Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

— Innocence should be suffocated if it fools itself. You wish you were Buñuel, but you’re Viridiana, a fool like Viridiana. You dream of palaces for beggars, but you wouldn’t toss them a dime in the streets, yet you offer to help crooks like that dominatrix who works at the Dungeon, feeding off human frailty! What happens in the bedroom affects the whole world. Sexuality and life are one in the same. If you keep believing in your fantasy world, someday you’ll wake up and it will be too late.

— When authorities back you, I doubt. No authority backed Pessoa. Women — I always say — when I read Simone de Beauvoir — I think — she’s a good writer, but she woulda been a much better — much better mother. That’s what I think of you, a good writer, but you woulda been a much better — much better mother. You coulda given birth to a great man. You chose the wrong career. You shoulda been a mother.

— And you, you shoulda been a woman.

— I won’t deny it. I woulda loved to be a mother.

— You’re green with envy.

— Envy is a splendid sensation, but I would never envy you. Envy involves someone greater than oneself. I woulda never published with lowlifes.

— That was a reprint. It can be reprinted a thousand times.

— I am an elitist. But I tell you, don’t brag that your book was published by Yale because Foucault recommended it. Nobody believes it anyway.

— Don’t tell me what I should say.

— I don’t care about authorities, institutions.

— I don’t care about institutions.

— Yes, you care. Institutions don’t care about you. But, yes, you care. They throw you a bone, they publish your book, or they publish my journal. But those are stark naked bones that wouldn’t draw a maggot.

— You wish you were a woman like me.

— I would love to be a woman, but not like you. I woulda been a mother. Remember, the fact that the institutions recognize you, doubt of yourself, start running. The translation prize got you the publication.

— It was the merit of the work.

— Merit is never recognized until it is too late.

— A romantic notion for unknowns to cling to. Many writers, the majority, have been recognized. Joyce, Ibsen, I don’t have to name them.

— I guarantee you a poem published in my journal will give you more recognition than all your books published in Spain.

— I don’t need your favors. Who are you? Am I like you? Would you see me like I am?

— You woulda been a better, a much better mother. I coulda been a Dostoevsky, a Schopenhauer, instead I’m an Uncle Vanya.

— Poetry is the art of losers. The people who win are losers. The more you lose, the more you can win.

— That’s not original. Original was the original sin. After that we have all been losing terrain. Rapidly.

— I’m nobody, and you are nobody too.

— But I’m not just anybody, not just anybody is nobody, anybody wishes he were somebody like nobody. Nobody takes somebody’s place and throws anybody off nobody’s throne. Understand me. Something is rotten in the state of the arts. The masses are in decadence and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. When the masses revolt, the masses are at their peak. I yearn for Danton, Napoleon, Joan of Arc — for some black man to rise and revolutionize me from horns to skirts. Make me better than I am. That’s what I want to be — a Don Quixote de la Mancha — a gentle, noble soul who rises up in madness. That’s what keeps the people healthy. Damn it. It’s important to understand the meaning of taste.

— Taste makes for the quality of life.

— Taste makes for bad taste too.

— It’s a principle of organization: who in the world belongs together and how do we recognize each other. Give the people the best, develop their taste, teach them to think. Many great thoughts come from the thought of a people. And many great men come from the thought of a single man.

— From his yearnings.

— If you yearn like I do, believe me, you’ll go much farther than me.

— How far have you gotten?

— To the greatest yearning. Yearning for hunger like a rat’s mouth and satisfying myself with a piece of cheese that gives me bad breath. In other words, I eat it all up.

— Well, tell me, now whattaya gonna do?

— Wait for my liberty to come. It’ll fall out of the sky like a gift from the gods. I’ll make your life so, so impossible. Guerrilla warfare here and there. Until you grant me my independence.

— Who is the stronger? The bamboo that bends in the gale or the elm that won’t.

— The one that won’t — no matter what — has dignity.

— What is dignity?

— The measure of liberty.

— I mean, which is stronger: the island that sells itself and eats well, or the one that stands tall and dies of hunger and solitude.

— Which is freer?

— Neither one is free. Everything belongs to something. Solitude goes wherever you go, traveler. But like Don Antonio Machado used to say, if there’s wine, drink wine, and if there’s no wine, what’s your problem, brother, drink the water.

— Is this all you brought me?

— You asked me for the menstruation piece.

— I need more. Something longer. Everything you read me the other day. This is full of English. I want more Spanish. Mixing languages like this is typical of your social class. It’s your hang-up, not mine. You discuss philosophical issues in English and leave your feelings in Spanish, reinforcing Hispanic stereotypes — all sex like Almodóvar, all tango — and you leave all the cerebral, intellectual speculations to the Anglo-Saxon tongue. How insulting to Hispanidad!

— But Cenci, you only asked me to bring the menstruation scene.

— But I don’t want them to say I’m publishing you because we’re friends.

— Them who?

— Olmo-Olmo.

— You care what the sophist says?

— No, but it doesn’t help. He ripped you apart the other day.

— For god’s sake —I said— leave her alone.

— She’s all washed up. Talking about gobbers and scabs and snot and lashes and tears. Why doesn’t she pick a theme to inspire change in mankind? What a waste of talent to talk about human waste. What’s she trying to prove?

— She must have an ace up her sleeve.

— She thinks dialogue is everything. She should work on description. Take someone’s face for example and describe it. Because she loses track of her themes.

— And you lose track of your characters.

— Mine is an allegory of lost souls. You know what a dead man did to me? He copied my narrative techniques.

— Schizo-realism.

— My school is not called Schizo-realism. It’s called Story Workshop.

— Schizo-realism.

— Quit calling it Schizo-realism.

— I think it’s more original. I just don’t like the psychological reference.

— Cut it out. The dead man was plagiarizing my narrative technique. A solemn voice rose over a shrill one. Then a faint whistle replied with an awkward flute, a real amateur. The guy wasn’t dead yet, but he was about to die, so I didn’t want to accuse him of plagiary.

— So what did you tell him?

— Nothing, I let it go. After all, he was about to die and I still have a career ahead of me. You scribbled something out here.

— I already told you why. It’s one thing to publish a book as a book. A fragment is another story.

— What did it say here?

—“Today I woke up happy. Something transformed me last night.” I thought it was over-the-top to publish as a fragment. The dream really starts with: “It was a classroom. Jabalí was teaching.” I was sitting in the first row at my desk. All the students were preschoolers, except me. I was the oldest and felt self-conscious because I had my period. My uniform was a knee-length chiffon jumper, the kind that swirls up in the wind. I was wearing bobby socks and moccasins. My hair was cut like Audrey Hepburn’s. I was taking an exam on Rubén Darío. Jabalí came over to read my exam and whispered in my ear: