It was the late 1980s, the age that gave us the personal
computer, the disposable contact lens, and The
Simpsons — but also the Challenger explosion, the global stock market
crash, and “new” Coke. AIDS was raging in the United States.
Cole was a young psychology researcher who’d landed on a study of
988 HIV-positive, AIDS-free gay men¹, and he was trying to crack the workings
of the lethal virus. Over nine years, Cole tracked 80 of these men. Every six
months, they gave blood, sat for interviews, and filled in questionnaires.
Every time, there were fewer and fewer of them. A significant number fell sick,
many perished. And as they did, Cole wondered why some subjects succumbed to
HIV while others were able to resist it. He looked at the obvious—age, socioeconomic
status, overall health, sleep quality, exercise habits, sex life, anxiety
levels, depression history—but none of these predicted who would get AIDS or
how soon they’d die.
At one point, Cole thought to compare the openly gay men
to those who hid their sexual identity. It turned out that closeted men got
AIDS faster and died sooner than out men did. What about being in the closet
made those men more vulnerable to HIV? A strand of research at the time
implicated repressed emotions as a possible factor—closeted men bottled up
their feelings, which made them sick—but the evidence was thin and the
biological mechanism unknown. After all, how do you convert emotion into
disease? How do feelings turn into something real?
In a follow-up study, Cole decided to test yet another
variable: subjects’ sensitivity to rejection. He found that, on average,
closeted men were more sensitive to rejection than openly gay men. It made
sense: If you cared too much about others’ judgment, you’d want to hide the
parts of yourself likely to be stigmatized, such as your sexual identity.
At the time, the impact of social connections on health
wasn’t entirely new. For a long time, researchers had observed a curious link
between social isolation and a number of diseases, from heart disease to cancer
to some neurodegenerative disorders. But no studies had been conducted to test
this link directly, and no one could really explain it. According to one
theory, social relationships exert a positive influence on health because of
peer pressure. If, the theory went, there are healthy people around you whose
opinions you care about, you’ll be more likely to swing by the gym, slug kale
juice every morning, and skip the second or third glass of wine at the end of a
tough workday.
But Cole’s research showed that bad habits weren’t
actually wrecking his subjects’ health. The gay men who contracted AIDS were
just as physically fit and mentally well as those who resisted the disease.
There seemed to be something else, something more direct, that was stripping
some participants’ immune defenses and leaving them fatally exposed to the
virus.
For a long time, Cole couldn’t figure it out. The technology that now
allows scientists to zoom into cells and read genetic code was new and
prohibitively expensive. Then, in the early 2000s, Cole got his hands on a
gene-sequencing machine. He also met John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist from the
University of Chicago, who had pioneered the idea that social relationships
shape our brains. Cacioppo believed who we know — and how well we know
them — impacts our thoughts, behaviors, and physical health on the very level
of biology.
Cacioppo never bought the peer pressure theory of social
relationships. “What I knew was that no matter what social species you’re
talking about, all the way down to fruit flies, if you isolate them, they die
earlier,” he says. And since fruit flies are hardly the type to sink into
debauchery unless other fruit flies keep an eye on them, there had to be
another route for social isolation to get so deeply under the skin of humans
and animals.
To find out what this route might be, Cole and Cacioppo
analyzed data from 14 elderly Chicagoans of various ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds. The data, collected over four years, included the
subjects’ demographics, habits, behaviors, medical conditions, and
self-reported feelings of loneliness. In addition, Cole and Cacioppo scraped
the inside of each participant’s cheek with a swab, then gene sequenced and
analyzed the DNA samples.
Isolation, it
appeared, could fool the body into thinking it’s in mortal danger.
The results were remarkable: The immune systems of the
lonely subjects behaved differently from those of the non-lonely—and
dramatically so. For instance, the lonely subjects’ antiviral defenses were
partially shut down, which suggested a possible reason for why socially
sensitive gay men were so vulnerable to HIV. But that wasn’t where the damage
ended. In addition to suppressing the body’s innate defenses against viruses, loneliness
also seemed to crank up inflammation to dangerous levels, raising the risk of
myriad diseases.
