The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of Little Boy
The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter
Friday, August 06, 2010
FUCK YOU, TRUMAN (Hiroshima / Nagasaki Anniversary again)
Hiroshima marks 65th atomic bomb anniversary
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of Little Boy
The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of Little Boy
The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Obscenidad, estupidez y censura (Sobre el Proyecto de Ley de Censura de Obscenidad en la Prensa del Perú)
Obscenidad, estupidez y censura
Por Jorge Bruce
Dado que la inmensa mayoría de iniciativas de nuestros congresistas configuran soberanos despropósitos, procuremos por lo menos extraer alguna enseñanza de su reiterada estupidez. La última ha sido el proyecto de censura vinculado a la obscenidad en los medios. Como todo parece indicar que esta movida es otro más de esos fallidos globos de ensayo que pueblan semanalmente nuestro cielo, vamos a tomar en serio aquello de no hay mal que por bien no venga.
Yo sabía que en mi biblioteca tenía algo preciso al respecto. Gracias a la ignorancia de nuestros padres de la patria, lo recordé. Hace tiempo me entrevistó el más erudito en materia de obscenidad entre nuestros presentadores de televisión. Al concluir, me preguntó si me interesaría recibir un compendio de trabajos suyos sobre obscenidad y pornografía. En el mejor estilo nacional dije que sí, recibí el voluminoso texto en casa y lo relegué. Hasta hoy (¡Gracias hermanón!). El entrevistador era, por supuesto, Marco Aurelio Denegri y sus textos una delicia que aguardaba con paciencia entre mis libros.
Extractos: “¿Todo lo obsceno es pornográfico? No, porque no todo lo obsceno es sexual. Lo pornográfico, en cambio, siempre lo es (…). Además de la obscenidad sexual, existe la obscenidad excretoria, que comprende la micción y la evacuación fecal; y además de la excretoria, existe la obscenidad pédica. Orinar, mear, cagar y peer son actos ciertamente obscenos, habida cuenta de que no sean adecuados los sitios de su cumplimiento”. (Recuérdese a los presidentes Piñera, recientemente fotografiado meando contra una pared, o Toledo en el neumático de un helicóptero).
Esto es producto de la cultura, claro está: “Las mujeres de la tribu Musgu, del Camerún, localizan el pudor en el culo; se lo tapan escrupulosamente, pero dejan completamente descubierta la parte anterior del cuerpo”. Mientras los tembuanos y los peruanos ocultamos el pene, los masainos, “cuyo miembro es enorme, estiman vergonzoso ocultarlo”.
De ahí la dificultad de precisar la obscenidad. Denegri: “No podemos decir ‘esto’ es obsceno –advierte Bataille–. La obscenidad es una relación. No existe la ‘obscenidad’ como existe el ‘fuego’ o la ‘sangre’ (…). Algo es obsceno si alguien lo ve y lo dice; no se trata exactamente de un objeto, sino de una relación entre un objeto y el espíritu de una persona”.
Lo cual nos lleva a la censura propuesta por nuestros preclaros representantes: “Y a propósito de la censura, si hay algo obsceno per se, eso es la censura.”
Y por eso: “Señala Bataille con justa razón que el hombre tiene permanentemente miedo de sí mismo; sus movimientos eróticos lo aterran; por eso desbarra, porque no comprende lo que pasa; incomprensión debida al desconocimiento que profesa de sí propio; pero como tampoco se esfuerza por conocerse, no domina lo que le aterra y sigue inevitablemente cometiendo estupideces.
Mientras nos espante el erotismo y nos angustie el placer, habrá censura, vale decir estupidez a borbotones, expulsada con el mismo arrebato con que brota el petróleo de la tierra”.
Acallado el ruido del proyecto retrógrado, ¡que alguna editorial publique los escritos de Denegri!
Por Jorge Bruce
Dado que la inmensa mayoría de iniciativas de nuestros congresistas configuran soberanos despropósitos, procuremos por lo menos extraer alguna enseñanza de su reiterada estupidez. La última ha sido el proyecto de censura vinculado a la obscenidad en los medios. Como todo parece indicar que esta movida es otro más de esos fallidos globos de ensayo que pueblan semanalmente nuestro cielo, vamos a tomar en serio aquello de no hay mal que por bien no venga.
Yo sabía que en mi biblioteca tenía algo preciso al respecto. Gracias a la ignorancia de nuestros padres de la patria, lo recordé. Hace tiempo me entrevistó el más erudito en materia de obscenidad entre nuestros presentadores de televisión. Al concluir, me preguntó si me interesaría recibir un compendio de trabajos suyos sobre obscenidad y pornografía. En el mejor estilo nacional dije que sí, recibí el voluminoso texto en casa y lo relegué. Hasta hoy (¡Gracias hermanón!). El entrevistador era, por supuesto, Marco Aurelio Denegri y sus textos una delicia que aguardaba con paciencia entre mis libros.
Extractos: “¿Todo lo obsceno es pornográfico? No, porque no todo lo obsceno es sexual. Lo pornográfico, en cambio, siempre lo es (…). Además de la obscenidad sexual, existe la obscenidad excretoria, que comprende la micción y la evacuación fecal; y además de la excretoria, existe la obscenidad pédica. Orinar, mear, cagar y peer son actos ciertamente obscenos, habida cuenta de que no sean adecuados los sitios de su cumplimiento”. (Recuérdese a los presidentes Piñera, recientemente fotografiado meando contra una pared, o Toledo en el neumático de un helicóptero).
Esto es producto de la cultura, claro está: “Las mujeres de la tribu Musgu, del Camerún, localizan el pudor en el culo; se lo tapan escrupulosamente, pero dejan completamente descubierta la parte anterior del cuerpo”. Mientras los tembuanos y los peruanos ocultamos el pene, los masainos, “cuyo miembro es enorme, estiman vergonzoso ocultarlo”.
De ahí la dificultad de precisar la obscenidad. Denegri: “No podemos decir ‘esto’ es obsceno –advierte Bataille–. La obscenidad es una relación. No existe la ‘obscenidad’ como existe el ‘fuego’ o la ‘sangre’ (…). Algo es obsceno si alguien lo ve y lo dice; no se trata exactamente de un objeto, sino de una relación entre un objeto y el espíritu de una persona”.
Lo cual nos lleva a la censura propuesta por nuestros preclaros representantes: “Y a propósito de la censura, si hay algo obsceno per se, eso es la censura.”
