An Elephant of One's Own

Well, that was interesting. It's not often I get to talk to people (as in "talk to", as opposed to "talk at" [my students] or "talk past" [colleagues, etc]), so of course I jumped at the chance, once it turned out that, miraculously, one of my meandering comments on YT had actually been replied to by a real human. My interlocutor was a feminist, and the topic was (once again) "toxic masculinity", but you can't have everything. It could be worse: I could have been talking to a Canadian about hockey, or someone from Missouri about the boil on his bum. The conversation chuntered along nicely, with clarifications on both sides, until this appeared onscreen (quoting from memory, I hope accurately): ""Men view themselves a certain way and this needs to be undone." You know that sinking feeling when you've been chatting to an apparently perfectly ordinary person in the pub and suddenly they casually make some outrageou...

Sí, la película vale la pena. Historia absurda, mucha niebla simbólica, pero se quedará imborrable en tu memoria y es lo que cuenta. No tengo tiempo para escribir. No sé cuándo lo tendré. Tal vez nunca. Y por eso escribo ahora, porque para mí haber escrito algo es haber vivido algo, y últimamente me harto de tantos ensayos virtuales, que no sobrepasan de fugaces excitaciones neuronales y no dejan huella ni en papel ni en pantalla ni en el recuerdo - cuando quiero poder recordar, de aquí seis meses, que hasta en estos días difíciles, algo fui capaz de pensar. Lo que difícilmente habrá es ton, y peor todavía, son. No me pidan tanto. Son cinco minutos máxime que puedo dedicar a esto. Tema 1: El Telégrafo . Hace tiempo decidí dejar de leerlo: lo mío con ese pasquín gobiernista siempre fue malsano. Pero echo un tímido vistazo, y ahí está, de nuevo, la Sylva Charvet , como para sacarle de quicio a uno. Habría esperado que la retaguardia correísta se quedaría estos días en silencio, por e...

"But seeing no man does willingly suffer himself to be punished by the deprivation of any part of his goods, and much less of his liberty or life, therefore, is the magistrate armed with the force and strength of all his subjects, in order to the punishment of those that violate any other man’s rights." (Locke, First Letter Concerning Toleration ) Rights. According to me, the result of negotiations between a big fella and a little fella, inscribed on vellum or nearest locally available equivalent. Uncle Wiki may say different, but I think that's how most people understand the word. If you (little fella) have a right to X, it means big fella can't stop you doing or having X, or rather he can , but if he does he's tearing up the contract and he better watch out, because if he tears up the contract then you'll... um. This is where we run into difficulties. If your "rights" are trampled on, you'll do what? The Frowning Fathers had their own answ...

It's raining, at the moment, but (vide supra) probably not for long. We may get another week and then that's yer lot until next winter. So I'm trying to do what I can with this rain, but find my thoughts turning increasingly to England, and the wise thrush, and all of that. England. I left the place in '85, and haven't been back except for flying visits (holidays when my mother was alive). I watch enough YT and read enough Guardian to know that the place has become unrecognisable since, and that I would be a foreigner, of the comical stuck in a timewarp sort, like Rees Mogg only loucher and more disgusting. I wouldn't fit in any better there than I do anywhere else. I'm a statistical anomaly on any scale you can invent. Even my vowels are behind the times. But none of this stops me fantasising about, what was it, old ladies cycling to church through a morning johnmajor, or in my version, lining up at the National Gallery or plonking down in a Turkish tea...

El otro día, un vecino cristiano me hizo obsequio de un libro (librito, aclaremos) de su autoría. Le contesté mediante carta. Contenido sigue. (Por si acaso el hipotético lector se ha topado con argumentos similares) ***** Estimado Camilo: Quisiera de nuevo agradecerle el regalo del libro de su autoría, el cual he leído con interés. Puedo equivocarme, pero tengo la sensación de que parte de su intención fue entablar un diálogo con sus lectores sobre los temas que abarca. Con este mismo espíritu de diálogo y amistad me permito ofrecerle a continuación mi propio punto de vista sobre las cuestiones que trata. Lo que presento no es más que el punto de vista personal, forjado a través de muchos años de reflexión, de una persona que pese a haber dedicado tiempo y esfuerzo a indagar en estas cuestiones, no se considera para nada poseedor de la verdad última y final, y por lo tanto siempre está dispuesto a dialogar y a escuchar ideas nuevas, y a aceptar críticas fundadas en todo momen...