MESSAGE FROM CARLOS FLEITAS, URUGUAYAN SURREALIST WHO HAS COME THROUGH

PM: Hi, Tex Mex is a mixture of US and Mexican cuisine. It appeared to me that Shakespeare really is thinking very differently from anyone else and that could be called 'schizophrenic'. Obviously he must have suffered immense disillusionment, been a very special person indeed yet also disfigured by all the hatred around him and probably involved deeply in it, yet also incredibly gentle. The kind of ironic voice that maintains a steady drone in the background until all the figures appearing in the historical window are burnt into it like marionettes on intense black and white, until the only thing anyone notices anymore are not the figures frozen but the murmuring voice, a voice now murmuring not droning on and now more palpable than all the good and great who are now nothing, all in their tombs. Somehow you believe Shakespeare must be saved even if the rest must be, and are, damned. Yet they killed, fucked and died and now all that is left is their animal hide deep in the tomb and all Shakespeare's words around.

CF: I am so impressed by the mail concerning Shakespeare and schizophrenia, that I think you should do more research or think it more, and write a small book at least and uploaded to your blog.

You definitely have something really important to communicate. It is fresh and surprising. I think one starts to write profoundly, when one can find a completely different angle to look to reality. And I think in this case you did. Worth the shot.

PM: Hola, what is the weather like now where you are? Do you have flowering cactus, is there scrub or forest? or beaches, sea, sun, sky? do you all sit around wearing sombreros riding on donkeys? I have one Mexican student now, Edmundo Navarro, and he says that this is the common perception of Mexico people have. We talked about the Aztecas and about novels like 'Under the Volcano' but he hadn't heard of it. It seems that things like novels go in waves, some generations have no understanding of them. or poetry. is Octavio Paz a great poet? is he not Mexican? what is Tex Mex?

CF: No, i have not any idea sorry. I am bad with filling applications. My wife does it for me. But no clue in this case. Anyway wife and daughter paid some 100 dollar to get the visa. A hundred dollars is something here. I guess equivalent for you 500.

PM: Hola Carlos, yes I think NYC is the best bet. LA is dominated by Hollywood and seems to me to be very tacky, filled with very tacky people who only care about celebrity, money, status and enormous swimming pools. Frisco is also fine, especially the Bay area where I have made many connections. Chicago is also fine, since it is the third city, a northern city with a liberal reputation. But I think NYC is the place to begin. Perhaps I will still live to see Montevideo? bw

CF: Great brilliant analysis, a fresh look at reality. I feel privileged talking with you.

Concerning the States I would love to live there, maybe Frisco because Americans have their downsides but they are always flowing, changing, inventing at high speed. And with Obama I think they will be more relief from the burden of Bush’s war against intellectuals, scientists and all brilliant minds. They had a nasty time, censured, fired from works just because they speak out. What a nightmare. We had that kind of thing in Lam plus torture. So I have seen the sea of monsters as you call it.

I would recommend you to go to liberal states not south or the Bible Belt. New York seems fine and Frisco seems ok. I would live a little in both places. You will have to face the crisis, but what the hell we only have one life! New York which I know I lived there a couple of months wont let you miss cosmopolitism of London although is highly competitive and people live in a rush. Also Chicago may be fine or LA but this one I think only spins around planet Hollywood. Give me your thoughts please to my reply.

PM: Hi, I read a number of new books in the course of my work as a teacher, such as Louis Sacher's novel 'Holes', 'Charlie Bone' (which I read to my Year 3 class last week, almost 20 pages.) and others. But coming to terms with Shakespeare is the main part of working as an English teacher, because S is so great, so profound, yet so difficult. Things as fundamental as thought processes, but also idioms, grammar, have shifted a good deal since Shakespeare's day, when people must have spoken metaphorically or poetically and very tangentially, all the time. It was part of the conventions of being civilised and it seems to me that most of this discourse could be termed 'schizophrenic' because it depends on a magical understanding of reality. For instance, plays like 'The Tempest' but also 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and many of the tragedies such as 'Julius Caesar' depend on some part on the intercession of some magical entity, such as Aerial or Oberon and Titania or supernatural intercession, such as dreams, even Richard's dream on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth when all the ghosts of his victims visit him.

