Vincent Van Gogh
abandonó la realidad,
su oreja derecha,
perdió todo.
Más silencioso que la luz
no dejó de ver y escuchar
la voz del segado trigal,
el paisaje que marcó su regreso.
Rolando Gabrielli©2008
Hace 13 años.
sábado, septiembre 20, 2008
Discurso de graduación...
Discurso de graduación que pronunció en el Kenyon College de Ohio en 2005, sobre lo destartalada, estúpida y repulsiva que es la vida adulta,
Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
viernes, septiembre 19, 2008
jueves, septiembre 18, 2008
DespedidaSi muero,
dejad el balcón abierto.
El niño come naranjas.
(Desde mi balcón lo veo).
El segador siega el trigo.
(Desde mi balcón lo siento).
¡Si muero,
dejad el balcón abierto!
Federico García Lorca
El mito, la grandeza, genialidad de Federico García Lorca y su obra, seguirán vivos por la eternidad de España y la poesía. Los franquistas lo asesinaron ahí en Viznar, Granada, junto a un barranco y yace bajo un olivo, desde el 18 de agosto de 1936. Está enterrado junto a otros tres hombres sencillos del pueblo, un maestro cojo y dos banderilleros anarquistas. España busca a los desaparecidos de la Guerra Civil. Laura García Lorca, sobrina del poeta y dramaturgo, ha dicho al diario español El País que ya no se opone la familia a que exhumen su cadáver, los restos, que sospechan estàn en una fosa comùn junto a otros mil o tres mil asesinados por el franquismo. Laura ha dicho que la familia no quiere privilegios ni olvido para los que acompañaron a García Lorca en la muerte y martirio. Que dejen allí al poeta donde lo mataron en el barranco de Vìznar. Otra posibilidad, sugiere sería "llevarlo a Nueva York con su padre, a Madrid, con su madre y sus hermanas, a la huerta de San Vicente. Esparcir sus cenizas en varios lugares en los que vivió... Pero queremos dejarlo allí. Murió así, lo mataron de esa manera y es importante que siga ahí. Remover una fosa causa muchas inquietudes. En nuestro caso, el hecho de que se proceda a ello no cierra nuestras heridas." La familia viva de Lorca ha dicho finalmente en un comunicado suscrito por Vicenta, Manuel y Concha Fernández-Montesinos García y Gloria, Isabel y Laura García-Lorca de los Ríos, que dejar los restos del Poeta sería "una forma de preservar el barranco de Víznar como lugar de la memoria colectiva, pública y civil". Después de todo, el crimen de García Lorca es la espina atravesada en el corazón de España y en la garganta del fascismo.
(RG)
miércoles, septiembre 17, 2008
martes, septiembre 16, 2008
El abecedario de las cosas
IUna ventana no es garantía para que el paisaje se acomode a tus ojos. Siempre habrá otra ventana
II
Si entras por una misma puerta muy seguido, puedes llegar siempre al mismo lugar
III
La vasija que guarda por siglos agua, puede conservar algo del silencio que guardará tu memoria
IV
El calendario que se ciñe por los días, tiene término
V
Al consumir la imagen un espejo, corre el riesgo de borrarse o repetirse en el mejor de los casos
VI
Un libro corre el riesgo de no ser leído, pero su peor escenario, es ser mal interpretado
VII
Si la Poesía se estaciona debajo de mi almohada, puedo dormir tranquilo
VIII
Yo escribo para entender mi propio abecedario
IX
El amor se mantiene como el canto de la cigarra...
