Procrastinatio

So, I have a paper due tomorrow by five. What do I do instead? I take an unwilling participant for Japanese food (I needed it, there was no use denying myself) and come home exhausted, emotionally and physically drained from test taking and mad end-of-quarter grading and from watching Amarelo Manga which was a gorgeous Brazilian film, extremely theatrical. I say gorgeous, because of the incredible use of color saturation, but what I really mean is terrible in the sense that the French give "formidable" that strange mix of awe, and fear, grotesque as we find ourselves in an abbatoir, or as an aging, voluminous asthmatic woman gorges herself and her vagina on oxygen.

I have no energy to write about the films I must, and I drift off to sleep at 8 pm instead, only to be aroused at 1 by the gods of sleeplessness. This insomnia can't go on. I will conquer my need for all things I can't have. I will find some way to relieve all the pain and stress in my life. I will join a monastery... No, not that. Funny though how many problems could be avoided if one didn't have all those pesky feelings that one accumulates like a layer of dead skin that needs to slough off but doesn't. And if they were all linear, it would be alright, but there are always these conflicting emotions. I am constantly amazed by how we as humans are capable of twisting ourselves up in knots, and pitting one set of legitimate emotions against another set of competing, and sometimes equally legitimate ones, but that somehow have a subordinate position because of social constructs, rules and decorum.

I really hate myself for feeling what I know I shouldn't, for not being able to control every last impulse for comfort. I hate the fact that I can't be self-sufficient. Or that even when I can there is still something missing. At dinner I. was playing games, she asked, "raise your hand if you don't love me!" and promptly raised her hand, and I looked at her over her miso and said, "oh, baby, that's no good... You have to love yourself!" and she put her hand down and smiled her toothy grin at me, "why?" "well," I started, "because, sometimes you are the only one that will do it for you!" and she laughed at my very serious explanation, and said, "Oh, like if you are at school and you don't have any friends and your mommy isn't there to love you?" Precisely. Ah yes, if only our mommies could make everything better forever. But I hope she understands how important it is to love yourself, to not second-guess everything, or doubt your worth. I establish, through performativity what I want to believe for myself.

So I wake up and I still can't make myself write, so I decide to do the translation that I need to have for tomorrow morning and I am looking at the ultra-cheap pop-song lyrics and their description of love and desire and I think about how truly pathetic the sentiments are and then I come across this lyric by Gloria Estefan, which is, at once self-anhilating, and at the same time absolutely true in its sentiment, at least it seems to me a slightly more sophisticated look at how vile and pusilanimous we truly are in that moment where we stoop and ask to be loved by someone else, and yet, how beautiful and clear we can be too. And I realize that this particular song is rather difficult to translate precisely because of the false cognate "pretender" which is only partly used to mean "to pretend" but has the semantic load of "aspire, hope, expect, attempt and even, but not in this case, woo."

Ah yes, how to blame one(self), when that sentiment persists?:

No pretendo ser la gota
que derrama tu silencio
Ni pretendo ser la nota que
se escapa en tu lamento

No pretendo ser la huella
que se deja en tu camino
Ni pretendo ser aquella
que se cruza en tu destino

Solo quiero descubrirme
tras la luz de tu sonrisa
Ser el balsamo que alivia
tus tristezas en la vida

Solo quiero ser la calma
que se escurre en tu desvelo
Ser el sueño en que descansa
la razón de tus anhelos

Simplemente es el amor
cuando ha roto sus cadenas
Para darte el corazón
no pretendo ser tu dueña

No pretendo ser la llama
donde enciendes tus pasiones
Ni pretendo ser la espada
que atraviese tus errores

No pretendo ser el aire
que respiras en la noche
Ni pretendo ser la carne
que destila tus derroches

Solo quiero ser la mano
que se tiende en el quebranto
Ser un poco ese remanso
donde muere el desengaño

Solo quiero ser la estrella
que se engarza en tu mirada
La caricia que se entrega
sin razon y sin palabras

Simplemente es el amor
que ha encontrado su camino
Para darte una ilusión
no pretendo hacerte mio

Simplemente es el amor
cuando ha roto sus cadenas
Para darte el corazón
no pretendo ser tu dueña

Solo quiero ser la mano
que se tiende en el quebranto
Ser un poco ese remanso
donde muere el desengaño

Solo quiero ser la estrella
que se engarza en tu mirada
La caricia que se entrega
sin razón y sin palabras

Simplemente es el amor
que ha encontrado su camino
Para darte mi ilusion
no pretendo hacerte mio

Simplemente es el amor
cuando ha roto sus cadenas
Para darte el corazón
no pretendo ser tu dueña

Simplemente es el amor

And my humble and (probably faulty) translation for the Spanish-challenged

I don’t hope to be the straw
That breaks your silence
Nor do I hope to be the note that
Slips out in your lamentation

I don’t hope to be the mark
That is left in you path
Nor do I hope to be the one
That crosses your destiny

I just want to find myself
Behind the light of your smile
Be the balm that relieves
The sadness in your life

I just want to be the calm
That slips through your sleeplessness
Be the dream in which the
Reason for your longings rests

It is simply love
When it has broken its chains
To give you my heart
I don’t hope to be your owner

I don’t hope to be the flame
Where you ignite your passions
Nor do I hope to be the sword
That pierces your mistakes

I don’t hope to be the air
That you breath in the night
Nor do I hope to be the flesh
That distills your excesses

I just want to be the hand
That holds itself out in brokenness
To be, just a little, that backwater
In which disappointment dies

I just want to be the star
That is set (like a pearl) in your gaze
The caress that gives itself over
Without reason or words

It is simply love
That has found its path
To give you happiness
I don’t hope to make you mine

It is simply love
When it has broken its chains
To give you my heart
I don’t hope to be your owner

It is simply love.