It’s cold in Manizales, a city in the sky set high in the central range of the Colombian Andes, although it dawned hot and sunny. Well, relatively hot. It’s about nine o’clock in the morning on the last day of November in a year that has seen the very worst of humanity triumph all over a sad and abused planet.
In Manizales it never really gets too hot or, truth be told, too cold. Just different ranges of spring although the humidity varies, frequently by the hour. Still, it’s chilly right now. Today I’ve layered up: tee shirt under shirt under sweater. That’s all I need here to escape the chill. The morning has turned foggy, visibility outside is nil, but it involves low lying clouds more than fog, as occurs when you’re in a city higher than the seven thousand foot mark, an interesting albeit common phenomenon in this city in the sky set amidst mountains usually dressed in myriad shades of green. The sight is eerily beautiful. It’s as though the city repented of having woken early and pulled its ethereally fluffy white blankets back up over its head.
It’s a good day for a fireplace. For several fireplaces. We have a small one set high on a wall in the living room but it’s not wood burning, it’s powered by a relatively small propane gas cylinder, not a fireplace Santa would appreciate but very pretty when it’s lit. Something we seldom do. If I were to build the perfect house it would be set amidst waterfalls and deep caverns and lakes but near the ocean, and would have fireplaces all over the place, and large rooms with balconies, and the roof would be a park-like terrace full of plants but with a Jacuzzi and would feature wrought iron outdoor living room furniture of sorts, and a wrought iron desk with a glass top so I could work outside, and an outdoor fire pit nearby.
But, for now, no such luck.
Still, I can’t complain, I have a large tenth floor apartment that occupies the entire floor giving us a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city and of the surrounding mountains, many clad in snow, and of the neighboring city set below, far below with a tall cathedral set not very far away, and a small park set outside of the front door. And with a used-book store set aside our lobby. The city’s cultural center with its large performing arts center is across the street and a block away we have the city’s initial aerial cable transport station, gondolas taking us to the nearby bus terminal and then to the neighboring municipality. And, two blocks from our front door, a small modern shopping mall.
What I don’t have is my three sons, now all grown; two with children of their own. They live a continent away in the Global North and I never see them now; well, except every once in a while in a video call. We’ve lived apart for a very long time now, decades. I’ve remarried to a wonderful woman, not just attractive but spiritual and intelligent and eclectic, and she fills a lot of the void I’ve created for myself after leaving most of my past behind, as do the wonderfully kind, talented and artistic people of Manizales, and as do my few expatriate friends, traces of my old life, but nothing can replace my sons. I think of them daily. And I think of the many, many people I’ve known, some of whom I’ve loved. Most of them have long vanished from my life but not from my memory.
It’s been a full life, one full of blessing and of challenges, most of which (the challenges) have been overcome. It frequently feels as though it’s been too full but today, for some reason, it seems hollow. Perhaps it’s the weather but, although the low lying clouds still have everything covered so that it seems as though the world outside my windows has been erased, a bright spot in the white, a brighter white, seems to be trying to break through. Of course, eventually it will. It always does.
So, why does today still feel so gloomy?
It must be missing my sons and the grandchildren I’ve never really gotten to know which sculpts the day in hollow tones. And the echoes of old relationships turned acrid which, at least from time to time, still cast long and somber shadows.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
The Kalends and Nones have passed and now the Ides have arrived. In a week, I’ll start the last voyage around our star, Sol, of the eighth decade of my life on Terra. A lot has been crammed into those almost seventy-nine years, much of it difficult, some unpleasant, too much perfidious, but I’ve seem to have somehow managed to cope with it all and, a great deal has been undeservedly positive, amazingly so.
It appears, at least to others, that I’m unusually healthy for someone almost seventy-nine years old, unusually active with unusual stamina. I still play tennis and when I do (three times a week), it’s for at least two hours, sometimes followed by an hour’s walk. And my hair, though streaked with silver is both plentiful and still dark. After a long life in the United States, I’m back where I started, in a celestial city high in the central range of the Colombian Andes, living on the tenth floor of a large and comfortable apartment only a few miles from where I first entered this world. Still, slowly and intermittently, strange aches are making an appearance and, in addition, strange observations are occurring to me such as that “Jack Bunny” (or perhaps “Bugs Benny”) would be a fusion of Jack Benny and Bugs Bunny, and would make an awesome character: as “frugal” as he was witty and droll while concurrently being penurious and ever so lightly pernicious. I confess that I loved them both although those who remember them tend to be fewer every year.
I’ve succeeded in many things, many of them unexpected. I’ve taught American History and Problems of American Democracy, among many other things, to citizens of the United States, observing to myself the irony involved in that being done by someone who started life as a young boy from Manizales and that, as a serious historian and researcher, I’ve found that, more often than not, what I taught as a young historian was utterly false. Indeed, while many feel we’ve recently entered the post truth era, to me, it seems that we as a people have been there since we invented language. Not something of which I am proud although I’m proud to now understand that history has little to do with reality but a great deal to do with ever-present propaganda, and that “news” reporting has a lot to do with that. It’s not for nothing that journalism’s most prestigious awards are named after Joseph Pulitzer, an entrepreneur who felt that fiction, presented as news, was an extremely profitable art form and, in that, he was not the first. Not by far. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon mythos bequeathed to the United States by the United Kingdom.
