Yoshitoshi's World

I loved it!

Pedro Almodovar rocks; as usual… he is one of my favorite film makers/producer/directors. Gracias Pedro!

Even though the movie is placed in a town in Spain (close to Madrid), it showed a lot of the same traditions we have in the mother land = Costa Rica, and taking into consideration that my family’s roots are from Spain even more…

In a strange sense I have forgotten or tried to forget some of the traditions that make me somewhat the person I am today… perhaps because pain-time-distance makes us forget about things, maybe because I am in a place where traditions are not too important, where family at times becomes second (and I don’t really have a family here anymore), where being “old fashion” is sort of weird and un-cool thing… not sure… all I can say that this movie touched me in a way I haven’t been touched in a while and it took me back to times/places when I was with my mother, my family, back in Costa Rica.

So many memories, some good, some not too good, some great, some bad… When I thought I have forgotten… they all came back to me… or I returned to them...

The part in the movie that really got me was when Penelope Cruz sang a song her mom thought her when she was a kid… Volver by Carlos Gardel. It was a shock to me… I don’t remember a lot of things of when I was a kid, but this scene took me back to the time when my mother was teaching me that song because Carlitos Gardel is like an institution in the Spanish speaking culture and Volver was one of my mother’s favorite songs… and now I feel all these years have been a lost between my mother and I between my family and I between my traditions/roots and I… maybe it is time to Volver not so much return home or return to things that are already lost, but time to volver to the person I really am (volver = return). And in honor to this feeling here it is Volver by Carlos Gardel and its translation:

Yo adivino el parpadeode las luces que a lo lejos van marcando mi retorno... Son las mismas que alumbraron con sus pálidos reflejos hondas horas de dolor...Y aunque no quise el regreso, siempre se vuelve al primer amor... La quieta [vieja] calle donde el eco dijo tuya es su vida, tuyo es su querer, bajo el burlón mirar de las estrellas que con indiferencia hoy me ven volver...

Volver... con la frente marchita, las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien...

Sentir... que es un soplo la vida, que veinte años no es nada, que febril la mirada, errante en las sombras, te busca y te nombra...

Vivir... con el alma aferradaa un dulce recuerdo que lloro otra vez...

Tengo miedo del encuentro con el pasado que vuelvea enfrentarse con mi vida...Tengo miedo de las noches que pobladas de recuerdos encadenan mi soñar... Pero el viajero que huyetarde o temprano detiene su andar... Y aunque el olvido, que todo destruye,haya matado mi vieja ilusión, guardo escondida una esperanza humildeque es toda la fortuna de mi corazón

Volver... con la frente marchita, las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien...
Sentir... que es un soplo la vida, que veinte años no es nada, que febril la mirada, errante en las sombras, te busca y te nombra...
Vivir... con el alma aferradaa un dulce recuerdo que lloro otra vez...

I can almost see the flicker of the lights that in the distance mark the way of my returning…They’re the very ones that lit up, their reflections pale and misted, many hours of deep pain. Though it was not what I wanted, first love makes one always come back again. The quiet [age-old] street where once the echo told me: Her life is yours, her love is yours to earn, under the stars that mockingly look on me, and now in their indifference see me return...

Return… with my forehead all wrinkled, my temples turned silver by time’s falling snow…

To feel… that one’s life is a twinkle, twenty years hardly reckon, and two fevered eyes beckon, in shadows forestall you and seek you and call you...

To live… with the soul firmly clinging to one sweet remembrance that makes me weep so...

I am frightened of the meeting with the past that is returning to confront my life all over. I am frightened of the nighttimes when my dreams are linked and fleeting and old memories come to stay. And yet the traveler who’s fleeing sooner or later must stop on the way…And though oblivion, which destroys all being, has killed my old hopes, ripping them apart, yet I keep hidden a humble hopeful glimmer that is the only fortune there is in my heart.

Return… with my forehead all wrinkled, my temples turned silver by time’s falling snow…
To feel… that one’s life is a twinkle, twenty years hardly reckon, and two fevered eyes beckon, in shadows forestall you and seek you and call you...
To live… with the soul firmly clinging to one sweet remembrance that makes me weep so...