Curious Hugo

poeticliaison asked: Thank you for your response to my writer's block question! I've just been spending the past few days reading a lot under the trees in my backyard and it seems to be helping.

My pleasure. I think that writer’s block is nothing but a way of your creativity saying: “hey, the well’s running low, it’s time to process stimulus in” so leave the production for a while and focus on finding inspiration in little things. Soon enough, you’ll get the call back, and the writing will flow.

lalalava asked: thank you for the follow<3
your blog is beautiful

My pleasure. I like the sincerity in your posts. Thanks for reading mine as well. I’m honored.

I decided to get rid of him on a Friday night. I had gone through much trouble to arrange for mostly interesting people from the New York publishing scene to be present at what I thought was an intellectually stimulating evening and he was ruining it.  One by one,  editors, writers, journalists, and critics had made their presence evident, sharing interesting stories, not only related to the pieces featured on their prestigious newspapers and magazines, but also about their normal lives; trivial information that helped making the event human and laid-back.

The editor of the online version of one of the oldest magazines in the city was focusing on the most discussed articles on their website; among them, one about the financial aspects of the new co-ownership of the Mets and another one about the death of the “Godfather of rap”. A senior editor of another influential magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture had left work behind and was sharing a story about riding her bike on a full tummy. She was also telling us about how she had “extracted” a splinter buried into her thumb with a pair of tweezers. At the same time, the famous finance blogger at one of the biggest news agencies was in the middle of a heated argument about journalistic quality. He disagreed with someone who had said that putting pressure on reporters, by having them post, update, tweet, podcast, webcast, put together slideshows, and shoot videos about their stories simultaneously, was affecting the quality of the content they produced. For him all those things improved, rather than detract from that quality. Meanwhile, in another corner, the international magazine writer was telling people that the third production of the Men in Black franchise was being shot on her block, while the Nobel prize winning economist and op-ed columnist argued furiously that some right-wing financial writer was distorting the facts when discussing the present administration’s health policy on one of those journals with a time fixation. Suddenly, someone disrupted the atmosphere with the most annoying activity anyone can do at these gatherings. He delivered a sales pitch.

I didn’t know him that well. After all, we had become acquaintances more out of reciprocity than anything else, but he was crossing the line. For a few minutes, the conversation shifted towards all the artists he represented. It would have been okay if they had been two or three, but there were hundreds, and he was squeezing each and every one of them into his advertisement-like monologue. One after the other, he went on about gorillas, satirical rewritings of A Christmas Carol, poems that positively channel anger, slime balls, and the fact that one his writers had written only six hundred and twenty-eight words that day. In addition, he did not waste a chance to direct our attention to his self-published books and his blog.

The others had slowly become quiet and, eventually, he was the only one putting thoughts into words. He was killing the feeling; the vibe I had prepared so carefully. That’s when I decided that I had to put an end to his monopolization of the evening. It had been enough. For several minutes, I thought of what I was about to do and decided it was the only solution to the problem. Although I don’t feel proud about it—he was a nice guy after all—, I went ahead and silenced him. I singled him out, took one last look at his Twitter profile, and clicked on “Unfollow”. My home page looked much better after that.

Hugo R. Vargas

(Source: curioushugo.com)

I don’t claim to be a comedian or anything, but, ironically, the one thing that irritates me about this country is the dissonance between my humorous remarks and the sense of humor of some Dutch people. They are just incompatible. Don’t get me wrong, the Dutch are great people; smart, efficient, organized, friendly, and everything, but when it comes to understanding my humor, man! They laugh at blunt slapstick, pie-in-the-face kind of comedy, but throw in a pun or something insightful and, congratulations, you’ve lost them. They just stare at you, or get angry. And these are people that are known for speaking English flawlessly. If anything, I get the impression that they use the Dutch word for joke—”grapje”—as an apology: “No, you carry the bags… grapje!”, and they pick them up themselves.

Today, the weather was particularly crazy. It was really cold and misty in the morning. After that, it became warmer, then it started raining. On top of the rain, it got windy. Later in the afternoon, I was walking out of the supermarket as this guy was preparing his umbrella to go out as well. We got out at the same time and noticed a clear blue sky and the sun shining beautifully only a few minutes after it had been all gray. We both stopped for a second, acknowledging the sudden change. At this point, he started to close the umbrella, which was halfway open, and I turned to him and said with a smirk: “If you don’t like Dutch weather, wait five minutes, eh?”. He gave me this blank stare and said: “No, but I do like the weather.”

Gush, come on. I know I was paraphrasing Mark Twain and everything, but it is certainly not one of his densest pieces. I wasn’t expecting him to laugh out loud, or roll on the floor laughing—their acronyms being texted by people here all the time—. A simple “heheh, tell me about it” would have sufficed, but no; he had to destroy my faith in humans.

In another incident, we were at the pool. There are a couple of hours a day when people that are not taking lessons or members of swim teams can use it. At this particular time, people take up four lanes and swim counter-clockwise around the edges. To me it looks as if they are trying to get the pool to flush. Anyway, most of the girls swim doggy paddle, and they never put their heads, with their big blow-dried hairdos, under water. One of them said to a friend of mine: “I try to swim at least three hours every week”. I interrupted flirtatiously; “but you know what; it doesn’t count if you don’t get your hair wet”. Granted, it was cheesy, but I was just trying to get a smile out of the girl. And she gave me this empty look and replied, looking up, clearly trying to recall: “nooo, but it did get a little wet when I got in”. See what I’m talking about, or am I crazy? And that’s the actual watery “wet” we’re talking about. Don’t even try to make it a dirty joke, because you’d cause a short circuit. She was not a bimbo either. I know for a fact that this is a very smart girl, but she was cursed with the Dutch insensible sense of humor.

I know; there’s always something.

(Source: curioushugo.com)