“Don’t look at me, they look at us looking at each other. / Let’s look at the way not to look at each other. / Let’s not look at each other, / and when they don’t look at us we will look at each other”. I would need my wise and kind Literature teacher in the third year of high school at the Benemérita Normal School of Coahuila, Mrs. Amelia Vitela widow of García, to be here to tell me what genre these beautiful verses belong to, if they are rhymes, couplets or madrigal. In any case, I will say that I found them in a text by Don Ricardo Palma.
Reading the tasty pages of that great author in my early youth, I learned to love Peru, whose colonial past has the same richness as Mexico’s. I keep fond memories of that sister country. I went to Lima to present one of mine at its Book Fair. When I entered the room where the presentation was to take place, there were two people in it: the representative of the Fair and the representative of my publishing house. That didn’t bother me too much: I once gave a talk for just one person, so I had twice the audience. Also with me was my wife, the best of my listeners -and the most accurate critic-, so with that large audience of three people I began my spiel.
And it happened that the people who passed in front of the open door of the hall would stop, listen to me curiously, and then go inside and take their seats. Within 10 minutes of starting to speak, I already had a full room. And believe me, the enclosure was not small at all. “I had never seen anything like it,” commented the organizer. I said, “Me neither.” That day I received as a gift from the Fair the “Peruvian Traditions” by Don Ricardo Palma, in five robust volumes that I treasure as part of the best in my library. Pen and mischief equal to those of my countryman Valle Arizpe had Don Ricardo. I also read in my youth, in an edition of the venerable Sopena Argentina, “La gloria de don Ramiro”, by the Argentine Enrique Larreta.
The glory of that hidalgo who lived in the time of Felipe Segundo consisted of having met Santa Rosa de Lima in Peru. I visited his convent, and brought with me a beautiful image of the beautiful saint. Now that country so dear to me is going through stormy times. The excessiveness in the exercise of power usually brings with it stormy winds, at least where there are truly autonomous Congresses, and not mayors at the service of the boss in turn.
I hope that order and peace, fruits of law and justice, return to Peru soon. Don Poseidón, a wealthy farmer, owned a bull stallion called “El Mariscal de Campo”. The sonorous name came to the animal very big, because it did not fulfill its generative mission. The cows fixed their Juno eyes on him, and he turned his gaze elsewhere. They presented her appetizing rumps to him and he didn’t even see them. Don Poseidón consulted the case with a veterinarian and he was given two bottles containing an amber liquid. “Make the bull drink one,” he instructed him. “If one doesn’t work, give him the other.” A single one was enough to awaken the dormant impulses of the animal.
One by one he mounted all the cows in the corral, which were not few, and they were all sated and satisfied. Love well fulfilled reconciles with beings and things. If Napoleon and Hitler had not suffered from erectile dysfunction, according to serious researchers, the history of the world would have been different. Days after the successful recovery of the bull, a neighbor of Don Poseidón asked him what was in the bottle that the bull had drunk. “I don’t know,” replied the old man, “but I drank the other one, and it tasted like cinnamon tea with eggnog and camphor.” FINISH.
LOOKOUT
By Armando SOURCES AGUIRRE.
Malbéne, the controversial theologian from Leuven, rarely gives interviews. He says: “The interviewer always talks more than me.”
A few days ago, however, he granted one for Lumen magazine. In it, the interviewer asked:
Do you think you are close to God?
“Yes,” he replied. But not because I have managed to get close to him, but because he always gets close to me. God is a loving father, like the one who receives the prodigal son in Rembrandt’s painting, and is always with open arms to welcome us to his heart when we need him.
Malbéne always arouses controversy with his statements. On this occasion he said with a smile at the end of that interview:
-I think that on this occasion I saw myself as more orthodox than orthodoxy.
See you tomorrow!.
MANGANITAS
By AFA.
“. World Cup.”.
A certain critic said
that for the soulless,
the aforementioned cup
it looks pretty empty.
#Politics #worse