When we talk about reality we talk about the reality of schizophrenia, because reality is simply the layering of various historical forms of schizophrenia which successively came to be outmoded. We are living through another era when another 'great illusion', another disturbed schizophrenic veil is dropping so we can view yet another vista possibly with sea monsters.

I'm considering emigrating to the States. What do you think?

CF: Yes my friend you did well, your pen is more sharp than going down to be beaten up and spend a night in the cooler.

I'm really very happy you are fine. And my first impression is as yours. G20 as I see it is more advertising than real solutions, and by the way they “slipped” addressing climate change as they promised. So their rhetoric of a non peril planet is just that, pure rhetoric. I guess better than going to demonstrations is talking to each other and talking to others as well all about this. We have great techs to do it, even without have not met ever, such as email. You will find sometimes dumb brains that live in denial, but the message will keep going for sure

PM: also very few people (perhaps 4,000 according to the police) turned out to demonstrate, very curious since there is presently a world-wide crisis of capitalism. I can only think that everyone was scared off by the police, who were saying that the demo would turn very violent. Perhaps everyone is too busy looking after number 1 to care about the world. Personally I'm glad to have avoided it, because I thought the demonstration would turn nasty very quickly. The only thing that might have happened would have been a night in the cells for me and this is the last thing I need right now. Personally I admire people who turned up, who stuck to their guns, but I don't think I'm presently fit enough to go through all that, but went to work instead where I at least attempted to get my students thinking and discussing these issues.
The economic crisis looks as if its worsening and neither the G20 nor the demonstrators seem to have a clue about what to do about it. I think the world will plummet further into chaos but I think that things will change too.

CF: I read The origin of tragedy, he is very persuasive. I like him. Do you think he provided an ideological basis to the Nazi's?
Thanks guapo

PM: Nietzsche didn't believe in a public revolution, a Marxist revolution, but a personal revolution that would produce the man of the future - him. In order to accomplish this he lived in a variety of guesthouses and small hotels in Switzerland, southern Germany and northern Italy. There he met almost no one of interest and was left alone with his fairly bizarre ramblings and footnotes. Out of these he collocated some remarkable books with many interesting insights.

CF: Sorry but seriously speaking my memory has started to have flaws. I tend more to forget than to remember dont no why. Anyway i do not have the money to buy books. So please do not get upset. You are my memory and teacher.

PM: Your asking me things that have already been answered a thousand times so why not go back and re-read Deleuze or Zizek? I'd say Nietzsche was an iconoclast rather than a revolutionary, because, although he sought to be radical he never left behind the baggage of reactionary ideas that he came along with, such as his infamous misogyny.

CF: Tell me please, what kind of Revolution Nietzsche accomplished from your point of you. I don´t understand your assertion. And yes The perfect storm is quickly reaching its peak.

PM: Why don't you put it through Babelfish, get a bad machine translation?
I think this crisis is going to be the big one, the biggest in the history of capitalism. There are many reasons for this but primarily global warming on the one hand and the drying up of fossil fuels on the other. Lots of different things, that are all connected to a similar locus, are converging and they all mean that the basic terms in which our civilisation is conceived and thought has to be relocated, similar to the kind of revolution that Nietzsche undoubtedly accomplished in his own time. Of course not only another Nietzsche, but another Dostoevsky, another Tolstoy. We need genius at this time and I can't see any. Maybe I'm blind, but I can't see it. Who among our philosophers or writers deserves to stand among these people? I'm unsurprised that there is crisis. The same old throwbacks are trotting out their waffle and guff all over again and it isn't working anymore, because material conditions have moved on beyond the actual chairs with the actual worn out cloths that sit beneath the actual arses of the hordes of actual time servers (and also those that are actually corrupted) that have brought on this world historical crisis.

PM: Hola, essentially I think its unsurprising that the terrorists are now targeting sports stars (or stars generally) because they have tried targeting lots of members of law enforcement agencies, soldiers and little or nothing has happened. To get anywhere they must feel they must target bigger, higher profile events that are naturally disconnected with the various wars. This is very like the Munich Olympics in 1972 and will lead to the same end I suppose.