Since the early 1970’s I’ve been focused on issues involving the blatant hypocrisy with respect to the two “world” wars of the twentieth century and the related so called “cold war”, as well as on the myriad invasions of foreign countries by the United States to enforce a colonialist economic system deceptively labeled capitalism, amazed at to how easy it’s always been in systems falsely labeled as “democracies” to deceive the populace into accepting what should be unacceptable. Today, that is especially obvious as the purported victims of the Nazi “Holocaust” engage in a holocaust of their own, one against the Palestinian people, a holocaust fully supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and their NATO allies, a “project involving attempts to implement the Zionist goal of a “Greater Israel” throughout the Middle East and I have consequently come to suspect that too many of the lives lost on every side of most of the conflicts since the dawn of the twentieth century in one way or another involve that hideous Zionist project. As a young man I was horrified by the Nazi Holocaust and reflected a great deal on what I would have done to protect its victims, had I been born a few decades earlier than my birth in 1946. After a good deal of reflection I naively concluded that it would have been my ethical and moral responsibility to have done everything in my power to save as many of the victims as possible. Well now that responsibility is squarely on my shoulders, on our collective shoulders but, no matter how hard those of us who seek justice, equity and peace try, our efforts are nullified by the worst among us and I am coming to understand how the German people, previously among the most moral, ethical and socially conscious people in Europe, indeed, the ones who most fairly treated Europe’s Jews, so permitted the perversion of their values. It seems, as the old refrain goes, “the more things change the more they stay the same”. What a depressing realization. Perhaps that realization is what metaphorically led the Hebrew Archangel Hêl él (inappropriately identified with the Roman god Lucifer) to futilely rebel against the vicious YHWH.
In addition to history I’ve taught comparative mythologies and comparative religions, comparative politics, comparative political systems and comparative constitutions; I’ve also taught democratic theory, international law, human rights law, constitutional law and the history of political ideas. And I’ve written and lectured as a political analyst and commentator about United States and Colombian politics and about international affairs, about justice and injustice and about the futility of the antithesis of Kant’s perpetual peace. For a while, I practiced law in New York and then in Florida, admittedly not all that successfully, and I’ve engaged in political consulting devising unusual solutions to mundane problems. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I’ve not really succeeded in those things that most mattered to me, in my personal relations, although, during the past five years I seem to have finally experienced domestic bliss. Hopefully, this time is the charm. I’ve lived with too many women, too many of whom I’ve hurt although, in at least a few instances, failed relationships have matured into warm friendships. And, in at least one case, a special relationship has lasted for more than six decades.
Professionally I’ve enjoyed impressive successes and devastating failures although in neither case were the results deserved, not really. I started my professional career after graduating from both the Eastern Military Academy (where I also taught) and the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, firmly convinced that our government was beneficent and that the sacrifices it demanded of our best and brightest were really for the common good in a quest for justice, equity and peace. Unfortunately, as I eventually discovered, I could not have been more wrong. I found that out when, being true to the honor systems in which I’d been raised, I sought to expose government corruption only to find that corruption is the rule and that it does not take kindly to being exposed.
You know, naiveté, when it impacts others, is as much a problem as is corruption. Still, on reflection, my setbacks are the things that most improved me as a human being, the experiences that evoked wisdom and growth and an understanding of the reality in which we live and brought me closer to becoming the person I always hoped I would be: a person focused on others, on justice and equity and fair play, on compassion rather than on conspicuous consumption (although the gravitational well of conspicuous consumption still exercises a strong draw on my fantasies). In those fantasies I’d be immensely wealthy but dedicated to philanthropy, to providing shelter and food for the homeless, education and healthcare for all, and the opportunity for everyone to attain everything of which they are capable, I would manage to assure a world free of violence and to minimize suffering, although I would still live more than just comfortably. I wonder how many of today’s greediest billionaires once shared similar fantasies.
In reality though, my greatest fantasy has always been to return to the past and to correct my errors, albeit a return preserving everything I’ve ever learned. Not at all likely. An unrealizable chance to have been a better son and a better brother and a better husband and a better father and a better friend and a better teacher and a better lawyer, but not to have been quite so naïve or so trusting, or, with women, not to have so often been so cavalier. Still, I seem to have learned from my mistakes and while still far from the person I’d like to see looking back at me in the mirror, I’m now perhaps the best version of myself that I’ve ever been, and that’s something not all of us achieve as the years grow heavier on our shoulders.
I’ve written quite a bit during the past two decades since the demise of my marriage to the mother of my three sons and among the things I’ve written is that, if there’s a karmic afterlife along Abrahamic lines, something in which I do not believe, then in order to attain a paradisiacal afterlife, two things would seem necessary (and perhaps only two things), two things somehow echoing a portion of what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer: first, to have forgiven everyone who has wronged me or caused me harm, intentionally or not, and second, to have received sincere forgiveness from everyone who I’ve harmed in any way, intentionally or not. Unfortunately, I fear I would fail in both respects. Most of us, unfortunately, would which is why, if a heaven and hell exist, heaven would be tiny and hell enormous.
My atonement for such failure, in another nightmarish fantasy, would be to be left as the final guardian of the omniverse, to live on and on, alone, incorporating everything that ever was or ever would be, reliving it from the perspective of every being that had ever been or ever would be, over and over again, but absolutely alone, the only remnant of everything that had ever been or would ever be, but without the capacity to attain insanity. To become infinitely bored and alone. Totally and completely alone.