X
Una piedra se respeta más, que el pie que la pisa
XI
Una ola vuelve a la playa, por amor al principio y al fin
XII
La máscara no se siente falsa, sino que recrea un rostro que la ha escogido
XIII
El desierto es más silencioso que tu corazón, pero tan profundo como tus ojos
XIV
La marea es un ejercicio de Sístole y Diàstole, tu corazón brilla como una Luna llena sobre el mar
XV
El fraude tiene corazón de paloma huérfana
XVII
La Razón no necesita el chillido de la Urraca
XVIII
La mano invisible del mercado nos está estrangulando
XIX
Mercados: la Bolsa o la Vida
XX
La psicología es el patín de la infancia
XXI
Un naipe no se derrumba, se deja lleva r por el azar
XXII
Los dados sólo le mienten al perdedor
XXIII
La Bella Durmiente sueña despierta
XXIV
Soledad,con tu compañía, mejor
XXV
Cría lectores y te demandarán a Google
XXVI
Los enemigos son tan importantes como los amigos, ayudan a estar alerta
XXVII
Nadie se libera de un clavo bien clavado
XXVIII
¿Qué hubiese hecho Mahoma si no tuviera montañas?
XXIX
Tu silencio es otro tipo de ruido. ¿No lo escuchas?
XXX
Polifemo tenìa un ojo clínico
David Foster Wallace, La broma infinita (Final)
CUATRO¿De qué se saturò David Foster Wallace? Cuentan sus allegados que a partir del siglo XXI ya no era el mismo. No he dejado de pensar sobre las últimas horas de DFW, porque nunca sabremos si fue una decisión de último minuto o ya la había tomado. Su padre dijo: no aguantó más. Probó con todo tipo de medicamentos. Estaba, digo, dentro del corazón, del alma, en el fondo de la caja toráxica, donde sólo llegan las tripas personales. Ahí nadie entra, sólo el que sabe hasta cuando da su hígado y pueden respirar sus pulmones.El mismo sábado me enteré de su deceso. Fue en horas de la noche. Aún no se ha dicho con certeza de qué y cómo murió.
Escribió, según las reseñas, de la novela Infinite Jest, de la intoxicación banal, deprimente y comercial de Estados Unidos. Lo que entiendo es que le tomaba el pulso, revisaba los puntos cardinales, el millaje, cambio de aceite, la respiración, su drogadicción en todos los sentidos y direcciones a la sociedad norteamericana. Todo seriamente, humor, sarcasmo, morosidad, velocidad, cambio de paso y de lenguajes, movimientos bien calculados o simplemente a caballo desbocado de las situaciones y lenguajes que iba creando para cada situación como si se apegara a su cuerpo la realidad y la ficción reclamara su espacio dentro del cuerpo principal. Sé que debo leerlo, es un compromiso. Me lo dije muchas veces en el estacionamiento ante el asfalto como testigo. y lo haré con lo que encuentre en español (castellano). Estoy dispuesto, si no encuentro aquí esos libros o adonde los encargarè, a canjear la novela 2666 de Roberto Bolaño por La broma infinita. Es un buen deal, no, David y sé que estarías de acuerdo, porque es tu par o algo así en castellano. Perdona el tuteo, pero me hubiese gustado conocerte y compartir contigo el otro lado de las cosas, la verdad simplemente, esa atmósfera que la toxina no deja respirar muchas veces o el humo de la chimenea reciclando la historia.
También se muere de mala historia, de ambiente contaminado por lo banal, falso, y de la mentira se puede sobrevivir un tiempo, quizás, hasta que ese letal arsenal toca la punta de tu hígado con su arpón infestado de estièrcol y entra con todo su valor agregado nacional. En principio puede ser un cosquilleo, un elemental sentimiento de desasosiengo, esa intranquilidad que empuja a buscar una salida que se va mordiendo la propia cola. El malestar va avanzando hasta anidarse en el lugar más poderoso, el motor del cuerpo y de todo lo que le acompañe, desde los gestos hasta los sentimientos más íntimos: el cerebro. Cuando se concentra ahí toda la cloaca que respiramos, La asfixia va ganando terreno, minando el cuerpo real, que termina abandonándose, cayendo una y otra vez, con esa sensación de un largo vacío que no terminará de tocar fondo. Hay que estar en el cuerpo, para comprender ese estado. Después se entra como a un pequeño túnel portatil que te persigue a donde vayas. Difícil sobrevivir a la caricatura, porque la tragedia global, suele transformarse en personal. Con su basura de vendedores de productos nuevos, suelen contaminarlo todo. Deja de comprar y verás lo que te ocurre. Un ejército de sombras y risas medievales entran por la ventana de tu casa y la marcan con una X. Leo en una de mis pesquizas, que a Wallace le producía horror y preocupaba: “la anomia y el solipsismo y una forma peculiarmente americana de soledad: la perspectiva de morirse sin haber querido nunca a nadie más que a uno mismo" El ombliguismo personal, íntimo, esa mirada hacia si misma de la sociedad, pareciera querer decirnos, cómo si la rótula dañada no nos dejara avanzar después de un ataque con morteros o él paso de un ventarrón de mariposas que nos deja sin aire. Wallace venía hablando de la tristeza que sentía en el estómago desde hace unos años.
