#YNWA Suarez

It. was. just. half. a. bite.

He didn’t attack or try to kill someone, for god’s sake. The man obviously has issues, he regresses to something primal when threatened, and yes, FIFA did need to send out a strong message.

But a stadium ban? And of 13 games for Liverpool? I mean, come on, that just sucks.

Suarez may have made a mistake, and while the act itself might not be justifiable or defensible, I think people should still support the player. He’s an awesome striker beyond compare. And no genius exists without a touch of madness.

Is it acceptable? No.

But, is it forgivable? Yes, I believe so..

And if Chiellini himself thinks so, then why are we judging him so harshly for something not a fifth as dangerous as a deliberate elbow to the nose, or a nasty ankle breaking tackle, or a head butt or a punch to the face? It was a moment of passion, it’s gone. Why do we have to condemn the man? If Chiellini himself thinks FIFA’s punishment is too harsh, why are so many of the LFC fans up in arms?

 

You’ll never walk alone, isn’t that supposed to be it?

And, if you guys can’t find it in your hearts to forgive, support or love the man, at least give this article a read before you decide to condemn and slime him: Portrait of a Serial Winner

When do you think an ordinary player must walk alone, but we don’t let one of ours do that? Not when everything is fine, and the world thinks he’s great and wonderful. But when everyone else has turned against him… What he did might not be justified or defensible, but you can still support the lad. He didn’t murder or rape someone. It was just half a bite. Not even as dangerous as an elbow to the face or a violent headbutt or a kick to the shins or a bad tackle. It. was. just. half. a. bite. And if you really cannot find it in you to even support him, at least don’t slime him. That’s just mean. And base. And ungrateful.

I mean, he bit Chiellini, didn’t he? And Uruguay can find it in their hearts to support him wholeheartedly. So, what’s with all this hatred and mocking and taunting.

Really sad..

Why would he even want to stay in a club where the fans themselves do not even attempt to understand him? I, for one, would be really sad to see him go.. Has been a pleasure to watch on the field. And I’m proud that he’s in red, that he’s on our side.

A bite is not worth throwing your man to the dogs.

The Tower of Peace // Shelter from the Storm

She ran through the rain, the cold water dripping down the sides of her face and into the flowery dress that now clung scandalously to her body. The sun hovered lazily at the edge of the horizon, darkness only moments away. It was not far now. The Tower. She could already see it in the distance, rising up to the faintly star-studded sky, perfectly camouflaged against its surroundings. Hidden away from everybody else. It was sanctuary, her refuge. And as she made her way through the dense jungle, eyes focused only on her destination, she nearly stumbled and fell into a deep puddle of disturbed water. A stab of pain in her right ankle accompanied her regaining her balance. This was no time to fall.

Not much further now..

He was waiting at the foot of the tower when she got there. ‘You’re all drenched,’ he said, smiling. She wanted to throw herself into his arms like the long lost friends that they were. Instead, she insipidly nodded, looking around to see what had changed since the last time she had visited him here. The garden had grown wild, and there were flowers everywhere, yet she could see that he thought they bloomed to spite him, and she did her best not to speak of them or even think of them.

The flowers rustled quietly in the wind, as if begging to be touched.

Instead, she reached out and touched him, once, gently, the skin above his collar warm against her icy fingers. (Though perhaps that was the rain’s fault) She would have kissed him then, too, but they were supposed to be adults, and she was supposed to be a certain way that existed between two narrow lines of acceptable behavior. She satisfied herself by studying his profile instead, and as he spoke to her of troubles and amusements, she ached to run her fingers through his midnight hair. He smiled at her indulgently as she concentrated on the pieces of him that she could still see, that were still open to her, and then he turned away, leaving her to make her own way up the tower. It would take him a while to put away his weapons, lead the horses back to their stables and then join her. So she climbed the endless spiraling staircase herself, fingers curled around the cold railing in the dark, ankle still throbbing with a dull pain that she tried her best to ignore, water still dripping down her body in tiny rivulets and large drops.

It was a long way down.

Standing at the top, she felt a rush of giddy feeling sweeping over her. Perhaps things were finally changing for the better. Perhaps, the war was finally done with them. Perhaps, tonight, they could begin rebuilding everything that the fire had destroyed. Perhaps he would even remember what he had once sworn to her, a long long time ago, before the first war had started. But, somewhere within, she already knew what he always had; that the damage was done.

There was no going back.

Still, she thought wistfully, as she heard the wooden door rattle, and rushed to the door to let him in, beaming from ear to ear even as he breathed deeply, in an attempt to catch his breath after the steep climb. His hair was disheveled and wild as he stripped away his sweat soaked shirt and changed into the torn colorless gray garb that he seemed to favor. His eyes were always tired, even before the war, but lately it felt like even his own smiles stopped before they could reach his eyes. Still, he was beautiful to her.

And she smiled as she touched him again.

War or no war, every single ounce of pain was worth being able to stand here, so close to him, worth being able to touch him, even if he distractedly moved her hand away, or quickly sat down to pour over his books and maps before she had even finished saying what she was saying. It wasn’t important, surely. Not as vital as this memory of a present yet to be transformed into the past. His eyes glowed tirelessly as he sat at his desk late into the night, and she watched him sitting there for hours, until sleep tugged at her eye-lids and dragged her to its realm. Even then, she only truly breathed easy when she felt him climb into bed with her, his presence all the reassurance that she had ever needed.

