It is evident, although sometimes we forget it, as it happens with almost everything we take for granted, that the things that one day we begin to do, just like that, suddenly disrupt what we have been doing over the years.
I say this because, as a result of this newsletter, in addition to placing them on bookcases, I have begun to arrange my books, both those that I read and those condemned to be read at some other time, in a sort of cross-graft-hybrid of madhouse archivist and naturalist’s showcase.
Obviously, I am not referring to the book as an object, since I continue to place these in the alphabetical order to which the thick present of that pandemic that seems to have happened a century and twenty minutes ago condemned them; I am talking about experience, about the mark left by certain readings, since they are the ones that now find a different accommodation in that piece of furniture that could also be a shadow.
For this reason, now, every time I remember a reading, in addition to physically seeing the book, I imagine the place where its own shadow is stored, that is, the space of that cross-graft-hybrid where, in addition to , my previous readings have been coined, at least, those that meant a particular experience —all this, by the way, was revealed to me after reading The healing hand of the Colombian Lina María Parra Ochoa, The second coming of Hilda Bustamantefrom Argentina Salomé Esper and the sky of the jungle, of the Cuban Elaine Vilar Madruga.
The drawer that doesn’t close
Before, however, getting into the Colombian novel —which, to speak of that other world unnoticed by the majority of mortals, occupied not so much with existing as with living at the behest of the light of reason, tells us, in two stages, the story of the black Ana Gregoria and her student Soledad, as well as that of Soledad’s daughter, whom Ana Gregoria, as she did with her mother, will teach to bury her fingers in the earth to feel, to begin to feel. understand and let the powers inhabit her, after the death of her father—or in the Cuban novel —that, to talk about that other environment that will never cease to be the heart of darkness, even if they are different darknesses, tells the story of women who, first of all, must choose between the natural gloom of the jungle and the denatured gloom of human violence—I would like to point out one more thing about my chimerical furniture.
And it is that, among its drawers —since I mentioned Ana Gregoria, Soledad and her daughter, just as I mentioned the women who perpetuate the ritual and sacrificial cycle of Vilar Madruga’s book, whose bodies face time and again a decision that crystallizes, brilliantly, in an almost perfect metaphor: choosing between being the ones who devour their children or letting the jungle do it, I also want to say that the protagonists of the hand that heals they share a particular custom with the protagonist of Salomé Esper’s novel, a custom that is none other than returning from death—, there is a drawer that does not close. And it does not close because there lie, leaning out at all times, readings that, for some reason, left something on pause. The reasons why what was supposed to happen remains happening, of course, are many, but, for what is relevant here, which is to talk about Parra Ochoa’s book —as well as Vilar Madruga and Esper’s, I realize— , I must point out these two: they are readings waiting for another reading to accompany them or readings that intuit their continuation.
But let me give an example: until recently, in the drawer that doesn’t close, lurked the shadow of bad postures, Parra Ochoa’s book of stories in whose characters —above all the narrators of visiting day and ghosts, as well as Estefanía de The distance between the trees— I sensed the continuation that came with the hand that heals —This type of prolongation is not only a consequence of what is told, but also of how it is told—; as well as, until recently, the own the hand that heals loomed there, waiting for it to arrive The second coming of Hilda Bustamante, novel whose tone, despite being radically different, or precisely because of that, would come to accompany it, or just like, until I entered, machete in hand, the book by Vilar Madruga, I understood why, from time to time, they peeked into in that drawer, intrigued and surprised, my rereadings of the maelstrom, of some stories by Quiroga, Canaima and Toá.
The second hand of heaven
“Ana Gregoria takes my hands in hers. Look, my girl, she tells me, pay attention to me, I don’t last long for you anymore. She then she raises my hands to force me to look at them. One hand heals and the other hand kills, she says. The two together are the powers, they invoke them, they contain them, they mold them like clay. Neither is good nor bad, because sometimes the cure is a curse and sometimes death is welcome”: these lines contain the heart that beats inside Parra Ochoa’s novel, they are, in a way, the hinge between the two worlds what reaches the hand that heals —as well as Esper’s would be: “A few meters separate us from unspeakable things, from another life.”
Of course, in Parra Ochoa’s novel, which gives the reader an experience as beautiful as it is raw and unrealistically real —perhaps for this reason Esper’s novel completes it, because his experience is as funny as it is extraordinarily ordinary—, there are other hinges — It is no coincidence that the narrator struggles with the library that her father inherited from her and with the shadow that it would seem to emanate, as soon as she begins to understand the world she inhabits and also begins to become a hinge—, but this is the essential and is the one that one ends up accepting without hardly realizing it.
I mention that one accepts that world full of hinges —the lives of Soledad and Ana Gregoria, as well as those of the women of the sky of the jungle, are, in themselves, hinges, because at the same time that they open to reveal, naked, the natural world and its violence, they open to reveal the world of men and their violence—because this is not a trivial matter: both Parra Ochoa like Vilar Madruga turn off, for a moment, the light of reason, allowing us to have other eyes open.
It is those other eyes that we suddenly open while reading, which, in addition to allowing us to see things that we did not see —like a piece of furniture, for example—, allow us to do something else: read as we read before our reading was governed. by pure intellectuality —this, which also achieves The second coming of Hilda Bustamante, The three novels achieve this through very careful prose.
And it is that, to put it clearly —these, after all, are the only thing that inhabits both worlds— what Parra Ochoa, Vilar Madruga and Esper do is kidnap the reader from the moment they start reading until they finish —without that he realizes, moreover, that suddenly he is in a fable and, suddenly, in a tragedy.
The hand that heals, the sky of the jungle and The second coming of Hilda Bustamante They make us read as we read as children, I mean: regardless of whether all that they bring inside is possible or not.
coordinates
the hand that heals was published by Editorial Transito, while Jungle Heaven by Lava and The second coming of Hilda Bustamante for Stealth. the book of stories bad postures It was published by Editorial Eafit. And, for those who wanted to read any of Vilar Madruga’s previous books, it is worth mentioning The tyranny of the flies published by Editorial Barrett.
#eyes #open