Teoría del espejo


La vida se mueve deprisa, pasan los días y como sólo somos humanos y no saddhus que levitan por la tierra y se llaman Yogamarandumam, pues a veces se nos olvida detenernos un momento para reflexionar y ser agradecidos. Hablé ayer con un amigo, después que le conté que había soñado con él y me dijo que las cosas en Puerto Rico iban de mal en peor. Que ahora no sólo niñas de escuela intermedia inyectan jeringuillas a sus compañeros de clase por jugarles una broma, sino que también pueden asaltarte y ponerte un revólver en la cabeza tipos que visten con camisa de manga larga un viernes de noche en pleno Condado. Wao. Pues sí, las cosas están jodidas, pero tampoco hay razón para cruzar los brazos y ponernos a llorar o dejar de ser, por un minuto, menos agradecidos.

Esta mañana me levanté y un sol resplandeciente entró por la ventana. Estoy sola en un país que entiendo muy poco, pero cada día que pasa, intento penetrar un poco más. No conozco a prácticamente nadie, con excepción de los estudiantes que veo entrar y salir del edificio donde vivo y las compañeras de piso que tenía, pero que ya se mudaron. Y pues, desde que estoy aquí, en Breslavia, el sur de Polonia, tengo mucho tiempo para compartir conmigo misma.

Almorcé hoy en una cafetería que me gusta mucho y que queda justo enfrente de donde vivo. Y aunque no hay ni un solo plato que cueste más de 20 złoty ($6), la comida es bastante buena y la señora que cocina es alegre y simpática y lo prepara todo con amor. Ahí me senté en la misma mesa de madera de siempre. Me moría de hambre y hasta me comenzó a doler la cabeza esperando que estuviera listo el goulash con pancakes de papa y ensalada. Tenía a Puerto Rico en la mente y las historias que había escuchado y leído en la prensa durante las últimas semanas. Estaba distraída, pensando y cuando devolví la vista a mi nueva realidad polaca, vi a un niño que me miraba firmemente a los ojos.

Era un niñito de unos 6 años. Tenía unos ojos enormes, aunque apagados, y un pañuelo de pirata en la cabeza. No tenía pelo. Hablaba muy poco, sin embargo sonreía bastante. Estaba sentado al lado de su padre, quien le cortaba la carne en trozos y le daba de comer un poco de su sopa. La madre, sentada al otro lado de la mesa, no hablaba. Una expresión vacía y triste ahogaba sus ojos. Le intenté sonreír un par de veces, pero no conseguí respuesta. El niño estaba débil. Pálido. Sin embargo comía, aunque lento, casi cada trozo que le daba el padre.

Cuando llegó mi goulash, comencé a comerlo mientras observaba disimuladamente los movimientos de esta familia. Al poco rato, terminaron sus almuerzos y se dieron a la marcha. La madre le puso una mascarita protectora- de esas de papel para evitar gérmenes- en la cara al niño y cogidos de la mano, desaparecieron.

En ese momento sólo pude pensar una cosa. Ese niño me había impactado, pero mucho… Y de muchas maneras. Creo que finalmente logré digerir por completo la teoría del espejo de Kapuściński, quién decía que es sólo a través de los Otros que logramos entendernos a nosotros mismos. Es decir, los Otros, son un espejo viviente a través del cual se refleja nuestra propia identidad (miedos, alegrías, ansiedades, complejos…)

Los dejo con algo que dijo Oscar Wilde hace muchos años: "A veces podemos pasarnos años sin vivir en absoluto, y de pronto toda nuestra vida se concentra en un solo instante"...

¡Qué disfruten su día!

Hitler, Hallucinogens & Auschwitz


There is a much commented belief that links Adolf Hitler's messianic ideas with his experimentation with hallucinogens. Leyend says that in 1911, Hitler became acquainted with Ernst Pretzsche, a bookseller whose father had travelled to Mexico and spent some time researching Aztec customs, magic, and rituals. This man led Hitler through an exploration of cosmic chronicle, which intertwined the past, present, and future of human destiny aided by peyote consumption.


In 1913 Hitler travelled to the Danube and stayed with a herbalist who prepared a potion of peyote for him. This marked his first transcendental experience into the insight of the mysteries of reincarnation and other supernatural beliefs. Although initially he was not psyched to undergo a process in which he might possibly lose control of himself, Hitler agreed to take the potion primarily because of his interest in discovering the meaning of his destiny within the historical process of his own body chemistry.