Inflammation, in normal doses, is not a foe. In fact,
it’s part of the body’s defense against malicious microbes. It’s also a
marvelous example of nature’s flair in designing human beings. Circulating
through your bloodstream are thousands of immune cells. These cells come
equipped with receptors that not only detect invading pathogens but also tell
them apart and mount a defense tailored to each type of bug.
The immune system’s default mode is antiviral. That’s
because, as a social species, we’re constantly exposed to viruses that spread
from one person to another. Bacteria, on the other hand, can infiltrate through
open wounds. During injury, immune cells squeeze out of blood vessels and
travel to fight bacteria wherever they are, triggering a cascade of healing
processes. One of these processes is inflammation. It’s the redness, swelling,
and heat you experience when you injure yourself, and it’s what keeps infection
from spreading throughout your body.
Once the intruder is no longer a threat, inflammation
subsides. If it doesn’t, it can become extremely dangerous. Prolonged
inflammation has long been known as a risk factor for infectious diseases, but
around the time that Cole and Cacioppo began their collaboration, other
researchers started to link inflammation to a host of non-infectious illnesses,
from asthma to arthritis, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and depression. A 2012 review of
the clinical literature suggested that chronic inflammation may, in
fact, lie at the root of many more diseases than initially thought. “Perhaps,”
the researchers concluded, “even all of them.”
It also explained why both the closeted and the
rejection-sensitive gay men fell prey to HIV more easily: The former were more
likely to be socially isolated while the latter felt social isolation more
strongly. And isolation, it appeared, could fool the body into thinking it’s in
mortal danger. It tinkered with one of our most fundamental survival
mechanisms—the immune system—and could even turn it against us.
Though astonishing, the link between loneliness and immune activity
hinged on just one study of only 14 people. Correlations like this come up
constantly in scientific research, and many of these findings are never
replicated. Genetics at the time had a particularly embarrassing replication
rate: alleged “breakthroughs” would arrive hot off the press, only to be
demolished and discredited the next day.
Naturally, Cole was cautious about drawing conclusions. But
as more studies followed, a growing body of evidence emerged to support his
initial findings. In 2011, he and Cacioppo extended their original sample from
14 to 93 people and got the same results: reduced viral defenses and elevated
inflammation in the lonely subjects. This pattern cropped up in various other
studies: people suffering from PTSD and breast cancer, people grieving or
caring for dying spouses, people dealing with relationship difficulties, even
people being evaluated while performing a task.
“Social
isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk
factor for disease out there. Nothing can compare.”
So far, research suggests that the situations that most
reliably predict a dangerous surge of inflammation involve social rejection and
loss. The health impact of divorce, for example, depends largely on who
initiates it: If it’s your spouse, you not only lose an important relationship
but feel rejected, which will derail your immune system more than if the
decision to end the marriage came from you.
A 2010
meta-analysis of 148 studies concluded that being lonely is not only
bad for your health, it’s in fact significantly worse than drinking or not
exercising. Loneliness emerged as a risk factor for early death with an impact
as significant as smoking and three times more significant than obesity. Yet
even this may be an understatement because, according to Cacioppo, obesity
“does not make you as miserable as loneliness.” Not even stress can measure up.
“We think of stress as a risk factor for disease,” says Cole.
“And it is, somewhat. But if you actually measure stress using our best
available instruments, it can’t hold a candle to social isolation. Social
isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk
factor for disease out there. Nothing can compare.”
John Cacioppo didn’t set out to study loneliness because of a harrowing
personal experience. “People are disappointed when they hear that,” he says in
an interview with
University of Chicago Magazine. He was a social psychologist at a time when
social psychology tried to explain human behavior through the social and
cultural experiences we are aware of and can verbalize. But most of human
behavior is unconscious. The solution, for Cacioppo, was not a return to
digging into repressed desires in dreams and fantasies—by that time,
psychoanalysis was seen as little more than quackery—but a better understanding
of the brain, the grand originator of all thought, emotion, and motivation.
There was no way, he thought, “to comprehend the full scope and processes of
mental existence without delving into biological reality.”