Y por eso: “Señala Bataille con justa razón que el hombre tiene permanentemente miedo de sí mismo; sus movimientos eróticos lo aterran; por eso desbarra, porque no comprende lo que pasa; incomprensión debida al desconocimiento que profesa de sí propio; pero como tampoco se esfuerza por conocerse, no domina lo que le aterra y sigue inevitablemente cometiendo estupideces.
Mientras nos espante el erotismo y nos angustie el placer, habrá censura, vale decir estupidez a borbotones, expulsada con el mismo arrebato con que brota el petróleo de la tierra”.
Acallado el ruido del proyecto retrógrado, ¡que alguna editorial publique los escritos de Denegri!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Two essays about Saramago's Blindness
BLINDNESS
Comments of Bob Corbett
October 2001
How are we to imagine a world in which some central part of our meaning system suddenly disappears? I've played with the idea in thinking about having survived an atomic war which destroyed most humans, and all the basic infrastructures of everyday life. The problems one runs into even in such a game of imagination is to be consistent and being able to step far enough away to see what it is that really changes. In my day-dreaming imaginings I never went so far as to even dare to consider the inner changes in my person or the other survivors around me. It was much more than I could do to even anticipate and manage the physical problems of change and how to deal with them.
Jose Saramago presents us with exactly such a problematic, yet his masterful analysis deals not only with the physical aspects of change and how his characters deal with them, but he inters into the psychological realm and astounds us with his insights and brilliance.
A man is sitting at a traffic light one day waiting for the light to turn green and he suddenly goes blind. This is the "first blind man." Slowly this mysterious form of blindness, the like not known in the literature of modern medicine, spreads to the whole nation. As best we know, there is only one sighted person left in the realm. We follow a cast of fewer than 10 characters in detail. We have no names, only descriptors. After all one character tells us "blind people need no names." There is the first blind man, the first blind man's wife. The blind man had a seeming good semaritan who helps him home and but then steals his car and is thus called the man who had stole the car. There is the doctor whom he consults and the doctor's wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint and the man with the black eye patch. There are a few others, but these become our key characters, later on adding the dog of tears.
In the early days of the white blindness in which each person seems only a white creamy mass, the government freaks out at the quick contagion of it and inters a large number of the blind in an old insane asylum. There, in scenes which are quite reminiscent of Golding's The Lord of the Flies, pure anarchy reigns and a gang sets itself up to control the government delivered food.
Soon however, the 7 central characters have escaped the asylum when it turns out that all the guards who are keeping them interred have themselves gone blind and they simply walk out into a world of all blind people.
All blind people that is, save one. The doctor's wife somehow remains sighted and she is able to give this small group the advantages that allows it to survive when others could not. She can locate places, keep them all in line and, most importantly, find food and water in a world gone blind.
What is this odd book of Jose Saramago? Is it an allegory? If so an allegory of what? Of the dependency of humans on basic systems of order in the manner of Thomas Hobbes? Is it a condemnation of humans as being only on the edge of civilization and being shown to be ready to plunge into barbarism at the least shaking of central systems of order? Or on a more positive note, is the tiny group of 7 the hopeful core that even in such catastrophic circumstances would maintain humanity and re-create a safer environment? Were this latter the case then the critic has a difficult time explaining the presence of the one sighted person who survives and leads. Or does this problematic suggest that leaders are essential to the continuation of the human species?
Or, abandoning the allegory theory, is this simply an astonishing tour-de-force of imagination, being just what it is literally and no more, the investigation of the logic of life when something such as sight disappears and the sighted woman is necessary as a sop since no other believable mode of survival would be easily available. This view would harmonize with the direction one finds in other Saramago novels especially The Stone Raft and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, perhaps even of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Saramago seems to have a passion for playing with alternative realities and attending with care to the logic of the system he once sets up.
I believe I lean much more to this notion that we are to understand Blindness not as an allegory, but as an exploration of an alternative reality. On his view we are freer to remain inside the story as given and just marvel at how he unravels the story and develops not only the physical ramifications, but especially how he deals with the inner realities and changes in the character's minds. However, on this view we are left with the curious status of the doctor's wife's sight, and then the even more curious recurrence of the "special" dog which we had in The Stone Raft as well. Saramago seems to like dogs in nearly occult roles in his fantasies. This one, however, plays no central as the dog in The Stone Raft. Rather, it gets it name by licking away the tears of the doctor's wife when she breaks down in near despair on see what has happened to the blind city. The dog of tears remains with the group the rest of the tale, but seems to have no other role.
After just the first few pages I nearly lost my faith in Saramago. The blind man goes blind at the stop sign, gets taken home by the car thief and soon is taken to the doctor, who is an ophthalmologist, by his wife. I began to wonder -- how in the world can he sustain an entire moderately long novel as the story of this blind guy. Where could this go? What is there to build on? I suspected I may have had a weak Saramago novel in my hand. And then the thunderous second shoe drops, the doctor goes blind in the night. I simply gasped aloud on the subway I was riding when that happened. I knew I was now in for something odd, but I had no idea just how odd and soon people were falling into blindness with great rapidity and I was hooked on a new alternative world according to Saramago. The ending, which I won't mention was very unsatisfactory to me, but I'll leave that to the reader to discover and evaluate on his or her own.
Jose Saramago is one of the great masters of storytelling and fiction of our time. His language is impeccable and he plays with it often, calling attention to it, even interrupting the story to reflect on words and modes of expressing thoughts. The story itself is captivating and in the later sections when the group of 7 are wandering in this nightmare of a city where all are blind is one of the most frightful and even terrifying scenes I know in fiction. This is in no way a horror story, yet I can't imagine a novel in the genre of horror rising to the level of terror that Saramago strikes in us in these scenes of wandering bands of blind people struggling to find food and stay alive. It is a macabre and brilliant painting of pictures for the verbally sighted and yet another addition to the marvelous list of Saramago triumphs.
Special thanks to George Snedeker for this note:
George Snedeker
I have just read your review of Saramago's BLINDNESS. As a visually impaired person, I have been trying to make sense of his use of blindness as a trope. blindness operates in his text as both an intertextual sign and as a referent. blindness represents limitation. this is true in the very obvious sense of the analogy between knowing and seeing. blindness also leads the characters to return to the state of nature. I have always been troubled by the doctor's wife. her eyes allow her to lead the others to safety. she is also necessary as the narrator of the story. without her, who would describe the events and scenes of the novel.
BETWEEN METAPHOR AND REFERENT:Reading Saramago's "Blindness"
George Snedeker
Sociology Program
SUNY/College at Old Westbury
Jose Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Although several of his books were available in English translation, not many people in the United States had read his novels prior to the award. Soon his latest novel, Blindness, was on the New York Times Best-Seller List. If I had not previously read two of his earlier books, I would not have been much interested in reading an allegorical novel that uses blindness as its master sign.
