Feb
7
35 Days of Spanish 365
Posted by: | February 7, 2010 | Comments Off on 35 Days of Spanish 365
Many weeks later, as he sat facing the computer screen hours before the due project, (name was removed for security purposes) was to remember that distant morn when his professor took him to discover magical realism. At that time, UBC was a village of about 50,000, built on the peninsula, surrounded by clear water that ran along the coast and through to the open ocean. The world was so young that many things were left to be discovered, many things left to be learnt and for this young individual, a long life to live. Every four years, during the coldest of winter months, there was held a grand ceremony, lasting only two weeks, that celebrated the very greatest of those to walk, skate, sled, or curl on this earth. It was this week that our young protagonist yearned for to arrive, and which, however close it seemed, was just out of reach, impeded by that which faced him in this hour, not a single project, but a plethora of examinations that were to decide the path he took, his fate, and that of the world. He went from web page to web page, scouring notes and thoughts about magic and realism, ancient myths and beliefs, dragging with him the weight of the consequences of taking the short-cut, the easy way out, by listening to the distant words of web-gypsies, who set up virtual tents and with a great uproar of strong opinion, false ingenuity and pipesmoke, would display their thoughts for others to see. “Things have a life of their own,” a web-gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. “It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls..” Our protagonist, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of these useless gypsy words to extract gold from the depths of the web. And so, taking them, against the counsel of this heavy gypsy with an untamed web page and sparrow hands, our young protagonist used these words to complete the smallest of weekly web-journal entries. Empowered by the words of the great, inspired by those whose knowledge of prose he could not touch, this young gent, a dignified gentleman though he was, produced what would grant him the grades worthy of participation. With a click heard around the vast array of tubes that make up these wondrous web of internets, he finished his assignment.
Achieving what he set out to do in reflecting upon his readings of late: the epic literary tone, the mythical structure, the use of cultural tales of yesteryear to narrate the stories of the present, the fantastic portrayed as normal and accepted, and the real being embellished as marvelously real. Our young protagonist’s fate was laid to rest, for the time being, in the hands of his professor. So it goes.