There's a very real sense that Paklistan is about to implode. If that happens the West cannot walk away, because Pakistan has nuclear weapons. The West can walk away from Afghanistan, which is just of minor strategic or regional importance. But Pakistan means a lot to everyone. If America loses Pakistan it really also loses most of its importance in the region, which will simply return to Sharia law and orthodox Islamic rule (what the fanatics on the television box call 'Islamic extremism' actually the normal role and function of Islam in Islamic - ie not Western - society.).

That is probably good for the region, but not good for MacDonalds and the rest who wish to impose an alien way of life on the people there without simply asking them first.

Such a way of life is easier for us, because we are co-religionists with the Americans but much else besides. We share so much of their way of life it is easy for us to take it on, to identify with it.

bw

CF: Yes I saw Papillion, great movie. I liked Bullit also. In fact Steve Mc Queen was mimicked by Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard.
Good points you bring up. Anyway the issue is very complex, more than we think i guess and everything is moving so fast...Yes reality is much more exciting than films, i agree, you do not have a fix script....So anything can happen...

PM: Hola, Pakistan is a key ally of the West in a region where there are not many regimes who are friendly to it. India has traditionally allied itself with Russia and is essentially uninterested in Capitalism, preferring its own brand of Socialism. Iran is obviously antithetical to the Americans, as is Afghanistan and the other countries with the exception of Turkey, the Wests next big regional ally. Both Turkey and Pakistan are constantly embarrassing the West, because both regimes are essential illiberal and authoritarian. How can America, home of the free, be allied to such countries?

Tonight I was watching an old Steve McQueen film 'Bullit' which reminded me too of another film I saw on TV some weeks ago, 'Straw Dogs' by Sam Peckinpah, 'bloody Sam'. For many years 'Straw Dogs' was a kind of benchmark for notoriety in film. Have you seen Papillion? One of my favourite McQueen films. The films McQueen did with Peckinpah are also interesting. As you know Peckinpah figures Mexico, LAm, as a borderland where white men who live beyond society can flee into. I love the ending of 'The Wild Bunch'. Peckinpah brings pathos out of what is really a squalid gunfight. He uses such atypical stars, like Ernst Borgnine.

Maybe your not so much interested in these matters with reality itself being more exciting than film these days. As my father once said 'too real'. Says it all.

bw

PM: Hola Carlos, we had snow here three weeks ago, the first snow for 18 years, in other words not since the end of the Cold War. A foot of snow in London, it was amazing and the whole of London was paralysed by it.

Would you recommend Mexico as somewhere to go to? I know it has a tropical climate and that there are many benefits. I have been invited to teach in one of the universities on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico. All the names are Aztec names, but a few Spanish ones too, so the synthesis would be amazing and the history too.

CF: I do not know what to say. I tend not to recommend because what is good for me, may be bad for other. Anyway i you give a try you will find a complete different culture there. Southern Pacific coast is better than Mexico City because the capital is some kind of a monster, biggest city on earth. I have a fellow haijin who is also a friend in Mexico City Israel Lopez Balán if you want i can give you his email address and you can write to him, because he knows better than me. Personally i would like to go to Africa.

PM: Recently I saw 'Che Part One' with Benecio del Toro but this film was very disappointing for me and I think it missed the whole point about Che, not as some guerilla exuding machismo, because I don't think he was that kind of person, rather a sensitive, idealist who was traumatised by the injustices he saw and decided to do something about it. He made many mistakes, of course he did, but I think the film 'Motorcycle Diaries' is closer to the real spirit of Che than the other film, which depicts him as a charmless brute, a cliche of LAm Marxist guerillas.

CF: Totally agree with you.

PM: Another film that is closer to the spirit of Che is Woody Allen's 'Bananas'. Remember the bit where the beautiful female revolutionist is bitten on the breast by the snake and all the male guerillas run into the hut to suck the poison out? (I've heard that Woody Allen's new film 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' is a return to form for him. Maybe the free wheeling easy going attitude of the Spanish suits Allen? I think Barcelona is somewhere that Allen could be mad again.). Barcelona is a very nice city and the mind works better in the heat where its much easier to be happy.

