INDIO GRIS

INDIVIDUAL MAGAZINE OF GARBAGE COLLECTION 
Nº 36. YEAR 2001- FEBRUARY,  THURSDAY 1
FUSIONED - DIRECTED - WRITTEN AND CORRESPONDED BY: MENASSA 2001

WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPEAK BUT WE DO IT IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES 
SPANISH, FRENCH, ENGLISH, GERMAN, ARABIAN, PORTUGUESE, ITALIAN, CATALAN

INDIO GRIS, IS A PRODUCT
OF  A FUSION
THE BRIGTHENESS OF THE GREY
AND
THE JARAMA INDIAN
THE FUSION WITH MORE FUTURE  OF THE 
XXI CENTURY

Indio Gris

INDIO GRIS Nº 36

1

Week from the 4^th to the 11^th of June, 1976, Buenos Aires, preparing the exile.

Darling:

Today I've been with my father and he told me that, whatever man does,  he will be discontented anyway, then it's better to do what is less work and we can add, between us, what gives us more pleasure.

Every woman is a woman. What do we search for, then? Maybe a space where somebody can call us, Dad, finally man, free from her paws of tenderness and of her mortal mutilation.

Our union reaches its maximum splendour in the delirium of flesh. With you I had my first words about that cursed and wonderful flesh that almost drove us mad.

When we didn't know what to do with love, you announced violence, the revealing, constitutive strike, the poem. The poem (I understood it that way) that violated definitively, the links of love and it held its way towards death, precisely, in the instant of pleasure. You and I, we trembled a thousand times facing the possibility of horror. I was always helped from all my spooks by my father, what about you?

A woman, a woman, a woman and this, yes, I don't know what it means.

2

February 9^th, 1980

Darling:

Have you ever been in a predicament? This predicament which I want  to refer to clearly, and I don't know if I'll be able. Words must be left aside in order that they can raise up to an unknown universe, but that's not enough.

Everything seems to indicate that we must earn money and I already knew  it, but sometimes knowing isn't enough. I'm not saying that I want to commit suicide, but I say that I don't understand. When I have too many written papers without publishing at home, I get nervous, I don't know what to do: if I'm a writer I want to publish immediately, if I'm an editor I have to wait at least a year and a half, after the publishing of the theatre book the publishing house will have to hold on its activities and for two reasons, one is economic and the other is because the energies which are laid on publishing, will go into the psychological field, movement with which  Menassa and his people, this time the majority women, will initiate the Second Foundation of Madrid.

In the previous letter I told you that I have three finished books and one about to finish and I feel as if they were gold ingots and that's my asset and  this way I go through life. The books are named, and I know that I have already told you  in the other letter, but I want to tell you again, Love exists and Freedom. Book which I entirely wrote on the group  experience of Carbonero ( one who sells charcoal)  and Sol (Sun), that is to say, a book  which I wrote at the same time I was writing Psychoanalysis of the Leader and for reasons I ignore I haven't yet published. I sent the first version of the book  in November of '78 to the House of the America's contest, the first version had 102 pages, the second one, in which I corrected all the introduction and took out several poems, was reduced to 63 pages and written this way I sent it to Villa de Rota contest in Cadiz in November of  '79. So a year after, February 1980, I have the book, the four copies I sent to the contest on my desk. Before I continue writing this letter, I'll read one of the complete copies and I'll see if I can find out why this book hasn't been awarded. So long.

Before starting to read I want to write to you that at home, lives are evolving clearly. In general, I spend more time with my children and that, though it may seem a lie, makes me feel good. Javier and Ana Mercedes are having a strong relationship with me. On Saturdays and Sundays, in winter,  I stay at home writing and they are all pleased that I write( they come to salute me in my studio and I come down to dine with them). I live now in the upper floor and I come down to watch a tv programme with the kids or to listen to music in a beautiful phonograph we have in the dining-room and I also come down when the bell rings and nobody opens  the door and I also come down to water the plants; well, in reality, I come down  frequently and in my leisure moments, Saturdays and Sundays I stay at home writing. Yesterday I went to the Argentine Centre to listen to MARIO TREJO reciting his poems; tomorrow, Sunday, he's coming for dinner with Poni and to see his friend Aguirre's anthology, in which he is very well placed.

I, darling, pretend to be a fool and I observe and realise that I won many races and without almost noticing it. Everything gets a little mixed up for me, on Monday I'll put  a copy of the "complete" translation into French of SALTO MORTAL (Somersault) in an envelope. I hope you like it, it was a year and a half's work. I expect that you show it to people who can give an opinion of the French version. And I don't know if it is because of your authority on me or  your authority on poetry, your word it's always very important for me. Thanks.

I have been reading and I tell you about it in the other page:

EL AMOR EXISTE Y LA LIBERTAD (Love Exists and Freedom) is a grandiose book and this is the reason why it hasn't been awarded a prize. Compact writing and at times baroque, it opposes all kinds of dogma, also among many other things the famous leftist dogmas and the not less famous freedom. After finishing reading  Love Exists and Freedom, I was attracted to read other works from the author, and I read more or less half of the other unpublished book, which is called POETA DE LA NOCHE (Poet of the Night), that has around 100 pages. The two first parts of this book, "POEMA DE LUZ" ( "Poem of Light") and "POETA DE LA NOCHE" ("Poet of the Night"), open , with no doubt, a new space for my words. Almost colloquial, almost dammed, cosmic. And then, taken by the poet's unruliness, I read the third unpublished book, that after changing its name several times, I think I have found the appropriate one for the grandeur of these verses: LA MUERTE DE LA MUERTE (The Death of Death). I read half of it, but anyway I can say that with this book, the maturity of the poet begins. Not that he reaches his maturity, but he starts his road towards writing his best verses.

