Rizal echoes Nietzsche

                    Funerary stela of Amenemhat and his Family

Our past is dead! That Hispanic-Filipino world will remain dead!

And we have killed it!

How can we console ourselves, we murderers of all

murderers?

The holiest and most powerful thing the world until

now has bled to death under our knives --- who will

cleanse us of this blood?

With what water could we purify ourselves?

What atoning ceremonies, what sacred games will

we have to invent?

Is not the greatness of this feat too great for us?

Do we not have to become gods ourselves

to seem worthy of it?

There has never been a greater feat, and

whoever is born after us will be part, because of

this feat, of a history greater than all that has gone

before!"

Here Rizal fell silent and turned his eyes back to

his listeners. They, too, were silent and looked at him in amazement.

Finally, he threw his lantern to the ground,

so that it shattered and was extinguished.

 

"I have come too soon," he said later, "it is not yet

 my time. This huge event is still coming and still on its way, and it has not yet reached the consciousness of the Filipinos.

Lightning and thunder need time, starlight needs

time, feats need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard.

This feat is still for them more distant than the most

distant Stars --- and yet --- they have done it!

 

It is also said that on the same day, Rizal went into different churches, and that in them he intoned his requiem quod mundum.*

Taken outside and interrogated, it is said that he

only repeated this:

 

"What else are still these churches but tombs and funerary stelae of our lost centuries?"

 

 

*Eternal rest for that world.

¡Aquel Mundo ha muerto! Rizal hace eco de Nietzsche

 

¡Nuestro pasado ha muerto! ¡Aquel mundo hispanofilipino seguirá muerto! ¡Y nosotros lo hemos matado! ¿Cómo consolarnos, nosotros

asesinos de todos los asesinos? Lo más

santo y más poderoso que el mundo

poseía hasta ahora se ha desangrado

bajo nuestros cuchillos, ¿quién nos

limpiará de esta sangre? ¿Con qué agua

podríamos purificarnos? ¿Qué

ceremonias expiatorias, que juegos

sagrados tendremos que inventar? ¿No

es la grandeza de esta hazaña demasiado

grande para nosotros? ¿No tenemos que

convertirnos nosotros mismos en dioses

para parecer dignos de ella? No ha

habido nunca hazaña mayor, ¡y

quienquiera que nazca después de

nosotros formará parte, por causa de

esta hazaña, de una historia superior a

toda la transcurrida hasta ahora!». 

Aquí Rizal se quedó callado y

volvió a dirigir la vista a sus oyentes:

también estos callaban y lo miraban

extrañados. Finalmente tiró su farol al

suelo, de modo que se hizo pedazos y se

apagó. 

«He venido demasiado pronto»,

dijo después, «no es todavía mi

momento. Este acontecimiento enorme

está todavía viniendo y de camino, y no

ha llegado aún a la consciencia de los filipinos.

El relámpago y el trueno necesitan

tiempo, la luz de las estrellas necesita

tiempo, las hazañas necesitan tiempo,

también después de hechas, para ser

vistas y oídas. Esta hazaña sigue siendo

para ellos más lejana que las más

lejanas estrellas, ¡y sin embargo la han

hecho!». 

Se cuenta además que ese

mismo día Rizal se metió en

diferentes iglesias y que en ellas entonó

su requiem quod mundum.* Llevado

fuera e interrogado, se dice que solo

repuso esto: 

«¿Qué otra cosa son aún

estas iglesias que tumbas y estelas

funerarias de nuestros siglos perdidos?».

 

  

*descanso eterno para aquel mundo

 

 

Nietzsche's "Section 125" In English

 

La gaya ciencia, section 125:

 

God is dead!

God will remain dead! And we have killed him!

How can we console ourselves, we murderers of all murderers?

The holiest and most powerful thing the world

possessed until now has bled to death

under our knives ---

who will cleanse us of this blood?

with what water could we purify ourselves?

What atonement ceremonies, what sacred games will we have to invent?

Is not the greatness of this feat too great for us?

Do we not have to

become gods ourselves

to seem worthy of it? There has

never been a greater feat, and

whoever is born after us will

be part, because of this feat, of a

of a history greater than all that has gone before!".

 

Here the madman fell silent and

and looked at his listeners again:

they, too, were silent and looked at him

in amazement. Finally, he threw his lantern to the

the ground, so that it shattered and went out,

extinguished.

 

"I have come too soon,"

he said later, "it is not yet my

time. This huge event

is still coming and on its way,

and it has not yet reached the ears of men.

The lightning and the thunder need time, the light of the stars

 need time, starlight needs time, exploits need time, 

even after they are done, to be seen and heard.

This feat is still for them more distant than the most distant

stars, and yet they have done it!"

 

It is further told that on that

same day the madman went into different churches

and that in them he intoned

his requiem aeternam deo*.