PM: I think personally re the economy that we have hit a situation that might be depicted as monopoly capitalism. None of the world's leaders know where to go from here, because the banking system has stalled and could very simply cease functioning. This is possibly the biggest crisis for capitalism in its history. No one understands the economy completely, no one really has an answer. I saw yesterday that a new version of 'King Lear' starring Anthony Hopkins and many other typical contemporary Hollywood celebrities, had been cancelled due to the credit crunch. Of course maybe its not a good time for a tragedy as stark as 'King Lear', but maybe its also time for some new poetry, not endless re-hashes of the old. Maybe that's the timely message of the credit crunch.

CF: Right

PM: An article in The Guardian recently suggested that creativity is the answer not the mathematical or pseudo-mathematical lore of economics and I think that's also close to the truth. Beside the article is captioned a painting by Casper David Frederich, often taken as a summary of Nietzscheanism, The Wanderer above the Mists. Of course what Brown, Obama et al need is another Nietzsche at this juncture, a world historical figure who will summarise exactly what is presently happening, where it will lead and where to go next. But if such a figure appeared, would they even listen? I doubt it, in fact I think they'd probably throw him or her off the roof of the Pentagon. (that's why they blew it up first of all!)

CF: Totally agree

PM: So, maybe you have some thoughts on all of this?

CF: No, I agree completely with you. Also I want to tell you that once you invited me to crash at your flat in London. You know I have not the resources to go there, and also health is bad. But i was deeply touched by your gesture of good will and friendship. You are the only person that is worth talking about literature and politics, and the only one I do.
Hasta luego

Ps like most British people I rarely show emotion. This is called the 'stiff upper lip'. I think its part of living in a cold climate.

CF: No worry, you are a very passionate, sensible and emotional person, I can read you like an open book... You are not a dead corpse as many people are, you are alive...

PM: Hola, the perpetrators of the attack seem to have been - Lashkar-e-Taiba (Urdu: لشکرطیبہ laškar-ĕ ṯayyiba; literally Army of the Good, translated as Army of the Righteous, or Army of the Pure).

This army was set up by the Pakistani military in the 1980s to attack the Soviets. Afterwards it was directed against the Indian military, part of the long running border dispute that occured after the British left and the sub-continent was partitioned into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These are in some ways arbitrary divisions, but more or less most people in Pakistan are Muslim and most people in India are Hindu. All of this is a legacy of British Imperialism in the region when the British sought to divide and conquer the local populace by setting different groups of Indians against each other and not against the British. Obviously what has happend is that the Pakistani military have created this army of hardened militants and suicide fighters - did you notice that the Pakistani police practically refused to fight the militants, hence the complaints of the cricketers that they were left on their own to cope with the attack. It may be that the police are terrified of these people, a Frankenstein's monster created by the Pakistani government to defeat their enemies that has now come back to attack them. It is clear that Pakistan as a major state is finished if this continues and gets worse. Its also very worrying that it possesses nuclear weapons.

What do you think of the films of Jean Luc Godard or Akira Kurosawa? Are there any home grown Uruguayan film directors?

CF: Yes I agree. But the cricket attack, as the Mumbai, Bali and others was chosen to frighten west folks. Anyway Pakistan is more complicated than Irak or Iran. I do not deny that coloniliasm is a fact, and true the celts were invaders, even Mayan were invaders, and this is a current issue. But today they are other more subtle ways of doing so, therefore why keep the old school alive. Why you go to Irak, or Mumbai now, even if they pay you the airfare and hotel bill? I saw a brilliant documentary on Deutsche Welle: Confessions of a young broker. Do you know who the ninjas are. They were clearly targeted by the City boys and New York one's

PM: Dear Carlos, Ireland was always going to be occupied by an outsider power because of its geographical status on the edge of Europe. Even the Celts were originally invaders. Occupation is not really pleasant but it is a fact of history. After 1916 in Ireland the Free State got under way and Irish Republicanism seemed to mean a lot to people there, but today most people seem to have sickened and given up on ideology, prefering instead to look at their own lives, trying to work out strategies for survival. I don't know why this is, but it may be that the economy has improved and today we live lives far beyond the expectations of our forebears, even our parents. With all this around no one takes ideologues seriously, except as when the economy threatens to implode, as of now.

