Desconcertada agenda

At more than 200 km per hour, slowly

 

Poetry

Some cherries

 

Vívelo

Soy de Madrid

 

India

Why the world needs India

 

Sergio Rodríguez

red Echium wildpretii

 

Grito de Amor

Towards a general theory of cavities

 

Graffiti of the World

Premio Internacional Cuadernos del Laberinto de Pensamiento, 2020

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Latest blog entries

destacado Desconcertada Agenda - Enrique Gracia TrinidadPoetry
Friday March 1st, 2024

AT 200 Km PER HOUR, SLOWLY

Enrique Gracia Trinidad pays homage to Whitman, Celaya, Lorca, and more.
destaca algunas cerezasPoetry
Tuesday May 30th, 2023

Some cherries

This new work by Juan Vicente Piqueras, noting that it is his particular cry, or whisper, of anguish and loneliness, as Luis Alberto de Cuenca, president of the jury that…
destaca soy de madridLiterature
Thursday February 9th, 2023

Soy de Madrid

Isabel Ayuso, President of the Comunidad de Madrid, commissioned the book “Soy de Madrid”. The book contains contributions of Nobel Prize, Mario Vargas-Llosa, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Andrés Trapiello… along with lesser…
Why the world needs IndiaChinaOthers
Tuesday November 22nd, 2022

Why the world needs India

India has unseated its former Metropolis, Great Britain, as the world's fifth largest economic power. PM Narendra Modi is leveraging to make the Great Leap Forward with Indian characteristics.
Grito de AmorPoetry
Saturday October 22nd, 2022

CRY OF LOVE

Cry of Love (Towards a General Theory of Cavities) offers some concepts about love, poetically trying to bring order to the imbroglios in your heart, regardless of the mess you…
Sergio-Rodríguez-JiménezPoetry
Friday October 14th, 2022

Of the red Echium wildpretii and other marvels

“Nati, my mother, was born in Tenerife. I once had a sporadic relationship with her, which ended some years ago. We have never been in close contact. She currently lives…

Books

“¡Cogito, ergo we are all confused!”

From The Headless Man, Dibugrafías

Grito de amor

Grito de Amor / Hacia una teoría general de las cavidades

Poetry
Illustrations: Miguel Panadero
Prologue: Antón Alvar Ezquerra
Cuadernos del Laberinto, 2022
ISBN: 9788418997211

“There are those who say the only thing that matters is filling the void, and more specifically, the void of our cavities. That is why we are often obsessed by one of them, whether it’s that of the sex, the heart, or the head itself, apparently the most innocuous, and we are consumed by the little wisdom at our disposal. In this Grito de amor, stories, poems, and a few theories come together that aspire to fill those voids, to make us feel a little better, or to warn us of certain things. “If the signs irritate you, oh! How much more will the things they signify irritate you!” -says Pantagruel.

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“Towards a general theory of cavities”

Anthology of minimal literature. 100 authors

Portada del libro Antología de Literatura mínimaPoetry
Anthologists: Enrique Gracia Trinidad and Alicia Arés
Cuadernos del Laberinto, 2021
ISBN: 9788418997075

This anthology gathers 100 essential authors of contemporary literature in Spanish and their short works, i.e., poetic pieces, epigrams, soleares, greguerías, aphorisms, apothegms, proverbs, aeroliths, paremias, sentences, maxims, tenths, doloras, humoradas, haikus, tankas….

In the case of poems, short texts are undoubtedly a very desirable dish. Not because poetry should be brief, which is not the case, nor because of that “what is good if brief is twice as good”; but because the condensation that poetic already carries in its entrails, is magnified by the small -sorry for playing the oxymoron-, and that extreme condensation, that going to the point and avoiding the chaff, is much appreciated by the good reader who is quickly placed in the reflection, in complicity and in the suspension of mood, extremes that always suit the poetic reading.

By the way, if someone thinks that this book is a bit of a tailor’s drawer, he is absolutely right, but let us not forget that without everything that tailors carry in their drawer we would end up rather naked and that is not the case. Let’s use these pages to help us dress, if not our flesh, then our fantasy, our wit and our emotions.

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“epigrams, soleares, greguerías, aphorisms, apothegms, proverbs, aeroliths, paremias, sentences, maxims, tenths, doloras, humoradas, haikus, tankas…”

World Graffiti


Other genres
Prologue by Pastron#7
English translation by Nick Line
Colección Anaquel de Pensamiento
Cuadernos del Laberinto, 2020
ISBN: 9788412280876

Some people think graffiti is art; some that it is a means to send a message, and there are also those who simply think graffiti is junk. But whatever you think, graffiti is created by its authors in a spirit of stoicism, accepting their anonymity and the fact that their work could disappear the minute it is finished. Graffiti is the Mono no aware, the feeling that expresses the fleeting nature of things; that these creations are beautiful precisely because of their impermanence.