 

Taken out and interrogated, 

it is said that he only said this:

 

"What else are these churches but the tombs

and funerary stelae of God?"

 

 

*Eternal rest for God

 

 

 

 

Found it! But it is in Spanish: Sección 125.

 I love, I revere Nietzsche.  His final mental breakdown was triggered by the sight of a horse being beaten to death on a busy city street.

His final ten years of life were painful, after his nervous breakdown he became an invalid who had lost his mind.  Under the care of his mother and sister, with whom he had had torturous, emotionally and psychologically unbalanced relationships all his previous life.

His sister tried to rehabilitate her image in his writings by falsifying parts of them before publication.

Her name was Elizabeth!!!  Um Gottes willen.  

I will post the excerpt from Section 125 in English in my next blog post.

Here is a photo from his lost years, postrated, lost in another world.

I find it very beautiful despite its ugliness, because it is a raw portrait of the pain, isolation, loneliness of a man who was brilliant and never understood in his lifetime.

La gaya ciencia, sección 125:

 

¡Dios ha muerto! ¡Dios

seguirá muerto! ¡Y nosotros lo hemos

matado! ¿Cómo consolarnos, nosotros

asesinos de todos los asesinos? Lo más

santo y más poderoso que el mundo

poseía hasta ahora se ha desangrado

bajo nuestros cuchillos, ¿quién nos

limpiará de esta sangre? ¿Con qué agua

podríamos purificarnos? ¿Qué

ceremonias expiatorias, que juegos

sagrados tendremos que inventar? ¿No

es la grandeza de esta hazaña demasiado

grande para nosotros? ¿No tenemos que

convertirnos nosotros mismos en dioses

para parecer dignos de ella? No ha

habido nunca hazaña mayor, ¡y

quienquiera que nazca después de

nosotros formará parte, por causa de

esta hazaña, de una historia superior a

toda la transcurrida hasta ahora!». Aquí

el hombre loco se quedó callado y

volvió a dirigir la vista a sus oyentes:

también estos callaban y lo miraban

extrañados. Finalmente tiró su farol al

suelo, de modo que se hizo pedazos y se

apagó. «He venido demasiado pronto»,

dijo después, «no es todavía mi

momento. Este acontecimiento enorme

está todavía viniendo y de camino, y no

ha llegado aún a oídos de los hombres.

El relámpago y el trueno necesitan

tiempo, la luz de las estrellas necesita

tiempo, las hazañas necesitan tiempo,

también después de hechas, para ser

vistas y oídas. Esta hazaña sigue siendo

para ellos más lejana que las más

lejanas estrellas, ¡y sin embargo la han

hecho!». Se cuenta además que ese

mismo día el hombre loco se metió en

diferentes iglesias y que en ellas entonó

su requiem aeternam deo*. Llevado

fuera e interrogado, se dice que solo

repuso esto: «¿Qué otra cosa son aún

estas iglesias que tumbas y estelas

funerarias de Dios?».

 

 

*descanso eterno para Dios

 

Academia.edu --- anyone?

https://independent.academia.edu/search?q=elizabeth%20medina

It's Saturday, May 18, 2024.

I was thinking of closing my Academic.edu page. There are around 10 visitors to the page each week.  The number of views appears under each title.  Most of the texts appear to have gotten just 2 or 3 views.  The papers/texts that have gotten the most number of views are (titles are not precise, plucked from memory):

Hispanic-Filipino Literature, a literature of resistance.

A New Perspective on Filipino History

Hispanic-Filipino Identity:  Loss and Recovery

Adelina Gurrea: Hispanic-Filipino Gothic

After giving it more thought, I've decided to hold on to the page until after I finish my novel and find a publisher for it.

The Academia.edu page also helps me be a little informed of what kinds of papers Filipino university students and scholars are writing.

This is also positive.

It appears that the post-Hispanic Filipino period (the U.S. period) is now under the magnifying glass and the pseudo-republic is being critiqued by new generations.  Very interesting.

They appear to have a ways to go; they are not connecting the dots to the global, macro scenario of invisible economic machinations and the Mr. Global pseudo-republic of U.S. Inc.

As Nietzsche wrote, time is needed.  Much time.

He wrote this wonderful paragraph in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (I believe), which I adapted to the Hispanic-Filipino debacle:

IT'S NOT IN THIS LAPTOP... MUST LOOK IN MY EXTERNAL DRIVE.

At any rate, I decided to keep the Academia.edu page subscription awhile longer.  It's a kind of public service for my fellow Filipinos. After all, I didn't write all that so I could bury it under the floorboards.  It all came to me from somewhere else, some energies that inter-layered, entangled with my own.  ALL IS MENTAL, said Hermes Trismegistus, three thousand years ago in Egypt.

I'll keep looking for the lines from Nietzsche.

