La Búsqueda de Ella.

De algún modo, esta búsqueda describe todas las búsquedas. Logra intercambiarlas, por lo que el resultado es el mismo: una única búsqueda.

Lo que la define es la falta de éxito. En esa búsqueda, nunca se llega al objeto procurado, pero también es imposible sustraerse de ella, claudicando... El resultado es evidente: ellos se encuentran atados a una vorágine constante (a veces más estrepitosa que otras), de la que saldrán sólo cuando el futuro se les acaba.

Este es mi humilde homenaje a esos hombres que viven buscando a ella, la mujer que no reaparece:

Hacia allí, después de seis días y seis noches, el hombre llega a Zobeida, ciudad blanca, bien expuesta a la luna, con calles que giran sobre sí mismas como un ovillo. Esto se cuenta de su fundación: 

hombres de naciones diversas tuvieron un sueño igual, vieron una mujer que corría de noche por una ciudad desconocida, la vieron de espaldas, con el pelo largo, y estaba desnuda. Soñaron que la seguían. A fuerza de vueltas todos la perdieron. Después del sueño buscaron aquella ciudad; no la encontraron pero se encontraron ellos; decidieron construir una ciudad como en el sueño. En la disposición de las calles cada uno rehizo el recorrido de su persecución; en el punto donde había perdido las huellas de la fugitiva, cada uno ordenó de otra manera que en el sueño los espacios y los muros, de modo que no pudiera escapársele más. Esta fue la ciudad de Zobeida donde se establecieron esperando que una noche se repitiese aquella escena. 

Ninguno de ellos, ni en el sueño ni en la vigilia, vio nunca más a la mujer.

Las calles de la ciudad eran aquellas por las que iban al trabajo todos los días, sin ninguna relación ya con la persecución soñada. Que por lo demás estaba olvidada hacia tiempo. Nuevos hombres llegaron de otros países, que habían tenido un sueño como el de ellos, y en la ciudad de Zobeida reconocían algo de las calles del sueño, y cambiaban de lugar galerías y escaleras para que se parecieran más al camino de la mujer perseguida y para que en el punto donde había desaparecido no le quedara modo de escapar. Los que habían llegado primero no entendían qué era lo que atraía a esa gente a Zobeida, a esa fea ciudad, a esa trampa (*).

(*) De 'Las Ciudades y el Deseo' en Ciudades Invisibles de Ítalo Calvino. 

I want to be cool... V

Just one idea shows us her totaly 'fighting kind': there’s no such thing like begging rights: we have to conquer them. This was her way of life. She was Julieta Lantieri, born in 1873 in Cuneo – an Italian area in Piedmont. At her 6 years old her whole family immigrates to Argentina. In 1886, Julieta began to study at Colegio Provincial (before known as Colegio Nacional Rafael Hernández) in La Plata -- main city in Buenos Aires. Julieta was the first woman in such a school and later on the first one to study Medicine Science (but at the public university in Buenos Aires). By 1911, the Buenos Aires Town Hall called for legislative elections and Julieta realized since gender was not specified she was able to vote... This bold attitude turned her in the very first woman who votes not only in Argentina but in Latin America! This really special lady was the sixth woman working as a GP in Argentina, specialized in mental disorders in children and women. Rights of both groups were simply her never-ending fight. In this direction, she creates the First Association for College Women and integrates the Socialist Party with the well known Alicia Moreau de Justo. Lately, she also creates the first feminist party in Argentina and run for national congress woman. Her amazing bravery and her popular causes wasn’t nice for the conservative army people and when these made the coup d'etat against the constitutional government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, Julieta died in a car accident. This sad event was highly suspected in those days as politically motivated. She always said: My deeds are an affirmation of my conscience and I am just doing my duty.

I want to be cool. Just like this lady...

I want to be cool... IV

1. He is the father of modern Turkey. He was born by the name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 1881 and chooses the army as a career in 1915, during the First World War led the Turkish army at Gelibolu and Istanbul. By the end of the war he was a total hero and from that time on all of the Turkish people supported him. He led again the Turkish army in the War of Independence (1919-1922), and in 1923 became the first President of the New Republic of Turkey. During the last fifteen years of his life in Atatürk introducing many reforms and improving life of great modern Turkey. He died in November 1938, but today his people still think of him with the greatest respect. 
2. A hundred and sixty years ago, most nurses did not study nursing, but a British woman, called Florence Nightingale tried to change this lack of proper education. In the 1850s she worked in a hospital for wounded soldiers in the Crimea (now Ukraine) – then there was a war during from 1850 to 1853. People say she never slept but spent all her time helping the men. The soldiers called her ‘The Lady of the Lamp’ because of the lamp she always carried as she walked around at night through the wounded. When she returned to England, she began a school of nursing in London. This great lady died in 1910.