But neuroscientists at that time paid no attention to
the social world that Cacioppo wanted to marry with “biological reality.” They
saw human behavior as little more than electrical currents zipping inside our
heads. This made no sense to Cacioppo. He knew that the brain evolved in an
intensely social context. Throughout history, relationships with other humans
were far too important for survival to have left no mark on our biology and
evolutionary development.
We are
fundamentally social organisms, our mythic rugged individualism
notwithstanding. We are born to the most prolonged period of abject dependency
of any mammal. For the species to survive, human infants must instantly engage
their parents in protective behaviour, and the parents must care enough about
their offspring to nurture and protect them. Even once grown we are not
particularly splendid physical specimens. Other animals can run faster, see and
smell better, and fight more effectively than we can. Our major evolutionary
advantage is our brain and ability to communicate, remember, plan, and work
together. Our survival depends on our collective abilities, not our individual
might. Thus, it makes sense that our health may also depend on our interactions
with one another.
The breakdown of these interactions seemed like a good
starting point for studying their health impact; hence Cacioppo’s focus on
loneliness. To be sure, he never expected that his research would take over two
decades, but the more he learned about social isolation, the more there was
still to learn. “This just continues to change how I think about us as a
species.”
From an evolutionary point of view, loneliness appears to serve a
purpose, which Cacioppo likens to that of hunger. Hunger prods you to look for
food before you run out of fuel and starve to death. It signals a survival
risk. And to make sure you heed that signal, hunger feels unpleasant and
bothers you until you feed yourself. Loneliness acts in a similar way.
Historically, we depended on others for protection and nurturing, and social
isolation could cost us our lives. Loneliness left us vulnerable to lurking
predators. Feeling lonely, just like feeling hungry, is a danger signal. When
you stray too far from the tribe, the pang of loneliness drives you back to
repair alliances, invest in new relationships, and thus avoid dying.
This fact — that during our evolution loneliness cued
physical threat — can help explain the unusual immune activity of people facing
loss and social rejection. For a long time, researchers saw inflammation as an
automatic physiological response to bacterial invasion: Immune cell receptors
would sniff out a foreign agent, and off would go a built-in sequence of
defense reactions and healing processes. But now we know that these same
mechanisms can kick in preemptively, before bugs have infiltrated the body, and
before an injury has actually occurred.
How does this work? Contrary to what we’ve long thought,
it turns out that immune cells do not passively execute prewired defense
mechanisms. Instead, they actively listen to outside signals—especially those
coming from the brain—and act on them. When your brain sends a message that you
are lonely, the immune cells hear danger! and
turn off some of your antiviral defenses: You don’t need those now, after all,
since viruses spread among people. Being lonely, you run a higher risk of
injury and infection by bacteria, which is why your immune system diverts
resources from antiviral to antibacterial defenses. In other words, it starts
pumping out inflammation.
Your immune
system is stuck in prehistoric cave-dweller times.
In the modern world, however, loneliness seldom equals
mortal danger. You get lonely and feel rejected for all kinds of
non-life-threatening reasons: you break up with your partner, get passed up for
promotion, give a talk and it tanks, call a friend to have a good cry and she’s
distracted. You begin to think your friendship doesn’t mean a whole lot to her.
Perhaps she used to envy you and now she gloats internally at your spectacular
fall. Before you know it, you’ve spun a drama of epic proportions out of the
tiniest smidgeon of evidence.
Meanwhile, your immune system is stuck in prehistoric
cave-dweller times. It equates social rejection, no matter how trivial, with
getting mortally wounded or becoming a lion’s dinner. It links loneliness with
physical danger. That’s why, says Cole, “purely symbolic or imagined
stimuli—that is, situations that have not yet happened and may never actually
occur—can engage the same ancestral programs that are triggered by actual
social or physical threats.”
But unlike actual threats, which come and swiftly go
(you kill or die, eat or get eaten), imagined—or perceived—threats can linger a
long while, fed by our deepest fears, looming ever larger in our imaginations.
When these threats take up residence in our minds, inflammation can turn from
an acute emergency response into a chronic assault on the body. It can make us
vulnerable to a battery of mental disorders and physical illnesses.