We weren't talking about Colonialism specifially, but about sport. Cricket is a legacy of Imperialism, but former colonies like Sri Lanka have gone onto master that sport and even beat England these days. In the Indian sub-continent cricket is big business and because of that it is unsurprising that it attracts the attention of these people. I'm surprised that an attack like this didn't happen in the 1980s.

Today I was teaching in the John Roan school in Maze Hill, a suburb of London nr Greenwich. On top of the hill is a house/castle built by the dramatist/architect John Vanbrugh. There are lots of museums and famous sites in the area. While I sat with the children I read the letters of Keats and came across a letter sent by him from Ireland. In the 18th century Ireland sounded a very impoverished, tragic and haunted place to visit. Keats seems to have got a ship to Donaghadee and then walked to Belfast, quite a walk even today. English people like Keats seemed to break the mould by taking an interest in things usually beyond the understanding of most people of that day. Its almost as if they were destined to change everything.

CF: Don´t get me wrong. You are arguing on a basis of reason. Guys that blow cricket are not. They have a complete different mind. They have not read even history books. Look colonialism will never ever be a solution. In they long run folks expelled brits, soviets, americans and the same melody along history. It is a matter concerning your homeland. Think if someone comes to your house, occupies your living room whatever reason they can give, and they shatter your families pics, your most beloved objects and try to take control of your decisions. What would you do Paul. This is the same. The so called islamic fundamentalists have a clear message, we do not want foreigners or anything of their culture. Go home, because you are invading our house. So be the Brits, Americans or Maldives armies that ocuppy their countries, they will sooner or later expell them. Remember the history of celts with Romans, and Romans were very, very organized military and political. You know some one said that the best army Americans have is the "pop culture" (soft imperialism) and i think he was right. Have you seen the pic "Why do we fight for" a documentary very poignant.

PM: well they unleashed certain forces (Bin Laden) that left their control. Of course they unleashed them to defeat Soviet regional power and then Soviet world power. Cricket is part of the meaning of British Imperialism, but it is also a great game. I played it myself last night at the Oval in South London. Cricket, football, tennis, golf, rugby: these are all English games, great games and great gifts to the world that Britain has given. What other country has created so many games, games like football that have gone on to dominate the entire planet, not just the former British bits. You are not wrong about these things, but you have got to see the other point of view. The British invented games while all the Germans were inventing were new ways to assault France.

CF: Why cricket? It could be cricket, or even a junior baby soccer league, or a mahjong club. Trouble is when you unleash certain forces you can´t control them (i.e Irak, Afganistan Mid East) and under that heavy atmosphere, people just flip out
and they target anything at hand, even for personal reasons (old injuries, simbolic meanings, etc) Remember cricket was introduced by the Brits, when their motto was "the way of England is the way of the world" So if some "terrorist" has it as a symbolic meaning of colonialistic game, he will go after it. Anyway, this is just a personal opinion and the problem is so complex that they will never solve it. Even if they retire from Mid East they have to bear with a new aftermath, the fog of war...

PM: yes those are great points, but why is cricket involved? Well this isn't just cricket, by that I mean people having fun with a sport, but big business and big business creates, as you say, the problems and the solutions and then the blowback. Sport in our culture is not about international communication, it is about excluding the mass of people from the fantastic wealth earned by stars of sport, entertainment, politics. It is quite palpable that those stars will eventually become targets in turn, because they have targeted the mass of people as quite literally excluded. People don't feel the slightest connection with those stars, especially in a country like Pakistan where most people live in abject poverty staring through the metallic bars of the gates of rich homes. Its different in Britain where even being unemployed isn't a question of starvation but of living a simpler life.

