Sueño de una Noche de Verano de William Shakespeare

ROBÍN (PUCK)
Esta noche el rey aquí tiene fiesta;
procura que no se encuentre a la reina:
Oberón está cegado de ira,
porque ella ha robado a un rey de la India
un hermoso niño que será su paje;
jamás había robado niño semejante.
Oberón, celoso, quiere la criatura
para su cortejo, aquí, en la espesura.
Mas ella a su lindo amado retiene,
lo adorna de flores, lo hace su deleite.
Y ya no se ven en prado o floresta,
junto a clara fuente, bajo las estrellas,
sin armar tal riña que los elfos corren
y en copas de bellotas todos se esconden.

HADA
Si yo no confundo tu forma y aspecto,
tú eres el espíritu bribón y travieso
que llaman Robín. ¿No eres tú, quizá?
¿Tú no asustas a las mozas del lugar,
trasteas molinillos, la leche desnatas,
haces que no saquen manteca en las casas
o que la cerveza no levante espuma,
se pierda el viajero de noche, y te burlas?
A los que te llaman «el trasgo» y «buen duende»
te agrada ayudarles, y ahí tienen suerte.
¿No eres el que digo?

ROBÍN (PUCK)
Muy bien me conoces:
yo soy ese alegre andarín de la noche.
Divierto a Oberón, que ríe de gozo
si burlo a un caballo potente y brioso
relinchando a modo de joven potrilla.
Acecho en el vaso de vieja cuentista
en forma y aspecto de manzana asada;
asomo ante el labio y, por la papada,
cuando va a beber, vierto la cerveza.
Al contar sus cuentos, esta pobre vieja
a veces me toma por un taburete:
le esquivo el trasero, al suelo se viene,
grita «¡Qué culada!», y tose sin fin.
Toda la compaña se echa a reír,
crece el regocijo, estornudan, juran
que un día tan gracioso no han vivido nunca.
Pero aparta, hada: Oberón se acerca.

PUCK: The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

FAIRY: Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?

PUCK: Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Grandes principios: Matar a un ruiseñor de Harper Lee

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich.

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.

When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail.

Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-itcoming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father’s profound distaste for the practice of criminal law.

During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’s education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they

knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

We lived on the main residential street in town— Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.

A Hallmak Card

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Posiblemente la mejor canción del mundo

Ohhh...

Oh her eyes, her eyes
make the stars look
like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair
falls perfectly
without her trying
She's so beautiful
and I tell her everyday

Yeah I know, I know
when I compliment her
she wont believe me
And it's so it's so
sad to think she
don't see what I see
But everytime she asks me do
I look okay
I say

[Chorus]

When I see your face
there's not a thing
that I would change
Cause you're amazing
Just the way you are

And when you smile
the whole world stops
and stares for a while
Cause girl you're amazing
Just the way you are.

Her lips, her lips
could kiss them
all day if she'd let me
Her laugh, her laugh
She hates but
I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful
and i tell her
everyday

Oh you know, you know
you know
I'd never ask
you to change
if perfect is what
you're searching for
then just stay the same

So don't even bother asking
if you look okay
You know I say

[Chorus]

The way you are
The way you are
Girl you're amazing
Just the way you are

Amen to that!

When you look at another person's behavior (and please, do look at what he does, not just how he explains what he does. A man with a good and different explanation for each of the five times he's stood you up is a really good...explainer. Did you want to marry a world-class explainer?), the question will arise: Is it character or circumstance? Did he do what he did because of who he is, at his core, or was he pushed to that behavior by circumstance? Guess what? Pretty much, after 18, it's character, every time. It's true that under extraordinary circumstances—baby trapped under car, grandmother stuck in burning building—you might see some hitherto unsuspected heroism emerge in someone you thought had not a drop, and even so, what you learn from that is: He had a drop of heroism in him, after all. But it is also true that even a man pushed to robbing a bakery for bread for his starving child will show who he is by how he conducts himself during the robbery.

It's not true, despite what the advice columnists often write, that a man who leaves his wife for you will eventually leave you. It is true that a man who leaves his wife for you is capable of leaving you, and you would be smart to look at how he conducted himself during his divorce because no matter how crazy, bitter, unreasonable his ex was or is, his behavior reveals his character. You cannot behave cruelly without having some cruelty in your nature (and most of us do). An angry man who honors his obligations gracefully, a man who shows up on time to see his kids, even when their mother behaves badly—that man is a good bet.

I've also discovered that the Virtuous have their downside. A man who cannot face his own flaws or acknowledge the ugliness (not horrors—just normal human flaws: envy, jealousy, pettiness) in his nature, a man who will patiently explain, for days on end, that you should not be hurt by his behavior because he's a good guy who didn't mean to hurt you—may actually prove to be worse company, in the long run, than a guy who behaves badly from time to time and admits it. (Or at least, that's how it is for me. Deeply, Determinedly Virtuous people scare me.) As it turns out, I prefer the full boil to the long simmer and I wish I'd known it sooner.

By Amy Bloom
O, The Oprah Magazine
From the October 2008 issue
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/

Con la que está cayendo

Todos deberíamos leer este libro con 18 años y entenderlo**

Continueamente me acuerdo del que yo considero el mejor libro jamás escrito sobre bolsa e inversión. No es casualidad que viniera recomendado/impuesto por uno de mis dos jefes favoritos del mundo, que es además una de mis personas favoritas del mundo junto con mi otro jefe favorito (ahora pienso la suerte que he tenido en la vida, no con los maridos pero sí con los jefes) que también es una de mis personas favoritas del mundo. También he tenido varios jefes cabrones que me las han hecho pasar canutas... Pero no sé si es mejor tener un buen curro con un jefe cabrón o un curro cabrón con un buen jefe. ¿Qué os parece?