In one study,
for example, the negative impact of feeling lonely on the immune system was
twice as large as that of subjects’ marital status or their frequency of social
contact (more objective measures of social integration and connectedness). This
is not to say that objective circumstances don’t matter; of course they do.
Losing a valued relationship, a job prospect, your self-esteem—these are not
trivial matters, and the hurt is not simply in your head. Still, as far as
loneliness goes, the research suggests that the factual reality of it impacts
our immune system in a different way—and to a smaller extent—than our
subjective experience.
Indeed when he speaks of loneliness, Cacioppo defines it
as perceived, rather than objective, social isolation. The distinction makes
sense. Intuitively, we know that feeling lonely does not simply equate to the
number of people present in or absent from our lives. Who hasn’t felt alone in
a crowd or been a stranger at a glitzy cocktail party? There’s a reason we make
movies about angst-ridden holiday dinners and dreaded family gatherings: We
often feel loneliest surrounded by those closest to us.
Despite the fact that technology has connected us to a
degree never before seen in history, we’re still as lonely as ever. Most
researchers estimate that between 20 and 30 percent of people are chronically
lonely. One study finds that, among Londoners, that number is closer to 50
percent. Loneliness is also universal. It can equally affect both introverts
and extroverts, says Cacioppo, and the only difference between them is the
number of close relationships required to feel connected (one for introverts
versus three for extroverts)
What makes loneliness so pervasive? And why has technology done little
to reduce it? Evolution, again, provides a clue. “It is not the case that
historically other human beings were always necessarily a good thing to have
around,” explains Cole in a 2016 interview:
There were
occasions in which other human beings were raiding your camp or stealing your
food and your spouse or infecting you with diseases. So, human beings are great
assets to other human beings but they can also be great threats.
According to Cacioppo, this has hardwired into us a
negative bias against other people that acts in tandem with our attraction to
them. Our social existence emerges from this constant tug-of-war between a
desperate need to connect with others and the very real threat they pose to our
survival.
Sensitivity to social threats may, in fact, be even more
deeply etched into biology than a desire for connection. Consider the evolution
of our sense of taste. We are far more sensitive to bitter than we are to
sweet, says Cacioppo, because throughout history bitter tastes often meant
poison. A strong visceral reaction against bitter ensured that we stay away
from foods that could kill us.
Similarly, a built-in negative bias against other humans
would have protected us from miscalculated friendship. “If I make an error and
detect a person as a foe who turns out to be a friend, that’s okay. I don’t
make a friend as fast, but I survive,” says Cacioppo. “But if I mistakenly
detect someone as a friend when they’re a foe, that can cost me my life.”
No matter how
it arises, negative social bias can ultimately warp reality in an invisible yet
dramatic way.
So two conflicting forces shape our social existence,
amounting to what Cole refers to as the “paradox of loneliness.” Social
motivation pulls us toward other people; social threat drives us away from
them. This paradox can help explain why being alone is not the same as being
lonely.
People low in social motivation, for example, tend to
feel quite happy on their own or with just a few close friends. We call them
introverts, and their experience is not so much loneliness as solitude.
For people high on social motivation, the reverse is
true: They need a larger number of social ties in order to feel connected, and
the absence of these ties can plunge them into deep loneliness. Then, there are
those who desperately crave connection yet just as desperately want to be left
alone. This is, in fact, one of the particularly cruel twists of depression:
The more you need others to help you out of your hole, the more you withdraw
into it, burying yourself deeper and deeper still.
Why do some people feel more threatened by others, thus risking social
isolation? According to Cole, there are two main factors. The first is innate:
You may have been born with a particularly sensitive nervous system that picks
up the subtlest cues of social threats in your environment. A negative bias
against other people can also be acquired through life experiences—especially
those occurring in childhood, a critical developmental window and a sort of
“dress rehearsal” for later life. Growing evidence suggests that early
adversity can reprogram vital biological systems, adapting them to hostile
conditions in the future. The nervous system can become more vigilant, the
immune system more responsive to potential threats, and inflammation can be
triggered more easily.
