Looking back in Translation

I wrote a poem called "Antonym" about 3 years ago which literally came to me upon wakening from a very vivid dream.  Needless to say, it reflects the story of a very important person in my romantic life.  More accurately, the MOST important person in my romantic life.  I wrote the poem in a little over half an hour with no pauses and it was good enough for me to have it copyrighted.  I posted it on this blog on Valentines Day of 2010, I believe.  In any event, these days being the time of year we look back on our lives, (I probably do it more than most since the past it more vivid than the present at this point of my life), I decided to translate the same poem into Spanish.  First of all, to see if I could translate it faithfully and, secondly, because I'd like to do a little translating on line and practice what I did professionally when I lived in Barcelona.  The result below:

ANTONIMO

Te odio

Te odio porque apareces en mis sueños

Y envuelves la noche

Te odio porque despiertas recuerdos ya olvidados

Y envuelven el dia

Te odio porque llevo el sabor de tu boca,

Tu piel, tu cuerpo
Y es solo un recuerdo

Te odio porque siempre te alejas de mi

En mis sueños, en mi vida

Te odio porque te comparo con todos los demás

Y valen mas que tu

Te odio porque nuestro pasado obscurece mi presente

Y me niega el futuro

Te odio porque no hay presente

No hay futuro

Te odio porque te voy buscando

Sabiendo que no te encontrare

Te odio porque una vez fuiste mio

Te odio porque ahora perteneces a otra

 Te odio porque solo fuiste un préstamo del destino

Te odio porque respirábamos el mismo aire

Te odio porque ahora no respiramos ese aire

Te odio porque nuestros cuerpos unidos

Alcanzaban alturas que mortales desconocían

Te odio porque conocía tu cuerpo mejor que el mio

Te odio porque me completabas

Te odio porque ahora me falta todo

Te odio porque comunicábamos sin palabras

Te odio porque ahora no hay comunicación alguna

 Te odio porque no te vere hacer viejo
Te odio porque solo recuerdo nuestra juventud

Te odio porque conseguiste lo mejor de mi vida

Te odio porque no consegui lo mejor de la tuya

Te odio porque no oiste la canción que te cantaba

Te odio porque no oi la tuya para mi

Te odio porque no consigo, aunque trato con todos mis esfuerzos

Odiarte

Interesting Anecdotes

A good friend passed these on to me and I thought this is fun trivia for a hot, humid summer evening. I need to write in my blog more and will do so now that I have a new PC and a lot of time on my hands and in my mind.


Very Interesting Anecdotes
 
 
If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of your mouth.
 
To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers.
 
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by 'Bayer'.
 
Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!
   
People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport.
   
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.
   
Astronauts can't belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
   
Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash.
   
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off!
   
Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.
   
The night of January 20 is "Saint Agnes's Eve", which is regarded as a time when a young woman dreams of her future husband.
   
Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.
   
It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!
   
Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.
   
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
   
If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst
mechanism shuts off.
   
Each year 2,000,000 smokers either quit smoking or die of tobacco-related diseases.
   
Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
   
Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
  
The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
  
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.
   
Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450°F.
   
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
   
Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
  
The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.
   
Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.
   
The University of Alaska spans four time zones.
  
The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
   
In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.
  
Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.
   
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
   
A comet's tail always points away from the sun.
   
The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.
   
Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers; that is why it is found in some medicines.
   
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
   
If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.
   
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
   
In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
   
Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
   
Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.
 
The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.
   
The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
   
Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.
    
Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.
  
Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.
     
Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.
   
For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.
  
The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements. 
   

Holy Week - 2011

Since I haven't written in some time and I'm leaving for Florida soon, I will just share a poem I wrote way back in high school that has everything to do with Holy Week.

The Vigil


A woman stands beside the cross
Her beautiful serene eyes are glistening with tears
Her rose-tinted skin is now almost transparently white with grief
Her glorious mass of shining chestnut hair
Has tumbled over her shoulders
Now shaking with her silent weeping.


She raises her head toward the figure hanging on the cross
And as she looks at Him, a dagger pierces her soul
The Man hanging on the Cross is her only son
She is filled with anguish, pain and sorrow
But, helpless to do anything for Him.

There is a woman beside her sharing her sorrow
A woman called Mary of Magdala.

A group of soldiers are gambling for His seamless robe
Which she made for Him, so long ago.


The sky has suddenly become dark.
Lightning and thunder break through the unearthly stillness
With an angry force
And the woman hears a voice she knows to be her son’s murmur….
“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”
And a soldier exclaims in terror and wonder…..
“Truly, this is the Son of God.”


A soft drizzle begins to fall
As two men take the Savior off the cross
And they lay Him in His mother’s arms.
There is still great sorrow and pain in her heart
But, she is also happy.
That He is rid of His suffering and agony.


His hands still bear
The marks where the nails had been cruelly driven into
Those divine hands
Which had caressed her cheek as a babe,
Had helped His father at work
Had healed the sick, the blind and the lame
And had changed bread and wine
Into His own Body and Blood.

The people had demanded the death
Of her Divine Son
This innocent Man
Lying in her arms now
Who had come down to earth
To save man from his sins
Their God and Creator
Who had brought the message of…
Love your neighbor as yourselves.