I want to be cool, just like these good people.

I want to be cool... III

   
1. Not many people know about Marie Curie’s activities during the Worl War One. The grateful woman went to battlefield with her daughter Irene (later well known as the author of her mother’s biography) to set up an X-ray able to be carried around and get precise diagnosis of wound soldiers (she got the money from wealthy French families, universities and automobile factories).  In 1914 went in the first ambulance, only equipped with X-ray equipment motorized by a horsepower. Full of enthusiasm Mary learned anatomy, took radiology samples and even drove their vehicle! They say the very first soldier who got into the ambulance had bullets in his head, arm and hips. After took care, Mary diagnosed another 29 French privates just in one night and more than a million during two years, the whole time that this French Army service lasted). Mary Curie – or better: Marya Sklodowska, was born in November the 7^th of 1867 in Warsaw and passed away in July the 4^th of 1934.
2. Rachel was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, in 1907. She was brought up in a small farm and seems there became really interested in nature (she usually write poems about her animals – how sweet from a little girl!). When she reached 18 years old, left her family home and went to study zoology at the Pennsylvania College for Women. She graduated in 1929 and then study at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. For many, many years she worked as a biologist. She had no doubt at all about people, animals and plants are all linked and her books were fundamental to many people to understand the importance of environment for every one of us. Nowadays, they call her ‘The Mother of the Environmental Movement’.

I want to be cool, just like these people.

The Lady from Shanghai

[Michael ‘The Irish’ is at the yacht wheel. On the radio sounds an advertisement that finishes with the word 'love'. Just then comes Mrs. Banister and say:]

...that lady knew something about wickedness.


Mrs. Banister: -Would you help me?

Michael: -Love...

Mrs. Banister: -Give me the wheel.

Michael: -Do you believe in love Mrs. Banister?

Mrs. Banister: -I was taught to think in love in Chinese...

Michael: -The way a Frenchman thinks about laughter in French?

Mrs. Banister: -The Chinese say: 'Is difficult to love to last longer. Therefore, one who loves passionately is cured of love, in the end...

Michael: -Of course, that's a hard way to thinking...

Mrs. Banister: -There's more to the proverb: human nature is eternal. Therefore, one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end'.

I always find this dialogue amazing. Just amazing.
Is from 'The Lady from Shanghai', an Orson Welles' movie released in 1948.

I want to be cool... II

I. Gabrielle’s mother died in 1889. With only six years old her father sent her away to rather nasty aunts - just like in Cinderella’s story. They gave some needles and threads and name her as ‘Coco’ which means ‘little pet’. Gabrielle thinks about death almost every day. But one summer her aunts sent Coco with her grandfather to Vichy in France. There she met a mysterious gentleman -- whose identity was never reveal and she always referred to him as ‘M.B’. That man showed her the great French world, fashion, glamour, everything... only if Gabrielle accept to be his unique companion. Gabrielle wasn’t in love but discovered in him a great chance to get out from her misery and NEVER came back to those annoying aunts. They lived in Pau near the Pyrenean and just there she met her truly love: Boy Capel. They run away together and about those times she began her successful career. During the WWII opened up her first clothing workshop and gave to her designs the comfort and simplicity that times were asking for...

II. Ignacio de Loyola, also known as the Compañía de Jesús creator, achieves his Holiness by the example from other people. He was the youngest of seven brothers and live in a very prosperous home. He had Juan de Velásquez as a tutor which was theman who left the boy to the Fernando de Aragón and Isabel de Castilla court. Lately, Ignacio joint the Army and was an outstanding martial professional. In 1521 during the French took over in Pamplona was badly wounded and had to return to the Castle. Meanwhile his recovering, he asked for some Chevaliery books to his sister but there wasn’t any… just books about Saints lives and the Holy Bible. So he began to read those and because of them decided to become a God’s man. He left the well-off life and end up as a priest: Saints turns a warrior into a man of Faith...

I still want to be cool, like these people too.