No matter how it arises, negative social bias can
ultimately warp reality in an invisible yet dramatic way. Suppose you are wired
(whether by nature or experience) to see the world as a dangerous place. In
your daily interactions, you’ll treat others with suspicion or at least a mild
reserve, and in response, they’ll be more ambivalent and reserved toward you.
Their new attitude will reinforce your initial suspicions, which will make youmore mistrustful of
their motives and perhaps even hostile, which will make them even more
ambivalent and reserved. And on and on.
“It becomes this vicious cycle,”
says Cole, “where the behavior creates another loop from the social world
outside me so then the social world really is kind of, in a self-fulfilling prophecy
sense, proving my theory.” In other words, threats without any basis in reality
can actually become real.
Hard to break, this self-perpetuating cycle can
ultimately lead to chronic loneliness—and along for the ride, of course, is
chronic inflammation. But it gets worse. Every loop between social threat and
immune response further sensitizes the nervous system to danger signals while
also grooving in the pathways that these signals use to travel from brain to
body. Every burst of inflammation releases molecules that stimulate the same
neuroimmune pipeline that produced it in the first place. This sets in motion
yet another vicious cycle that continually reinforces inflammation in a process
that scientists call “biological embedding.”
Things once
considered merely trivial or a normal part of life can dramatically crank up
inflammation and make someone sick.
The health effects of biologically embedded inflammation
are varied and insidious. In the short term, it can lead to hypervigilance,
social anxiety, and heightened sensitivity to pain. As the brain becomes
increasingly sensitized to threat signals and the immune system more responsive
to them, symptoms turn more severe. Disrupted sleep, chronic pain, and
depression can arise. Over time, the whole mechanism can become so sensitive
that it’s triggered by even lower stress levels. At this point, things once
considered merely trivial or a normal part of life can dramatically crank up
inflammation and make someone sick.
Most harrowing of all, it can reach a point where no
external trigger is needed at all: Inflammation becomes so deeply embedded that
it just keeps raging on even if life seems nothing short of miraculous. In the
long term, this can lead to inflammation-related diseases, such as rheumatoid
arthritis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, some cancers, as well
as treatment-resistant depression, premature aging, and early mortality.
To call this bleak would be an understatement. It’s
chilling—morbid even. But a number of researchers think there is reason for
hope. The better we understand inflammation, the more we can do about it. Cole,
for one, doesn’t believe that the human genome evolved to make us miserable.
Quite the opposite, in fact: Our genes, he says, want us to be happy, to thrive.
Just like he once set out to demystify the early deaths of gay men, Cole is now
trying to pin down the biology of health, happiness, and connection.
But that’s another story altogether.
1.In 1983, the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases in the US launched a massive study into the causes of AIDS.
Known as The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), it included over 7,000 gay
and bisexual men in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. The Los
Angeles part of the study took place at UCLA, where 988 of the 1759
participants enrolled tested as HIV-positive but otherwise healthy. From this
group, Cole drew a sample of 80 gay men, who had taken additional tests to
capture the social, cognitive, behavioural and emotional aspects of AIDS.
Social entrepreneur in London & editor of upcoming
book on mental health by 15 British authors, thinkers and comedians
https://unbound.com/books/things-happen/
A mi suegro le gusta el boxeo. Lola, mi suegra, que es la suegra perfecta, porque es una mujer extraordinaria, buenísima persona, devota católica, me ayuda con los niños porque así lo desea, colabora, es prudente y no se mete en nada, (¿se puede superar eso?) por supuesto no le deja poner el boxeo cuando están los niños en casa.
Gracias a Dios el hijo de mi suegro no ha heredado tal afición. Mucho mejor el cine, dónde va a parar la cosa.
El caso es que a mi suegro lo que le mola de verdad es cuando los dejan tirados en el ring de boxeo que parece que ya no se pueden levantar. Pero si se levantan y siguen peleando, le mola más. Y si después de estar tirados un buen rato en el suelo del ring, encima ganan, eso ya es insuperable
Hay golpes y golpes en la vida, que recibes aunque no te dediques al boxeo. Que te dan y que te dejan grogui días y días, que no sabes si vas o vienes, ni dónde estás. Que sigues con la rutina como un autómata, porque ¿qué otra cosa puedes hacer que intentar seguir hasta que te puedas levantar?
