Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in ennnf's LiveJournal:

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
7:33 pm	http://www.narconews.com/Issue46/article2745.html Revenge of the Guelaguetza It has always been a Popular Celebration Based on Sharing and Community Cooperation By Hermann Bellinghausen La Jornada July 24, 2007 The Guelaguetza is a relatively new invention, but perhaps that doesn’t matter. It has a birth date (1932), a governor in lead (Francisco López Cortés, ), a Mexican President who patronized it (Abelardo Rodríguez, intern president, in 1933), a weak point (it originated from a racist idea: to render “racial homage” to the Oaxacans from below), and the humanitarian conjecture arising from the earthquake that in 1931 damaged seriously Oaxaca that the Federal government should lend a hand. The urban Guelaguetza, born from an earthquake, arrived in its 76th year shaken by yet another. The important thing today is that it serves to underscore, once more, what a shameful country this is, which permits the continuance of an illegitimate government, criminal and violent as that of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The “dispute” through the divine Guelaguetza returns to the symbolic in a land painfully real and concrete. Originated in the festive traditions of the central valleys of the state, mainly populated by Zapotecs, and expropriated by Spanish missionaries in order to superimpose the Virgin of Carmen, has always been a popular fiesta based on gifts and on communal cooperation. It is not a coincidence that this arose from a civilization that practices communal labor. The legend of a tragic love between the Zapotec princess Donají (dauther of the Lord of Zaachila, but since Christianized) and the enemy warrior Nucano, served the missionaries in sealing the fate of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples. Since then, the dances and the fiesta are syncretic (just like almost all indigenous culture that survives). The fact is that the Guelaguetza has turned out to be the major banquet of the political and business power in Oaxaca, hiding behind the typical hypocrisy of creole racism: using the Indian to spotlight the master. This local bourgeoisie co-serves in the 21st century traits of the 18th, in the worst sense. And now, to enter the festival, one passes through Ticket Master and/or American Express. The post-revolutionary state worked to attract the ignorant Mixtecs, the Zopotecs of the Ithmus, the Huaves, and the Mazatecs of the hills. Integration. Identity. Control? Today one supposes this to be a celebration of the 16 peoples (not “ethnic groups”) of Oaxaca. But it is not so that they join together, but rather to “spotlight” them. Through the years the Guelaguetza has turned into a great tourist opportunity offering for hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, artisans stores, jewelry, and services. To the people go the tips. Let them dance, folklorize, suffer and keep their mouths shut. By evolving from a street party to a mass spectacle, they carried it to the hill of Fortín and they killed it a piece at a time. Now with José Murat the perversion was complete: the Indians left offerings at the feet of the “lord” (live turkeys, fruit, bread, flowers) and the daughters of the master race could now shine dancing among the Indians. Ulises Ruiz never imagined what would be the Guelaguetza of his own destiny: a repressive crisis (for the second consecutive year). At the rate things are going, it will be his political grave. We attended a new transformation of the Guelaguetza, which for the rest persists in many towns of the Oaxacan plateau. Ever since the APPO movement started it is seen as a tradition to recover, when it looked like deep substrata of the social movement of the state (not just the capitol) was lost. It is a struggle that did not begin yesterday, and which has now found its ways to say “Enough!” in the towns. With the return of the Popular Revolutionary Army to the media’s attention and the useful conspiracy theories to explain the discontent in Oaxaca as “provocation” or a “plot by radical groups,” the repression has lost all shame and all limits, and even the international scandal has been deemed to be “manageable”; we in the media don’t say that anymore. The Oaxacan capitalists are desperate. Their tourist booty (vampirizing the Indian) is cracking. “They want to take away the Guelaguetza from us,” they whine in the last little thread of their discourse about the “Oaxacan identity,” threatened by the hairy mob that surely comes from Pluto and who deserves “all the weight of the law,” no matter that those to whom this applies are the most illegal elements in Oaxaca: the Executive, Congress, police, judge. (Who is going to respond for the criminal “lesson learned” against Emeterio Merino Cruz?) (editor’s note: Merino Cruz is a carpenter who was beaten half to death by Ruiz Ortiz’s goons as he was walking from his house to a job.) Today there