Wallace decidió finalmente tomar el último vagón dormido en la noche de California.
Epílogo
Me aprestaba a subir y a dejar el estacimiento, más bien el largo e infinito asfalto cubierto de noche, cuando veo cruzar hacia mì una joven de pantalones cortos y una suave blusa de aire y transparencias. Venía de un automóvil estacionado al medio del asfalto, como si la nada la empujara haciadonde estaba. A penas se fue acercando, vi que traía dudas, el aire de las preocupaciones, pero no dejaba de sonreir, arte primario de la comunicación. Al fondo se divisaba otra mujer en bermudas y un niño que revoloteaba en las proximidades del automóvil. Sólo esperé que llegara.
- Buenas noches, tengo el carro dañado
El vehículo estaba en el centro del mar de asfalto, y si no se movía a esas horas, era porque algo le sucedía. la mujer sonreìa, com osi todo se fuera a solucionar.
-Vamos a ver, dije
Y nos encaminamos hacia la máquina, que descansaba plácidamente. Un Toyota Corolla, sedán, pero con motor electrónico, como los de ahora.
_No arranca, ni se inmuta, no da señales de vida
-Bueno, puede ser la batería y por ahí nos vamos. jumper, y el motor quieto, como un àngel. No da señales el motor. La máquina está absorta en si misma, no aletea. La atmósfera tibia, descomplicada, es lo más proximo a la realidad. los gestos son los de siempre, interrogante, llamadas de celulares, exclamaciones y la luna sigue aclarándose.
Mientras conecto las dos máquinas, pienso en Wallace, su soledad final, sue riesgo de vida, lo que escribió, dijo, reflexionó, aportó, descubrió y aún no he leìdo. Notamos una interferencia de la alarma, suele suceder. Y seguimos intentándolo. Wallace, qué fue lo que pasó? ¿La vida giró en redondo, bocabajo? Quién arma este rompecabezas sin cabeza, pareciera hablarnos la soga del silencio. un pequeño gesto en medio de la noche y siento que el espejo nos mira, busca un reflejo ante la opacidad, él, que pareciera contener todos los rostros. (El hombre de la moto, vestido ridículamente, con esos sombreros de parques de entretenciones, pasa como una tromba entre uno y otro extremo de la realidad. Patrulla, eso se dirá asimismo) Wallace está aquí esta noche, me gustaría gritar. pero es tan fácil que a uno que le digan loco, y no es lo más importante, sino que no entenderían ni una sola palabra. El mar encontraría las palabras en alguna playa. Es apenas una gran verdad, a sí muere todo, como de rodillas sobre el asfalto. Se detiene uno de esos cuatro por cuatro que parece un búfalo en la noche y pregunta su chofer si necesitamos algo. El Toyota Corolla estaba dando extrañas señales de vida, un carraspeo muy alentador de parte del enfermo. -Gracias, parece que va a arrancar. Fueron palabras mágicas y tal vez un poco de intimidación de ese animal que bufaba sobre el asfalto y arrancó como un estruendo con sus cuatro patas enllantadas por la pradera de asfalto. Mientras se perdía en el pequeño horizonte, el vehículo insomne, salía del sopor y se incorporaba como todo un campeón a seguir en la ruta, sabía que le esperaba la velocidad por el corredor Sur. Nos despedimos y yo ya estaba lejos hace mucho rato.