Saramago uses a quotation from the Book of Exhortations as the epigram to Blindness: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe". Near the end of the novel, when the blind people are getting their vision back, he has one of his characters remark:" I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see" (292). These two quotations indicate the political and philosophical intention of the novel. They indicate, but do not disclose it. The greatest problem with an allegorical novel like Blindness is that it grants too much freedom to the reader. It allows too many interpretations.
Saramago uses blindness as a metaphor for both personal misfortune and social catastrophe. The story begins when the first blind man loses his vision in his car while waiting for a traffic light to change. The man who helps him get safely home goes back and steals his car. The next day the wife of the first blind man takes him to see the eye doctor. Within a few days, the wife of the first blind man, the car thief, the doctor and all of the patients in his waiting room also go blind. The only character in the novel that miraculously avoids the affliction of blindness is the doctor's wife.
With a large number of people going blind quickly and with no apparent cause, public health officials panic and the blind are interned in a former mental hospital to protect the population from infection.
They are provided with food but are left to fend for themselves within the walls of the abandoned mental hospital. Soldiers keep watch and threaten to kill anyone who tries to escape.
The numbers of infected persons increases rapidly. New groups of blind people are imprisoned in the hospital. Among the new inmates are a group of hoodlums, one of whom possesses a gun. The hoodlums soon demand that the other internees pay for their food and provide them with women to fulfill their sexual desires. This outrage soon leads to a revolt. A few days later, the blind internees realize that the entire population of the city has gone blind and they leave the hospital in search of food.
As the narrative of Blindness progresses, the conditions of the blind continue to get worse. They find themselves in a society that no longer functions. Blind people roam the streets looking for food and shelter. After scavenging for days, they realize that soon it will be impossible to obtain enough nourishment to keep alive. While they are at the edge of despair their vision miraculously begins to return. The novel abruptly ends without making clear in what ways people have been transformed by the horrific experience of collective blindness.
As I mentioned earlier, the doctor's wife is the only character who does not go blind. She remains free from infection. This allows her to assist the group of blind people. Her eyes allow her to exercise a degree of control over the situation. It is she who kills the blind man with the gun. It is she who leads the blind in their search for food and shelter.
Blindness is clearly a sign of limitation in this novel. It causes the entire society to no longer function. It also places blind people in the condition of physical jeopardy and psychological torment. The society no longer functions because the blind are not able to provide the ordinary services that we are routinely dependent upon for survival: the production and distribution of food, water and electricity and the maintenance of the infrastructure of transportation and communication.
The central problem with Saramago's novel is that his master sign "blindness" is a floating signifier. No matter what his intention, the metaphor of blindness has a real referent. Readers of this novel are faced with an ambiguity, the relationship between the "symbolic" and the "real". The authorial voice of the novel and the critical response which has appeared in the mainstream press has occluded the problem of the referent. Saramago writes as if his metaphorical depiction of misfortune and catastrophe could somehow be innocent of the cultural meanings that are routinely associated with visual impairment. It is interesting to note that reviews which have appeared in the mainstream press fail to even consider that the use of blindness as a metaphor might pose a problem.
Reviewers have often made the comparison between Blindness and Camus' Plague, Kafka's Trial and Golding's Lord of the Flies. None of the reviews I have read have made the more obvious comparison to H.G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind". In this story, Wells uses blindness to represent a restricting society and the struggle of the individual against social conformity. Both Saramago and Wells use blindness as a sign of limitation because this idea is readily available. It is part of our common stock of cultural images. They use "blindness" for the same reason that Golding uses "children" in Lord of the Flies.
Like Camus, Saramago uses disease as a way of representing social and political crisis. Both authors emphasize the human response to social catastrophe. However, there is a problem with the representation of historical events by means of a medical model. In this representation, nature displaces the social and replaces it with an image of fate. As a consequence, blindness is defined as a physical condition.
Saramago's writings have often been discussed as an example of "magic realism". However, Blindness has more in common with Kafka's allegorical novels than it does with works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie.
The fundamental problem posed by allegorical novels is how to locate their political and social meaning. Saramago provides his readers with few clues to guide interpretation. The story is set in an unnamed country, somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. There are few identifying characteristics that provide a context for the events that transpire.
The epidemic of blindness takes place without any apparent cause; the disease spreads quickly and as the novel ends the blind are getting their vision back. Their recovery has as little explanation as the onset of blindness. The problem the reader is faced with is what to make of the metaphorical illness, the social catastrophe, and the miraculous recovery. What does it all mean?
Near the end of the book, Saramago has one of his characters suggest that perhaps they had never really been blind, that perhaps the sighted do not really see. If this is meant to be the underlying message of the novel it is, in fact, not a very original idea, since the analogy between "seeing" and "understanding" is one of the oldest ideas in Western philosophy. It is perhaps most clearly illustrated in Book 7 of The Republic, where Plato uses a visual metaphor to illustrate the limits of human understanding. He describes a cave where several people are seated in such a way that they cannot see the direct light of the fire. Instead, they can only see its distorted shadows upon the wall of the cave.
I suspect that Saramago is more interested in probing the human capacity to understand social reality than the Platonic concept of Absolute Truth. I wish he had chosen a better way of representing this quest.
Bibliography
Plato. 1961.The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Saramago, Jose. 1997. Blindness. New York: Harcourt Brace
Wells, H. G. 1911. The Country of The Blind and Other Stories. London: T. Nelson
Comments of Bob Corbett
October 2001
How are we to imagine a world in which some central part of our meaning system suddenly disappears? I've played with the idea in thinking about having survived an atomic war which destroyed most humans, and all the basic infrastructures of everyday life. The problems one runs into even in such a game of imagination is to be consistent and being able to step far enough away to see what it is that really changes. In my day-dreaming imaginings I never went so far as to even dare to consider the inner changes in my person or the other survivors around me. It was much more than I could do to even anticipate and manage the physical problems of change and how to deal with them.
Jose Saramago presents us with exactly such a problematic, yet his masterful analysis deals not only with the physical aspects of change and how his characters deal with them, but he inters into the psychological realm and astounds us with his insights and brilliance.
A man is sitting at a traffic light one day waiting for the light to turn green and he suddenly goes blind. This is the "first blind man." Slowly this mysterious form of blindness, the like not known in the literature of modern medicine, spreads to the whole nation. As best we know, there is only one sighted person left in the realm. We follow a cast of fewer than 10 characters in detail. We have no names, only descriptors. After all one character tells us "blind people need no names." There is the first blind man, the first blind man's wife. The blind man had a seeming good semaritan who helps him home and but then steals his car and is thus called the man who had stole the car. There is the doctor whom he consults and the doctor's wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint and the man with the black eye patch. There are a few others, but these become our key characters, later on adding the dog of tears.