Yuck!
I sometimes speculate that, if the evil Abrahamic deity in fact existed, something I cannot believe, an experience similar to the afterlife I’ve just described had turned it into the vicious deity reflected in the Tanakh, the one against whom Hêl él rebelled, the one who revels in genocide and demands ritual castration of its male followers and seems to enjoy deceit and trickery and the blood of sacrificed animals and murdered human beings as well. And if that were the case, I wonder how it escaped the punishment that turned it into what it became, speculating that perhaps the creation in which we find ourselves is just its nightmarish fantasy. But then I wonder if it’s all my own nightmarish fantasy and I wonder if perhaps I’m not already serving my sentence as the final guardian of the omniverse.
I think not. I certainly hope not.
I believe that I still have quite a while to live. That’s something I’ve promised my much younger wife, my very special wife, my wife who seems the embodiment of everything positive, a source of beneficence to everyone with whom she comes into contact, the woman who somehow or other found me and seems determined to love me and even to admire me. To trust me and to have faith in me. And that has made me a better person than I’ve ever been before even if it’s a lot to even try live up to.
What a strange life my life has been. Like Pablo Neruda’s, although not as nobly, my life has been much too full and with quite a bit of time still apparently left. Which leads me to wonder just who and what I am and what my purpose in having lived has been, and what purposes still remain to be fulfilled.
Anyway, ….
Seventy-eight bottles of beer on the wall, seventy eight bottles of beer … and still counting. As a seventy-ninth bottle seems about to arrive. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
“Aniquinically yours” she shouted triumphally, “that’s how it’s used, it’s a neologism”. It’s the adverbial form of the word “aniquinical” which is an adjective for the noun “aniquin”, although perhaps that’s a verb, but I’m pretty sure it’s a noun.
“Hmmm” Will replied skeptically. “Hhmmm” was not an acceptable word in Scrabble no matter how frequently he thought about using it. He was intrigued by the possibility of adding “h”s to increase the word score but, he abided by both the spirit and letter of the rules, no pun intended, and, getting back to Martina’s “aniquinically yours”, he responded on a more specific rather than reactive basis: “I’m pretty sure brand new neologisms designed to fit the board don’t count. Anyway, they’d have to mean something and what the hell does ‘Aniquin’ mean”?
He’d used the word “neologism” recently and, after he had proved its existence to Alyssa, the arbiter in their game, Martina had become intrigued by the possibilities it represented for her in the game. Now, she looked at him somewhat mysteriously, seductively, knowingly, as though she wasn’t bluffing and said: “everyone knows what that means, at least if they’ve had a modicum of education” (and she immediately thought: “modicum”, I’ll have to remember that). But she simply said, “If you’re challenging, just look it up”.
From across the room Alyssa said, “I think she meant ‘Aniconically’, which is a word.
“Yeah” Martina said, “that’s what I said!”
“But, … you spelled it wrong” Alyssa added, to Martina’s disappointment. “It’s spelled A-n-i-c-o-n-i-c-a-l-l-y”.
Will laughed and said, “So Martina, … what does ‘Aniconically’ mean anyway”? Smirking, he knew Martina had just made up a word. Martina was all too frequently creative in a deviously dishonest fashion. But she was also beautiful and charming and charismatic and was thus usually able to pull off whatever she wanted, especially with men to whom she was not related. But he was immune. Martina was his younger, very competitive sister and Will loved her just the way she was, especially since, over time, he’d finally learned how to read her.
Apparently, the three were not quite as alone as they thought they were. From what some might refer to as another dimension, perhaps one set in a sort of twilight that might have once been familiar to a certain Rod Serling, Aniquin apparently inchoately stillborn, looked on from the ether flowing from the board of the game on which Martina and Will were playing. All boards used in that game were sources of soul-like concepts which, from time to time, entered and possessed, not bodies, but the memeplexes we refer to as words. Aniquin wondered just what it was that it itself might someday mean and wondered what the hell ‘Aniconically’ meant. There were a google of other inchoate concepts sharing the etherous, otherworldly vapor seemingly surrounding Aniquin, all of them inchoate or stillborn, all of them waiting to be defined, all of whom looked on expectantly, wondering whether a new word was being born.
Apparently, on Instagram there existed a certain “Ani Quinn”, so the potential for a new word existed.
In the meantime, in the more tangible world with which most of us are familiar, Martina and Will had dashed for their shared official Second Revised Edition of the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, a huge tome which sat pompously, almost smirking, in the middle of a bookcase made of castoff cement blocks and wooden planks on which diverse other books shared space with old wine bottles covered in the multicolored waxy residue of former candles as well as with the lonely, seemingly disappointed (or perhaps just disinterested) jade-colored bust of a well-known ancient Indian sage, one who too many people believed to have been born in a place referred to by its inhabitants as the Middle Kingdom (which was definitely different from Middle Earth).
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Tomorrow is the day most beloved by restaurateurs, florists and purveyors of assorted merchandise. But for many mothers it’s a very different sort of day, for those mothers whose children have become estranged, for those mothers who for one reason or another, found themselves unable to keep their children. For those mothers whose children find them unworthy of respect or of affection.