Rolando Gabrielli©2008
lunes, septiembre 15, 2008
Vida Life
No es lo mismo
la Vida que la Life
y tú repites a diario
que la tuya
es
difusa gris puerca,
tuerce el rabo
inesperadamente.
Danza alegre
la Life,
otra mueca de la Vida.
Rolando Gabrieli©2008
La vida Allende la muerte
Es el título de una pintura del chileno Roberto Matta, en homenaje a Salvador Allende y que acaba de donar su viuda Germana Matta, "al pueblo de Chile". Matta fue uno de los pintores surrealistas más importantes y prolíficos del siglo XX, el más reconocido de la plástica chilena a nivel mundial.
Un tanque inmerso en la devastada sociedad santiaguina, ese horizonte difuso, desgarrado, donde veo brazos y puños impotentes frente a la máquina acorazada, una escena no lejos de la realidad del 11 de septiembre de 1973. Allende muriò en La Moneda, en la Casa de los Presidentes de Chile. ¿Algún día se sabrá toda la verdad? ¿O sólo está reservada para los dueños de la historia? Rolando Gabrielli©2008
domingo, septiembre 14, 2008
La broma infinita, de David Foster Wallace
UNO
La muerte es un acto corriente. Ocurre. Un compromiso inevitable de la vida. Un hecho impostergable. Más allá o más acá, la línea está trazada. Se cuadra todo ante la capitana. A veces resulta ser una sorpresa anticipada. Ocurren eventos especiales que sorprenden, primero, a la vida, y luego, quizás, a la propia muerte. Internet trae de todo. Es caja de Pandora por naturaleza y el lector entra en el menú. Nada uno como en un largo río sin fin que desemboca en un mar de palabras. Toda selección es arbitraria y es lo que hace uno. Lee, separa, deja pasar, olvida. Algo queda entre los dedos y la memoria. No podemos leer todo y menos memorizarlo o procesarlo. Uno se detiene de acuerdo con sus intereses. Hay quienes buscan recetas de cocina y es un arte hablar de ese tema, repasar viejos postres, sabores, olores, seguir degustando lo perdido y recuperable. No buscaba nada, pero las noticias llegan a veces de manera espontánea, inconsultas. Son las que más sorprenden y quedan rondando en la cabeza. Noticias que adquieren categoría de obsesión. Independiente de nosotros mismos, adquieren categoría de ciclón silencioso. Vayamos al punto, la muerte de un escritor importa poco en estos tiempos. Es una notícula de obituario, que supera cualquiera de estas catástrofes naturales recurrentes, accidentes aéreos, asesinatos entre parejas, masacres, asaltos, choques de trenes, enfrentamientos entre narcos y policías, declaraciones de los dirigentes mundiales e historias de corazón, policiacas, de autoayuda, realty shows y pasatiempos de las cadenas de entretenimiento. basta leer con qué pasión y obsesión y banalidad también, se sigue el éxito o fracaso de losfutbolistas que juegan en otros países. Un escritor es una oveja negra y desacarriada con una campana loca al cuello. Lo que quiero decir es que David Foster Wallace, escritor norteamericano fue encontrado colgado en su casa por su mujer y me parecía un buen tipo, aunque no lo conocía ni había leído una sóla palabra de su potente y exitosa obra, según vengo a enterarme. Tenía 46 años, un gran humor, ejercía dando clases de creatividad en inglés y le cuelgan una fama desde 1996 cuando editó su novela Infinite Jest, aunque The Broom of the System, tuvo éxito en Estados Unidos en 1987 .
