I closed my writing tablet and went to bed. The following is my major work; what I had created regarding the two forms of my ‘self’;           “Waldo and I.”

“Borges and I

It’s the other one, it’s Borges, that things happen to. I stroll about Buenos Aires and stop, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance or an iron gate. News of Borges reaches me through the mail and I see his name on an academic ballot or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee, and Stevenson’s prose.[Well dear reader you get the gist of the story about myself and I and its mirror image], but those games are Borges’ now, and I will have to conceive something else. Thus my life is running away, and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to the other one. I do not know which of us two is writing this page.

JLB”

I had finally accomplished my life long goal. I had written a “word for word” sequel to “Borges and I.”

There was only one person in my dream that night; Pierre Mennard second original author of “Don Quixote.”

 

© Copyright – Waldo Tomosky

AN IGNORANT GOD

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in Short Stories

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Al Andalus, aristotle, Averroes, Borges, Catholic Militia, Chango, Christian, Islamic, Luisa Aldea, Mahgreb, Mesta, Old San Juan, Santiago Apostal, Short Stories, Slave Traders, Vijigantes

Another essay moved from an older blog

Of course he is ignorant; ignorant of our inventions.

Time and space are the demarcations of our cultural borders and individual frontiers. From the archaeological to the historical records we have documented borders, frontiers and other dimensions of our mind (as if it were really possible to document the metaphysical).

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina 1899 – 1986) refuted the concept of time, both past and future. He is not alone in these refutations. In his “Doctrine of Cycles” he reminds us that “the Pythagorians and Stoics argued that God’s knowledge is unable to comprehend infinite things and the eternal rotation of the worldly process serves to familiarize God with it.”

Singular events that occur in the past are joined together by our imaginations (logical and illogical); and the documentation is ubiquitous. These imaginings occur in a matter of split seconds, yet can result in conjunctions of events spread over millennia.

I apologize for using time as my first basis to abnegate time.

There are two documents which stand alone and are separated by almost three millennia. They are not joined by time; yet we have joined them together in our minds. The first document is Plato’s “Republic.” The second one is “Democracy in America” by Tocqueville. We can, without much difficulty and with sufficient perseverance, join them together by placing them in the category of political philosophy. They are stitched together with the writings of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This series of writings (The Apology, The Crito, Politics, The Prince, Leviathan, Constitutional Government, Democracy and Participation) make up an intricate needlework.

Each author was a separate man, with separate thoughts modified by separate times. Only the human ability to think has linked them together  .    .   .  and then  .   .   .  linked them together with this thing we call time. As you can clearly see, time is not real, it is an imaginary thing that we have used to tie our thoughts into neat little packages. Space is likewise a tool that we use to identify where one object stands in relationship to another (or the cultural distance between nations and people). Space becomes even more nebulous when we consider the cosmogonies; experts say that our universe is expanding while subsets of it are collapsing.

Our language, “a system of grunts and squeals” (professes Chesterton), serves to assist us in linking unthinkable thoughts together. I have failed to mention one other writer who has played a major part in the crocheting (with the thread of the writings mentioned above) political philosophy. That man is Averroes, the physician and thinker of Cordoba, Islamic Spain (Andalusia), eleventh century A.D..

Averroes, through his mental dexterity and perseverance, translated Aristotle. This we know. What we do not know is the name of the adventurous fellow who spirited Averroes’ translations across the Pyrenees. We also know that these translations gave the Renaissance a head start on its way to pre-science.

Andalusia (al Andalus) brings me back to my original thought of a God who is ignorant of borders, frontiers, and their supersets; time and space. When considering al Andalus, or Southern Iberia if you prefer that nomenclature, I am forced to observe the originations of borders that have been long forgotten. I offer the following list of events that depict cultural borders.

  • The purported vanishing of borders between Neanderthal and invading Homo Sapien through hybridization (Duarte, et al)
  • The expansion of the Iberian Megalithic Culture northward to Stonehenge and Scandinavia
  • The invasion of the Celts
  • The control of the coastlands by the Phoenicians
  • Cultural borders between the Lusitani, the Celitici, the Turditani and the Turdoli
  • The invasion of the Romans (stymied for eight years by an Iberian herdsman named Variatus)
  • The Visigothic crush of the Romans and establishment of Kingdoms
  • Islamic Arabic and Berber force’s invasion of Iberia via the Straights of Gibraltar
  • The establishment of an independent Islamic Emirate
  • Averroes’ translations during the muddling of borders by the always changing Islamic Party Kingdoms (Tiafas)
  • Christian Militias pushing back on Islamic borders until they no longer existed.

The confusion created by this blending, re-blending and folding back of borders and cultures may be shown with a more up-to-date example. Aristotelian logic was translated from Greek to Arabic and absorbed by the Renaissance; then translated to French and modified by European thought. This new Marxist Aristotle was finally translated back to Arabic and forced on the colonized Maghreb. Things that once appeared in a unique fragment of time were now blended to the point where only God knows what actually occurred.