Many of us have not been great sons or daughters taking for granted that incredibly special relationship until it’s too late. And then, of course, it’s too late. I know I certainly should have been a much better son. I always knew my mother loved me very much but I did not appreciate all the sacrifices she made and all that she endured to make me, as far as my better points go, the person I became.
It’s not easy to be a parent, and a “good parent” is an ideal that is too complex to easily attain. Many of the best parents are those most resented, at least for a while, by children who are incapable of understanding that forming a human being capable of confronting the challenges he or she are sure to face requires difficult decisions and that in seeking to make them, mistakes are not infrequent, and that such mistakes are all too often exaggeratedly taken out of context. But parents and those of their children who, rather than avoid parenthood become parents, are links in a chain as old as our species.
On this Mother’s Day my heart goes out to those mothers, who like so many fathers, find themselves ignored, or disrespected, or alone. Or who will merely engage in introspection on how much better they could have performed their sacred missions.
It’s a day for celebration; yes! And for recognition in many cases. But also for reflection, introspection, forgiveness and empathy. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
It’s Christmas Eve in the year 2024, an eventful year although not for reasons we will be proud to remember, especially in the Middle East. But it’s still that special season that has been honored wherever men have roamed since we became sentient and noticed the seeming miracle of the twin solstices, the one in the North, with the longest night, and the one in the South with the longest day. The equator is currently not far from where I live in a wonderful city high in the Central range of the Colombian Andes. Here, spring reigns eternal. It’s a city at the southern edge of the Northern Hemisphere. I guess that at the equator solstices and equinoxes coincide. I have often wondered what it would be like to live in a home that straddles the equatorial line, one concurrently both real and imaginary. It must be a magical place. But, at any rate, for me, solstices as well as equinoxes have always seemed days for introspection and this year I’ve reflected on my friend Bobby, and on the special parochial school in Hollis, Queens, in New York City from which I graduated in late June of 1960, St. Gerard de Majella (we just called it St. Gerard’s).
So, about Bobby.
I can’t recall his last name. He’s not in the picture above, he didn’t graduate with me from St. Gerard’s. He lived with his family over a candy store on Hillside Avenue in Queens Village, New York, between 215th and 216th streets I think. I recall sharing “chocolate egg creams” there. I lived in the Abbot Arms apartment complex across the street (at least I think that’s what it was called). We were briefly “best” friends during the 1960-1961 academic year, a very difficult year for me and not just because hormones had kicked into high gear. That was the year Bill Mazeroski broke Mickey Mantle’s heart, … and mine. Bobby was Italian and his family was very kind, very warm; very full of joy. I loved some of the food his wonderful mom made for us but not all of it, not the bull’s balls, … yuck!!! But I ate them just the same.
Bobby was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He helped me through a rough time. As had happened all too often, I’d switched schools in the middle of the 1960-61 academic year, having been transferred over my protests by my parents from Jamaica High School, which I really liked and where many of my friends from St. Gerard’s had gone, to Martin Van Buren, a relatively new school where I knew no one. After almost yearly changes in schools, this was one too many and I finally rebelled. I informally refused to accept the transfer, instead, riding the New York City subways all day until I was finally caught. I remember that I’d planned to emancipate myself by becoming a comic book artist and had sent DC Comics an idea for a new super hero I’d drawn, “Ultraman” I think I called him. Their rejection letter was polite: “they had enough artists and did not generally hire fourteen year olds”.
I remember that chief among the delights of Jamaica High were two girls, Karen Luckhart (I think that was her last name but I’ve probably misspelled it) and Mary Bakanskas (ditto on the spelling), and I also had a host of other good friends. One’s name was Tommy Scott, a classmate from St. Gerard’s; we used to hang out together before classes started. There was also a very pretty sophomore named Cindy who sometimes deigned to join us freshmen at our early morning gatherings. I remember that she smoked and seemed very mature and somewhat wise. Smoking created impressions like that back then. Now, not so much. And then there was a sort of friend, Johnny Eckelstein, a sort of rival. He was on Jamaica High’s track team.
I don’t remember anyone from my short stay at Van Buren.
At the end of that academic year I was off to the Eastern Military Academy in Cold Spring Hills, New York, overlooking Cold Spring Harbor, an old whaling port. It was my choice and a wise one. Eastern provided me with an Island of stability as my family fell apart. My mother and stepfather separated then divorced in 1962 and my younger siblings, my sister Marina and my brother Teddy were also sent to boarding schools, Marina to Sag Harbor and Teddy to St. Basil’s in upstate New York. Eastern was the first school in my life where I remained for more than two years. I graduated from Eastern in 1964 and returned to teach there for a decade after college at the Citadel.
I never saw or heard from Bobby after I left for Eastern but I never forgot him either.
I frequently wonder what happened to all of those people with whom I shared a bit of friendship in that strange year. I wish there was some way to reconnect but until recently, not even Facebook has helped. I’ve tried. I especially tried with respect to those who graduated with me from St. Gerard’s in June of 1960. Most especially with respect to one with whom I may never have shared a single word. Patricia Maher was her name and this time I´ve got the spelling right. I’ve posted on a Facebook page for St. Gerard’s (which ceased operations in 2008 but whose chapel still survives) but have yet to receive any responses. I’ve heard that former governor Mario Cuomo also went there. He was one of my law school professors, the one I most admired although his sons have sullied his name. I think of St. Gerard’s every time I watch Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in the Bells of St. Mary’s (which I try to do every Christmas).