Cuenta Peter Lynch que fue a precisamente al final de los años 20, el momento en el que el mercado bursátil empezó a ser percibido por la gran masa como una inversión conservadora y segura, una "inversión prudente" le llama él, que hasta el momento había sido considerado terreno de temerarios, cuando ese mismo mercado, fuertemente sobrevalorado, se convirtio en una ruleta más que en una inversión. En palabras literales de Lynch, "generalmente la bolsa se percibe como una inversión segura en el preciso momento que no lo es".

Otro de los grandes, Warren Buffet, ha dicho: "En lo que a mí conciene, los mercados (bursátiles) no existen. Están ahí solo para servir de referencia para ver si hay alguien dispuesto a hacer alguna estupidez." Refiriendose a que lo que de verdad existe es el negocio y el trabajo diario y el comercio y los beneficios reales de la gente real que, en efecto luego traspasarán a un plano financiero y se multiplicarán o no en cifras macro, pero que siempre parten de un intercambio real de trabajo, bienes, servicios y dinero.

Hay un pasaje de este libro que me llamó la atención la primera vez que lo leí, y como puede ver el lector del blog, sigo recurriendo, cada oportunidad que me brinda la situación económica.

Traduzco sin demasiado cuidado: Estoy acostumbrado a oír que la crisis del 87-88 es un doble casi exacto de la crisis del 29-32 y que estamos al borde de entrar en una nueva gran depresión.Y de hecho la crisis del 87 es en muchos sentidos similar a la del 29. Y qué? Si volvemos a entrar en una gran depresión, no será porque se hunda la bolsa, más de lo que lo fue la primera (el hundimiento de la bolsa es un reflejo, no una causa). En aquellos días sólo el 1% de la población tenía carteras de acciones. La primera gran depresión sucedió por una ralentización de la economía en un país en el que el 66% de la población activa trabajaba en el sector manufacturero, el 22% en la agricultura y en el que no existía la seguridad social, desempleo, planes de pensiones, seguros, fondos de garantías ni nada parecido. Hoy en día sólo el 25% de la población activa se ocupa en la fabricación de bienes, la agricultura supone menos del 3% y el sector servicios, que ha estado creciendo sistemáticamente durante las épocas expansivas y recesivas supone más del 70%*. Al contrario que en los años 30, hoy en día la mayor parte de la población tiene una casa en propiedad y en muchos casos esas casas valen hoy mucho más que cuando se compraron - cierto que unas cuantas no, cierto, pero son la minoría más minoritaria; la mayoría de las familias cuentan con dos sueldos. Así que si estamos al borde de una gran depresión, no será en absoluto como la de los años 30.

Este párrafo fue y sigue siendo una epifanía para mí. La Gran Depresión americana de los años 30 tuvo a la gente sin comida que llevarse a la boca, sin techo bajo el que dorminr, sin trabajo, sin nada. Y esa misma sociedad salió de aquella profunda pobreza, igual que se ha recuperado Alemania de las dos guerras, Polonia e incluso Rusia de la catástrofe comunista. Japón de todas sus maldiciones, y el Sudeste asiático de las suyas. De hecho los únicos países que han permanecido sumidos en la pobreza crónica y pertinaz son los que se han mantenido fieles a la tiranía del comunismo.

Pero se salió del 29, se salió de la del petróleo, se salió de la liberalización de tipos de interés, se salió del fin del monopolio (virtual) de Telefónica, se salió de Internet, se salió de la reconversión, se salió del primer imperio del PSOE, hemos salido de dos guerras mundiales, del telón de acero, de los 80s, de la pubertad, hace falta que siga?

Una de las muchísimas cosas divertidas de este libro es esta lista de estupideces que dice la gente sobre la bolsa; sólo una muestra:

1. Si ha bajado tanto, ya no puede bajar más

2. Ha subido muchísimo, ya no puede subir más

3. Sólo 0.5€ por acción, cuánto puedo perder?

4. Ya subirá

5. Cuando vuelva al precio de compra, vendo

Y mis favoritos:

Si una acción que he comprado sube, debe ser que tengo razón

Si una acción que he comprado baja, debe ser que me he equivocado

Dice Peter Lynch que el único motivo por el cual si hoy compro una acción y el precio de ésta mañana ha subido es porque ha habido alguien dispuesto a comprar por más precio que yo. Y biceversa. El que tenga entendederas que entienda.

Y aún es posible que de esta nos vayamos efectivamente al carajo, que se acabo el mercado libre, los coches de gasolina y el regaliz. Torres más altas han caído, decía siempre mi madre. Y quizá no le falte razón.

* Son datos de EEUU en los años 90

** ¿Porqué en el colegio te obligan a leer filosofía y poesia y no esto? No lo entenderé JAMÁS!!

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Kindle is not kinder

Recientemente el oscuro objeto de mi deseo ha decidido regalarme su e-book; al día siguiente Titina me manda un mensaje ofreciéndome un Kindle que se ha encontrado tirado en un avión. Claramente es una confabulación internacional. He estado queriendo uno de esos cachivaches no sé cuántos años y ahora de repente se alinean los astros para hecerme llegar varios de golpe....

Y es entonces que me pongo a mirar cómo de más baratos son las desgargas para kindle que sus homólogos en papel. En una descarga no hay papel, no hay empleados de la imprenta, no hay transporte, y por tanto no hay camión, ni gasolina, ni conductor, no hay almacén, no hay tienda, no hay etiquetas, ni cajita de cartón ni plástico, ni empleado de correos.

La copia de Kindle es 4€ más cara que la copia en papel! Pues si que hemos avanzado. La geta de los comerciantes se pelea con pirateo y que se metan sus precios por sus adorables posaderas.