The nights were the hardest part of her exile.

But in the present, (or maybe it was already the past, she thought sadly), her hand sought his as the World continued its indiscriminate and cruelly pre-meditated murdering and looting by bombs and missiles and soldiers all around their fortified turret. And even though he drew away from her subconscious need to feel his skin against her own, they both sighed peacefully and leaned into one another.

Like the last two trees in a parched desert.

It Is What It Is

It is what it is,
and what it is is tragic
To have wasted it all,
squandered all that magic

Yet perhaps this was inevitable
For everything has to end
Maybe they were mere illusions
and, maybe we, never friends

Yes, it is what it is
and what it is is sad
but you can’t lose something
that you never had

Mirages in the dessert
Hallucinations out at sea
But my favorite dream sequence
remains the one of you and me

But, it is what it is
and what it was was all pretense
Well, I give up, you win
And I guess this is how it ends.

Dreaming of the Past

One night, I dreamed a dream of paradise
and now there is nothing I can do to forget
I wake in the guilt of sins that are not mine
unreleased from this adopted regret

And even my oldest comrade now lies blue
In this world of sleeplessness’ solitude
So cold in the sky, so distant and cruel
But, always, mine, and forever, true

Like the color of someone’s eyes
when he turned to look into mine
on a moonlit winter evening
lost, now, in space and time

Let me in, I whisper quietly
But there’s no one left to hear my plea
The cold chased away all those memories
Like goldfishes swimming off to sea..

On Literary Models and their Choosing

Excerpt from Article Titled: MISUNDERSTANDINGS SURROUNDING GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ by JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ
Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
Source: http://brickmag.com/brick-87/vasquez

Taking by storm a novelist whose method is useful for the telling of one’s own reality, that’s what influence is. Another way of saying the same thing: influences are only involuntary for bad writers. A novelist with a minimum degree of control over his material searches them out and chooses them fully aware of what those choices will allow him to do, aware of the risks he’s running and how to manage them. An analysis of the process of influences adopted by García Márquez sheds important light on the theme of the authentic tradition: for the successor novelist, tradition (from the Latin tradere, to hand over or transmit) is the receipt of a set of tools he chooses to inherit not by virtue of national ties but of literary ones: the tools he chooses to inherit because they will be useful to him in transforming his experience into literature. The writer, said Borges, creates his precursors. That’s how it is. The novelist, loyal to his parasitic vocation, takes from life the events that he can use to make novels, and takes from novels the instruments he can use to narrate those events, aware that the achievements of one’s predecessors belong to the successor. And in doing so he establishes a special relationship, a sort of search for identity that can sometimes pass for a confrontation with one’s literary fathers, and sometimes for their premeditated cold-blooded murder, but always passes for what Harold Bloom, in that marvellous and excessive little book, The Anxiety of Influence, calls the “act of misreading,” which can be translated as “misinterpretation” and also as “reading wrong.” The successor novelist, the novelist who receives the influence of an important book like One Hundred Years of Solitude, carries out a misinterpretation of the novel, a revisionist reading that departs from a necessary lie or, at least, necessary to the successor novelist: the father’s book is insufficient, defective, incomplete. The successor novelist says, My obligation is to fix it. This is the main difference between the mediocre writer and the genuine writer. “Weaker talents idealize,” says Bloom. Those with capable imaginations “appropriate” from other people’s books. Cheap imitators of García Márquez are incapable of this misinterpretation. They read in such an aseptic and respectful way that their products are mere pastiches, for they don’t have the slightest problem in repeating in their books the procedures they’ve read—repeating them, I insist, not correcting them. They thus become mere imitators when they should be critics.

Always

It isn’t always the memories
that undo you late at night
Sometimes it’s only a feeling,
an absence of some near-divine light
Sometimes it is a number plate,
when the numbers add up to a name
Or a person stands up to be who you were,
and you avert your eyes in shame

It’s knowing that you’re growing
and that things must be left behind
That you are only a stranger
lost somewhere in the threads of time
And it’s paying the cost of life
in memories not yet made
It’s holding on to the hope
that some things can still be saved

For in the depths of something unstoppable
always tugging at my soul
You were the first hand to grab mine
and burn through all the cold
And I know you haven’t cared
for quite a long long time
But I’ll never forget that moment
when I first learned that I was still alive

And if I could have just one thing,
I don’t know if it would be you
But I remember the shade of your eyes
better than you ever could
It’s because I’ve seen the light in them
And it’s a light I can’t unsee
So, if it comes to a choice between us,
even my darkness could never choose me.

UnContainable

 

If I knew
how to contain this
the feeling of falling endlessly
I would not need you
to be an echo

An echo of
both the heights
and the depths
that I have only
dreamed of

Of heights and depths
that I have only
ever seen
in hues
of you.

My World
does not revolve
around you
but, sometimes
how I wish that
it would.

Because you’re all
I want to see
and touch
and know
and feel..

And because
everything else
is drenched in evil
and sin..
but you,
You will always be the good.

Even if
you do choose
to exist as a blade
without a handle
buried in my throat.

Yes, even then.