CategoryTravel

Bustamante, Tlaquepaque

On the third of this month I took a day trip from Guadalajara out to Tlaquepaque. I only brought my phone with me on the trip, and I just found this poem that I wrote outside an art gallery.

With a bigger laptop screen before me and a bit more time, I made a couple of edits to the original. In the first line, I substituted the preposition por instead of en between pasar and el césped. In the penultimate line, I replaced the indicative vive with the subjunctive viva, to give more of a sense of hope than expectation.

I don’t write poems much anymore. For whatever reason I was moved to that afternoon, and what’s more in Spanish.

…

El obrero puede pasar por el césped
y la obrera puede tocar las caras
de las esculturas en la casa
de Sergio Bustamante
en el pueblo de Tlaquepaque.

Por mi parte poseo las obras de arte
con mis ojos. No hay precios
en ninguna parte por los preciosos
excepto las joyas. El libro se llama
Alquimista de los sueños.

Pues la obrera no las toca de verdad
solo sí las plumas de su trapo.
También las piernas de una mosca
que no mueve durante mi visita.
Espero que todavía viva en esta zona

de aire acondicionado.

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the casual racism

Yesterday while walking along the malecón (esplanade) here in Puerto Vallarta, I sought some shade under a group of tree planters. One of the things I relearned here in Jalisco, including last week in Guadalajara, is always to walk and sit wherever there is shade. (I first learned this from Mookie, walking with him around Berkeley and trying to get him to heel on my left side, but he wisely insisted on walking in the shade instead, where the hot sidewalk wouldn’t hurt his paws.)

There was already some older white guy in the shade, fiddling with something in his hands, maybe his phone or his wallet, I don’t know. When I arrived, he immediately stood up. Walking away, he glared at me, shaking his head.

To the typical tourist here, because of my brown skin and casual clothing, they believe I’m Mexican. And so when I don’t act deferential, they think I’m dangerous or trying to scam them.

This evening after sunset, while the sky continued to turn marvelously nuanced grades of hues, I decided to walk south along the boardwalk from Playa Los Muertos, because I hadn’t been in that section yet. I had already taken a bus up towards the Saturday tianguis, and also walked inland in search of more affordable food, and walked north along the malecón too. So I decided to head in a different direction this time. These restaurants didn’t have tables set along the playa — instead, there were beach chairs that had been rented and now abandoned by los ricos. I decided to sit in one and watch the changing colors of the sky, reflected in the ocean.

— Are you following me? asked a woman, perhaps my age, seated in a nearby beach chair.

— What? No. I have no idea who you are.

— It’s just that I saw you earlier.

I myself hadn’t noticed her at all. She was a complete non-entity to me. But then I realized she might think I’m dangerous. Fair enough. It was getting dark, and the only other people near us were a Spanish-speaking family. Like pretty much all the gringos here, I suspected she had made no attempt whatsoever in her life to learn the language at all. She was a solo female traveler and I was a stranger.

— Would you like me to move? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.

— No, that’s okay. I’ll only be here for a minute.

It’s impossible to escape the racism of my fellow Americans, even when I’m traveling in another country. Last January while having tempura for breakfast (tempura for breakfast!) in a tiny shop in Asakusa, I was having an extended conversation with a group of men a little younger than me. Several minutes in, one of them said:

— Your English is quite good.

I had to pause for a long moment. Was this guy being serious? I mean, it’s true that I had come to the same conclusion about an Asian-Canadian when I first saw him in the hostel, but once he started speaking I immediately realized that he was like me, born outside Asia. We kind of laughed about it when he admitted the exact same thought about me. But this? We had already been talking for several minutes.

— I should hope so. I’ve been speaking the language for fifty-nine years.

No apology, no laughter, let’s just move on to the next bit of racism, this time from his friend, about why he won’t be traveling to the Philippines anytime soon.

— Why? I asked. Because everyone speaks English, because of the beautiful beaches, because the people are so friendly, because it’s so affordable… ?

— No, because my wife said she saw a TV program where they eat dogs.

Oh my god, it was like the Trump campaign all over again.

— I have never in my life known anyone to do that. Maybe in a big enough country, you can find someone who would do that, but I believe it’s extremely rare and the producers paid people willing to do this for the shock value.