Recovery from a Fall (Energy Work)

 I do energy work, Psychobioenergetics, besides being a practitioner of Medical Biomagnetism.

If you'd like to hear about my recent accident and how it taught me a little more about how our energy field is structured and what happens when we have an accident, here's the link:

https://rumble.com/v4t7yhb-recovery-from-a-fall.html

Writing a Novel in Spanish... duh??

I'm an impulsive character. I zero in swiftly on what it is I want, and without further ado, I leap into the Void.

Yep... it's my behavioral pattern.

I go with the flow.  I don't question whether what I am jumping into, I can jump out of, should it turn out to be a vat of boiling oil that cannibals positioned under the cliff I had picked to jump off of.

Right.

God exists, I know this for a fact.

Otherwise, how could I have decided to move to Chile and not slashed my wrists or otherwise suicided myself?

There are other plausible explanations, naturally.

God doesn't exist, I just have a very thick hide and a talent for convincing myself of anything.

No --- "talent" is too modest.

"Genius" is the right word.

Get to the point, Liz.  

How in HELL did I ever even think I had the right stuff to write a novel in Spanish?????

Let me qualify that statement, though.

Anyone can write any old kind of novel in Spanish.

If you are Filipino and you write a novel in Spanish, and you aren't a really good writer, but because there is a cohort of Spanish academics who want to encourage the production of Spanish works by Filipinos, you will find sponsors and eventually you'll see your novel between covers.

As long as you aren't looking to make a bunch of money.

Forget that.  Content yourself with a succès d'estime.

Succès d'estime Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

The meaning of SUCCÈS D'ESTIME is something (such as a work of art) that wins critical respect but not popular success; also : the reception accorded such a piece.
In my particular nutjob case, I wanted to prove (Capital Sin: Pride) that a Filipino(a) could write a decent novel in Spanish in 2024 that would recreate the 19th-century world of Las islas filipinas.  The Big But (or BUTT) being: that I would not depend on the academic milieu to help me get it published.
No, I would take my chances in the commercial publishing world (i.e., Shark Tank).
In Spanish.  This means, look for a publisher in the Spanish-speaking countries.
And it means:  write at the level of the Spanish and Hispanic-American, Hispanic-Caribbean cultured native Spanish writers. 
There is a tiny consideration that I had no idea I would have to deal with, and now I have crashed into the Elephant in the Room:
I AM NO EXPERT IN SPANISH PUNCTUATION.


THIS is MAJOR.  If I submit a manuscript, and the person who skims it sees that I make punctuation errors on the first page, he or she won't even bother to read it.
You don't use American punctuation when you write in Spanish.  American punctuation practically doesn't even have any rules.  If you've read tons in English, you've mastered it subconsciously.
Not so in Spanish.Spanish is an extremely elitist language.  It is full of Rules, Schmules.
Right now I find myself having to study the proper use of the comma, parentheses, n and em dashes, square brackets, the correct punctuation for dialogue...  It's a NIGHTMARE.

I am on the verge of giving up.
Of course, if I had 5,000 euro I could pay some smartypants Spanish cookie to take my manuscript and fix it for me.
I don't even have 180 euro.  I did, but had to spend it this afternoon on the maintenance charges for my water heater.  The gasfiters discovered that the regulator of the gas tanks (the water heater needs LPG to light it and heat the water that circulates through it then the water gets sent to my shower and faucets) had to be replaced.
It's frickin freezing in Santiago right now and I can't take cold showers or even stand to wash dishes in cold water, or I'll freeze to death/get rheumatism.

Well, proof that I am a complete psycho is that I actually find this situation hilarious.
I had my good friend and colleague go over the first half of the novel.  He has tons of experience as a translator and is a poet and artist.  He has checked my work before and I trust him.  But he isn't a master in punctuation, either.  I recently discovered this.  He didn't know the proper punctuation for dialog.  (You need to be a rocket scientist.)
...somehow, I will get over my feminine hysteria and despair.
I will learn the 50 million cases when it is okay to use a comma and the 100 billion cases where you must absolutely shoot yourself before using one.
I set out to write the great Spanish novel by Liz Medina, not realizing how goddam difficult it is to write a novel, for heaven's sake, and even worse, in a language you haven't read 40,000 books in.
Genocide is happening in Gaza and Hebron as I write this ridiculous blog entry.  The young generations of Ukraine have been sacrificed.  Homeless children in my country are getting trafficked.  Who the hell cares and what does it matter if I ever find a publisher?
I write because my life depends on it.  This insignificant old woman manages to live another day and pay her bills somehow, and if she went batshit crazy a few people she loves who love her would suffer meaninglessly.
So it still benefits a handful of people, and myself, for me to try and figure out how to write using the proper Spanish punctuation, then somehow finish this novel and find a publisher... just so it keeps me off the streets, or worse.

        Impossible Dream