CF: Who are the terrorists?. Some nations create the problem and then they give a "solution" But they risk a blowback. This is the blowback. And they need terrorists as a plant needs water. In LAm we know very well about this issue.

PM: no Catholicism in Italy is also very secular, in fact no one there gives a frig what the Pope says. But there are a whole range of customs that are bloody, visceral and culturally alien to me. I come from a basically Protestant, but really secular background. I don't object to religious practice really, but did so more when I was younger.

What did you think of the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers? I mean, that's really serious because this war against terrorism has entered a new phase when the terrorists must attack big, high profile targets in order to attract attention. This is the same as Black September at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Also both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. So we must wait and see exactly what the ramifications are of this, but I think it will mean war between India and Pakistan. Strangely I was at the Oval yesterday to practice with Battersea Ironsides, perfecting my off cutter in the Ken Barrington indoor centre.

CF: Catholicism in LAm is more liberal than in Italy, more secular. Many People who are catholics de do not go to mass, and use contraceptive methods, the right wing of Catholicism is very weak. And remember in LAm started the Theology of Liberation, who was doomed by the Vatican. Personally i am not catholic, protestant or whichever. My opinions on religions are really hard, and i do not want to hurt other peoples feelings. Therefore i keep them to myself. And quite frankly i dont give a damn what religion people practice, i only pay attention who people are...

PM: sometimes LAm is depicted as being violent and I'm sure some of the big cities are, as all big cities are. There is violence in London, but not around here or it happens at unsocial hours and in typical places where it is unwise to be. I'm familiar with a lot of the Catholic ritual found in LAm through my experiences in Ireland and of travelling around the southern Mediterranean. Its a good deal more visceral than Protestant culture, opulent, sumptuous yet, to me, quite false and superficial. They say in southern Italy that the bed sheets are hung out the window of a newly married couple to show the community that the women's hymen is broken. I mean that's the kind of level that such cultures are based on, yet such things are of fundamental importance to all of us. I just think Protestant culture, which I come from, is a lot more discrete and preferable.

CF: Totally agree, brilliant diagnosis, you are so right but climate change will force us to instigate a new way of handling production, social relationships, architecture etc etc. Trouble is as you say that reconstruction will be harder because every day that passes things are more out of control, the tipping point is not so far scientists say, have you read Wendel's Berry papers on local economies? Amazing preaching globalization as the best solution ever, and I think he has a point we may have to go local. Trade based on oil propulsion is doomed, unsustainable. You are so right we have reached the limit, because we cannot tolerate or be aware of the idea the planet has limits. The population growth to 9 billion people by 2050 makes the problem worse.

PM: It hasn't been realised that the human race made fatal decisions in the 20th century that squandered many possiblities. If we had had orderly planned change then the chaos that presently prevails would never have happened. Because of that capitalism has reached its outer limit. There is nowhere left for it to go, in short it has failed and we now need something else. Everyday that passes without anything being done means even more time for reconstruction later. Already the pinch is being felt everywhere. I thought that by now space colonisation would have happened, it being now 40 years since the moon landings leaving a very long period for further steps to occur. But this didn't happen. Its now time to realise that we've missed our final chance and begin to downscale until our resources are once again secured. But this won't happen.

CF: people wont wake up, someone saying that mankind needs to go through catastrophes to learn. Copenhagen is near, it will end in bla,bla.
G20 last july set as goal not to let Global Warming grow more than 2 Celsius, are they playing God?, 2 C is considered by many scientists the tipping point, if it is thus so, Amazonia will start to die back and pull billions of tons to the atmosphere that means goodbye living beings...
Also the C02 emissions have been rising in spite of the eupehmism "financial crisis"
We are loosing the planet I'm afraid. We must recognize the planet has limits. The more we "grow" the more we dwindle.

PM: it looks like this time they just about got away with it, but there is still a lot of irreperable damage. what will it take to wake people up to the issues now?


CF: Yes I have read the Prelude a magnus opus as you say, and also I love Wordsworth, Longfellow, Lord Byron etc...yes such an amount of rain (Climate Change starting to knock harder at the door?)