In the early days of the white blindness in which each person seems only a white creamy mass, the government freaks out at the quick contagion of it and inters a large number of the blind in an old insane asylum. There, in scenes which are quite reminiscent of Golding's The Lord of the Flies, pure anarchy reigns and a gang sets itself up to control the government delivered food.
Soon however, the 7 central characters have escaped the asylum when it turns out that all the guards who are keeping them interred have themselves gone blind and they simply walk out into a world of all blind people.
All blind people that is, save one. The doctor's wife somehow remains sighted and she is able to give this small group the advantages that allows it to survive when others could not. She can locate places, keep them all in line and, most importantly, find food and water in a world gone blind.
What is this odd book of Jose Saramago? Is it an allegory? If so an allegory of what? Of the dependency of humans on basic systems of order in the manner of Thomas Hobbes? Is it a condemnation of humans as being only on the edge of civilization and being shown to be ready to plunge into barbarism at the least shaking of central systems of order? Or on a more positive note, is the tiny group of 7 the hopeful core that even in such catastrophic circumstances would maintain humanity and re-create a safer environment? Were this latter the case then the critic has a difficult time explaining the presence of the one sighted person who survives and leads. Or does this problematic suggest that leaders are essential to the continuation of the human species?
Or, abandoning the allegory theory, is this simply an astonishing tour-de-force of imagination, being just what it is literally and no more, the investigation of the logic of life when something such as sight disappears and the sighted woman is necessary as a sop since no other believable mode of survival would be easily available. This view would harmonize with the direction one finds in other Saramago novels especially The Stone Raft and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, perhaps even of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Saramago seems to have a passion for playing with alternative realities and attending with care to the logic of the system he once sets up.
I believe I lean much more to this notion that we are to understand Blindness not as an allegory, but as an exploration of an alternative reality. On his view we are freer to remain inside the story as given and just marvel at how he unravels the story and develops not only the physical ramifications, but especially how he deals with the inner realities and changes in the character's minds. However, on this view we are left with the curious status of the doctor's wife's sight, and then the even more curious recurrence of the "special" dog which we had in The Stone Raft as well. Saramago seems to like dogs in nearly occult roles in his fantasies. This one, however, plays no central as the dog in The Stone Raft. Rather, it gets it name by licking away the tears of the doctor's wife when she breaks down in near despair on see what has happened to the blind city. The dog of tears remains with the group the rest of the tale, but seems to have no other role.
After just the first few pages I nearly lost my faith in Saramago. The blind man goes blind at the stop sign, gets taken home by the car thief and soon is taken to the doctor, who is an ophthalmologist, by his wife. I began to wonder -- how in the world can he sustain an entire moderately long novel as the story of this blind guy. Where could this go? What is there to build on? I suspected I may have had a weak Saramago novel in my hand. And then the thunderous second shoe drops, the doctor goes blind in the night. I simply gasped aloud on the subway I was riding when that happened. I knew I was now in for something odd, but I had no idea just how odd and soon people were falling into blindness with great rapidity and I was hooked on a new alternative world according to Saramago. The ending, which I won't mention was very unsatisfactory to me, but I'll leave that to the reader to discover and evaluate on his or her own.
Jose Saramago is one of the great masters of storytelling and fiction of our time. His language is impeccable and he plays with it often, calling attention to it, even interrupting the story to reflect on words and modes of expressing thoughts. The story itself is captivating and in the later sections when the group of 7 are wandering in this nightmare of a city where all are blind is one of the most frightful and even terrifying scenes I know in fiction. This is in no way a horror story, yet I can't imagine a novel in the genre of horror rising to the level of terror that Saramago strikes in us in these scenes of wandering bands of blind people struggling to find food and stay alive. It is a macabre and brilliant painting of pictures for the verbally sighted and yet another addition to the marvelous list of Saramago triumphs.
Special thanks to George Snedeker for this note:
George Snedeker
I have just read your review of Saramago's BLINDNESS. As a visually impaired person, I have been trying to make sense of his use of blindness as a trope. blindness operates in his text as both an intertextual sign and as a referent. blindness represents limitation. this is true in the very obvious sense of the analogy between knowing and seeing. blindness also leads the characters to return to the state of nature. I have always been troubled by the doctor's wife. her eyes allow her to lead the others to safety. she is also necessary as the narrator of the story. without her, who would describe the events and scenes of the novel.
BETWEEN METAPHOR AND REFERENT:Reading Saramago's "Blindness"
George Snedeker
Sociology Program
SUNY/College at Old Westbury
Jose Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Although several of his books were available in English translation, not many people in the United States had read his novels prior to the award. Soon his latest novel, Blindness, was on the New York Times Best-Seller List. If I had not previously read two of his earlier books, I would not have been much interested in reading an allegorical novel that uses blindness as its master sign.
Saramago uses a quotation from the Book of Exhortations as the epigram to Blindness: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe". Near the end of the novel, when the blind people are getting their vision back, he has one of his characters remark:" I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see" (292). These two quotations indicate the political and philosophical intention of the novel. They indicate, but do not disclose it. The greatest problem with an allegorical novel like Blindness is that it grants too much freedom to the reader. It allows too many interpretations.
Saramago uses blindness as a metaphor for both personal misfortune and social catastrophe. The story begins when the first blind man loses his vision in his car while waiting for a traffic light to change. The man who helps him get safely home goes back and steals his car. The next day the wife of the first blind man takes him to see the eye doctor. Within a few days, the wife of the first blind man, the car thief, the doctor and all of the patients in his waiting room also go blind. The only character in the novel that miraculously avoids the affliction of blindness is the doctor's wife.
With a large number of people going blind quickly and with no apparent cause, public health officials panic and the blind are interned in a former mental hospital to protect the population from infection.
They are provided with food but are left to fend for themselves within the walls of the abandoned mental hospital. Soldiers keep watch and threaten to kill anyone who tries to escape.
The numbers of infected persons increases rapidly. New groups of blind people are imprisoned in the hospital. Among the new inmates are a group of hoodlums, one of whom possesses a gun. The hoodlums soon demand that the other internees pay for their food and provide them with women to fulfill their sexual desires. This outrage soon leads to a revolt. A few days later, the blind internees realize that the entire population of the city has gone blind and they leave the hospital in search of food.