 After there is the novel, and some loose poems that can't find a place in any of the mentioned books, which will end up being together with the next poems I'll write as part of the fourth unpublished book of poems. I realise that a full demonstration of what is happening to me  would be to be able to send you, together with this letter, some material from each of the mentioned books. And  I don't know if that would be possible tonight.

 Excuse me for this intolerable prattle about my writings, but I can't avoid it, is a fundamental part of the predicament of the first page. I have also some economic problems of difficult solution, because in the measure that my poetic reputation grows and why not say it, professional reputation, that culture gives me, the economic credit is less each time. It isn't that I want anybody to worry about this, because I have always had economic problems. The difference is that this time it occurs to me  that not to have in order not to give and not to administer what one owns, is one of the cruellest forms of Narcissism, the rotten individuality of "I will not be bothered by no one so that no one will ask me for anything" dwells  in not to own. Complicated thought that will lead me, sooner or later, to take a decision, for example, to write this letter.

 I had intended to copy for you  the poems from each book which caught my attention, well, I reached up to the second section of the book Poet of the Night which will be formed by five parts: Poem of Light; Poet of the Night; Soldier of the Night, I guard my own thought; Freedom, Divine Treasure, and closing the book, Encounter in Cero Stage, this last part dedicated in such way to:

To the terrestrial, my family.

To the extraterrestrial, my friends.

 In the next letters I'll continue selecting and sending you the best poems of the proposed books.

 We'll send you the missing numbers of the magazine, plus commentaries. Please, Apocalypses needs more commentaries.

 February issue was genial, talk it over with your friends, so that they also subscribe to it. And it isn't asking for alms, the magazine is good, in some circles it's the best production going on in Europe. To read Apocalypses will do us all good. I have never been so full of hope with anything as with the magazine, if it stops circulating, I don't know if my poetic sensibility could bear such disillusion. The succinct phrase could be " subscribe to Cero Apocalypses, collaborate for the poet not to die of sadness".

 Baby, I tell you, the anthology killed me. Those six poems among so many poems, testify for me that the 15 years of active service to poetry, oblige me. I don't know to what, but they oblige me. At my age, other poets like me were finished. I've just started to write and assuredly they will finish with me as they did with all poets, but in my case they will have to put up with me when I'm old, they will have to bear my growing up till I become old.

 Sometimes I feel that I'm poor and sometimes I see my room full of gold ingots, pages like obscure and valuable diamonds and any foolishness places a smile in my mouth.

 At moments, I believe to have discover something in respect to money that segregates me from my contemporaries, other times I think that I have never known what to do with money. For the time being I perform magic, I undress and I tie myself to the wall and I flagellate myself and go to work. And when I return I notice again that it won't cover that indeterminate thing that shows up like necessity and I say to myself, "it will be in another month", and I punish myself even stronger and I go to work. In due time, if I go on working, I'll become an honourable man, I say to myself. And with that shit between my hands, again, I won't know what to do. I told you at the beginning of the letter, I am in a predicament.

 Since two days ago, in addition to my work in the consulting room, I work in the publishing house six hours a day and four on Saturdays, to see if with my six effective hours per day, we can gain some height and if this is not possible in two or three months, we'll have to close down or at least discontinue the activities of the publishing house for a quite prolonged time, and APOCALYPSES is among the activities of the house.

 In spite of what everything looks like, an inner strength tells me that everything is going all right, but I still can't prove it. I'm happy to be able to write to you.

3

We cannot believe this question of uranium because we were lied about the cows.  

4

THE COW WAS ALWAYS
A LITTLE CRAZY

MONOLOGUE BETWEEN THE COW
AND THE MORIBUND
A book by MIGUEL OSCAR MENASSA

 "I am tense, I have appetites, hungers of millenniums and now they'll want to content me with some piece of cheese, excrescence of some pastoral cow, or the same cow beaten to death and quartered on the table, recalling  ancient rites,  where men ate each other, and that was love.
               I stab  my small knife mercilessly into the cow's heart and the cow moos, it tears itself with passion in front of the murderer. I, with surgical precision, separate grease and nerves and I give my beloved one a morsel from the cow's burnt ovaries.
               -We're free, she says to me, while she entertains herself with the noise of her teeth trying to chew the burnt parts of the universe. Later, lighter, making  a mirage of everything, a lie, she says to me with ease:
               A magisterial cow that moos and murders all the time lives in me. Sometimes she seems in pain, but nothing matters to her, she knows that she was born to be beaten to death, and then she shits everywhere and the mad flowers eat what is essential of shit and grow rapidly towards the future."  

5

A PASSIONATE LOVE
AN UNLIMITED DESIRE
AN UNQUESTIONABLE TENDERNESS

A book written by Miguel Oscar Menassa
To get along with your partner in the Holiday Season
and during some of the working days

6

ANTICIPATING
REALITY

Indio Gris