is a popular Guelaguetza and there is another that the administrators of the patron festival to which they dedicate all of their repressive fury, only to reclaim their place. It is possible that Ruiz Ortiz may be the last “lord” of the Guelaguetza spell, as he cannot rescind the lines of riot police and the militarization of the highways, as that would prevent him from going out to the dance: this “fiesta” that with the background of a real mass of festooned indigenous communities wearing feathers which it was expected would serve as a modeling runway for the rich little girls, dressed up all as Indians, before the governors who look more like taskmasters in their hacienda. Who would have said that the celebration/spectacle would turn into an icy cold popular recovery. With all of its load of symbolic and mythical elements, the “Mondays on the Hill” are not now what they were before. It turns out that the Guelaguetza bites, and it strips away the power that they thought was theirs.Revenge of the Guelaguetza It has always been a Popular Celebration Based on Sharing and Community Cooperation By Hermann Bellinghausen La Jornada July 24, 2007 The Guelaguetza is a relatively new invention, but perhaps that doesn’t matter. It has a birth date (1932), a governor in lead (Francisco López Cortés, ), a Mexican President who patronized it (Abelardo Rodríguez, intern president, in 1933), a weak point (it originated from a racist idea: to render “racial homage” to the Oaxacans from below), and the humanitarian conjecture arising from the earthquake that in 1931 damaged seriously Oaxaca that the Federal government should lend a hand. The urban Guelaguetza, born from an earthquake, arrived in its 76th year shaken by yet another. The important thing today is that it serves to underscore, once more, what a shameful country this is, which permits the continuance of an illegitimate government, criminal and violent as that of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The “dispute” through the divine Guelaguetza returns to the symbolic in a land painfully real and concrete. Originated in the festive traditions of the central valleys of the state, mainly populated by Zapotecs, and expropriated by Spanish missionaries in order to superimpose the Virgin of Carmen, has always been a popular fiesta based on gifts and on communal cooperation. It is not a coincidence that this arose from a civilization that practices communal labor. The legend of a tragic love between the Zapotec princess Donají (dauther of the Lord of Zaachila, but since Christianized) and the enemy warrior Nucano, served the missionaries in sealing the fate of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples. Since then, the dances and the fiesta are syncretic (just like almost all indigenous culture that survives). The fact is that the Guelaguetza has turned out to be the major banquet of the political and business power in Oaxaca, hiding behind the typical hypocrisy of creole racism: using the Indian to spotlight the master. This local bourgeoisie co-serves in the 21st century traits of the 18th, in the worst sense. And now, to enter the festival, one passes through Ticket Master and/or American Express. The post-revolutionary state worked to attract the ignorant Mixtecs, the Zopotecs of the Ithmus, the Huaves, and the Mazatecs of the hills. Integration. Identity. Control? Today one supposes this to be a celebration of the 16 peoples (not “ethnic groups”) of Oaxaca. But it is not so that they join together, but rather to “spotlight” them. Through the years the Guelaguetza has turned into a great tourist opportunity offering for hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, artisans stores, jewelry, and services. To the people go the tips. Let them dance, folklorize, suffer and keep their mouths shut. By evolving from a street party to a mass spectacle, they carried it to the hill of Fortín and they killed it a piece at a time. Now with José Murat the perversion was complete: the Indians left offerings at the feet of the “lord” (live turkeys, fruit, bread, flowers) and the daughters of the master race could now shine dancing among the Indians. Ulises Ruiz never imagined what would be the Guelaguetza of his own destiny: a repressive crisis (for the second consecutive year). At the rate things are going, it will be his political grave. We attended a new transformation of the Guelaguetza, which for the rest persists in many towns of the Oaxacan plateau. Ever since the APPO movement started it is seen as a tradition to recover, when it looked like deep substrata of the social movement of the state (not just the capitol) was lost. It is a struggle that did not begin yesterday, and which has now found its ways to say “Enough!” in the towns. With the return of the Popular Revolutionary Army to the media’s attention and the useful conspiracy theories to explain the discontent in Oaxaca as “provocation” or a “plot by radical groups,” the repression has lost all shame and all limits, and even the international scandal has been deemed to be “manageable”; we in the media don’t say that anymore. The Oaxacan capitalists are desperate. Their tourist booty (vampirizing the Indian) is cracking. “They want to take away the Guelaguetza from us,” they whine in the last little thread of their discourse about the “Oaxacan identity,” threatened by the hairy mob that surely comes from Pluto and who deserves “all the weight of the law,” no matter that those to whom this applies are the most illegal elements in Oaxaca: the Executive, Congress, police, judge. (Who is going to respond for the criminal “lesson learned” against Emeterio Merino Cruz?) (editor’s note: Merino Cruz is a carpenter who was beaten half to death by Ruiz Ortiz’s goons as he was walking from his house to a job.) Today there is a popular Guelaguetza and there is another that the administrators of the patron festival to which they dedicate all of their repressive fury, only to reclaim their place. It is possible that Ruiz Ortiz may be the last “lord” of the Guelaguetza spell, as he cannot rescind the lines of riot police and the militarization of the highways, as that would prevent him from going out to the dance: this “fiesta” that with the background of a real mass of festooned indigenous communities wearing feathers which it was expected would serve as a modeling runway for the rich little girls, dressed up all as Indians, before the governors who look more like taskmasters in their hacienda. Who would have said that the celebration/spectacle would turn into an icy cold popular recovery. With all of its load of symbolic and mythical elements, the “Mondays on the Hill” are not now what they were before. It turns out that the Guelaguetza bites, and it strips away the power that they thought was theirs. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 26th, 2007
12:21 am	contact high. four young men, probably not very interesting to talk to. shirts flapping in the wind on a carretera peligrosa with their choppers chopping our eardrums away speeding this way and that around cars and in and out of lanes. and we were right in with them side by side and i saw their faces. and i reflected the elation of their trip. no leather to soften the blows, no helmet to save them from the catatonic state that they were almost surely to have faced with every moment they rode on. and one took his hands off those majestic handlebars and he held them together at his front and the care with which he pressed them together made me think he was actually carrying a physical specimen of deep secrets, a magic powder, something that transforms deaths' lust for you. so close to death kissing it at every moment. my face so transparently ecstatic sharing the fresh air elating their bodies and the risk running their blood a million times over. and it all comes to a skidding stop for me. and i look once again at the clock, waiting for death's womb to embrace me anew. at one moment i am so excited by life and its possibilities and the next i'm slouching in a corner, claustrophobic, apprehensive indecisive. i dont want anyone to give me a sense of direction i know i already have that... i put myself there but being incongruous to the scene they had set has weighed down on me. i was hopeful and now jaded again. i think about all the physical and intellectual ways of manifesting health again, but emotionally i am lost, descargada... inharmonious to all of the ebbs and flows around me. bored. Current Music: bartering lines (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006
8:02 pm	seeking connection i see i haven't written. i see my words are no longer allowed to move with music. they're no longer free to be something more than flat. and i see through these glasses that my focus is disfunctional. in the distance are the stars and the sparkles. in the distance the color glows like coals in the furnace. in the distance i recognize the saints in their armor. but in front of my face is dirt and slums and a thousand frat boys' vomit. the spiderweb-thin lines defining the gods and the devils in everything and anything trapped me in, and as i fit around i feel them cling to my. my. my. dirty smelly greasy hair. all i want is to pull it outta my face, apply the headphones, and listen to that song. and all the speakers can do is tell me itune's connecting, connecting, connecting. i wait and wait and click and click. it's connecting already godamnit! back away. my angst's no weaponry. i'll have to fight with my bare hands. i'll have to tear and beat and kick and punch my way out of this one. turn these eyes upside down and make them glare. mold that face fixed to boredom. burn it red with poison ivy. ...if only i were fighting something tangible. Current Music: goddamn voices of cheery folk (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 24th, 2006
