The Dream Master Chronicles

The day Pop music lost it's king

It is with great sorrow that I accept the passing of a very personal icon. While the death of Michael Jackson does not compare with the death of a family member, it no less ceases to imprint on my thoughts throughout the day.

A whole day has passed since I heard the news...I hear his songs all day...I see his photos on every webpage...I even sing "Music and me" to myself.

I will no doubt go back and forth forgetting that he's gone. His music lives on and I would like nothing more than to pay tribute someday by including his genius in my videogames (as I originally intended to). Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson...each begetting the next.

When I was only a year old, my uncle natal would joke about getting me a Michael Jackson thriller doll - he was so popular back then that I never forgot his name. Much later I made "Beat it" my favorite song even before I became an M.C. Hammer fan. Rap was kind of the in thing in the early nineties. Michael Jackson came back in force with his "Dangerous" Album and set a new standard for the rest of the decade.

I moved to Mexico in mid 1993 - of the few things that got me out of the depression of moving to another country was MJ's music. I bought all of his music and even rebought the albums. I got a copy, one way or the other, of all his movies and his greatest moments. I know the story of the Jackson 5 by heart (almost) and I've seen the MJ ScareCrow (The Wiz I think it was called) a couple of times.

Funny as my spotlight moments (got graduated and got a job) are marked by the death of Kwai Chang Caine, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Live and let die. I guess it means that it's my turn now to provide a light to those who, like me 16 years ago, are just coming to this world and need a hand.

Thanks Michael, God bless you.

-Juan Pablo Reyes Altamirano

The big f'ing deal

You it's a slightly confusing trick when you get your heart broken and it's from a girl that you knew she was gonna break it in the long end (God that's something about being attracted to the opposite astrological sign). Now I loved there before she didn't send me a valentine, but after she didn't and she still (her mother told me) went out with her boyfriend...I got the message that I don't exist for her. Now I can handle a lot, but being jerked around as though I never existed, in just one week...I draw the line right there. I have no idea how I upset her so. I think she even cut me off 5 days ago. All the while, there are plenty more people that aren't exactly that uncool and...they actually like my arrogance...because it'sfunny in a person like me. That I unshamefully treat the world like a playground - that has got to be the cornerstone of my persona. So what if I kick someone's pride from here to timbuctu - mines has been kicked around for almost 16 years, I deserve to fight fire with fire (and some dirt too). Now there has been a long line of great gals that have wanted to go out with me and I'm granting that finally (if they come along of course). Se here is to living and to loving...I've had with this stupid humilliating game of going after the wrong girl. Siege Heil

A Dream Master in love

Sometimes I think about all the dreams I have yet to make real...and I'll be damned if I can't make most of them come to life. Some dreams are of a lost childhood, a lost innocence. I have not lost more than those out there that suffer poverty and famine every day, but that is why I must work hard to give back as much as I can. Dreams of a lost family, a lost home...I'd rather give them to everyone else who still has a chance to live those things - I've pretty much burnt out my chances to experience them again. I've still got everyone in my heart, I'll just have to learn to live with just that for most of my life. It seems every-time I try to reach out and hand my world to a single person, I do it in vain - as if to say I'll still need it, I'm not free of the responsiblities my gifts bind me to.
We live in a world where all the dreamers are frail creatures and are yet potentially dangerous. I've kept a secret fortwo years and I will continue to keep it: I'm still in love with her. Until the day I have to let go or the day I can be with her. All great dreamers have to sacrifice something or someone - mines just happens to be her, apparently.
Like the comforts of a normal and convenient lifestyle, I have to give her up - I can't deal with the frustration of never having tried to prevail in making the most of myself.

I'd love to have a family with her, a home. But I need my arrogance, I need my pig-headed stubborness - these are the only weapons I've got against an indifferent and merciless world. I will always dream of our children, if at least that.

When you let go

Most of my emotional prblems are mostly one of two things: issues with friends or issues with my pride. In this apex of my young adult life I have two problems coinciding...the loss of my friends to a different schedule and the loss of my pride to that ultimate right of passage - the thesis.
In some ways, this is good, I get hurt and I learns...a whisper of my life some fifteen years ago. It is a period of sporadic and strong nostalgia.
Whether or not I'll look back on this moment as a turning point in my life is up to my emotional stability...whether I want to let my soul die or let go of everything else and walk the walk. I loved my life so far as it has gone, but I must let go (even if that's really the last thing I want to do).

Sore

It's been quite a while since I've written here (mostly due to the fact that I have to do this in a text editor in UNIX.
My world is coming down, more like, crashing down...because there is little left to protect. I have to end this 2 year venture in my thesis; the two year venture in DGSCA and perhaps give one more push in the direction of videogames before I go on hiatus and keep learning.
In all this, I find it hard to reconnect with my solitude. Nothing has really changed except that it's getting overwhelmingly harder to imagine myself leaving DGSCA. It has been my family and my home through this difficult time. It is my final ado to my alma mater as her child. I go on to become a child of the sun, to represent my people in the world and perhaps, in the universe.

When I left the faculty, I wanted a last chance...with my university...with the stars...and I have largely been granted that. In a huge way I've done what I've always dreamed of and more. I have dreamt the dream and now I have to wake up to reality, to make the dream come true. I have loved without uttering a single word of it...I just hope everyone knows.
It's time to say goodbye silently.