I recall the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s at St. Gerard’s and the special message that the Virgin of Fatima had supposedly delivered to a young girl in Portugal, Lucia dos Santos was her name then. She’d turned the message over, sealed, to the Vatican, and Pope John XXIII was supposed to finally unseal it as 1959 turned to 1960. I recall the rumor that when he’ read it, he’d passed out and that the message was so troubling that after we’d waited for half a century to hear it (well, not us specifically, we’d only waited thirteen years), we’d just have to keep on waiting.
I remember St. Gerard’s and love it more every year and wonder what ever happened to my classmates, hoping that they’ve all enjoyed happy and productive lives. But Bobby, I remember him best. I hope he’s thriving and that he’s had a great life.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
[1] To the tune of Joan Baez singing “There but for Fortune” and Simon and Garfunkel’s version of “The Seven O’clock News/Silent Night”.
An introspection dedicated to Billy, Alex and Edward, to Marina and Teddy, to my mother, Rosario who’s been gone now for a third of a century, and to her sisters Carola (who joined her a while ago) and Livia who is blessedly still here. To long gone “Pop” who left us in 1972 and to our matriarch, Juanita, who after having lived a bit more than a century, determined, on her own, that it was time to go. And, of course, to Natalia.
Christmas has often seemed nostalgically melancholy to me. It involves an anniversary, each anniversary different, sometimes very different. My happiest were when I was surrounded by family, first as a young child with my younger sister Marina, then with Marina and my little brother Teddy and with my mother and my stepfather Leon. Then, eventually, much later, as a parent with a wife and one, then two, and finally three sons.
My first recollection is when Marina and I were very little. My mother and father had separated and he was probably with his family in Barinas, Venezuela while my mother had started her adventure in the United States. We were left in my grandmother Juanita’s care, along with my wonderful aunts, Livia and Carola. My earliest Christmas memory involves my grandmother’s annual Christmas event for the poorest children in the City of Manizales in Colombia. My grandmother owned a hotel, the Hotel Roma, which included a wonderful restaurant with a large dining room and, for Christmas, she’d pile the dining room with a small mountain of gifts which, on that occasion, I, in representation of baby Jesus (I was three at the time) was charged with distributing to the many dozens of very poor young children present. It should have been a beautiful event except that I misbehaved. I kept a toy I liked for myself and when my grandmother found out, my baby Jesus role was over forever. She said I’d behaved more like baby Satan. My transgression that evening, even as young as I was, impacted me profoundly and since that time I have always tried my best to be kind to those less advantaged than I.
My next set of memories were after I and Marina had joined my mother in the United States and we had formed a new family with my stepfather Leon (who I always called “Pop” at his suggestion). We didn’t have very much back then but we didn’t know we were poor and Christmas was full of presents, or so it seemed. For me, usually toy guns, toy guns that became more and more realistic (that not being politically incorrect back then) and, on two occasions, electric trains. I can’t recall what presents Marina and Teddy received except on one occasion, Christmas of 1956, an eventful year. We’d been living idyllically for over a year in Charlotte, for once in a house rather than in an apartment, and even had a housekeeper but, in a flash, it was all gone and we were headed back to Miami Beach, to a tiny apartment again, and worse, my stepfather was not with us having been injured in a serious car accident. We had virtually nothing except a bit of charity from my stepfather’s sister, my aunt Mary, and my mother was understandably a wreck so that a good deal of family “management” had devolved on eleven year old me, and Christmas was around the corner. I’d arranged for small presents for Marina and Teddy so that they’d continue to believe in Santa, comic books for Marina as I recall, and perhaps a football for Teddy (which I too could use) but, on Christmas Eve, as twilight fell, in walked Pop, his arms loaded with gifts. The relief I felt was intense and the happiness awesome. The best present ever. We had each other. …. Until we didn’t. Not quite. Not in the same way. Five years later, in 1961 our family abruptly fragmented as so many, indeed most, do now. As the one I was to lead in the future many decades later was to do as well. I recall our last Christmas all together, it was in New York, in Queens Village, and it had snowed, and I recall that Marina, Teddy and I along with other children made snow angels in the yard of the small apartment complex where we then lived on Hillside Boulevard between 215th and 216th streets. Abbot Arms it was called, as I recall.
After that I was in a military boarding school, the Eastern Military Academy, and then in college at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, and I usually spent Christmases with friends at their homes. Pleasant times, even wonderful times, but not the same. And after college, I returned to the military academy from which I’d graduated, the one that had become home to me and where I spent almost a decade as a teacher and administrator. The Eastern Military Academy was a magical place, indeed, it was a real castle (Oheka Castle nowadays), and Christmases were interesting, almost always white. All the students were gone and the resident faculty members gathered to share the season in front of roaring fires with special egg nog and shared meals. Christmas then was communal, shared with special people. With Susan Metz with whom I lived at the time and with the literary scholar, Roger Hamilton, and with the LaForges and the Coffeens, and especially with the wonderful Greene family, David, the patriarch and his wonderful wife Jane, and their children: Robert (who was to become my best friend) and Laurie who passed away much too young. They were family but, of course, a very different sort of family.
