I don’t want to finish August without writting about the year at Portiño. We ended course 2008-2009 activities in July, with the traditional excursion to the aquatic park in Cerceda, and the volunteers are already talking about the next course in our mailing list.
I think this year was the best we live since I began as volunteer. The team we were last year growed progressively with a very interesting group of new volunteers. In February we split the team in two so we went to work two days in a week. The parties were more fun with the new ideas that veterans and newbies contributed. And all along the course we made more trips than ever. All this work was evident in the academic results and behaviour of the children. And as I desired, in the end of the course, we weren’t volunteers that help children in risk of exclusion to progress.In fact, we were a family.
But every wonderful things in the life are not eternal and, if it’s time to enjoy the sucess, it’s time for me to be a bit sad too. Some volunteers finished their university studies, and it’s probably they won’t continue because it. Even my personal boundings can force me to leave the group. So in the next months we’ll be working in the necessary transition. Laura ‘Laby’ Pérez will be the new coordinator of the group. She is fun and sweet with the children, she has two years of experience in the project, and she has energy like a RedBull cans truck 
Now I’ll pray for the spirit of these two years go on…
As you can see, I update this blog slowly. It happens because I have no much time to write long posts about really interesting things in this period. But I usually need to share little thoughts and moments, and fast news with my friends. So I opened a microblog (in Spanish) at identi.ca, the microblogging service that uses the laconi.ca free software as engine.
I seldom use the web interface to post. To do it, I use the identi.ca emacs mode, and Gwibber (that allows me automating links compression via TinyURL). And I use the identi.ca app for Facebook to inject these microposts as current status.
I don’t know how much time I’ll keep playing with it 
Today I published in GPUL’s weblog [ES] a (bit long) reflection on the past and the present, looking to the future of my loved free software group.
These moments to stop & think happen each 3-4 years, because it usually is the life cycle of one generation of activists in the group. I think we have the challenge to overcome the lack of young members. We must keep up with the times too and look for new ways adapted to the current situation: I propose to work in boosting our best programmers in the great free software projects and collaborate with another kind of volunteer associations (NGO’s, tipically).
And it is my personal challenge to overcome my personal circumstances to push GPUL in the way the members decide.
The history of the music has two parts: history before Kind of blue, and history after Kind of blue.
And it was published in August, 17th, 1959. Trane and Miles were 33 years old. Bill Evans, 30. In two impromptu performances they amazed the world.
Bajo un empedrado gris
por angostas calles
errática viajaba mi alma,
en dulces momentos
salvándote
como de manantial agua
que entre los dedos
se escapa.
Y despejando en la mirada
aquella tumultuosa soledad
hallé en el suelo, hecha jirones
una triste hoja embarrada.
Su frágil cuerpo
dibujaba
como de Calvario sombras
y sus azules versos
fluían turbios
por entre las baldosas.
Traté a duras penas
de leer aquellas estrofas
desleídas…
…Y sonreí…
porque aún con su métrica
herida de muerte
pensé: cada verso,
en el tiempo
cincelado está ya
a fuego.
Luego una profunda pena
me invadió
cuando reconocí
que aquel viejo poema
te lo había escrito yo…
u.p.m., julio de 2009
Brumes et pluies
Ô fins d’automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue,
Endormeuses saisons! je vous aime et vous loue
D’envelopper ainsi mon coeur et mon cerveau
D’un linceul vaporeux et d’un vague tombeau.
Dans cette grande plaine où l’autan froid se joue,
Où par les longues nuits la girouette s’enroue,
Mon âme mieux qu’au temps du tiède renouveau
Ouvrira largement ses ailes de corbeau.
Rien n’est plus doux au coeur plein de choses funèbres,
Et sur qui dès longtemps descendent les frimas,
Ô blafardes saisons, reines de nos climats,
Que l’aspect permanent de vos pâles ténèbres,
— Si ce n’est, par un soir sans lune, deux à deux,
D’endormir la douleur sur un lit hasardeux.
Tableaux Parisiens, CI. Charles Baudelaire, 1857
Agua de Río
Noche oscura, guárdame del temor
que entre mares, agua de río soy
Laberinto que turba la razón
del que lleva barro y arena en el corazón.