He tried to be nice, in his own way, mentioning that he understood that people have diferent values in other cultures, that he himself didn’t think it was wrong, it was more because of his wife.

— I think it’s wrong! I interrupted. I didn’t want to get into a discussion about how I have been a pescetarian for nearly twenty years, having given up meat when Mookie died, but this bit of moral relativism definitely didn’t sit well with me.

He kept on going on until his friend reminded him that I had already said I think it’s wrong and don’t know anyone at all who eats dogs.

They seemed like nice guys, and they were also fellow boardgamers, but dear god. The amount of casual racism among my fellow Americans, I should be used to it by now, I hope to escape it every time I travel outside the country, but somehow it follows me.

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applause please

This evening at Playa Las Muertos in Puerto Vallarta, I watched the sun setting past some couples holding hands and families arranging photos, beyond the footprinted sand, over the waves on the beach and the boats on the waves approaching the beach, at the horizon of the Pacific Ocean. Then when the last bit of its reddening globe disappeared, I heard applause.

There is a kind of applause that is performative. It happens, for example, at the end of a play in a theater or at a rock concert. The audience claps, and sometimes there are several rounds of this, people standing for an ovation, or flicking lighters, and sometimes shouting or whistling. Then the actors come out for several rounds of bows in a preordained order, or the band returns to their microphones to play an encore.

This evening’s applause was not performative. It was not for the sun, which after all was going to set regardless of whether any of us were there to bear witness.

I used to attend Cornell Cinema films frequently in Uris Hall. In 1981, the summer when I was in the pre-college program, I attended perhaps twenty films in a six-week period. Tickets were cheap, the auditorium (unlike the U-Halls — the University Halls where we lived) was air-conditioned, and the movies themselves were interestingly curated. These movies in pre-college and then in college exposed me to a much wider range of films than I had seen before on network TV, HBO, rented VHS tapes, or the theater in isolated small-town Ohio. And then at the end of one of these college movies, sometimes, sometimes but not always, we would clap.

Maybe this evening’s applause for the sunset was a little like this — for ourselves, to express appreciation we were sharing a moment, this singular moment during our mortality, together and never again quite in the same way. I mean it was a bit silly, we weren’t clapping for the projectionist, we were just clapping.

I think the applause, and that for this evening’s sunset, was also spontaneous.

I think it was just spontaneous in the same way that sometimes the passengers on an airplane used to applaud at the end of a routine flight, when the plane’s wheels touched the tarmac. This happened in the years immediately following the 1978 passage of airline deregulation in the US, when there were many people flying for the first time.

We want to do something when something delights us, when we are together, when something happens as it should, even if it may be happening for us for the first time. It is naive, like a child playing peek-a-boo or blowing bubbles with its own saliva, it is beautiful that we should clap.

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of pilgrimages

Last Saturday around 4am, my younger brother-in-law replied to some texts I had sent earlier, where I casually remarked that the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and various waterways could be considered “pilgrimages” (with the word in scare quotes). He wondered what I meant, so I replied with some groggy early morning thoughts, which I’ll organize a bit more here.

For me, a classic pilgrimage involves several elements:

  1. Trail. There is a path, or a set of possible paths. For example, there are defined routes for the Camino de Santiago (I completed the last part of the Portuguese Coastal Way from Vigo). There are also different routes on the Kumano Kodo, although only four or five are recognized for Dual Pilgrim status. While the way of a pilgrimage could be long-trodden foot trails such as these, for me a pilgrimage could be along converted railroad tracks or canal paths, such as the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath from Pittsburgh to Washington DC, or on a natural body of water, such as the Colorado, Mississippi, or Hudson Rivers.
  2. Trial. A pilgrimage involves physical hardship or mental challenge. Such difficulties are relative to individual capabilities; I think many people visit the Holy Land at an age when they are less spry. As for me, because I already tend to travel lightly, at low cost with little baggage, and close to the ground, the challenges of a pilgrimage need to be commensurately higher. On the Camino, I was unaccustomed to walking long distances anymore, it often rained on my hikes, and without reservations I worried whether the public albergue that night would be full. On the Kumano Kodo, while I stayed in comfort and often took public transit, it was challenging to figure out how to navigate rural Japan.
  3. Rarity. Would it be possible to have a pilgrimage every day, for example when traveling to and from work? I think it’s possible to have an appreciation for living those moments — the year when I worked at Bard College and lived in Rhinecliff, I often felt for the beauty of my commute, the Catskills flashing between the trees from across the Hudson. However, I do think in general a pilgrimage should take you out of yourself and your daily life. I don’t know. Last spring I met Antonio, who had walked the Camino de Santiago forty times over the last twenty years, making it his life to help people along the way.
  4. Recognition. When I landed in Narita last month, the customs officer was surprised that I had only one backpack, small enough to fit under the seat in front of me (and at the time weighing only 4 kilos in total). When I explained that I will be walking the Kumano Kodo, he immediately understood. I feel a sense of fellowship and shared experience when talking with others who have walked either pilgrimage. As far as recognition, for both of these pilgrimages are also the stamps in the credential booklet, and at the end the certificate / compostela. On the Kumano Kodo I also collected special goshuin to honor the 20th anniversary of its status as a World Heritage site.
  5. Destination (or destinations). Generally a pilgrimage should involve a destination, something on which body and mind are focused on reaching. In the case of the Kumano Kodo, there are three destinations, a triumvirate of Grand Shrines. But although a pilgrimage should have something to aim for — whether singular or multiple, intermediate or final — for the Camino de Santiago, the Way was more meaningful for me than the End. Or rather, the point of the pilgrimage was not reaching the end, but rather what happened on the journey.
  6. Reflection. This gets to the most important aspect of a pilgrimage, which is internal. Although a physical body may travel with difficulty along a well-known path to reach a destination, what is most distinct for a pilgrimage, as opposed to a hike, is an element of mindfulness. On the Camino de Santiago, I often considered thought about how the parts of the pilgrimage reflected life, and how ultimately you are walking along a path that does not belong only to you. On the Kumano Kodo I learned to ritually purify my hands and mouth, and then bow and clap while I thought about the focus of each kami to be best of my ability.

Like every definition or classification scheme, this is imperfect. Jay, a history professor at my last full-time job, took a personal pilgrimage to retrace the road trip that his father had taken across the United States in the days before the Interstate. Ed, a history teacher at my first full-time job, had a mission to visit every Major League Baseball stadium.

If I compare my own experiences on the Camino de Santiago and the Kumano Kodo, my journey on the former trip was more trying, and the final destination was more clearly defined, and it is more widely known. But even though it didn’t fit my archetype of a pilgrimage as closely, the Kumano Kodo was not a lesser experience.

My brother-in-law in our texts last weekend shared that one of his spiritual teachers dissuades his students from pilgrimages, because they can exhaust your money and health, and that the main practice of mindfulness/meditation can be done anywhere, and the bias of saying one place is more sacred than another is a created concept. I agree that the notion of “sacred” is a created concept, a kind of crutch. But so are mandalas. Words are created too, and I lean on them every day. Words and pilgrimages, even as they are invented, help us in our finitude.

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Dual Pilgrim

Last month I traveled to Japan. The first time I was five years old, when we flew from our home in New York to visit Manila, Dumaguete, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, and LA. I’ve wanted to return to Japan for many many years, because I have specific childhood memories: walking the grounds of the Imperial Palace and seeing geishas made-up and dressed in kimonos; staying at the Imperial Hotel, where we watched sumo on the television while Dad received a massage; eating tempura for the first time on the recommendation of the concierge; and, unlike anywhere else we visited, being surrounded by words I could not comprehend with my eyes or ears.

On my most recent trip I tried food I’d never had before and often found myself in places where the language was beyond me. But as Heraclitus says, you can’t step in the same river twice.

During my journey to Japan, I completed the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage:

2025 1 24WILLIAM ALBA HP

When I visited the office in Tanabe on January 24, they told me I was the first person this year to be certified as a Dual Pilgrim in their office. I think most people elect to complete their journey formally at Kumano Hongu Taisha, but I was traveling west to east and my plan didn’t take me that way. I hold that I actually completed the journey on the 23rd, after visiting the three Shinto Grand Shrines, but then again what is time when crossing the International Date Line, and anyhow the process of certification can happen on a different date: a student doesn’t graduate until Commencement, even if all requirements are completed beforehand.