My second “real” family, the one I founded as an adult, also shared what to me seemed beautiful winter holidays and that was as true when we could afford anything any of us wanted as it was when, occasionally, very briefly, we had practically nothing. Billy, Alex and Edward, my sons, always made Christmas very special, no matter what. Indeed, my most beautiful memory involves a time when, after a country hotel and restaurant we’d bought in Laurel Hills, North Carolina (the Echo Mountain Inn) had failed and we’d lost almost everything, we were spending Christmas morning in the Florida home of George and Agnes Chamberlin, the wonderful parents of a childhood friend, and presents were being opened. One came packed in a series of boxes to the utter delight of my second son, Alex (then about three years old). Alex was very excited as every present was opened (even though most were not for him) and, when the gag box within a box within a box package was being opened, he kept exclaiming, “a box; a box”. I also very fondly recall when some years later, at a time when our fortunes had vastly improved, my sons’ mother Cyndi and I climbed the roof of our large comfortable home to plant replica reindeer tracks so that my three sons would continue to believe in St. Nicholas, or at least to remain open-minded on the subject. Open mindedness reinforced by their mother’s refrain of “if you don’t believe you won’t receive”. A persuasive argument. I also recall the time some years later when I combed the country looking for a just released video game console my sons were desperate to receive (am Xbox as I recall), one which a business partner in upstate New York finally located for me. And I recall how pleased I was with myself for having been able to find it, the best present of all for me having been being able to please my sons.
When Christmases were happy times, one of the things that most impacted me, in addition to being extremely grateful for my family, was the spirit of decency and goodwill that seemed to permeate the season. The hope for peace and justice and for a better world that seemed a legacy from the Nazarene who many called “the Prince of Peace” (but in whose name, incongruously, his most devoted followers caused so much killing and mayhem and misery). The latter reality became more obvious to me as I matured intellectually and became a more devoted historian and academic; when I eventually began to pierce the veils of delusion woven around us all and Christmas lost much of its allure, its tidings of hope receding and becoming instead, an opportunity for contrasting the stark realities in which we lived. Realities in which a tiny few had more than they could ever consume. Realities in which a seeming majority managed to get by somehow. But a reality in which many, way too many, suffered terribly, both materially and spiritually. A reality where far too many found the holiday season the saddest and most despairing time of the year. To a greater and greater extent, the latter’s despair touched me, every year a bit more. It touched me as our world spiraled more and more out of quilter, it touched me more and more as justice and equity were revealed as empty promises, mere delusive illusions, and it touched me more and more as I came to realize that superficial things that seem to bring us pleasure, things like television programs and concerts and movies and sports were merely temporary distractions used to maintain us tightly under control. In that regard I remember the famous version of “Silent Night” by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released in 1966 (the 7:00 News and Silent Night medley) at the height of the military misadventure then known as the Vietnam War, a war that claimed many of those I most loved and admired. People like my Citadel classmates Woody Woodhouse and Ron Ashe and John Bradman and too many others to name.
Still, even then, Christmas had its enchantment. I recall Christmas during 1976 while I was attending the graduate division of the New York University’s School of Law to earn a postgraduate degree in international legal studies. I recall how on the day before Christmas Eve that year I drove with my wonderful friend, Robert Greene, through the neighborhood in lower Manhattan adjoining the Williamsburg Bridge which I traversed every weekday as I travelled to classes in Washington Square Park, and how from my car window we passed out bottles of Lowenbrau dark beer to the homeless men and women who congregated on our route, people who we were too poor to help on normal occasions, and I recall how pleased we were with our apparent beneficence, something which certainly did more for us than it did for the recipients of our gifts. And then I recall that, after my classes that evening, we were off, back to our Long Island home at the military academy where we both taught, off to share tidings of comfort and joy, a time of awakening for both of us but shielded from the dark by families and friends sharing memories that would keep us warm for years to come. That keep me warm today.
The 1970’s were a strange time, a time full of hope when we who’d come of age in the sixties thought we could change the world only to have it change us during the 1980’s. The 1980’s when we reverted to form, our idealistic illusions fading more and more each year as we had our own families and I had my own sons. Providing for them became the greater good and the world’s ills, and the ills of many around us became less clear, less important, at least to us. That digression lasted through the turn of the millennium, a privileged time for many of us in many senses, but a worse and worse time for most of the world.
I remember the last Christmas I spent as part of a family with my sons and their mother Cyndi, still my wife then. It was in 2006. By 2007 our family had imploded and exploded and fragmented and the last traces of merry Christmases had faded until their echoes had become dissonant and I found myself among the masses of those for whom the holidays were the saddest part of the year rather than the happiest. Not that I was terribly off, just that by 2008 I was in a different country, back in Colombia where I’d been born, in a different continent, separated from the family I had once led and which I missed very much. And that in that loneliness, although I was not alone, I came closer and closer to understanding the darker side of our world, a darker side about which I, then a college professor, taught. And I became very personally impacted by the seeming futility of seeking that world that the promises attributed to the ancient Nazarene proclaimed were our due and our responsibility. And I somehow blamed him for having failed us when the reverse was much more true.
