| To and fro I move, like some
kind of pariah from Mars, lost among the labyrinth of lonely and
badly laid-out urban streets. There is absolutely no place open
to buy even a cup of coffee or a newspaper. I wander lost in the
wilderness, or to be more precise, I'm like a swimmer in a dried-up
river. I pretend to be a pedestrian but I am a dissimulated prophet
of hurting stress. My external clean demeanor does not make me just
any other sleepless summer stroller. I do not wish to talk to anyone.
I have just come out to check the change in the town, the morning
after the night before. And this morning the town is fossilized
beyond comparison, perhaps like the ice-box of some millionaire
which has just been emptied by robbers in some cartoon scene.
A young man has passed me by with his clothes heavily stained
by wine splotches. He walks by in a daze, without making reference
to anything or anyone, totally indifferent to all around him.
He walks like someone who has come from a procession and who has
forsaken the contemplation of his equals for some very long time
to come.
There is a heavy weight of much-needed peace and silence all
around. I contemplate the urban barrenness with the monocle of
a solitary explorer. I evoke the smell of freshly made coffee,
worthy of any well-run kitchen, a smell which digs deep into the
very guts and even heartens one teeth. Although I don't come across
any place where I could have a coffee it gladdens my heart just
to be able to experience the want of one. But I return to the
scene of the fiesta like a plane that has just landed back to
everyday life, gladdened that everyone has had the delicacy to
absent themselves. Yet my body is punishing me as if I were coming
out of anesthetic, after I had just been skinned in the operating
theatre. However, to be more precise, it is not just some devouring
sadness that overwhelms me, but rather, a kind of heartrending
hypnosis. I am not experiencing some kind of super-renal hecatomb,
but the simple return to a normal life of low tension, the kind
of life that spends the day castrating all living objects.
The fiesta belongs with absolute immunity to the ceremonies which
have displaced it, the fiesta does not accept the lettering THE
END, the fiesta does not get locked into the parenthesis of the
rest of the year. It does not accept the brutal force of the majority
of the annual calendar. The fragrance of the fiesta infiltrates
the walls of human organization and runs along the empty avenues,
like the smell of well-made coffee from the houses, its goes down
the stairs and out the door.
Throughout the fiestas I never sat down in the street. But now
I am considering sitting on some porch step like some kind of
Hindu and perhaps fall asleep so that some type of vampire with
barely visible fangs might bring about the death of this explorer
while seven passengers on the local city bus gaze on me from inside
the bus and think:
"Look there goes another one who is sleeping off a hangover,
and who is going to arrive back home late".
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