MY TEARS

You said:
– What is the sign of the way, O dervish?
– Listen to what I say
and when you hear, Meditate!
This is the sign to you:
the that although advances,
You’ll increase your suffering.

In a May 1990 edition of the newspaper La Verdad de Murcia you can find can find the following:
“The Hero’s Journey par excellence is the journey to the kingdom of hell”
Jose Ortega.

I think it’s something I had said during the presentation of my first novel. Gilgamesh and death.
Recently, during my participation in a Sufi dihkr, Yusuf, my friend and connoisseur of oriental literature (the term refers to the cuneiform texts of Mesopotamia) and the philosophy of all ages, said in reference to me, that a certain group of neighbors oppressed by a multinational was fortunate to have on its side the “warrior Lugalbanda” (a god mixed with men and king of the city of Uruk).
It s really nice that somebody say about you such a thing, and in fact my corporate logo is a war helmet with a slogan that says “to live is to fight”, but few truly know the sacrifice that the struggle for justice and dignity (pardon the bombast ) holds.
When I was in the Naval Military School, Iived in a world of discipline and a in a sense of physical adventure, and I liked its intensity. But when my friend Paco Casado died and was eaten by fishes while living one of those adventures, I saw the other side of risk, which is nothing more than the simple and powerful death. It is death that gives real value and authenticity to the adventure.
Something similar happens in my paper war, that by the by and in theory is a war without death in sight but where tears are secured. No the fake tears that can be seen in a film because they are written in the script, but of despair, even when my job is to give hope to others.
The terms injustice, humiliation and despair are no more that sounds not remotely able to describe what I am forced to live each day. You have no idea what lies out there, the perfect evil that drives above and the levels of corruption, baseness and arbitrariness that can reach a machinery that have the misfortune to know well. Perhaps these phrases sound too abstract and vague: It is intentional and I should not be more explicit if my desire is to continue earning the bread with an honest job, because I have already suffered several disciplinary files from the lawyers profesional organization (Colegio de Abogados) , one of them for alleged, non-existent and risible injury to the dignity of the profession (which encompasses behaviors such as substance abuse or chronic alcoholism) that demonstrate the dangers of staying free and independent. As a hint, I will repeat here my old phrase that believing in the existence of justice in Spain is like believing in the existence of Santa Claus. Everything is rotten, everything is a lie and false. However, this is not a speech against the system, but a simple description, rather sentimental, of how I feel.
As I stated in my lecture THERO’S JOURNEY AND PRIMITIVE SPIRITUALITY, the plan that life has in store for each of us, and our individual mission, is to become heroes. It sounds epic, it but the only real function of de here help the weak. To achieve this state you must pass through the dark forest of doubt and despair, but what I live every day goes beyond a forest, it features the true hell and there is no corridor leading kindly to the exit.

When we Minister is an immoral, the Director General an outlaw, the senior official a brigand and the provincial chief a pickpocket, and when you see so clearly s their crimes, you’ll tell the Prosecutor or the judge. And it is then, upon receiving the first sentence, when you realize the kind of world in which you are actually living. And when the courts and prosecutors continue spewing their decisions as the green mush of the little girl in THE EXORCIST, then simply you get the idea that there are no heroes, no Lugalbandas, nor place for romantic epic or stories of knights, because machinery grinds you whatever you say or do.

 

Amado Nervo, Mexican poet, wrote with great foresight that is lawful for us to expect everything from life, because life is a river full of possibilities and gives the same to fill a big or small r skin bottle. At the same time it can be said that the criminal machinery of the system is like an untreatable and full of impossibilities mill wheel, and therefore gives the same trample a big hero to a little hero. Those stories of film in which the boy tat seemed defeated rises and finally triumphs, does not correspond to my reality. All I can say in my favor is that I have trodden a hundred times and as many I have risen again, without hope but rage, knowing it was just to return to receive a new caning me to lie on the ground, face bruised and bleeding even in figurative language.
I took me several days of August to write a judicial complain to prevent a neighborhood of humble and good families go to the ground so that speculators secretly allied with the government can build in the spot a luxury development. Last night I finished very early and I slept three hours. I’ve gone over every nuance, every comma, every word, every phrase. I re-read a hundred times the thirty pages to make it perfect. The problem is that, at this same matter, I have already done with my first complain and with the appeal, which were resolved with sentences whose reading causes a mixture of disgust and shame.
The problem is to fight to exhaustion for a just cause, and take care of every hue, cross out and rewrite, just to see how these worthies who wear togas dictate those judgments that would deserve a zero on a first course practice. The problem is to spend the night writing, without even dinner, knowing or reasonably fearing that it will not help because big or little hero does not matter.
The situation is like that of a young poet who comes before his Lord and recites an exquisite, large and full of subtleties poem, and when awaiting approval the responds with a burp and terminating the audience. What turns tragic what is no more that a pure problem of law interpretation, s with the moral turpitude and arrogance of those who decide with a belch.
. Is this what moistens my eyes every time I get a sentence. To live is to fight, yes. The epic is beautiful, true. But these monsters are neither those of Disney, nor folktale nor medieval legends. They have no face or a stray flake on their steel skin where introduce the sword.

Another poet, Baudelaire wrote: “In life you must always be drunk. Of wine, poetry or virtue. At your will, but be drunken“. At this point I have no doubt what is my drunkenness. But the spirit of justice, or rather the craving for it, tastes worse than ash on my palate.

José Ortega

Lawyer & writer