A Brief Dialogue

by Ivan Saldarriaga

Lost Between Poles of Manliness

Billy: So Clarence, how was the run?

Clarence: Billy Bob, it was DE-MASCULATING!

Billy: OUCH! Sounds painful!

Clarence: When I got too hot, I took off my shirt, just so happened it was right in front of a pack of college girls.

Billy: Well, that's not too bad, I'm sure they liked what they saw, haha!

Clarence: They all said "Ewww".

Billy: Oh, I see. Well you're still a man, Clarence, you're still a Man!

Saldarriaga Letterhead

Thought of the Night

by Ivandario Saldarriaga

I was once told a long time ago,
in efforts to console me after I had lost in a competition,
"...everyone on earth was made for a certain sport.
And that person was destined,
to be the one of the greatest of that sport."
It was a comforting thought when I first heard it.
It immediately made me think,
of of some intense, ambiguous sport somewhere in the world,
which I alone excelled at.

A sport where I could a hero and triumph.
Where boundless victories would always make me happy.

But as I've gotten older the reality of the matter is too apparent to deny:
there just aren't enough sports in the world for each and every one of us.

Trying, trying, oh so trying to turn lead to gold

by Ivan Saldarriaga

Initial thoughts on the alchemist consisted of sheer appreciation. I enjoyed reading about the character and his tireless determination to heed his “personal legend”. After all, we all have dreams as kids; we all want to aspire to something that will make us happy, or in the very least content. It was reassuring, comforting, to read of the boy Santiago and his commitment to his dreams. I can honestly say that it even inspired me to accomplish anything I set out to do; for a short while. So, beyond that small, inspiring moment, was there any value in the book?

After a bit of time, after the sweet aftertaste of the book had been washed away, it began to sink in that, damnit, the stuff in the book is just some fantastical story. There are too many of us that work hard for our dreams, too damn hard, and never see it materialize. I don’t see the universe “aligning” and coming together as “one” in order to help us towards our “personal legend”. There’s just seems to me to be more people not capable of realizing their dream, despite heroic efforts, than there are people that do end up capturing their elusive goals.

But after thinking like this for some time, another thought struck me. What are the dreams that most of us aspire for? They’re the common ones, like wishing to grow up famous, marry a beautiful actress (perhaps like Natalie Portman), land on the moon. The point is that they are the dreams and ambitions that are the ones popularized by…society (is that even the right word, here?) I remember in the book, at several moments in the novel actually, the boy was torn between two goals in life. The example in mind is in the beginning, when he is torn between loving the merchant’s daughter and following his vague dream to Egypt. I feel like his dream to be with the merchant’s daughter could be related to the “customary” child dreams we usually have (i.e. growing up to be a fireman, becoming president, etc.) while his true “personal legend” was of course going to Egypt. But to follow his common desire to marry would have been against his life’s mission. This made me realize that I was wrong in my previous estimation of the book. The majority of people try so hard to follow their “childhood” dreams to become actresses, dancers, freaking novelists. The novel attempts to say that we usually aren’t in sync enough with our “personal legends” to even realize what they are most of the time. By following our child dreams, we pursue the wrong goal, completely missing our reason for being. Perhaps the novel does hold some merit after all. (J).

So what, in essence becomes the point of the novel? What was the point of the journey through the desert? Was it really just to see the splendor of the pyramids? To see the vastness of the sands of the sahara? I don’t think so. The point of the journey was to teach him how to interpret the omens. Well, I’m not too sure about omens going around earth and such. However, sometimes the hardest thing to analyze is what is within us: that which we desire, want, believe deep in our own heart. And I think that in the end, it’s this that the book stresses for us to attempt to understand. The truest sadness might be going through life, without ever really knowing our own true heart’s nature. Santiago was lucky enough to have many guide him on his path towards his own revelations; most of the time, however, we only have ourselves to figure out what is truly our calling. Even Paulo Coelho realizes the difficulty in this task, naming his book after the character whose art was never completely perfected in reality.

A few quotes about love n stuff

"I want to do with you what the spring does with the cherry trees."
-Pablo Neruda

" Mi corazón fue un péndulo entre ella y la calle.
Y no sé con qué fuerza me libré de sus ojos
Me zafé de sus brazos.
Ella quedó nublando de lágrimas su angustia
Tras de la lluvia y el cristal
Pero incapaz para gritarme: ¡Espérame,
Yo me marcho contigo!"
-Otero Silva

"My wife and I tried two to three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable that we had to stop."
-Winston Churchill

"My friends tell me I have intimacy problems. But they don't really know me."
-Garry Shandling

A little Ad campaign

A Retrospective on On the Road

So first off, who hasn’t wished for more in their life? Is there anyone that doesn’t wake up sometimes with fear, looking ahead in their life concerned about the conventional path that they seem to be stuck in? Who isn’t sometimes hungry, hungry, hungry for more, for more life, more excitement, more happiness, more…everything? It’s these deeply rooted desires that I feel Kerouac addresses in his novel.

I recently read something that sounded like something of a paradox. It said that if you want to write something that is general then you have to write about something very, very specific. That’s exactly what I think that Kerouac did, by deciding to write about his unique, specific life, he managed to transpose the lessons and thoughts of his own life to express an entire generation.

The conclusion of the novel struck me as being chock full of anecdotes and slight ambiguities (for me at least). When dean leaves sal stranded in mexico, instead of getting angry or bitter, sal understands him and accepts dean’s decision to leave. He didn’t go into detail about what he understood, I don’t even know if he completely or fully understood himself. But in a vague way, Sal saw that dean couldn’t stay with him in mexico. It at first struck me as odd, it seemed that mexico was going to be the perfect place for dean, a land of absolute freedom and interesting people he could dig for the rest of his life. So why did he need to leave so abruptly? Was it the ties that he held back home to his women (his two wives and his children)? I don’t think so; I think his decision to leave stemmed from the very fact that Mexico would have been perfect for him to stay in. Part of the beat tradition is to hit the road, to be in pursuit of something better, more exciting, always in chase of something just slightly ahead, “especially ahead, always ahead”. Mexico presented itself as too complete for dean, a land where all of the pursuits might’ve ended for him. And, as a patron saint of the “beat” philosophy, Dean had to remain in a place where the only viable option for at least a semblance of happiness is in the pursuit: the states. That’s partly the reason I see for him leaving behind Sal. Sal was his “adventure” buddy, and to confront the obstacle of going back to the states, where he had to live with imperfections, instead of staying with his buddy in the heavenly mexico, presented itself as too much for him to do, forcing him to take the trip back alone.

So in the end, are they happy? Is this the way that we would want our own lives to turn out? It’s hard to say exactly. I feel as though the greatest sentiment towards the end is…acceptance. They’ve settled into their lives, realized their obligations. Sal settled with his girlfriend, and Dean with his second wife. But has their beat spirit left them completely? Nope, not any more than has the sad image of Dean as Sal’s car pulls away in the end. Their ambition and dream for something better and their pursuits remain within them. It drives them awake, looking for meaning in the streets they pass, the people they meet, the places they visit. Kerouac only wrote about his life but in doing so, he managed to write about us all.