12:06 am	"dung da do la...why cant i walk down street? free of suggestion" mmhhhmmm the bass is good good pumping your shoulders rolling your hips and your eyes bat flirtingly at the men women children puppies on the street. and you turn a corner and all of a sudden the business suits have melted into jeans and t shirts and theres one with a wheelchair and a blind man with a stick walking gazily his eyes bob towards the sky, can he see the light? is that god? but the girls whose style you would emulate and the boys whose favor you would play like pool--the more beers in your system, the straighter the shot--they become shadows of desire and you realize they are all zombies, buying machines, tools of the system, and their faces come to represent poisonous berries. they're disguised well as people, as people i'd want to know, but really you would not walk among this herd, you would not be in pace with their mindless chatter. no one i know and like would be among these people. it's all a facade. so i cracked myself out on an empty stomach and large cup of yummy strong coffee and tickled the stares of long-haired, blue-eyed, ripped-jean wearing, cow/city boy working in a bookstore. me dancing salsa in the streets with a balding latino man whose moves terrify me and send my mind spinning, all in a pretty snapshot. learning the life of an artist, me in pink pants and a turquoise dress and a blue hood averting peripheral visionaries. and i'm happy to think about communes and children, planting things and building things, in a place seemingly removed, but scared i'd miss the hipocrisy, the quick images, flashing lights, and rotten insides of nyc. i think it would be something to grow a perfect tomato in a window box downtown among mer-dah the pot dealer and the cross dressers from that singy-dancey club across the street. because there are beautiful things to make out of the ugly, and it'd be sweet to savor once we'd crushed it up, nyc i mean, one by one, from gallery to gallery, coffee shop to coffee shop, street person to street person, neighborhood to neighborhood. Current Music: fugazi (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
1:50 pm	intimidation I am equating the red hot breath coming out from my eyelids (stinging tears) to my intimidation. Because I can't reply either. Because our time, as you say, has been a ball of clay, and i think we damn right used it to the fullest degree, because days and nights, limited in their wordly time, have the capacity for stellar accomplishments. We produced something like the sky beyond the stars, like sparkles in a young girls eyes, or dimples in just-laid teenage boy. I don't know if you saw my vampire pictures, but imagine the dark one that scared you, that you found unpleasant (in the least) to look at. These pictures I love, because they look dark but it's in their non-truth that i find truth. Because you and I sucked the sangre from one another, and in so doing melded together a mystic creature out of the other. You know the taste of my lifeline. You know the sweet aroma of a tropicale cigarette on the roof overlooking a oaxacan demolish-ion, and you know the red light overlookers, city protectors raised above the slippery streets, and you know the mountains as they melt into space, and you know the color of a particular turquoise wall as the sun lowers itself gently behind us. we both know how the cold tiles feel beneath our gently folded legs in between our beds, and the deliberate opening of sterile needles, and the warm sensation of ink as it penetrates our guara skin. we know that feeling, the one of the car slow-motion-like approaching and descending the tall of a hill, in the masked walls of a divine bar, lowly lit benito juarez, seated among parejas mexicanas in a beauty-show flooded taquito. it's the high that we share that draws my heart to peek through the cracks in a $350+ wall. Current Music: karmacoma (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
10:33 pm	he said he said he said my mind is squooshed under pressure wont explode the jaw, and the skull, fence it in "i wanna go back to sleep...everything will fall right into place" fall into separate spheres the heart will spurt blood and you will be hiding tucked behind my ear like the strand of hair a different shade from the others and you wont know you dont know /care Current Mood: fucked up/down Current Music: the moon & antarctica modest mouse (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006
9:03 pm	the sunglass trinity. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