This book is composed of fifty stories inspired by fifty graffiti from different cities around the world that tell —through their hallmark of finitude— how we are all unique and ephemeral at the same time.

Winning work of the I International Award Cuadernos del Laberinto de Pensamiento, 2020

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“Even nothingness has something” from the story”

from Noghing, Graffiti of the Word (2020).

La geografía del erizo

La geografía del erizo

Poetry
Illustrations: Miguel Panadero
Prologue: Juan Vicente Piqueras Salinas
Cuadernos del Laberinto, 2020
ISBN: 9788412130935

Just as Xu Guangqi (徐光啟), also known as Paolo Xu after converting to Christianity in 1603 under the influence of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, asserted that East and West shared  common principles, the sea urchins of this geography break their silence and speak to us directly, and in their way call for a terra communis, where it’s places that make love and within which one breathes deeply before saying goodbye. They seem to be clear that identity is only confirmed when other identities capture our signs of life and return them: Pink Floyd sang Is there anybody out there? This Hegelian echo is fundamental, even if one carries spines, because this is what dictates to every being the imperious need for the presence of another, even though bristly fear and hatred will inevitably, although paradoxically, arise from that need. Nothing destroys us more, wrote George Steiner, than the silence of another human being. Hence Lear’s foolish fury at Cordelia and Kafka’s profound observation that many men survived the siren’s song but none their silence.
To combat this annihilating silence, one must first have a tendency toward the other, and secondly, be able to rouse their echo, so that it accompanies us. Hence, perhaps, the last verses, somewhat ethylic, of this book:

When I take you by the hand,
I no longer imagine we’ll need
to grow spines to save ourselves;
Instead, I imagine myself marching
toward the world,
as if it were on my side.
It must be the wine!

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“There is nothing more poetic than paying a bill”

 

from the poem “Discord”, The Geography of the sea urchin.

Dibugrafías


Short story, Art
Libros.com, 2017
ISBN: 9788417023928

Singapore, New York, Beijing, Madrid and many other locations around the world are the inspiration for more than 50 stories, each a reply to a painterly inquiry.

The result is Dibugrafías, as clear an example as any of “writing on the move”, creating wherever, free from the shackles of “sitting down to write” and the setting for such enigmatic characters as the numbered woman, the headless man or Mister No.

José Felix Valdivieso, a graduate of Law, as well as East Asian Studies, has a passion for languages, from Yoruba to Japanese, along with Chinese. He is the Communications Director at IE Business School and the author of the 2010 book Cosas y murciélagos (Things and Bats), published by Incipit Editores.

Miguel Panadero is a multi-faceted artist, engaged in a lifelong quest through painting, illustration and sculpture. His art, a reflection of the human condition and our relationship with our environment, has featured in numerous one-man and collective exhibitions.

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“I’ve also heard that flight exceeds the wing,
in the same way that painting exceeds the hand”

From I’ve Heard it Said, Dibugrafías

Cosas y murciélagos


Short story
CYAN, 2010
ISBN: 9788481988215

The world is travelling at 01 speed, unable to keep up with its own narration. These Things and bats are a bridge, a way of holding onto the world, of approaching the words of these things and the bats that live in it. Things, bats, you and me, are all points and the connections between two points and the bridge we have to extend to know ourselves as “existed”.

The magic is in connecting, and for that magic not to be broken, we need to be alert to all inclemency, because when one least expects it, suddenly, along comes a shout and finishes everything off.

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“Surely, memory is one of the first steps toward death.
When he began to remember…”

From The flight, Dibugrafías

José Félix Valdivieso

José Félix Valdivieso was born in Brussels, later graduating in East Asian Studies (specializing in Chinese) from UAM and in Law from UCM. He also holds an Executive MBA from IE Business School. He has traveled the world in search of languages, from Ancient and Modern Greek, as well as Russian, German, Chinese Japanese…and has now set about unravelling the language of the street—perhaps the most cyphered—through its graffiti. A problem, because as Ayako says in Love, one of the stories featured in this book “all languages are imprecise, and when they are precise they are so in their own way and she says that she knows this all too well because she translates, not just words and languages, but like everybody else, life, love, into something more chewable,” and that’s where the problems start, because everybody understands in their own way, and everybody’s way is their own way, not so precise…

At present

José Félix is also Chairman of IE China Center and author of the book Graffiti of the World, the poetry collection La Geografía del Erizo (Cuadernos del Laberinto, 2020), as well as the short story collection Dibugrafías (Libros.com 2017) and Cosas y Murciélagos (Incipit Editores, 2010).