Espero que su novela emblemática La broma infinita, llegue a mis manos pronto. Un Writer de verdad, según voy buceando más y mas en su obra. No siempre llegamos a la misma hora David Foster Wallace. Son 1092 páginasmás otras 115 de notas y erratas. Según leo, tiene que ver con el compromiso que adquirimos todos en la vida con las diversas manifestaciones que se nos presentan: Dios, el Diablo, la política o cualquier oficio donde se de la entrega total. Es más que todo eso, al parecer, un buceo crítico de la sociedad norteamericana sin contemplaciones.
_______________
DOS
Estuve pensando en David Foster Wallace, quien se sabía un suicida en potencia y había demandado lo vigilaran tiempo atrás en un hospital, cuando me interné en un parque de diversiones con entretenimientos norteamericanos. Me detenía ante los juegos, las marcas de los equipos, el idioma, las imágenes de Elvis Presley con su loca guitarra en Las Vegas, y todos esos juegos electrónicos para enloquecer al más cuerdo. Caminaba en la semipenumbra sobre la alfombra estelar, las luces, esos ruidos singulares de parques de entretención y aparecía mi desconocido escritor David Forter Wallace, como diciéndome: ya ves. es lo que digo, hacia donde vamos...No lo han dicho aún, ayer leí la información de su deceso y me quedé reflexionando si se había ahorcado o no. Lo encontró colgado su mujer, dice el primer anuncio de su muerte y lo reiteran los demás. Sigo leyendo sobre este autor y destaca su visión, sin duda, de la sociedad norteamericana, como apunto arriba de esta nota. Se fue convencido, por lo que leo, de lo que hacía. No hizo concesiones. No se trabó en la parálisis de la fama y del ego o de la banalidad del best seller. Qué malo tiene escribir un best seller, dicen, y quizás tengan razón, pero David Foster Wallace, noto que amaba los clásicos en el buen sentido de la palabra y apostó desde Grecia en adelante. Fue un duro crítico de Internet: "No nos engañemos: la Red no es más que una avalancha de información, un laissez faire salvaje, sin estándares éticos. Se acosa al consumidor con un aluvión de ofertas seductoras, sin ayudarle a discernir a la hora de elegir. La explosión punto.com es la destilación de la ética capitalista en estado químicamente puro".
----------------
TRES
¿Qué llevó a David Foster Wallace a la decisión final?, me pregunto mientras camino entre esta atmósfera de diversión y distracción, donde las personas parecen hipnotizadas por los aparatos electrónicos y algunos juegos tradicionales. Crayzi`s, Carr son mis favoritos, y cuando me subía en un viejo parque frente al mar, los llamábamos Carros Chocones, pero veo que ahora son Carros Locos. Un buen nombre para tanta locura. La gente atiende a sus gustos, preferencias, dos chinas muy blancas y de rostros mezclados, están electrizadas frente a la máquina de Elvis Presley y reciben de premio unos cartoncitos canjeables por la estafa de siempre, un juguetito o llavero. ¿Todo será electrónico, hasta el corazón de la noche? Pienso en este hombre que desconocía, mientras miro la alfombra que me lleva a ningún lugar. David Foster Wallace, sigo investigando, se sentía triste por su país. La literatura le mantenía a flote, supongo, pero es un salvavidas limitado, cuando las heridas y dolores trascienden la palabra. Karen Green, su esposa, lo encontró colgado en su casa. La sociedad en que vivía, le apestaba. No hay muchas ni màs razones para una decisión de este tamaño. Era un gran jugador con las palabras, dicen sus críticos, con un gran sentido del humor negro-como me simpatiza este tipo-armador de lenguaje, ficcionador de realidades y viceversa, con suma claridad, transparencia, se paseaba de ida y vuelta por un mundo que rechazaba.