2:53 pm	give aka the longing #3 i named the cd give. it is eery. like the blank noise when you look through me. but haunted by ghosts of yesterday. and by the constant drone behind the daily sites and sounds. your image is always there. it is charged but monotonous and apathetic, like the rhythm of a stroll, a reminder of the waiting room that the act of living becomes. i am not sad. i am not depressed. i am just circling through my memories and seeing them live out in my every movement. it wasn't made for him, it is all for no one. but really this means that i miss spritz. i miss walking on the stone streets past mexican men who recognize us from the nights before. i miss the tickling accent in his voice when he fights with me. and the look on his face when he hates me. i miss the deep rifts in his forehead when he sees me bleed. i miss train rides between the mountains and the city. i miss the morning light reflecting through the smoke of a cigarette when we watched the sun rise from the roof. i miss the unconscious snuggling in small beds. i miss the androgeny of drug-induced days. i miss the other one when he named me goddess. i miss his sweatshirt hanging off my shoulders on dark nights when saying goodbye was like the how-do-you-dos and the as-you-wishes. i miss the looks that passed between us. the cd contains a letter. i thought it would be for no one. i believe its all for no one. but i dont have substantiating evidence: dear you,often times i picture your face, and imagine my lips softly pressed against your cheeks. i wonder where the wind has taken you but also how come you don't feel so far away. on these icy cool nights i look at the stars and ask them to tell me their stories, how they came to their place so high, so lifted. and in my mind i ask you these questions too. how did you get so far away and distant. i sometimes think my blood is freezing in my veins, just standing there waiting, like i am perpetually awaiting the day when you stand by my side and the warmth of the sun resumes its holy place on my skin. i know this death thing is not true. it's just that sometimes i forget. i forget that you are here and i forget to forget what's holding me back. it's like your impression on the back of my eyes is as constant as the beat of my heart. you're always there. i couldn't get away if i tried. but i doubt i could get you to stay if i picked up the phone and felt your breath echo in my ear. must i dream and always see your face? lifted above the horizon like the stars in the sky. it's a sonnet. like morning, mourning for morning, dying for dawn. like the oxygen is thick but won't reach my lungs. it's because i feel you deep inside behind the consciousness of my activity and i yearn for you. i yearn for you to come back to my and me ours and we. i can make lust sound so justifiable, and eternal, like sunshine in the equation of plant growth. it's ok because these words make my everday feel epic when it is not. it's building up the motions, not the e-motions. there are girlfriends who stand beside their boys without words without expression. and in the deep dark secrecy of the night they coddle them with baby voices and soothing words. and they avoid issues. they refrain from the fights, rational reigning exhaustive painstakingly truthful cries that send him yearning for some love that neither the world nor the human condition supply him with. and there are girls like candy, sweet to savor once the crunch has split her in two, and he just pushes these pieces from his teeth with his tongue, to the place where his body can burn her and take care of the ashes. sweet to savor once the crunch has split her in two. Current Music: black and white eyes by syd matters (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
7:53 pm	silly sexy seattle i dont know what home is, i mean they say its where the heart is, but im thinking that my home should be washington. see this video: http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2654194?htv=12 Current Music: in bloom, nirvana (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 15th, 2006
1:42 pm	the longing #2 ummm so i must confess some sins. i buy into things i publicly oppose. that encompasses a whole lot of things. we all know. but there is one part of my life that is entirely wrong and entirely right at the same time. because it is based on lies lies and just before the 3rd strike out, there is a home run that brings in all the truth. and for me it is everything everytime. its what i live for. because with my fingers i can map out the points on his body and see the truth. and then when he holds it out to me in cupped hands, i can close my eyes and attach those pieces to those points. its a game, its what is fun for me about life and living and loving and knowing. and it breaks my heart when those nightmares are realities, because then i realize that fear that nights carry on me is fear of getting what i need and want. and i have made a decision, and this took a whole load of time to understand. but there is a song that has meant a whole lot to me since my world was torn down majorly more than a year ago. it says "if we sleep together will you be my friend for ever?" i thought this was so wrong so impossible. and i see that its by sharing a whole lot (of the love and hate) that i have made a friend for a lifetime. a friend whose path is so different from mine when you confine the meaning to words, but on exactly the same plane, same line, same points, as mine when you're talking about the longing and the living. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 11th, 2005