When I asked for my Philippine nationality to be recognized in their records in addition to the US, the clerk in Tanabe asked me which passport I had used to enter the country. Fair enough — Japanese law disallows their own citizens from holding multiple nationalities. So even though I am a dual citizen, my listing on this website as a Dual Pilgrim of the Camino de Santiago and of the Kumano Kodo shows only one nationality.

This photo links to the Dual Pilgrim website. The URL and text refer to “Willam Alba”, although the photo and certificate spell my first name correctly. Personally, I think this adds to the charm, reminding me how the person who took my picture and wrote my certificate struggled with the spelling of such a common name as mine, even though she could speak English far better than I can Japanese. There’s also something a bit poetic about it, taking the “I” out of my name, a removal of ego from the sign.

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expectations

According to Duolingo, I’ve reached a high intermediate level in Spanish (CEFR B2). I do believe it’s true. The day before yesterday, when Marissa asked me to translate some attention-getting phrases for her class, I immediately saw when Google Translate had mistakenly substituted “hablar” for “decir”; knew as if it were second nature the use cases for those two verbs as well as “contar”; understood her intention to use the affirmative imperative in the second-person plural and corrected the machine translation even with an irregular conjugation; suggested an alternate second line so the lines would rhyme; and removed an unnecessary definite article from the vocative. As an example, I suggested

Alumnos, denme:
A, B, C, D, E

in place of the machine translation:

Los estudiantes me dan
cinco cuatro tres dos uno

Then yesterday at the laundromat (one of my projects this weekend is to determine which thermal fuse or solenoid needs to be replaced inside our dryer at home), I understood what other people were saying to each other in Spanish. In the afternoon, when I read the label on the bag of corn chips I bought from a Mexican grocery store, I simply read the paragraph of text in Spanish, not bothering to look at the English until afterwards, reading everything con fluidez, pausing only once at “totopos”, which I learned from context as the Mexican word for corn chips. 

…

Still, I have much to learn. For example, I believe I don’t fully understand how Spanish speakers distinguish among the meanings for “esperar”. I know it can mean “to hope” or “to wait for” or “to expect”. While these concepts are similar, they are rendered quite distinctly in English. In contrast, in Spanish, these blur one into the other.

I get that a single word can serve many functions in a language, and that often you just know which one is intended from situational or grammatical context. It just seems to me, as a native English speaker, that these three concepts are more ambiguous than they ought to be, when rendered by a single word.

…

The other day I ordered four pizzas from Domino’s, one for each of us, in whatever style we fancied. Our eldest child complained that Domino’s is not great, and their “New York style” is certainly nothing like a slice of pie you’d get at a shop in the city. I absolutely agree, there are better pizza joints in Vegas, even accounting for the general rule that pizza gets worse going from east to west in the US. But the point, I said, is to have a reasonable expectation. Don’t think of it as a pizza from New York. Just accept the food on its own terms, enjoy it for what it is.

I relearned that lesson for myself this morning. I had picked up a Too Good to Go bag from Whole Foods last night. It was my first time trying one here in the States; I had them last fall in London and in Dublin. Getting home, I was disappointed on opening the bag that they were salted caramel and plain brownies, as well as cake donuts, because at my age I avoid chocolate late at night and I much prefer yeast donuts. But after popping a sour cream donut in the air fryer for breakfast, I realized that if I think of a cake donut not as an inferior substitute for a raised donut, but simply as a kind of cake, it’s actually enjoyable. It’s cake, made even better without the usual excess of icing.

