Oases y serendipity

Although I printed out all 32 pages of Fidel Castro's "Palabras a los intelectuales"*, I went to see the original in the Shields library Special Collections room. The booklet itself wasn't impressive - printed in 1961, its pages are no longer white, but a tea-stain color, the text equal to the printout, down to the parenthetical appearances of the applause given when Castro said something that seemed to demand it. (APLAUSOS)

*The title of the discourse given after the suppression/censura of Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal's documentary P.M.

I can't wait to go back to the reading room. It was as I'd imagined, well-lit, but hushed. The back room housing all sorts of precious manuscripts, images, sounds... I shattered the tranquility of that hermetic atmosphere by letting the door, literally, hit me in the ass as I entered. In order to maintain the proper ambiance of the reading room, someone really needs to take a look at those hinges - we can't continue to have that door slamming and interrupting scholarship. After I'd requested my reading material, the librarian solicitously mentioned that there exists an extensive Radical Pamphlets Collection and then sent another staff member to retrieve the document. While she searched, I went to wash the chalk dust off my hands and when I got back, the folder was ready for me. I took it to a back table (all the seats face the reception desk) and before sitting I glanced at the display case -

Western art. Bronzes done in the style of Charlie Russell (as well as some recasts of CMR's work) or Frederick Remington. The first sculpture my eyes fell on was of a group of three - Sacagawea, Pomp and the dog, Seaman. Off and on this weekend, I'd been thinking that perhaps this summer's trip to Bismarck might include research on the project that sprung to mind almost 4 years ago - indigenous woman as interpreter, focusing on two almost mythic and contrasting figures. La Malinche maligned and Sacagawea respected...displaced tribes willing to battle a hegemony and scattered nomadic tribes not really answering to anyone... Both women bought/sold/traded, one mixing discourse and intercourse, the other a chaste expecting mother...translation theory... one embodying the traductora/traidora and becoming la madre de la raza cósmica, one fostering cooperation aided by the deus ex machina, telenovelesca appearance of the long-lost brother...sly seductress in Rivera murals and noble heroine on dollar coin.