10:47 pm	human folly it's that time when the spirit runs dry. and when your face would sparkle people knew that it was magic, but it simply can't shine anymore. so they look and spit. and you crawl deeper and deeper into your vacancy on the doorstep of 210 59th street, with blankets and garbage. and you slurp on cigarettes because the smoke unravelling from your pursed lips lets you know the blood is flowing through your veins. i've had this feeling before: March 15 i had to save these quotes because i'll be reading and get sick to my stomach and cry and then something hilarious like the first one comes out and its just so sarcastic i laugh out loud. the second one is just kind of sick i didnt laugh but i grunted a little bit JOHN PRIOR from WAR AFTER THE WAR by George Packer of THE NEW YORKER: The Iraquis are an interesting people. None of them have weapons, none of them know where weapons are, all the bad people have left Fallujah, and they only want life to be normal again. Unfortunately, our compound was hit by rocket-propelled-grenade fire today, so I am not inclined to believe them. FOR THE IBRAHIMS, LIFE IS A LEDGER by David Finkel of THE WASHINGTON POST At 8:08 the electricity comes back on. At 8:09 it goes back off. At 8:10, the generator comes on, and Ayad manages to get one channel to come in clearly, an Iranian station that is showing montages of dead babies interspersed with images of President Bush grinning and seemingly licking his lips. March 21 have you noticed that when you are at your worst and you've been lying in bed all day but you get up and tears pour down your cheeks so you lay down again and then someone awful but beautiful comes and gets you dressed and you get up to face the world without inspiration but just because, at those times you are most beautiful? you dont feel beautiful, you feel wretched and your stomach is in a knot and all you want to do is walk in the grass of a big brick hospital in a stark white nightrobe with a wristband that identifies you as a sick person plus no less than two personnel following closely behind you, but people look at you and compliment you and hit on you and share their whiskey with you and shy away from your sparkly glance. it's sick, everything is, but thats cuz we are sick in mind. In the heat of the summer When the cockroaches seem to be your best friends around, and it's dark and late and your stomach is sick from the chile, and you decide the noise of your feet on the ground is to painful to hear to the backdrop of young throats breathing heavily in dreams. it's time to smoke, to sit on the sharp-edged wall where scary dogs snare their teeth at you in the field on one side, and jesus-lovers pierce your skin with fire-hot stakes on the other. you look for something more but there is fear and darkness and barking and drunkards with guns stumbling all around you, so you return to your friends. you slip off one flip flop and balance oh so carefully on the one foot, chasing the lurking cockroaches in the cracks on the walls, in the window curtains, and beneath the door. slam bam wham score... 4 or 5 times over. good night lovers. Current Music: Anger Management by Lovage (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
3:26 pm	the longing #1 i wonder if i am addicted to the feeling of longing. despite great joy and happiness, despite me sitting in a beautiful room full of beautiful people sharing beautiful things i can sit back in my solitude and allow my emotions to turn me upside down and inside out like there is no end to the mutation of the one painful dream that occupies my mind full fledged. stevie's day of a gun does it, pulses me in the spots where i hurt most and floats up into the imaginative of my mind, the part that sets physical reality far from the longing of my soul and body and energy. oh so much is produced out of this lethargic spinning, it's like i am tired of everything and anything beautiful and ugly and i just want to sit here in this light with this music, but nevertheless that longing occupies my limbs and i produce words and sounds and patterns and paint, and objects and subjects and everything in the world channels into the longing which uses my limp body to convey it. and it is when this spinning comes to close, as though razors marked its edge that i close my eyes and allow it to occupy my dreams where no one but myself can feel its power, oh no i am a monarch of my own kingdom all consisting of different parts of me, my mind is my courtyard and my body the landscape around it for which the courtyard sense and feels the real human life. but then there is the longing that sits upon its thrown ordering me around. i must sleep for how could i share this? i must count my gold in my own secure room and dream about the things i will do with it when more self control allows my eyes to open and a new day of constraint bleeds out the longing softly and slowly. i miss you, nora Current Music: Stevie's Day of a Gun by Martina Topley-Bird (2 Comments |Comment on this)