Valdemar

 

Valdemar. A photo he sent me, at the outset of the first  México class (VS185X Songs & Places: México) early in 2013. I'd asked everyone to get a copy of Octavio Paz (El laberinto de la soledad), and also this volume by Frances Toor, Mexcan Folkways. Which no doubt must have seemed strange and maybe a little amusing to Valdemar, whose family came from such deep Mexican roots--which he shared with us in his presence, really--his perceptiveness, a certain reticence, his Valdemar smile--that no understanding could ever be complete, that meanings needed to be touched on, precisely suggested, allowing always for the idiocyncracies of those involved. Better, their indiviudality--just as with Valde himself, the twists and turns in his own life... A back and forth...

As with Benito and Emiliano here (Juárez and Zapata, of course)--that understated playfulness--which Valde shared with us, too...

 I came upon him reading late one afternoon--it was before the class, and he was on the first floor of Wurster, in a nondescript chair, leaning back against the plywood wall--at the far end of that antinomian review space--holding a volume of Erich Fromm, in Spanish. When I saw the book, I felt I'd seen a whole new side of Valde's persona--this mid-century European humanist social thinker--whom I associated with an afternoon's browsing in the philosophy section of the Reed College bookstore--the name seemed from a long time before, I associated Fromm with the endless 1960's discussions on the meaning of life, in a time when people were moving back to the land, establishing communes, looking for new ways to live together.

Together, that was the word--On Being Human--always the inclusive view, a concern for each other, Valde's own quest. With family, with all of us...Cats included...

He told me about a film once--a favorite, I could tell--El lado oscuro del corazón. It fits here, too--the way Subiela created that atmosphere of closeness--the lines from the Girondo poems, rhetorical, but always pointing to a shared meaning--filmed in the intimate world of an Uruguayan bordello--in the public room, where the characters gathered--came to know each other. A strange conceit, really--to find true love in this way--but that thought was behind Fromm, too. We live in a fallen world, Adam and Eve together, on a quilted bed, floating forever on the waters of a quiet river...

¿Cómo impedir que corre el  manso río...?

_____

Valdemar was there with us on the night of the last México class (see With Vreni post), and in looking for the photo above--I found this poem, which he sent to Vreni and me following. Let me post it as a way of reaching out to Valde at this time.. a mandarle siempre gracias...

Este soneto lo escribieron anoche ustedes, Tony y Vreni. Yo, fiel al destino, lo transcribo. 

Nos están borrando, dijo entre llantos

borran nuestro idioma, nuestros remedios

nuestras comidas y con sus asedios

borran nuestros sueños y sus encantos.

Nos están borrando, gritó entre cantos

e hizo así de sus lágrimas sus medios

y con su voz nos llevó hacia otros predios

donde la guitarra conjura espantos:

Ojalá que te vaya muy bonito

de las luces que dajaste encendidas

todavía alumbra aquel farolito

y de noche hay un pobre venadito

que a tus brazos se acerca a escondidas

para amarte en sueños poco a poquito.

Valdemar