(ed. note: Last December we asked Mong-Lan to reflect upon violence that plagues her in home city. Here are her thoughts on the riots that erupted on a day that was intended to be a celebration.Read Mong-Lan's previous blog post here.)
“Cerraba los ojos y entraba
en la ardiente oscuridad olvidado de todo, como el fumador de opio que al
entrar al asqueroso fumadero donde el patrón chino huele a excremento, cree
recobrar el cielo.” (He
closed his eyes and entered into the ardent obscurity, forgetting everything,
as the smoker of opium who enters into the disgusting smoking room where the
Chinese patron smells of excrement, believes to have recovered
heaven.) — Roberto Arlt, Los Siete Locos (The Seven Crazies)
(1929)Nuestro destino (a diferencia del infierno de Swedenborg y
del infierno de la mitología tibetana) no es espantoso por irreal; es espantoso
porque es irreversible y de hierro. El
tiempo es la sustancia de que estoy hecho.
El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que
me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre; es un fuego que me consume, pero yo soy el
fuego. El mundo, desgraciadamente, es real; yo, desgraciadamente, soy Borges.
(Our destiny (unlike Swedenborg’s
hell or the Tibetan mythology’s hell) is not awful for being unreal; it is awful
because it is irreversible and of iron. Time is the substance I am made of.
Time is a river that steals me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that destroys
me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The
world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.) Jorge Luis
Borges, "Nueva refutación del tiempo" ("New Refutation of
Time"), Otras Inquisiciones, (Other
Inquisitions) (1952).
[Translations from the Spanish
to English by Mong-Lan]
The world,
fortunately or unfortunately is sometimes real; it depends on how you look at
it. But what is there for those who have little or nothing? In the deep
of the night, those who sleep on cold streets under winter blankets stir slowly
like dead logs.
Grief like
my own name, that follows me for centuries. Grief like a three-headed
creature that fights and argues with its own nature. Grief, scathed in
tears.
Buenos
Aires, a city at war with itself, burns from the inside. The youths burn
cars to ashes. Desperation rising, the economy has been about to explode
for years now, and does so recurringly.
Perhaps
the youths have been told they cannot do whatever their heart desires, for
whatever reason, . . . helpless, yet wanting to leave a mark, and therefore
they go out and destroy what belongs to those in authority, half-hazardly, burn
cars, sack stores, destroy and take what is not theirs and what could not be
theirs otherwise.
La Nacion: “El día del hincha de Boca terminó con barbarie y
saqueos.” (The day of the Supporters of Boca Junior soccer team ended
with barbarity and sacking.) That day was 12-12-12.
I’ve been
thinking (and feeling) about this for half a year and then some. When
connection breaks down, there is violence. Where there is desire, unmet,
there is often violence. Although it was a day specifically named for
celebration, for the supporters of the famous soccer team Boca Junior, ironically,
the celebration ended in destruction hard to comprehend.
As if a
war of the self, turned external, to a macroscopic gruesome level. I
witnessed the aftermath of it, so unbelievable that it was as if taken from a
horrific movie. Or it could’ve been the aftermath of a very real
war. It left behind a space that was empty and barbarous.
Destruction on a scale that is not understandable.
During
what was to have been a joy march, in celebration of the supporters of Boca
Junior, it ended in utter senselessness. The supporters of Boca Junior
threw rocks, broke into the TV channel station, stole computers, telephones,
anything and everything electronic. Five shops broken into, among which
was a cell phone shop, “Movistar;” a store selling men’s clothes, the Channel
13 TV studio, shattered by large rocks, and everything taken, computers,
telephones; the McDonald’s lights busted, . . kiosks broken into, the shattered
glass of lamps.
And the
people walked around in disbelief . . . stunned, a reminder of the futility of
life. What was proven? There is only freedom to destroy, to
unfetter themselves from the shackles of their own non-ability and helplessness. Is
it violence inherent in this culture, the soccer culture, that incites such
fierce animosity, such energy that leads to destruction? A lack of
respect responding to a lack of respect, leading to more lack of respect? In
the face of such barbarity, such violence, over 150 people were detained, but
then released. What kind of coincidence is it that the present governor of
Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, was once the president of the Boca Junior soccer
team?
The elite
Buenos Aires of Borges saw little place for such atrocity. Borges, brought
up in a bi-lingual household, read books in English as well as Spanish. The
Buenos Aires of Roberto Arlt, that of the belligerent streets, the gritty daily
existence of Porteños trying to negotiate their way through their crazed lives,
resonates more with the pulse of uncompromising Buenos Aires. Even then, perhaps Arlt could not imagine
such violence on a grand scale.
Irreversible, awful, and seemingly unreal.
Is it a question of using power correctly? The
power to be, the power to exist, to use power to create, not destroy; using
power not to hate, but to love.
Mong-Lan left
her native Vietnam, on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Multidisciplinary poet, writer,
dancer, visual artist, singer, and educator, she is the author of five books
and two chapbooks, including her book on the tango, Tango, Tangoing: Poems
& Art (the bilingual version: Tango, Tangueando: Poemas &
Dibujos). Find a complete list of titles here. Mong-Lan has won the Juniper
Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Awards, a Stegner
Fellowship at Stanford University, and a Fulbright Fellowship. She received a
Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. Mong-Lan’s poetry has been
frequently anthologized — in, for example, The Best American
Poetry. Visit: www.monglan.com