This now offers me my intended opportunity to relate how God is ignorant of time and space; likewise the frontiers and borders that man invents. It also brings me to the point where I admit that time and borders blend into God; a truly spiritual yet unexpected outcome. This circular theme centers in the small village of Loiza Aldea, Puerto Rico. Prior to defining Loiza Aldea I am required to reference Iberia and Africa in pre-Loiza Aldea periods.

In Spain the defeat of the Islamic Moors was celebrated as the result of one main event; the miraculous appearance of St. James the Apostle (Santiago Apostel) to the embattled Catholic Militias. This appearance gave the militias the will to fight. Subsequently these militias became controllers of the Catholic sheep raising cartel (the Mesta). Spanish farmers were severely misused by the cartel. The Mesta was allowed to herd and drove its sheep wherever it wished. Farm crops were overrun and destroyed by the sheep. Compensation was not required to be paid for the damage. The famished and desperate people migrated from Spain by the thousands; many of them establishing their new homes in Puerto Rico.

In Africa, at the same time, Nigerian Yoruba Tribes were decimated by Islamic slave traders. Some of these slaves were brought to Puerto Rico to work the farms. Eventually the class gap between rich and poor grew wider. Many poor Spanish families squatted on the edges of the swampy lagoons of Carolinas east of Old San Juan. This squat village soon became known as El Fangito (the swamp). Over the years some of these families were joined by Yoruban families. The people of El Fangito were eventually forced to move (by their own government who destroyed their homes). Escaped slaves and freemen had previously migrated to Loiza Aldea where a Native Indian (Taino) compound existed.

The native Tiano had, as their queen, “Yuiza.” The Yorubans had, as their warrior god, “Chango.” The Spanish had, as their patron, “Santiago Apostel.”

Each July in Loiza Aldea a ten day festival is held to commemorate the victory of Santiago Apostel. But the borders and frontiers are in voluntary disarray. The Islamic Iberian Moors and slave traders have taken on the persona of “Vijigantes”; played by locals who are dressed in colorful and blousy costumes and frightful masks made of coconut shells. Multiple images of Santiago Apostle, Queen Yuiza and warrior Chango share the streets with each other. St. Peter, patron of the local church, also holds a prominent place. The flag of Loiza Aldea is flown with its multi-cultural simulacrums of the yellow Yoiza River, images of the bells of the local church, and shared colors of all inhabitants.

God remains ignorant of borders or cultural frontiers in Loiza Aldea. He remains unaffected by the time or space that their ancestors occupied. Yet their God (a trinity of Spanish, African and Caribbean cultures) is now One.

 

© Copyright – Waldo Tomosky

AS I WANDERED #52 McFee

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in AS I WANDERED

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Tags

9/11, Barclay, Borges, Bradford, Brown's Landing, Buffalo, Gouldie, Hudson, Immigrant, Indentured Servtitude, Ireland, Irish, Jay Gould, Scranton

I know, I know. You are right. I should have addressed this long ago.

I identified parts of Bogdan Yelcovich’s life in the Immigrant.

I also told you a bit about me in the Scranton railroad yard.

And I discussed people such as Borges, Hudson, Gould, and cities such as Bradford and Buffalo; and even places such as Brown’s Landing.

Not to mention Henryville where we visited his Uncle Eppy and Aunt Polly.

So now we must talk about Jim McFee; the third member of the “Three Railroad Men.”

Come, come now. You know who they are.

Bogdan Yelcovich, Jim McFee and myself; Wally.

Now Jim McFee does not have as much written history as some of the above subjects, but he does have a background.

First we need to straighten out some misconceptions. The name McFee likes to be claimed by the Scots. However, forty percent of the McFees are Irish – – – and that is what we should discuss today.

Another misconception was that all the Irish immigrated here during the great famine of 1845 to 1852. Not so.

Well – – – not necessarily so. Although a lot of them did migrate to Canada before the famine. Canada could not handle the large influx so they departed and headed for the United States.

Nova Scotia in particular had a great influx of people from the southern Irish counties of Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Cork and Kerry. They arrived in Halifax and Pictou. Some lesser numbers landed at the Gulf of Canso, Sydney, Yarmouth and other ports.

McFee Ship

How do I reach the conclusion that there were great migrations before the famine?

Every governmental study of Ireland that was done in the early 1800’s said that Ireland was on the verge of collapse.

Unemployment was high, productivity was low, and the potato crop was the singular thing keeping famine from the doorstep.

The Irish were not ignorant of these facts – – – and a lot of them immigrated before the great famine; leaving their beautiful land behind.

~

Just check out the origins of the people in the cemetery at Barclay.

Some of those even returned to the province of Nova Scotia in Canada.

They populated the working force that worked on our canals and slaved as household servants.

McFee Poster

Take a look at any census report from the early 1800’s and see who was doing the heavy lifting and drudgery. Look to see who the indentured servants were. Then look at the column that states their country of origin.
 
They left an impact on all aspects of our past:

~

~

~

And, I am sure, they will continue to sacrifice in whatever the future deals to this great country.

~

As I Wander Introduction 2

©W. Tomosky♠

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