Suave brisa, guárdame del ciclón
que entre vientos, tallos de espiga soy
Blanca luna, blanca es mi devoción,
en tus ojos quise mirarme yo
¡Ay de mí, de mi ambición!
Y allí quedé sentado junto al camino
mientras me salpicaba el agua del río
Miles de sueños iguales al mío
Miles de gotas de agua de río
¡Ay de mí, de mi ambición!
Agua helada, limpia, clara
llévame hasta el mar
Agua helada, en otras aguas
me quise encontrar
Y allí quedé sentado junto al camino,
mi vida turbia como el agua del río
Tantos recuerdos iguales al mío
bañados por aquellas gotas de río
Así quedé dormido junto al camino…
Mientras bajaba turbia el agua del río…
Así quedé dormido junto al camino…
Mientras bajaba el agua turbia del río…
Miles de sueños iguales al mío…
Antonio Vega, 1998
It’s the leit motiv of my life these days…
- I’m a member of GPUL, so I’m a free software activist -> I collaborated with ESF-Galicia (Engineers Without Borders) in their migration to free software and open standards.
- I’m a social volunteer of OCV in Portiño->OCV funds some cooperation projects of ESF in Honduras.
- GPUL promotes free software -> GPUL has a project of a computer classroom in Portiño
- Lucía, is another volunteer of OCV in Portiño-> She got a scholarship to travel and work in a cooperation project of ESF in Honduras.
- I’m a worker of CartoLab-> CartoLab, ESF and OCV signed an agreement to develop a custom gvSIG to ESF projects in Honduras->I’ll a developer in that project-> Lucía will process the data she’ll take with the free software tool in which I work.
So, I everyday dive in a dense mesh of same names and organizations…
It happened in an afternoon ten years ago. My best friend Quico called me by phone. The new was incredible: Gabriel had dead knocked down by a truck.
Father Gabriel Vázquez Seijas was our spiritual director. He was is the spiritual director of a several generations of Catholic social activists. He had left his confortable life to become a priest when he got aware the material and spiritual poverty of Canido neighborhood in the city of Ferrol. He studied with the Society in Comillas University, and it was a very important detail because he was not only a social worker, he was an intelectual warrior too.
Besides of his important action in Ferrol, where he had important confrontation with the authorities defending workers and and handing out dangerous books in the street, he had a mission in the HOAC (Catholic Action Labour Brotherhood) in the years of dictatorship in Spain and he met there with Guillermo Rovirosa.
I met Gabriel in Cáritas the year I finished my pre-university studies thanks to Quico. I had the target in work in cooperation when I had finished my degree, but he showed me I (we, everybody) can do an important work around. So now I’m a social volunteer.
Ten years ago my friends and me became spiritual orphans. We and another lot of people, that were helped in any moment of our lives by Gabriel, cryed his death. Now we have his life as testimony. Ten years after, I pray for being a worthy disciple someday.
“Attention to the poor must be considered only if you react to him as anyone”
–Father Gabriel Vázquez Seijas
¿Serás, amor
un largo adiós que no se acaba?
Vivir, desde el principio, es separarse.
En el mismo encuentro
con la luz, con los labios,
el corazón percibe la congoja
de tener que estar ciego y sólo un día.
Amor es el retraso milagroso
de su término mismo:
es prolongar el hecho mágico
de que uno y uno sean dos, en contra
de la primer condena de la vida.
Con los besos,
con la pena y el pecho se conquistan,
en afanosas lides, entre gozos
parecidos a juegos,
días, tierras, espacios fabulosos,
a la gran disyunción que está esperando,
hermana de la muerte o muerte misma.
Cada beso perfecto aparta el tiempo,
le echa hacia atrás, ensancha el mundo breve
donde puede besarse todavía.
Ni en el lugar, ni en el hallazgo
tiene el amor su cima:
es en la resistencia a separarse
en donde se le siente,
desnudo altísimo, temblando.
Y la separación no es el momento
cuando brazos, o voces,
se despiden con señas materiales.
Es de antes, de después.
Si se estrechan las manos, si se abraza,
nunca es para apartarse,
es porque el alma ciegamente siente
que la forma posible de estar juntos
es una despedida larga, clara
y que lo más seguro es el adiós.
Pedro Salinas, 1936