Those darker times have now largely passed, at least personally. Since 2019 I’ve found comfort with my current wife, Natalia, a woman who, as a noncustodial parent, has also endured the loss of intimacy with her children. Because of shared negative experiences we’re able to comfort each other and to share a new version of joy, although one tinged with maturity and reality. One grounded in spirituality and civic activism. One which resonates with the echoes of the homeless and the poor and with their suffering, suffering of which Joan Baez once sang “there but for fortune go you or I”. So now, this season is neither merry nor full of despair but, at least for my wife and for me, it has evolved into a time for reflection and introspection, and for recalling memories of other days, and for watching old Christmas classics like “The Bells of St. Mary’s” and “Going My Way” where Bing Crosby, long gone, still creates the illusion of Christmas as a magical time, a time when anything is possible and, at any rate, when things seemingly turned out well. It has evolved into a time for my own version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carroll”; a time where I welcome the spirits of Christmases past to share a cup of cheer, albeit nostalgically and melancholically as I recall happy times now receded into fond memories.
Soo, it’s that season again, but this year, this terrible year when genocide has become acceptable in Nazareth and Bethlehem and the other areas where the Nazarene whose birth we celebrate once trod, it’s a time for even more reflection and introspection than usual, and for treasuring the people, not the things, that leave us with at least a trace of hope that the Christmas dreams of our youth will someday be reflected in better, more just and kinder realities. Times when that gentle Nazarene, were he among us, whether or not he was or is divine, would find us having been worth his sacrifice. And with that image in my heart, an ironic refrain seems to fill the end of a movie as a portly old man dressed in red and white, in extremely good humor, shouts: “and a merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night”. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
November 5, 2024 is purportedly federal election day in the United States of America but the concept of an “election day” has become meaningless. And that may not be a negative although how that has come about is troubling given that the main goal of that evolutive process seems to have become, not the implementation of more effective democracy but rather, the facilitation of more efficient electoral fraud and manipulation.
How so?
Well, in its least malign aspect, the evolving trend towards a voting season rather than an electoral day looks to “lock-in” voters prior to the availability of information necessary to make adequately informed voting decisions, thus making electoral manipulation more feasible. That, of course, is tied into the manipulation of essential information by the corporate media through not only the publication and dissemination of distortions and outright lies as facts, but by the obfuscation of important relevant information, the Hunter Biden laptop from Hell being a prime, albeit far from the most important, example. At least as nefarious are the range of voting procedures crafted by those who seek to minimize electoral safeguards through a longer, less organized and poorly monitored voting cycle, one where, for example, the State of California has criminalized required identity verification prior to voting and indeed, where most states controlled by the Democratic Party have taken steps to permit the casting of votes by people who provide no proof of who they are nor of their right to do so.
The mass mailing of unsolicited ballots coupled with the ability to “harvest” and return such ballots is obviously designed, in its most benign aspect, to create a “market” for the purchase and sale of votes, and for the theft and unauthorized casting of ballots in its most nefarious form. And that is where we find ourselves as the electoral season draws to a close “on or about” this November 5. I use the phrase “on or about” because there is no longer a “hard date” by which votes must be cast given that judges and electoral officials in Democratic Party controlled states, and even in Democratic Party controlled counties and electoral districts have taken to insisting that the absence of postmarks or the receipt of ballots with postmarks beyond the date fixed for their return should be ignored in the interests of what they claim is a more ample form of democracy, something that seems akin to the old political slogan of “vote early and vote often”.
I have long avocated for an electoral period rather than an election day in order to make participation in the electoral process more convenient. Decades ago I proposed that elections should take place over a series of set dates, perhaps as long as three or four, with results published daily to motivate the lazy to cast their votes when it became obvious that their participation would be essential in order for candidates they preferred to emerge victorious. But I understood that as important as participation in the electoral process was, safeguarding of the electoral process was at least as important, and that real democracy required limiting participation to eligible voters through strictly enforced safeguards, safeguards in fact effectively imposed in the poorest and least technologically advanced countries, safeguards such as photo identification cards, signatures and fingerprints. In the Republic of Colombia where I currently reside such procedures are uniformly applied and though not perfect (electoral fraud still exists), at least efforts are made to minimize electoral fraud rather than to promote it.
In the United States, democracy is not thriving, it never has. At the best of times the country has been ruled through a patchwork two-party dictatorship at the local, state, regional and federal levels, the “duopoly” at it is referred to by its critics, among them many smaller political parties, independent candidates and concerned voters. But today’s Democratic Party seeks to eliminate even the duopoly. During the past four years it has utterly corrupted the penal and judicial systems in order to minimize the ability of opponents to run against its pre-selected candidates, and I do not refer specifically to Donald Trump. He at least is powerful enough to fight back. But rather, to the most decent among alternative options, people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of the assassinated senator and former attorney general, Robert Francis Kennedy and the nephew of the assassinated president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy; people like the eminent and brilliant Afro-American philosopher, academic and civic leader, Cornell West; people like eminent physician and civic leader, Jill Stein; people like former Democratic Party congressman and peace activist Dennis Kucinich. Perhaps even worse, in an effort to retain permanent dictatorial power for the ill-named Democratic Party, the Biden administration has done everything possible to curtail opposing viewpoints through criminalization of the right to hold and express opposing opinions and in that effort has recruited the major news media and the major internet platforms.
Not that the GOP, the Grand Old Party, otherwise known as the Republicans are all that much better although, except when it comes to blind allegiance to Zionists imperil ambitions, it is significantly less inclined to engage in military adventures abroad or to censorship and lawfare at home. Still, its candidate in this election is one of the world’s least pleasant persons, an egotistical, self-promoting demagogue. How far have we sunk as a polity when he seems far more trustworthy than the slick loophole specialists who oppose him, the Clintons and the Obamas if not quite the Bidens, those who offer us as a choice the chameleonic Kamala Harris, lawyers all, lawyers beloved of the quasi-cultural Hollywood and New York elites and, of course, of the Deep State moles who believe they’ve found the “one ring to rule us all and in the darkness bind us”.