As the narrative of Blindness progresses, the conditions of the blind continue to get worse. They find themselves in a society that no longer functions. Blind people roam the streets looking for food and shelter. After scavenging for days, they realize that soon it will be impossible to obtain enough nourishment to keep alive. While they are at the edge of despair their vision miraculously begins to return. The novel abruptly ends without making clear in what ways people have been transformed by the horrific experience of collective blindness.
As I mentioned earlier, the doctor's wife is the only character who does not go blind. She remains free from infection. This allows her to assist the group of blind people. Her eyes allow her to exercise a degree of control over the situation. It is she who kills the blind man with the gun. It is she who leads the blind in their search for food and shelter.
Blindness is clearly a sign of limitation in this novel. It causes the entire society to no longer function. It also places blind people in the condition of physical jeopardy and psychological torment. The society no longer functions because the blind are not able to provide the ordinary services that we are routinely dependent upon for survival: the production and distribution of food, water and electricity and the maintenance of the infrastructure of transportation and communication.
The central problem with Saramago's novel is that his master sign "blindness" is a floating signifier. No matter what his intention, the metaphor of blindness has a real referent. Readers of this novel are faced with an ambiguity, the relationship between the "symbolic" and the "real". The authorial voice of the novel and the critical response which has appeared in the mainstream press has occluded the problem of the referent. Saramago writes as if his metaphorical depiction of misfortune and catastrophe could somehow be innocent of the cultural meanings that are routinely associated with visual impairment. It is interesting to note that reviews which have appeared in the mainstream press fail to even consider that the use of blindness as a metaphor might pose a problem.
Reviewers have often made the comparison between Blindness and Camus' Plague, Kafka's Trial and Golding's Lord of the Flies. None of the reviews I have read have made the more obvious comparison to H.G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind". In this story, Wells uses blindness to represent a restricting society and the struggle of the individual against social conformity. Both Saramago and Wells use blindness as a sign of limitation because this idea is readily available. It is part of our common stock of cultural images. They use "blindness" for the same reason that Golding uses "children" in Lord of the Flies.
Like Camus, Saramago uses disease as a way of representing social and political crisis. Both authors emphasize the human response to social catastrophe. However, there is a problem with the representation of historical events by means of a medical model. In this representation, nature displaces the social and replaces it with an image of fate. As a consequence, blindness is defined as a physical condition.
Saramago's writings have often been discussed as an example of "magic realism". However, Blindness has more in common with Kafka's allegorical novels than it does with works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie.
The fundamental problem posed by allegorical novels is how to locate their political and social meaning. Saramago provides his readers with few clues to guide interpretation. The story is set in an unnamed country, somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. There are few identifying characteristics that provide a context for the events that transpire.
The epidemic of blindness takes place without any apparent cause; the disease spreads quickly and as the novel ends the blind are getting their vision back. Their recovery has as little explanation as the onset of blindness. The problem the reader is faced with is what to make of the metaphorical illness, the social catastrophe, and the miraculous recovery. What does it all mean?
Near the end of the book, Saramago has one of his characters suggest that perhaps they had never really been blind, that perhaps the sighted do not really see. If this is meant to be the underlying message of the novel it is, in fact, not a very original idea, since the analogy between "seeing" and "understanding" is one of the oldest ideas in Western philosophy. It is perhaps most clearly illustrated in Book 7 of The Republic, where Plato uses a visual metaphor to illustrate the limits of human understanding. He describes a cave where several people are seated in such a way that they cannot see the direct light of the fire. Instead, they can only see its distorted shadows upon the wall of the cave.
I suspect that Saramago is more interested in probing the human capacity to understand social reality than the Platonic concept of Absolute Truth. I wish he had chosen a better way of representing this quest.
Bibliography
Plato. 1961.The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Saramago, Jose. 1997. Blindness. New York: Harcourt Brace
Wells, H. G. 1911. The Country of The Blind and Other Stories. London: T. Nelson
Muere escritor portugués José Saramago
Muere escritor portugués José Saramago
Vie, 18/06/2010 - 07:34
El escritor portugués y Premio Nobel de Literatura José Saramago falleció hoy, viernes, en su casa de Lanzarote a los 87 años de edad, a causa de una leucemia crónica, informaron fuentes de la familia.
La muerte se produjo cuando el escritor se encontraba en su residencia canaria, acompañado por su mujer y traductora, Pilar del Río.
José Saramago había pasado una noche tranquila. Tras desayunar con normalidad y haber mantenido una conversación con su esposa, comenzó a sentirse mal y al poco tiempo falleció, explicaron las citadas fuentes. (Madrid, EFE)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Lukanikos, the Greek [awsome] riot dog
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Monday, April 26, 2010
En Octubre No Hay Milagros (extracto)
Y así como a Don Lucho, mañana, a ti, también, pueden sacarte los muebles a la calle. Será como abrirte el estómago y dejar, a la mirada pública, tus intestinos: lo más íntimo que tienes. Entonces, después de muchos años de trabajo, comprenderás que nunca tuviste un pedacito de tierra para vivir, que todo lo tuyo fue ajeno, que ni siquiera eres dueño de tu patria. Y todos estarán contra ti: los pobres sólo verán, desde lejos, tu desgracia; los ricos dirán que fuiste un hombre sin voluntad, que te faltó energía para conquistar un sitio en tu país. Y si reclamas, la fuerza del orden te acusará de rebeldía y, violentos, te enseñarán los deberes de todo buen ciudadano. La iglesia te aconsejará paciencia, humildad; los políticos te prometerán un cielo terrenal a cambio de un voto; los sabios et avergonzarán al demostrar que no supiste emplear la inteligencia para hacer fortuna; los poetas señoritos verán tus cosas en la calle y luego cantarán al geranio de tu maceta rota o a tu gato que juega sonámbulo con el sol; los escritores puros tomarán debida nota de tu tragedia y escribirán un cuento perfecto en donde tú sólo serás un personaje interesante para sus artificios verbales. Y será anti-literario, nada formal, para los críticos de los diarios de Don Manuel, dialogar contigo, a través de esta novela, decirte que la revolución socialista depende de la acción colectiva y consciente de todos los que, como tú, no tienen un pedacito de tierra en su país, para vivir.
En Octubre No Hay Milagros
Oswaldo Reynoso
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Explanation of the Higgs Boson
A quasi-political Explanation of the Higgs Boson;
for Mr Waldegrave, UK Science Minister 1993.