An Indigo Gale

To take the lighter side of things seriously, you sometimes have to lighten your conscience...unload the guilt that comes with the thirst for knowledge and control. Power also blinds you to these things, the small things.

After watching my two best friends, of these past 2 years, finally graduate from the faculty...I felt I needed to hold on to something a lost a long time ago. Humility was never a strong part of my character, it is simply thrust upon me as a consequence, like it is now. I have nothing to show for myself as of yet, I am simply another human being walking through a simple and meager life. Not even my experience can speak for me.

It was throughout the ceremony that I found my heart could still bleed...if only for a few seconds. Her name I could still remember, even after what seemed and eternity after I left the faculty. It's amazing to still be attracted to the same person you thought you left behind in the mist so many years ago.

JP, my initials and my nickname, has become symbolic of resistance; of borderline obsession with a dream; of impermeability. Long has it been since I had a softspot for anything that wasn't in my narrow vision of things to come. It happened when I saw Carolina...and it happened again when I saw Elba.

There is still a part of me that's unbound to my dream...a part of me I'm not sure I want to let go.

A heart of ice can fracture but it can also refreeze itself solid if enough time goes by.

The questions I ask myself are: Do I really want to die a stonecold monument to chasing your dreams? Do I really want to die alone?

Is JP to become a bronze statue postmortum? Or does the symbol have a chance to become a pleasent memory in the minds of those who survive and a noble footnote in history?

How many times can a man trip over the same stone?

I feel suffocated because my human interaction has been reduced to it's almost absolute minimum (just imagine when I live alone). I bore of the usual people and I'm getting paranoid that I'm starting to fill in a familiar place among all around me (when that was exactly what I was trying to avoid). It's not to my advantage because I get sick in very tight circles.
I spent a very long time thinking about my situation, about how heat affects that (literally...it's too damn hot). I can't look to my family because I promised something a long time ago and that promise has not been fulfilled. I can't look to my friends for the same reasons.

Drawing energy from oneself is hard, but in my life there isn't much else I can do. It's either that or grow roots (and that's also something I don't want).

My only weight and my only fault...that of my thesis.

At the same time, I feel the burning of my ancestor's longing. Their memory of a once proud race that had nothing but curiousity for the nature of things, even if it meant condemning their own gods to obsoletion.

I speak for the nahuatl, through them I speak for the maya and through both, I speak for all ancient mesoamerica. My strength comes also from the songs of africa, both jungle and desert. For them I can hear the world: the germans, the italians, the english, the french, the japanese, the chinese and all the other distant realms of mankind's spirit. I can even hear and attune to the call of distant India, the cradle of the ancient world.

The spice must flow...

For a while now, I have been suspicious of my uncle Natal's intents withg my brother. I don't like the artificial constructs of society and even less when it is imposed on someone I love very deeply. Obviously this is Eric's moment so it is his decision and his moment alone. Still, the idea that in the near future the extended family will reintegrate into a conforming group...kinda chaps my ass.
All things considered my brother will have to choose what's best for his interests...I just wish he would stop considering the godforsaken interests of others.
On another note, the girl whose namesake has been the key to my heart, has finally contacted me...seems she misses me. I would like to see her again, whatever that may entail. Whether something happens or not, my heart is set on completing the dream...which far outweighs anything or anyone.
Life is meant to be what we make of it, so I look down upon those who say "Go with the flow"...the flow doesn't actually take you anywhere fulfilling. You must become the flow in order to achieve happiness and satisfaction.

Cuban sunset

Today I saw a very nice film, the crowning piece of a series of four movies I rented on a whim (it started with curiousity for The Seeker).
It reflected what life was like back in Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution, a haven for all those seeking good times and good music (there were obviously other scanty things on the streets of havana). But just the music and the dance was worth it and that's where this movie comes in: The Lost City.

It was the mecca of a new empire for the mafia and associates but it was also the border between two very powerful ideals. In the middle is love and artistry, free thinking and free expression.

Everything that makes your life a greater experience is worth defending, but not always equally important. Dreams, not ideals, are what matter most. Dreams give your soul a purpose in the vast bleakness of the universe.
So to wrap up, women and cities are two things you can always lose without too much regret.
Love is a lesson best learned last.

The real McCoy

Once in a lifetime you can turn around and say you've walked a long hard road, side by side with the best. Many things come back to you in that brief moment of retrospection: Ghosts, whispers, songs and even the twilight of an age gone past. Your age has come to pass.
Now a new age has begun, where you are in control of what is to come. Such is life...when you dive into the waters.

As you can guess, a lot of things have happened in a small space of time. I finally left my blog at hi-5 and of course blogger. I never really cared for comments anyways. My friend and professor Igor Valiente Gomez has left his grass roots in the faculty of engineering, after almost 14 years of hard toil. He handed the torch of wrapping up the details of my thesis to another teacher (who was once a member of my generation). In doing so, I had to go see him and meet Rodrigo (the new teacher), walking through what seems centuries of old school halls.

These are the ghosts of retrospection.

Halls that echoed far more distant promises. Once I was promised that I would know what love is, that I would always feel at home and yet another was that I would never feel alone. The thing is...you never stop growing.

These are the whispers

I've almost always enjoyed every new epoch of my life, even if it had little to do with my prospects for the future. Instead of the love that I was lusting since childhood, I got companionship. Instead of a home, I found myself a world that doted the endless void that is the whole universe. You never stop growing, but neither does the rest of the world.