She thinks about this as she lays Him in the tomb
And she weeps again
But this time, for those who have denied Him
Hoping they will find Him again.


And as she walks down the path, away from the tomb,
We see a Queen, a Mother, a Saint, an Angel

And her name is MARY.

  
Happy Easter yet again all and I will write when I'm settled in Florida with my laptop and everything connected and running.  

Long time no write, BUT.......

Its been ages since I've written but that's because my life will be undergoing a major transformation as of March 1, 2011.  It will be the first day that I WON'T have to get up to go to work.  My last official day of work is February 28, 2011, which happens to be a Monday!  I'm finally retiring after 27 years at Polytechnic, and, 4 years or so before that at law firm Fisher & Fisher, Esq., and before, that  3 years with Savings Banks Trust Co. in Manhattan, and before that, about 5 years with Comercial Sert, S.A. in Barcelona, and before that - my first job was with Production Associates, Inc. in Manila! Phew! 

Now, I am planning to retire to Florida because one more winter in New York and I will literally turn into a block of ice.  Talk abut "The Winter of Our Discontent" !!!!
Why am I leaving arguably the greatest city on earth?  Well, sincerely, because, to me, it never was.  For too many reasons to count, but it never lived up to my naive hype about it, which was formed by the movies we saw in Manila featuring New York - Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barefoot in the Park, Sunday in New York and almost every picture of Doris Day with Rock Hudson and Tony Randall.  Hah! What a surprise I got when I finally got here.  Granted it was the middle 60's when Filipino nurses were butchered in Chicago, Civil Rights riots were occurring everywhere, the subways were graffiti laden ovens and dangerous, we had a major blackout and a subway strike within 6 months of my arriving here, not to mention one of the coldest winters in decades (the winter of '66), and I didn't know a soul here!  I never made peace with this city until 1984 (7 years after I returned from Spain (I left NYC in August of 1969)), when I finally found a nice little apartment on Second Place in Carroll Gardens and I must admit for about 3 or 4 years, I was finally having a good time here, and then I had to move because the landlord was selling the building. I moved a couple of blocks away to another apartment in Carroll Gardens which I really liked and the rent was reasonable ($500/month) and stayed there 16 years and then I had to move again because the landlord needed the apartment for his family, and that's when all hell broke loose.  After that,  I finally found an apartment, still in Carroll Gardens, though the rent was now almost triple the rent I was paying before, and though it was/is a sweet apartment, (lovely floors and painted all new and within seconds walking distance of grocer, cleaners, laundry and subway), something died in me and from then on, all I looked forward to was the day I finally reached the point that I COULD retire and leave all this behind.

I'm not naive to think that now my life will all be a bed of roses but I intend to be warmer in the winter and not deal with icy sidewalks, absentee landlords, and have to wake up before the sun is up to take showers in a freezing bathroom and wait on an icy subway platform for a train that is crowded and late or in a sweltering platform in the summer for a train that is crowded and late.

Friends advise or warn me (with all good intentions) that life is not all roses somewhere else (of course! no place is perfect and the alternative may be Perfect but I'd like to prolong that a bit) but if Florida can get humid, and has hurricanes, mosquitos and one may need a fan or airconditioner in the summer - well, if I lived in Manila for the first 20 years of my life - this is old hat to me!
I haven't found the definite place in Florida yet but a person near and dear to me is helping me tremendously with that by taking me there for the first two weeks of January of this year to have a look-see and now while I am finishing off my final weeks at Poly, he is going back to Florida for a few days by himself to see if he can finally settle on something he knows will be good for me, then I will consonsider myself lucky and can't wait to move there.  If that doesn't work out, I am even thinking of going back to live in Spain to some nice little city or town near the coast - SOUTH of Barcelona or even the south of Spain or maybe someplace like La Coruna.  Who knows.  I'm doing my best (with help) but looking on my own too and praying a lot and what will happen, will happen.  You know the saying "Man plans and God laughs" or as they say in Spanish - "hombre propone y Dios dispone"

The only really sad thing is that I will be moving away from the state where my closest and dearest relatives live - my daughter Frances and granddaughter Laura and son in law, but they, unfortunately, live in a lovely town upstate from NYC where it is all lovely but there are no apartments nearby and I would need a car to get around and back to the cold weather.  But they are being understanding and lovely about it and besides my Laura will get a chance to get out of the cold (no fan of it herself - she wears hoodies in my apartment in the summer!) and visit me somewhere where we can walk or take a short ride to the BEACH - our favorite place to be!!

So there you have it folks.  Another big change in my life, but it's time.  Polytechnic University, as I used to know it, has changed and moved on, and so must I.

I owe a lot of the help in my decision making to someone special and I am and will be forever grateful for everything he's done for me - however things turn out.  Fate is the hunter and I am prepared for this new adventure in my life.  I thank God for continued good health and pray that I don't slip on these icy sidewalks before I get a chance to leave.

I'll have to budget my life a bit more carefully but for many, many years, I've done more with less.  If I can turn a clean but slightly shabby room in a pension in Barcelona in 1969 to a cozy room where everyone wanted to hang out in, I can do most anything.  Almost.

Will keep you posted on where I end up.