No me gusta el boxeo.
No.
Me gusta la paz, la gente tranquila y en paz consigo misma.
A mi suegra lo que le gusta es su nombre: DOLORES. Le gusta tanto, tantísimo que le gustaría que la llamaran así . De hecho yo lo intenté una temporada, pero fue imposible. Si hay alguien al que yo tenga que hacer la pelota y tratar de agradar, además de a mi madre, es a mi suegra. Sobre todo por lo dificilíiiiiiiiisimo que es tener una suegra como ella. Pues no pudo ser porque todo el mundo, empezando por sus hermanas, la llama Lola. Me decían: "olvídalo Susana. Es Lola y lo seguirá siendo el resto de su vida". Espero que sea larga vida.
Y la buena prueba de lo muchísimo que le gusta su nombre es que se lo puso a su hija, mi cuñada. Pero como se estilaba por la época, con el María delante, así que mi cuñada se llama María Dolores, y su nombre no le gusta. La llamamos Loli, para distinguir, porque cuando solo había un teléfono en casa y madre e hija se llaman igual, pues había que distinguir, ¿no es así?
A mi madre no le gusta nada su nombre: MARÍA DEL ROSARIO. Quien la llame así queda sentenciado de por vida, a no ser que sea funcionario público o trabajador del hospital. A su prima la llamaban Charo, y tenía una amiga que se llamaba Charo, así que ella se quedó con ROSI.
Y como no le gustaba nada, nada su nombre, se pasó los nueve meses de embarazo pensando un nombre bonito para su hija, si era niña, que no se sabía. Estuve a punto de ser Nuria, pero me tocó Susana.
Y me gusta mi nombre. Mucho. Mami acertó. Muchas gracias, mami.
Me gusta mi nombre. Me gusta la gente tranquila y no me gusta el boxeo.
Así estaba el pórtico esta mañanita cuando he entrado a trabajar. Con el anuncio de la exposición de Buñuel y el programa de eventos de la Laboral. Tendrá lugar en la iglesia "desacralizada" de la Laboral. ¡Ay si el Caudillo que ideó este edificio levantara la cabeza! Está muy mareado últimamente, con sus restos "pa´cá y p ´allá". Como si España no tuviera otros problemas Es que somos muy así, los asturianos, quitando usos eclesiásticos a las iglesias. Ahora sirve para eventos como este o el acto de graduación de los alumnos del Conservatorio. La acústica del lugar es extraordinaria.
Por aquí debajo de este escudo paso tooooooooodas las mañanas. Por lo visto no se pudo quitar. Era algo estructural y se podía fastidiar la seguridad del arco, o algo así. Es lo que yo llamo memoria histórica de verdad. Si lo ves cada día, no te olvidas de que pasó: 40 años de dictadura. Y si trabajas al lado del tanatorio y ves pasar funerarias todos los días, no te olvidas de que, de momento estás viva, pero mañana puede no ser así. Carpe Diem!
IGLESIA DESACRALIZADA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD LABORAL.
EL ESCUDO TAMBIÉN EN LO ALTO DEL TEATRO.
HOY ESTÁ NUBLADO PERO CUANDO DEJÉ A MIS HIJOS EN LA PARADA DEL BUS, UN TÍMIDO RAYO ILUMINABA LA TORRE....Y SE FUE. LA LUZ ESTÁ, PERO DE UN MOMENTO A OTRO, DESAPARECE....¿Verdad que sí?
La verdad que no había leído nada de ella y me encantó su cuento "Zoo" (La Fuga, 2018). Ágil, entretenido y divertido. Sobre las peripecias de un abogado divorciado.
"La libertad nunca es en vano. Solo tiene que buscar su deseo y aprender a no sexualizar su dolor. Cuando el deseo es verdadero es difícil convertirlo en metáfora: nadie que desea de verdad acepta un cosa por otra".