Duele la partida de un desconocido que sufría y enfrentaba la falsa felicidad, por todos nosotros. Los rostros que estoy viendo pasar podrían ir cubiertos con el chador musulmán y tendrían un significado, una mayor vinculación que la que tengo ahora con David Foster Wallace. Abandono este coto de la diversión electrónica y voy a comer a una franquicia colombiana. Un grupo de gringos jóvenes en una mesa próxima, unas lesbianas leen la cartelera de cine, una joven pareja cena como si fuera un ritual, muchas mesas vacías y me decanto por una ensalada griega con alcachofas y un jugo de guanabana. Salgo del restaurante iluminado por lámparas artesanales colgantes blancas y me dirijo al estacionamiento al aire libre. Inmenso y casi vacío, la noche caía tibia con una luna cobarde, apagada entre nubes muy altas, mezquinas, pero que ya entregaban a su rehén. No le perdí pisada a la luna cuando llegué al automóvil y el desolado estacionamiento crecía como un mar lejano de asfalto que dormía después de un día muy agitado. La marea ascendía a algunas cuadras, el mar real vivía su fin de semana.
Anoche soñé que me ahorcaba con tu soga
SUEÑO (antecedente)Anoche soñé toda la noche que me ahorcaba. Unas sogas relativamente gruesas, amarillentas, de esas que aprietan y raspan sólo con mirarlas. Eran varias en fila india. Todas casi uniformadas fente a mi cuello. Las sogas se sentían seguras de sí mismas, confiadas, aplomadas diría ahora. Si uno se quedaba mirándolas fíjamente, hacían sentir su utilidad, complicidad y casi respeto por su oficio. Yo diría que expresaban su compromiso y tambièn su silencio. Daban a entender una extraña confianza. Después de todo, lo que cierran es un círculo. Lo que hay dentro, en este caso, es lo que arrebatan. Nunca pierden la serenidad. Al otro lado del sueño, alcancé a vislumbrar que alguien alzaba una copa. No logré descifrar si era vino o champagne, porque la copa era transparente, sin color. Hombre o mujer, para el caso es lo mismo. Podía ser una despedida, supongo. Hay quienes se meten en los sueños y hacen cualquier gesto para sorprendernos. La noche estaba tibia. La ventana en su lugar y afuera, corría una brisa cálida. El sueño seguía su curso. Las sogas con su círculo abierto como si estuvieran en un desfile de moda. Yo había esperado todo el día una llamada teléfonica. No llegó. Las portadas de los diarios traían escritos escalofríantes. Probablemente normales. Parecía que todo se iba acabar en un sólo día. Las cuerdas no tenían apuro. ¿Conversaban entre ellas a quien le tocaba el turno? Sólo son suposiciones mías. Los sueños no son tan explícitos como uno quisiera. Se borran, superponen, atraviesan calles, carreteras, caminos, bosques, mares y caen a precipicios. Son sueños y tienen todos esos inconvenientes. Los personajes se suelen subir a trenes. Descender a sótanos y hasta tomar helados. Hay pisos de madera. Muros largos, verdaderos obstáculos. Todo puede caber en un sueño. Inclusive la realidad. Estas cuerdas son las más versadas en la materia de saber que todo es posible. Era una noche larga y no parecía avanzar. Estaba estacionada en la oscuridad, en las partes más oscuras del sueño. Hasta ahí no llegaba. Traducir un sueño no es nada fácil. Mi cuello estaba más alargado en un intento por ver de más cerca la luna. Sentir lo olores húmedos del trópico. No sólo escuchar, sino clasificar los ruidos de los insectos. Ver como las estrellas brillan a pesar de las adversidades. Y escuchar aullar a los perros, con sus voces democráticas, casi siempre uniformadas. Una puerta que se cierra o una ventana que deja la noche por fuera. Al otro lado del sueño, la copa volvía a ser alzada. ¿Triunfo o derrota? Uno se hace preguntas como si fuera a tener respuestas. Las escenas se suceden. Repiten. Varían. Quedan vacías. No encuentran el cuadro. Las cuerdas se siguen pasando la voz. Son palabras rosadas, amarillas, negras, rojas, violetas. Tienen textura y van silenciosas.
Alguien alza la copa al otro lado del sueño y me pregunta: ¿Por qué le cuentas esto al sueño? El escritor fue encontrado colgado por su mujer cuando llegó a casa. Rolando Gabrielli©2008
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