1. The Higgs Mechanism
Imagine a cocktail party of political party
workers who are uniformly distributed across the floor, all talking to their nearest neighbours. The ex-Prime- Minister enters and crosses the room. All of the workers in her neighbourhood are strongly attracted to her and cluster round her. As she moves she attracts the people she comes close to, while the ones she has left return to their even spacing. Because of the knot of people always clustered around her she acquires a greater mass than normal, that is, she has more momentum for the same speed of movement across the room. Once moving she is harder to stop, and once stopped she is harder to get moving again because the clustering process has to be restarted. In three dimensions, and with the complications of relativity, this is the Higgs mechanism. In order to give particles mass, a background field is invented which becomes locally distorted whenever a particle moves through it. The distortion - the clustering of the field around the particle - generates the particle's mass. The idea comes directly from the Physics of Solids. Instead of a field spread throughout all space a solid contains a lattice of positively charged crystal atoms. When an electron moves through the lattice the atoms are attracted to it, causing the electron's effective mass to be as much as 40 times bigger than the mass of a free electron. The postulated Higgs field in the vacuum is a sort of hypothetical lattice which fills our Universe. We need it because otherwise we cannot explain why the Z and W particles which carry the Weak Interactions are so heavy while the photon which carries Electromagnetic forces is massless. 
2. The Higgs Boson.
Now consider a rumour passing through our room full of uniformly spread political workers. Those near the door hear of it first and cluster together to get the details, then they turn and move closer to their next neighbours who want to know about it too. A wave of clustering passes through the room. It may spread out to all the corners, or it may form a compact bunch which carries the news along a line of workers from the door to some dignitary at the other side of the room. Since the information is carried by clusters of people, and since it was clustering which gave extra mass to the ex-Prime Minister, then the rumour-carrying clusters also have mass. The Higgs boson is predicted to be just such a clustering in the Higgs field. We will find it much easier to believe that the field exists, and that the mechanism for giving other particles mass is true, if we actually see the Higgs particle itself. Again, there are analogies in the Physics of Solids. A crystal lattice can carry waves of clustering without needing an electron to move and attract the atoms. These waves can behave as if they are particles. They are called phonons, and they too are bosons. There could be a Higgs mechanism, and a Higgs field throughout our Universe, without there being a Higgs boson. The next generation of colliders will sort this out.
from David J. Miller, Physics and Astronomy, University College London.
(cartoons courtesy of CERN).
from David J. Miller, Physics and Astronomy, University College London.
(cartoons courtesy of CERN).
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Carnegie Mellon Student Uses Skin as Input For Smart Phones and Other Mobile Devices
Carnegie Mellon Student Uses Skin as Input For Smart Phones and Other Mobile Devices (APRIL 6th)
PITTSBURGH—A combination of simple bio-acoustic sensors and some sophisticated machine learning makes it possible for people to use their fingers or forearms — and potentially, any part of their bodies — as touchpads to control smart phones or other mobile devices.
The technology, called Skinput, was developed by Chris Harrison, a third-year Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), along with Desney Tan and Dan Morris of Microsoft Research. Harrison will describe the technology in a paper to be presented on Monday, April 12, at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery's annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Ga.
Skinput, www.chrisharrison.net/projects/skinput/, could help people take better advantage of the tremendous computing power now available in compact devices that can be easily worn or carried. The diminutive size that makes smart phones, MP3 players and other devices so portable also severely limits the size and utility of the keypads, touchscreens and jog wheels typically used to control them.
"With Skinput, we can use our own skin — the body's largest organ — as an input device," Harrison said. "It's kind of crazy to think we could summon interfaces onto our bodies, but it turns out to make a lot of sense. Our skin is always with us, and makes the ultimate interactive touch surface."
In a prototype developed while Harrison was an intern at Microsoft Research last summer, acoustic sensors are attached to the upper arm. These sensors capture sound generated by such actions as flicking or tapping fingers together, or tapping the forearm. This sound is not transmitted through the air, but by transverse waves through the skin and by longitudinal, or compressive, waves through the bones.
Harrison and his colleagues found that the tap of each fingertip, a tap to one of five locations on the arm, or a tap to one of 10 locations on the forearm produces a unique acoustic signature that machine learning programs could learn to identify. These computer programs, which improve with experience, were able to determine the signature of each type of tap by analyzing 186 different features of the acoustic signals, including frequencies and amplitude.
In a trial involving 20 subjects, the system was able to classify the inputs with 88 percent accuracy overall. Accuracy depended in part on proximity of the sensors to the input; forearm taps could be identified with 96 percent accuracy when sensors were attached below the elbow, and 88 percent accuracy when the sensors were above the elbow. Finger flicks could be identified with 97 percent accuracy.
"There's nothing super sophisticated about the sensor itself," Harrison said, "but it does require some unusual processing. It's sort of like the computer mouse — the device mechanics themselves aren't revolutionary, but are used in a revolutionary way." The sensor is an array of highly tuned vibration sensors — cantilevered piezo films.
The prototype armband includes both the sensor array and a small projector that can superimpose colored buttons onto the wearer's forearm, which can be used to navigate through menus of commands. Additionally, a keypad can be projected on the palm of the hand. Simple devices, such as MP3 players, might be controlled simply by tapping fingertips, without need of superimposed buttons; in fact, Skinput can take advantage of proprioception — a person's sense of body configuration — for eyes-free interaction.
Though the prototype is of substantial size and designed to fit the upper arm, the sensor array could easily be miniaturized so that it could be worn much like a wristwatch, Harrison said.
Testing indicates the accuracy of Skinput is reduced in heavier, fleshier people and that age and sex might also affect accuracy. Running or jogging also can generate noise and degrade the signals, the researchers report, but the amount of testing was limited and accuracy likely would improve as the machine learning programs receive more training under such conditions.
Harrison, who delights in "blurring the lines between technology and magic," is a prodigious inventor. Last year, he launched a company, Invynt LLC, to market a technology he calls "Lean and Zoom," which automatically magnifies the image on a computer monitor as the user leans toward the screen. He also has developed a technique to create a pseudo-3D experience for videoconferencing using a single webcam at each conference site. Another project explored how touchscreens can be enhanced with tactile buttons that can change shape as virtual interfaces on the touchscreen change.
Skinput is an extension of an earlier invention by Harrison called Scratch Input, which used acoustic microphones to enable users to control cell phones and other devices by tapping or scratching on tables, walls or other surfaces.
"Chris is a rising star," said Scott Hudson, HCII professor and Harrison's faculty adviser. "Even though he's a comparatively new Ph.D. student, the very innovative nature of his work has garnered a lot of attention both in the HCI research community and beyond."
The HCII is a unit of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, one of the world's leading centers for computer science research and education. Follow the School of Computer Science on Twitter @SCSatCMU.
