Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Se deshace el sol en un cubo...

PICASSO’S SERIES.

Lelé Santilli


A Lee.

Se deshace el sol en un cubo
de agua
agitado en la marcha. Y si
derrama,
es la sed de la tierra
la que gana. No hay
medidas
ni
propiedades físicas
que no puedan contarse
de otro modo
cuando el ojo mira
a su antojo.
Y si el que mira, apenas
mitológico,
hace atalayas
de todas sus batallas,
mira más lejos,
más hondo, vasto
espejo
de sí mismo, el
universo.

07/22/07

Kaapy uara

Kaapy uara
To C. Harada


This morning I felt a weird energy. I woke up earlier, like a child anticipating gifts on whatever celebration posted in the calendar. I love this time of year on the central farm. I can be lazy, spending a lot of time doing nothing with not as many people around. I can be bored too, but that happens in the city too, right? And there it is also noisy, and hot like hell. Beautiful morning, today. Great to walk, not many mosquitoes close to the pond. So I headed east. After half an hour, my backpack wanted to rest under a beautiful big tree. I joined it, enjoying my openness to celebrating a good time.
The promise of a premature nap was close enough to make me check the grasses. And I found it. Here a gigantic capybará female –kaapy uara, master of grasses- was delivering her babies and dying. I had the impression that the babies were full term, and the only reason she was still alive was to let them be born. She was seriously wounded. She was bleeding profusely and was so weak that fear had no place to stand up when I approached her.
My heart was pumping at the same pace as hers, but mine was stronger in the physical sense. However, her heart took over mine. Not much life in her eyes, but still, that light. It shifted my brain in seconds. It changed my whole conception of the world. It took the last piece of my entitlement as a human being. I was this poor animal next to her, sitting in the grass, caressing her back like siblings do when love and compassion, sadness and fierce protection come together. I had these memories. Bringing all kinds of images like the flow of the ancestors’ river. Spinning at times, more and more of that torrent: comprehension and understanding of life was coming by. My current journey was sinking into its broken pieces, its rubbish pile.
I had to leave that place. I had to make a clean cut from such a strong experience before it knocked me out. So I put the last of the babies in a plastic bag I always carry and went back to the farm. They will not survive by themselves, of course. The cook woman will take care of them. They are really appreciated around this time of the year, for the Catholic fasting. It is the only warm blooded animal that can replace fish -and here fish taste so much like mud– after a pope decided it was so. The Spaniards hide the fact that the meat tastes like pork.

Lelé Santilli.