"Soy como un director teatral: siempre tengo una actriz secundaria lista para asumir el rol principal. Si perdía a Mercedes, ya tenía a Mar en el reparto".
"Los mensajes de Mercedes seguían zumbando dentro de mis pantalones, pero no importaban: legalmente solo puedes cometer adulterio, si estás legítimamente casado. Además, cuando estás harto de mentir y poner excusas, el silencio puede ser una buena opción".
"El entrenador de delfines era igual de rubio que Aquaman y, aunque me duela admitirlo, hacía buena pareja con mi ex mujer. A su lado, Vanesa era aún más guapa y tenía los ojos más verdes y las tetas más altas. Mi amigo argentino tiene razón: una mujer que te abandona se parece a una playa un día de lluvia. Es una paisaje que conoces, pero diferente y meláncolico porque ya no lo puedes frecuentar".
No sé lo que se encuentra usted, amable lector, tras bajar al quiosco y comprar la prensa. Ahora casi solo se lee prensa en red. Yo me encontré esto el sábado pasado y mi niña, observadora del mundo, de camino a casita me pidió fotografiar a los tres caballitos blancos del vecino. Y eso hice. ¿Qué hace una madre? Pues yo, prácticamente todo lo que me piden mis hijos. Sólo piden cosas buenas.
Les va la música a la hora de pastar...
Estuve por "robar" un par de lechugas al vecino, o mejor dicho, se las compraría, pero es que no las vende. Son para autoconsumo, como es natural. Mejor que las del super. Está claro. Qué pinta los repollos. Yo tengo bastante terreno, pero como jardín...sólo me faltaba tener huerta. Hay gente que se relaja con esto, yo prefiero la lectura, la música...
Hoy Recital de Poesía en el Real Club de Tenis de Gijón. Recibida invitación. ****************************************** Sres.
Socios,
Les
informamos que el jueves 29 de noviembre, a las 20:00 horas, tendrá lugar en
las instalaciones de nuestro Club un recital poético del "Grupo
Encadenados" que nos presentarán su duodecimo libro,
“En
caída libre” . A la finalizacion del acto se
servirá un vino español entre los asistentes, adjuntamos cartel informativo.
De conformidad con
lo establecido en la normativa vigente en materia de Protección de Datos de
Carácter Personal, se le informa de que los datos personales facilitados
voluntariamente por usted y sin carácter obligatorio, están incorporados a un
soporte o fichero de datos personales, titularidad de REAL CLUB TENIS GIJON,
siendo tratados sobre la base de su consentimiento o de la relación jurídica
que le vincula con REAL CLUB TENIS GIJON, con la finalidad de mantener y gestionar
su relación contractual con REAL CLUB TENIS GIJON y del envío de
comunicaciones de carácter informativo. Igualmente, se le comunica que le
asisten los derechos de acceso, rectificación, supresión, limitación,
portabilidad, oposición al tratamiento, y a no ser objeto de decisiones
individualizadas, pudiendo ejercitarlos mediante petición escrita gratuita
dirigida a REAL CLUB TENIS GIJON, domiciliada en CAMINO DE LOS ROSALES 532,
33203 GIJON, ASTURIAS, a la atención del Responsable del Tratamiento.
No lo dice cualquiera, sino un señor experto en esto. Igual hay que hacerle caso a este señor, que se hace llamar el PULPO: OCTOPUS. Las siglas de su cargo. Lo dice Jaron Lanier, que de esto sabe más que usted, amable lector, y que yo.
La verdad que no queda mal o no me suena mal porque lo dice ella y ella cae bien. Al menos a mí me cae muy bien y me parece muy buena actriz. De lo mejor que tenemos en España. Lo declara en su entrevista para MUJER HOY. Tiene la misma edad que yo, 48:
"¿Qué le dice ahora mismo su edad, cerca de esos cruciales 50, en su cabeza y en su corazón?
Actitud. Tienes unas cartas en la vida y hay que saber jugarlas lo mejor posible. Me gusta cumplir años y celebrarlo. Y estoy espléndida para la edad que tengo, qué quieres que te diga...No me ando con tonterías de inseguridades".