Absolute power seems to be the goal and, as the old adage claims, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Today, the descendants of those who believed they were fighting against such tyranny instead find themselves actively involved in promoting genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid on the one hand as they court nuclear holocaust on the other, all in order to enrich the tiny minority of billionaires reliant for their political and economic power on perpetual war and oppression. And on our own cowardice, cupidity and stupidity.
It is, in all probability, too late to defeat the forces of darkness arrayed against us, but we can still, at least, back our own versions of Tolkien’s Frodo: I allude to people like Jill Stein and Cornell West who are still options, and in other elections, we can decide to vote for any candidate unaligned with the duopoly. As always, if enough of us took that road less travelled, we might somehow find ourselves glimpsing a light at the end of that deep dark tunnel into which we’ve been forced to descend, assured that the wreak of filth and death we smell is really milk and honey.
As the purportedly Wicked Witch of the West exclaimed in the 1930’s movie version of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, … “what a world, what a world”! But perhaps hers is not the last word.
In 1875 poet William Ernest Henley, perhaps channeling the “darker days referenced by Sigmund Freud, wrote a poem he entitled “Invictus”, one I share as I close, albeit set in prose:
Out of the night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet, the menace of the years finds and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
“Great Ones we are grateful” was an expression my younger brother Teddy used to shout to the sky above Venice Beach in California during early mornings and late evenings many decades ago, at a time when his intuition insisted that we were not alone in the universe, and that we had benign mentors watching over us.
Times seemed bad to Teddy back then, back in the seventies and early eighties of the last century during another millennium when the Age of Aquarius was purportedly about to dawn. Of course, now, those times seem like a golden age, at least in comparison to the present. And now, even to Teddy, the Great Ones, if they exist or ever existed, seem as distant from us, and as disinterested in us, as do our own divinities, leaving us abandoned to our own devices, led through illusions and delusions and deceit by the very worst among us.
So while my brother’s optimism and hope were beautiful in their way, they were more than anything a symptom of the reality that we’d lost our way and that we seemed congenitally incapable of finding our way back.
Although back towards what, given our history as a species, seems a depressing thought.
And our path forward, unfortunately, now seems even worse. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
A single lavender rose, braving the snow, surviving despite the bitter cold, clinging tenaciously to life had invaded his dreams during a difficult night and its memory insistently clung to him after he woke, so much so that he immediately researched it meaning, something he did not frequently do as, while spiritual and curious, he had little faith in the symbolic interpretations of others, too many of whom seemed charlatans looking to exploit the gullible and naïve. That morning, somewhat amused at himself and his foibles, he found himself among them.
The symbolic dream meanings for a lavender rose that he found that morning after brief and superficial research claimed that it represented a variant of innocent and instantaneous love, perhaps but not necessarily romantic, but he sensed that was not what it had meant in his dream. In his dream, the lavender rose had been somewhat sentient and able to communicate indirectly, perhaps, emotively, initially fleeing from him as he tried to acquire it, the pot in which it had been planted falling and shattering and the flower portion disappearing. But, as he had gathered the shards of the pot in which it had been planted and which had fallen, and the stalk and leaves and seeds with which it had been raised, it had, albeit damaged and with most of its petals lost, suddenly appeared and asked to return, promising to generate new buds.
Now that seemed symbolic and he wished, not for the first time, that he had the psychic gift or talent of mystic interpretation, or that he trusted in someone who did, which he did not. Thus not only the lavender rose but the dream sequence in which he and she had met (it seemed feminine to him) remained an enigma. An important enigma as it seemed important to discern the dream’s meaning, and perhaps, the role that lavender roses might someday play in his life, or in the lives of someone among those he loved.
He’d just have to wait and see, not only the usual occurrence in his life but perhaps of life in general, and perhaps that was its message.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, an intermittent commentator on radio and television, and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
After deep reflection and introspection, he finally concluded that he did not really believe in anyone, not even in himself. As long as interests coincided, loyalty was a possibility albeit not a certainty, but once they clashed, regardless of shared interests, loyalty evaporated into hazy rationalizations. And that made sense.
That was logical. No one was safely reliable. No one could always be counted on. Love made no difference, it was, by its nature, always potentially ephemeral and always frailly ethereal. And when dissipated, love all too frequently morphed into something very negative, something akin to hate or at best, disdain.
Disquieting? Of course. Sad? Terribly. But to expect otherwise was to delude oneself, something most of us did frequently, indeed, almost always. When we find reality discomfiting, we usually ignore it and delve into our own personal fantasies, … and not the fun kind.
There were people he could almost count on but he admitted to himself that “almost” was a positivist way of presenting a negative, and dangerously so. And it applied to himself as much as to anyone, and not just with respect to others, it applied to him in his roles with himself as well. How strange.
It applied to us as individuals but also to us as collectives which explained much of history, not the fake narrative Pablum we’re taught and force fed daily, but the reality of what’s been and why.
He wondered if this day, a day where realism seemed ascendant, was a very good day, or a very bad day, and the answer was a confusingly emphatic: “yes”! _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 