The Ruiz Diaries

Jaime Grijalba Gomez is translating the late filmmaker Raúl Ruiz’s diaries. You can subscribe and get them in your inbox! It’s like becoming a correspondent of the Great Man Himself. Or his medium.

You can also pay Jaime to help him keep at it.

I had to share this one because the story Ruiz tells is so very, very Ruizian. Obviously, if you’re Raúl Ruiz, people are going to tell you stories like this. Another reason to subscribe to the diaries: they help you to be Raúl Ruiz. Oh, I don’t say you’ll ever make it, not all the way. But anything that gets you close…

Over to Jaime:

Short Note: Ruiz tells a fascinating tale here, which is apparently true. If you’d like to donate, do it here, it gives you more translations. Thanks and enjoy! Yesterday I spent the day wandering around without much point. I didn’t go to the bank. I had lunch with Jacques Bouquin at the Sukiyaki. In the middle of lunch Martine arrived. He had to treat about work with both of us. Then I passed to L’Arbre à Lettres, where I bought a book by Ali al-Baghdadi, writer of the 14th century of the court of the Mameluke in Egypt. I read some of it. Exulting and joyful obscenity. I took a nap and at 18.00 hrs. I went to meet with Bruno Beaugé, who has done some sets for me. He’d like to work again for me. In the night we dined with Guy and Rachel at Michel Ciment’s house. They had invited a female writer specialized in Nietzsche. Gossip and good mood. At the end of dinner I told a story that Bruno had told me that same afternoon. I left them perplexed. Nevertheless, it seems luminous to me. Bruno says that in 1971, being in the northeast of Cameroon, in a little transited region, they found a tribe whose members spoke an unknown language even for the local interpreters. The members of the tribe were completely naked and each one had in his hands a flute that played only one note. They surrounded them, made a circle around the Europeans and they composed, making one sound after the other, a melody of four notes that they repeated as they narrowed the circle. After three hours, Bruno and his companions understood clearly and distinctly that the members of the tribe were asking for a shovel and a lavatory. They gave it to them and the mysterious flutists rushed away and the jungle swallowed them. 18.45 hrs. At the Mecano, to have a beer with Valeria, a nephew and René Naranjo in this Anguish Sunday. The place is almost full. Before coming I went to a Muslim bookshop and bought The Ringstones of Wisdom by Ibn Arabi. God, exterior and interior, thus we understand the manifest for what’s hidden and the hidden for what’s manifested. “The perishable and contingent beings don’t have another actual reality than the one of God”. Every determined manifestation, every particular being are necessarily divine (commentary to Chapter I, p. 63). Day 361The Ruiz Diaries by ruizdiariesSome Street Santiago de Chile, Chile