Me espera esta tarde, a partir de las siete, una estupenda velada musical en el salón de actos del Conservatorio Profesional de Música y Danza de Gijón. Mi hijo interpretará un par de obras, una de ellas de Edward Grieg, muy complicada y virtuosística.
Me alegro de haber transmitido a mis hijos el amor por la buena música y el conocimiento de la misma.
Recuerdo que mis hermanos, todos varones, iban alguna vez, en los veranos en Luanco, a jugar a una sala de juegos. A mí me ponía nerviosa el Tetris y la música de las máquinas tragaperras. Me gustan los juegos que me relajen, pero ellos tenían una velocidad de dedos impresionante para esas maquinitas. Yo la tenía para el piano. Mi hijo también la tiene para el piano y la guitarra, además del criterio para discernir la MÚSICA, con mayúsculas, de la musiquilla de las tragaperras actuales, que son las plays stations y demás.
Por supuesto que también tiene agilidad en eso -es un niño de hoy- pero los padres, mientras educamos a nuestros hijos, también podemos discernir a qué pueden dedicar su valioso tiempo. Y dónde ganan sus premios, si hay suerte. Si jugando a la Play tragaperras actual, muy moderna ella, o "jugando" con las teclas de un "pianoforte". De hecho en inglés y francés, se usa el verbo "jugar" y no como nosotros, tocar....
Este poema, en asturiano, cerró la intervención del Rector en la Festividad de Santa Catalina. Un bellísimo poema del poeta griego Constantino Cavafis (1863-1933) sobre Ítaca. Cada cual tiene su propia Ítaca y nos recuerda que el viaje es más importante que la meta.
Ítaca
Cuando entames el to viaxe a Ítaca
pide que'l camín sía llargu, llenu d'aventures,
llenu d'esperiencies.
Non temes a los lestrigones nin a los cíclopes
nin al griespu Poseidón, seres
tales enxamás vas topar nel to camín, si'l
to pensar ye eleváu, si selecta ye la emoción
que toca'l to espíritu y el to cuerpu.
Nin a los lestrigones nin a los cíclopes
nin al xavaz Poseidón vas atopar, si nun
los lleves dientro de la to alma, si nun
los irgue la to alma delantre ti.
Pide que'l camín sía llargu.
Que munches sían les mañanes de branu en
que llegues -¡con qué prestar y allegría!-
a puertos nunca vistos antes.
Detente nos emporios de Fenicia y
faite con formoses mercancíes, nácare y
coral, ámbare y ébanu
y toa suerte d'arumes sensuales, cuantos
más abondosos arumes sensuales puedas.
Ve a munches ciudaes exipcies
a aprender, a aprender de los sos sabios.
Ten siempres a Ítaca na to mente.
Llegar ellí ye'l to destín.
Mas nun entaínes nunca'l viaxe.
Meyor que dure munchos años
y atracar, vieyu yá, na isla, arriquecíu de cuanto ganasti nel
camín
ensin aguantar a que Ítaca arriquézate.
Ítaca brindóte tan formosu viaxe.
Ensin ella nun entamaríes el camín.
Pero nun tien yá nada que date.
Anque la topes probe, Ítaca nun t'engañó.
Asina, sabiu como volvisti, con tanta esperiencia, vas
Asturias tiene dos grandes problemas: sus políticos, que no han sabido barrer para casa como lo han hecho los vascos y catalanes, a costa de sus nacionalismos y los asturianos que no son buenos asturianos y no defienden lo nuestro, que ya es grave.
Aquí el actual director del Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, enmendándoles la plana. A ver si se enteran de una vez.
Esto es para estar orgullosa de ser asturiana. Hay asturianos que tiran piedras contra nuestra tierra y lo nuestro. Él hace justo lo contrario. Le escuché hace unos meses en la entrega de premios de EL COMERCIO y me parece una persona fantástica. ¡Ojalá lo logre! No está fácil pero estar ahí, ya es un premio.
ENLACE EN PRENSA:
https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/jose-andres-candidato-20181128003602-ntvo.html