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Contact:
Byron Spice
412-268-9068
bspice@cs.cmu.edu
Friday, March 12, 2010
Area de juegos
La verdad es que nadie puede herirnos salvo la gente que queremos.
-JL Borges
Tomé las llaves del auto y salí inmediatamente. Es que, luego de pensarlo mientras almorzaba a solas en nuestra piecita, tenía que hacer algo para arreglar nuestra situación. Bueno, tengo que reconocer que mi posición se había ablandado desde esta mañana en la que discutimos como un par de perros rabiosos. Pero creo que podemos resarcir nuestros errores –pensaba- los cuales no creo "de fondo" sino más bien creo, o me he tratado de convencer, de que nuestras discusiones, las embarazosas situaciones que nos enrostramos y los acalorados fundamentos en los que nos protegimos tienen un punto común en nuestros beligerantes caracteres y no en errores fatales. Además, que pareja no tiene peleas.
Mientras iba manejando hacia el centro comercial, recordaba su carta cual lectura venenosa que mi subconsciente iba releyendo una y otra vez. "(...) Después de todo lo pasado entre nosotros y, más aún, luego de todo lo que me echaste en cara, te perdoné. ¿Pero qué hiciste luego? Fuiste nuevamente a verla. Lo sé, aunque no lo quieras reconocer. No sé si para decirle adiós como dices; pero eso ya no viene al caso."
Pero, ¡carajo, que uno no puede decir adiós personalmente sin que surjan temores infantiles en tu nueva pareja! En parte tiene razón. El perdón que me dio luego de nuestra última pelea fue realmente conmovedor. Me suplico que no la hiriera, y psicológicamente creo que lo hice. La denigre es cierto. No fue de hombres, pero supe disculparme en su momento. Y el hecho que me encontrara con Carla, no significa que quisiera abandonarla. Fui a aclarar un punto que no pude cerrar y a decir adiós, ¡solo eso, joder! Y ahora que pensaba que todo estaba superado, surge esto. Aunque, lo que me tranquiliza relativamente, es el saber que para ella lo nuestro es muy fuerte. También para mí, y temo que pueda perderla por esta terrible confusión. Si, es eso, una terrible confusión.
Los autos que miro en el espejo retrovisor quedan atrás, muy atrás. La velocidad relativa entre una camioneta que mi autito alcanza se vuelve constante y casi nula. La física hace lo suyo y el vértigo también. El movimiento se vuelve más acelerado, y la dejo también atrás. La radio suena sin sentido, la cambio diez veces en la primera luz roja que me detengo. ¿Hubo otros semáforos en el camino? No lo recuerdo, mi mente que soportaba un dolorcito agudo en la sien, solo seguía en esa carta.
"(...) Solo nuestro hijo, a quien siento mucho más mío que tuyo porque yo lo parí, me da algo de consuelo y real alegría. No me busca por sexo, ni para que la justifique de estupideces propias de inmaduros como tú. Solo por él llegue a perdonarte, y quise que esto funcionara a pesar de que nunca formalizaste nuestra relación. Hasta estuve en contra de mi familia por empezar a vivir contigo. Lo di todo, en cuerpo y alma, y eso te consta. Pero ahora ya es tarde. También quiero que sepas que siempre tendrás un lugar como su padre, pero solo si te lo propones. Mi marido no lo serás nuevamente, nunca más. No hay otro hombre, no necesito terceras personas para saber cuándo una relación ya no va más."
Me aproximé al centro comercial sin confianza. Con miedo, esperanza, con el nudo en la garganta y el aguijoneo de las tripas. ¿Amor? No sé. ¿Costumbre? Quizá. ¿A mi hijo? No lo sé. ¿A ella? Nos merecemos el uno al otro… creo. Mi vida pasa por estos bemoles casi siempre. Pero aún no es tarde.
"(...) No te molestes en llamarme. El celular está en la habitación. Quiero estar sola porque estoy muy mal. Nunca he llorado tanto por alguien. En la tarde estaré con el bebe en su sitio preferido en esta ciudad a la que me arrastraste. El está bien, y no tiene por qué pagar por esto. Seguro llegarás de noche, como siempre, y mi ausencia será nada para ti, como lo ha sido toda esta farsa durante todos estos años."
Hipocresía. Hábitos. Hijos. Humores. Huidas. ¿Hasta cuándo? Es la oportunidad de empezar de cero o de deshacer esto que ya empieza a oler a cadáver. No, ella me perdonará, está amarga. Pero esto no es nada. Nos hemos perdonado muchas cosas y sé que esto quedará atrás también, esto es nada. La amo con todo el corazón, pero mi cuerpo quiere libertad algunas veces. Sé que ella esta estresada por toda esta situación, pero no vamos a terminar todo lo nuestro por tonterías. Quizá debí terminar esto cuando ella tuvo la responsabilidad de los hechos. O quizá ni siquiera invitarla a salir cuando podría haber estado con otras mujeres, saliendo, cogiendo, mintiendo, hiriéndome en un círculo vicioso de vanidad, apariencias, y autosatisfacción. ¿La vida es espiral? ¿Es círculo vicioso? ¿Es línea recta o es ascendente? Al fin y al cabo, la vida solo se centra en dos hechos: el nacimiento y la muerte, lo que suceda en medio es nada, solo un remedo; y ahora solo me queda la muerte. Pero no como lo cree César Moro (…la muerte de esperar y el morir de verte lejos), sino la muerte de esperar el fin de la eternidad, como en la mitología, con una piedra redonda sobre los hombros o, mejor aún, con un buitre devorando nuestras entrañas.
Estacioné con facilidad. Veo el camino, y leo la suerte del poeta, con un camino llano y listo para escribir diálogos, nuevamente certeros, voraces, ladinos, zahories, conmovedores y convincentes. En mi casó, haré lo que tengo que hacer. Mentiré de ser el caso, creo que vale la pena. Los dos, o los tres valemos la pena. Los tres, eso es. Los tres debemos seguir. No puede fallarme esta vez. Yo ya no lo haré. Me siento paralizado y cada paso es más pesado que el anterior. Que me pasa. Nada, no soy nada. "(...) su sitio preferido en esta ciudad". Su sitio preferido. Eso lo sabía. Antes había estado acá con una tipa que tenía dos hijas y que solo cogía conmigo para obtener dinero para su guardarropa. Sus hijas la pasaban de lo lindo. Ha pasado tanto tiempo desde esos días.