…

It’s as though I continually have to wake up to this notion, to relearn the lesson expressed by sayings such as

You get what you get, and you don’t get upset (a phrase I learned when the children were about the age of the ones Marissa now teaches)

Happiness = Reality/Expectations (I believe I first heard this expressed aloud by my friend Marc when were in college. Less commonly I’ve seen: Happiness = Reality – Expectations, but whether expressed as a ratio or difference or more complicated algebraic expression isn’t the point)

Comparison is the thief of joy (in this case, comparison not to what others have or do, but to what you wanted or expected)

This does not imply fatalism nor blind acceptance to one’s situation when seen as as a portion of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference

…

Today I will finish reading Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, which describes the inner peace that comes with accepting that we have mortal limitations. Being the sort of person who needs to wake up every day, I will immediately begin re-reading the book, perhaps on a regular basis.

And I will not be disappointed by how much more Spanish I want to learn. I will continue to enjoy the process in the hope, though I suppose not necessarily with the expectation, that one day I may achieve CEFR C2 proficiency.

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avocados …

I visited Doug and Esta last week on Friday, during my day-long layover at LAX as I flew between Narita and Harry Reid. When they graciously invited me to rest at their house, I had notions of starting a journal about my trip to Japan. But after an hour of preparing to do just that, I flopped sideways on the living room couch. I slept the day away, physically and mentally exhausted from traveling in Japan, where I understand so little: how to navigate inside and between cities on foot and by public transit, how to understand an address when it’s written, let alone how to express the location of my hostel for an Amazon delivery. It takes a toll, to understand basic everyday customs and language — how to use a toilet, to bathe, to order food — in a country where people seem particularly mindful about customs and language.

Seeing the two of them was an enormous pleasure and a great comfort, doubly because only a week earlier we had met in Kyoto. I had been to their home in Culver City only once, and remarked how the city design and architecture of LA being a bit jarring after staying in Japan for 17 days. So my sense of ease wasn’t about being back in California or in the US. It was about being with lifelong friends. Although we see each other all too infrequently, we’ve known each other for over three decades.

They have an avocado tree in their backyard. An avocado tree! Doug wraps each one in its own little silk bag, to protect the fruit from squirrels. Squirrels are clever, I don’t know why they don’t just gnaw away at the stem so they can carry off the fruit to remove the gift wrapping at their own leisure, but the method does work. He wrapped up a few for me to take on my flight, and they had ripened enough for me to enjoy on Thursday and Friday. I wrote:

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the avocados
that were in
my luggage

and which
you had generously
packed
away for me

Thank you
they were luscious
so ripe
and so smooth

Doug sent a haiku as a rejoinder:

I ate the creamy
Avocados with scars from
A hungry squirrel

The avocado, aguacate, alligator pear — I never had one as a child except as a thin green gruel in Taco Bell, but when I went to Berkeley for grad school I discovered I loved them in sandwiches and of course as guacamole. The best store-bought ones most reliably seem to come from Mexico. So many of my favorite foods originate or became popular there — vanilla, chocolate, chili peppers of every variety. Each time I visit Mexico I find more dishes to love, or simply to enjoy well-prepared street foods: tacos de pescado, aguachile, huaraches, huitlacoche.

The generous bounty of Mexico.

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un regreso al hogar

La semana pasada regresé a Bard College para familiarizarme con la currículo del “Language & Thinking Program”, es decir, un programa del lenguaje y pensamiento. La semana que viene regresaré a Nueva York de nuevo.

Me gusta mucho el paisaje en el norte del estado de Nueva York. Para mí es el paisaje de Dios, de verdad, especialmente los lagos Finger alrededor de Ithaca y al lado del río Hudson cerca de Rhinebeck. Cuando mucha gente piensa en Nueva York, piensa en solo la ciudad. La ciudad sí es buena, me gusta también, es mi lugar de nacimiento, pero el resto del estado es tan precioso. Tengo muchos recuerdos como estudiante y profesor allí.

Regresar a Bard College fue algo así como un regreso al hogar. Es el primer lugar donde enseñaba mis propias clases en una universidad. Además, aprendí mucho del estilo de la enseñanza en el Instituto de la Escritura y Pensamiento. Está enfocado en usar el acto de la escritura para explorar y explotar textos y para recurrir tus propias experiencias. Tengo muchas ganas de enseñar en esta manera otra vez.