Of course it is ridiculous to believe that peyote could possibly be held accountable for the atrocities that would later occur under his power, anyhow it is interesting to think about how this out-of-body experience could have influenced Hitler's twisted views of race and government.

I recently visited two of the largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camps: Auschwitz and Birkenau. Located approximately one hour away from Krakow, Poland, in a town called Oświęcim, this network was dominated by the Third Reich during World War II, and designated as the place of the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe". Nazi Germany's ultimate goal was to completely exterminate these unpure ethnities, or said in Otto Thierack's words (Minister of Justice of the Third Reich): "We must free the German nation of Poles, Russians, Jews and Gypsies".


Between 1940 and 1945, at least 1,300,000 people were deported to these camps. According to data obtained directly from Auschwitz: 1.100.000 were Jews, 150.000 were Poles, 23.000 were Roma (gypsies), 15.000 were Soviet war prisioners, and 25.000 belonged to other minority groups such as Jehova's Witnesses, homosexuals, etc. The SS exterminated the majority of these prisioners in gas chambers and over 1.100.000 were killed in Auschwitz.


Trains that carried these persons from all over Nazi-occupied Europe were led directly to the gas chambers. But first, men, women and children were separated. The two latter groups were usually sent to die immediately, while those considered to be strong and fit to work were exploited in other ways, and obviously most died later on from disease and/or starvation, forced labor, medical experiments, tortures, etc.

It is no mystery that most of these facts are widely known, and it is obvious that the Holocaust is and continues being a popular subject portrayed in cinema, books, and other creative demonstrations. However, the experience of actually seeing and stepping on the largest German Nazi extermination camps has changed me forever, I believe, moreover, provided me with a much direct insight of the maquiavelic manifestations that mankind is capable of inflicting on the Other (and continues doing so).

Some of the scenes that shocked me the most are the following...

1. 20 tons of hair belonging to women prisioners who were shaved completely (genitals included), and whose hair was primarily used to manufacture textiles and other products.
2. 80.000 pairs of shoes were found in Auschwitz previous to the Red Army's invasion (along with suitcases named and addressed, shoe polish and brushes, clothes, pots and pans, eyeglasses, etc.). Evidently, the Nazis were able to destroy most of the evidence of their sickly crimes and tortures, although not all of it.


3. Walls covered with the pictures of men and women who were deported to the extermination camps, together with the dates they arrived and the date they were killed. The longest time period I observed was 6 months.



4. Gas chambers disguised as mass showers. In order to avoid histeria and panic, prisioners were fooled into believing that they would be desinfected before entering the camp. The feeling of death permeates every wall here



5. Dozens of crematoriums

6. And electrified barb wire, which proved to be a common option for people who couldn't take the torture anymore and decided to end their own lives... that is, if the SS guards wouldn't catch them before running into the electricity and send them to standing-up or complete darkness cells in order to prolong their pain.
If you thought Auschwitz was hardcore, Birkenau was even more so! Prisioners here were placed in horse stables and this here, was the toilet designated for thousands of them. Malaria, dehydration, dhiarrhea, and countless other diseases made the queues endless. According to our guide, if someone was not able to make it to the "toilet" in time, the person would have to relieve him or herself in their feeding bowls.
And finally, these were the "beds" in Birkenau. Most often, 3 to 4 prisioners had to share each one.

Whether Hitler's sick and criminal ideas were influenced by his experimentation with hallucinogens such as peyote, mescalin or LSD, and subsequent psychosis (which would eventually lead to his self murder), continues to be debated.

In 1940, however, when LSD was "invented", a psychiatrist & scientist named Tayleur Stockings, who researched the effects of mescalin on schzophrenic patients concluded something extremely interesting:

"Mescaline intoxication is indeed a true "schizophrenia" if we use the word in its literal sense of "split mind", for the characteristic effect of mescaline is a molecular fragmentation of the entire personality, exactly similar to that found in schizophrenic patients... Thus the subject of the mescaline psychosis may believe that he has become transformed into some great personage, such as a god or a legendary character, or a being from another world".
Leaves you thinking...

Una mirada al mundo