Hay un dicho que no se puede volver al hogar. Es verdad, con el tiempo hogar cambia y tú también. Hay edificios en el campus que no existió la última vez que estuve allí. El centro de estudiantes tiene una piedra angular con el año 1999 y recuerdo cuando se estaba construyendo frente a los dormitorios donde los profesores nos alojábamos. El edificio es antiguo ahora, se puede ver óxido y otros signos de desgaste. Antes fui uno de los más jovenes profesores, al principio de mi carrera, y la semana pasada fui el más mayor en la sala.

Sin embargo, los métodos siguen siendo los mismos. Hay un objetivo común ahora, un ensayo al final de las dos semanas y media, y pienso que esta tarea es buena. Sin duda será difícil y agotador, tanto para mí como para mis estudiantes, pero vale mucho la pena. Es un lugar para jugar con el lenguaje, es una comunidad verdadera de escribir y pensar.

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un prado

Llevo un mes estudiando en un curso autodidacta. Esta mañana en el video, al pasear el maestro usó la palabra “prado”. ¿Prado? ¿Qué? me pregunté. Él no está en El parque del Retiro en Madrid, acaba de decir que está en Inglaterra.

Aprendí que “prado” es una zona con césped. De hecho, todavía no entiendo las similitudes y las diferencias entre “prado”, “campo”, y “vega”. En mi experiencia limitada, “campo” es más común. Conozco “vega” solo porque vivimos cerca de Las Vegas y busqué el significado. Ahora hay “prado” también.

Para mí, El Prado es el hogar de Las Meninas, una de las pinturas más finas en todo el mundo. En abril me paré mucho tiempo en frente de esta imagen. Algún día debería escribir sobre mis experiencias en este museo …

En fin, “prado” es simplemente un lugar natural. Es como The Alamo o como Los Alamos. Un día más, una palabra más.

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Un camino (una conclusión)

En este blog llevo una quincena escribiendo sobre mi camino. En los títulos, escribí “Un camino” porque para mí este viaje fue solo mi camino. Sería impertinente decir que mi camino es El Camino de Santiago. Es simplemente uno camino, sin mayúscula.

Es un poco irónico que el cuento dura más de dos semanas aunque el viaje real dura menos de una semana. Además, no pude escribir todos mis pensamientos, solo algunos de lo más destacado. Esto es característico del acto de escribir. No se puede decir todo.

De una manera, mi camino sigue. Según algunas personas, no hay tiempo entre un viaje en El Camino de Santiago y el siguiente. Estos simplemente son descansos en un solo Camino de Santiago largo. Puedo ver este punto de vista. Como dije en el final de mi última entrada, no me parece que mi camino terminó cuando llegué a la catedral en Santiago de Compostela.

…

Salí de la ciudad muy temprano en la mañana del 3 de mayo. Traté de tomar un autobús hacia el aeropuerto pero nunca llegó. Vague por las calles y finalmente tomó un taxi. Eso me sentí un poco más como el final, montar en un coche.

Cuando regresé a Madrid, fue como volver a casa. Tomó un autobús a Atocha y hablé con dos estudiantes universitarios de botánica — estadounidenses en su primer viaje a España. Mi hostal no aceptó mi mochila, así que regresé a la estación para tomar un tren Cercanías a San Lorenzo de El Escorial y El Valle de los Caídos. Pero eso es para otro momento.

…

Voy a tomar un descanso. Llevo ocho semanas escribiendo todos los días (excepto 11 de junio) en este blog. Me he demostrado a mí mismo que puedo mantener un hábito de escribir cada día.

Pero escribir en este blog ha sido un poco difícil, especialmente recientemente. A veces me costaba mucho escribir sobre mi camino. Tenía que ser auténtico e interesante. En vez de eso, suelo escribir cualquier cosa en la que esté pensando. Contar una historia exige más estructura.

Además, tengo proyectos que tienen que ver con la escritura, con plazos para completar. En varias semanas estaré enseñando en un programa intensivo de escritura y pensar. En septiembre daré un presentación sobre riesgos en comunicar con extraterrestres. Quiero empezar a una traducción de español a inglés.

Por eso, desde ahora voy a escribir menos a menudo en este blog. Todavía tengo un propósito de escribir todos los día, pero en formas diferentes, no solo aquí. Mi racha de ocho semanas fue un éxito, pero tengo otras cosas que hacer …

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