Recuerdo el primer día que la traje por acá. Me sorprendí como si fuera el primero. Vocación de actor? No sé. Pero nuestro bebe se divirtió a montones. Nosotros también, estuvimos abrazados, mirando a nuestro hijo jugar, correr, y caerse y correr otra vez con una gran risa en los labios. Hasta juraría que estaba contento por nosotros. Aquella vez vinimos a celebrar una reconciliación. Una más en nuestra larga lista. Comimos en un fast-food, y hasta nos tomamos una foto. Tan buenos recuerdos. Tantos "tu-y-yo" que grabó en un montón de árboles que luego me llevaba a visitar para contemplarlos. Le implorare, si! Ya no me importa nada. Solo ella y mi hijo. Mi seguridad emocional, mi psicoanalista, y mi vergüenza al tacho. Ellos dos lo valen todo.
Doblo la esquina y sigo tieso. Como empiezo el dialogo? Tan solo seré dulce. Dejaré que desfogue, que reniegue y que gane, pero que me perdone. O estará callada como acostumbra hacer cuando está realmente enfadada. Soy nada. "(...) mi ausencia será nada para ti, como lo ha sido toda esta farsa durante todos estos años." Esperanza, si eso tenemos, y bastante fe. Sé que la vida no ha sido buena con nosotros, trabajando yo de camarero, ella moliéndose en esa guardería, y nuestro hijo con unos amigos. Pero esta vez será diferente, la vida será grata con nosotros.
Llegue y habían dos niños negros jugando y una gorda al costado. El silencio llegó solo a pesar de las carcajadas infantiles. "(...) su sitio preferido en esta ciudad". Lo confundí? No lo creo. Está todo tan vacio, como si fuera feriado. Incluso los comercios, que a esta hora del lunes deberían estar atendiendo a clientes, enamorados, y turistas, están cerrados. Que habrá pasado. Un dolor de cabeza me sorprendió al igual que en la carretera de camino para acá.
De pronto, la realidad se tornó difusa, y sentí frio en los pies, al igual que vértigo y nauseas. No puede ser. Estaban celebrando un cumpleaños en una tienda local. Tenía un letrero que decía: Disfruta el domingo con nosotros! Me senté y decidí pensar que tal vez sería un descuido de los dependientes de aquel negocio. No fue así.
Los menús que indicaban las ofertas dominicales, la poca afluencia de público, y ese ambiente familiar, tan especial de los domingos, reinaban en el ambiente. Al preguntar la hora me di con la sorpresa que eran dos horas antes que lo esperado. Fui a un tragamonedas. Pregunté al vigilante que pasaba la hora y me lo confirmó. Busqué un panel o algo que indique el día y hora, hasta que lo encontré. Eran las 5:34 PM del domingo 14 de febrero de 1988.
No lo podía creer. Hasta que relacioné extraños hechos al aproximarme al centro comercial. Uno fue el mareo que sentí y que no me dejó reconocer lugares comunes de camino al centro comercial. Tal como me pasó cuando paré en la luz roja en la que no podía sintonizar radio alguna. Yo lo atribuí a la situación estresante que atravesaba en ese instante. Además, la velocidad a la que iba me parecía más rápido de lo normal; al punto que al alcanzar a un auto, este desaparecía como por arte de magia, encontrándome alternativamente en una autopista desolada, al borde de un acantilado, a la orilla del mar, o en medio del tráfico.
Yo pensé, como muchas veces pasa a todos quienes manejamos muy frecuentemente, que eso se debía a que mi estado consciente estaba obnubilado por aquella aterradora carta que repasaba una y otra vez, y que mi subconsciente había manejado por la ruta habitual mostrándome esas imágenes de fondo como producto recuerdos pasados (Arizona, Pasamayo, Ocean City).
Recordé además que el tiempo es una dimensión en permanente relación con el estado psicológico de las personas, registrándose muchos casos de personas que se encontraron repentinamente en contradicción con el tiempo y el espacio al cual pertenecían. Como el caso de Gaspar Hauser en Alemania, o el de las señoras que decían haber visitado el Palacio de Versalles en el siglo XVII. Incluso, los fanáticos de los platillos voladores argumentan que el fenómeno OVNI somos nosotros mismos visitándonos desde el futuro.
Asimismo recordé algunas teorías físicas sobre pluriversos, y los espacios dimensionales que se creen superpuestos. Al respecto, el físico Hugh Everett interpreta ciertas peculiaridades cuánticas como una explicación racional a la posibilidad de que cada consecuencia probable a un suceso se transforme en una realidad en uno de los múltiples universos del Multiverso. Tal es el caso del enigma cuántico que representan los espejos en el sentido que la imagen que representan puede pertenecer a uno de esos universos paralelos. Muy semejante a los múltiples universos que Los Vedas representan como burbujas, una contigua a la otra.
Pero bien, ¿y yo? Me encontraba en medio de esa incertidumbre, pero sin embargo –a pesar de lo nubloso de mi visión- vi algo que me saco de ese estado. Quizá me hubiera valido quedarme así como estaba: con la incertidumbre de saber si el tiempo y el espacio, en alguna curvatura que fuera cuita de cuánticos y alquimistas, forman cavernas que albergan futuros diferentes al que tenía al frente.
Mi hijo correteaba solo, y a pocos metros de él, mi esposa y un hombre conversaban. Por sus facciones se traslucía una tristeza inmensa. Entre ellos hubieron besos y abrazos que ahora solo recuerdo como nublosas situaciones, comunes entre dos personas con vidas comunes, entre dos amantes que se dicen adiós. Si en verdad era domingo, es decir ayer, –como parecía ser este sueño, si sueño, no puede ser otra cosa que un triste sueño– yo había estado trabajando. Ella me dijo que no había salido, que no había tenido para movilizarse, pero me parece haber escuchado a mi hijo decir que había jugado muy bien ese domingo –cosa no muy frecuente cuando se queda en casa.
Los seguí, pues se habían levantado. Se dirigían a un restaurant fino. Ella llamó a mi bebé quien los seguía unos metros atrás. Caminaban los dos como tratando de inmovilizar el tiempo o quizá perennizar el momento. Retrasaron el paso, mi hijo los pasó corriendo; ellos retomaron el andar con breves choquecitos de brazo. Las nauseas invadieron mi cuerpo. No lo podía creer. Porque a mí? La imagen seguía en movimiento pero con difusa visibilidad. Él la abrazó por el talle, pero ella esquivo el beso. Y las nauseas en mi estomago. No! Tengo que evitarlo. Prefiero mantener el mareo en mi mente y recordar nada. Si, esa es la solución. Recordar nada.
Un vértigo profundo me tumbó en el suelo. Al levantarme estaba en un centro comercial idéntico, en un área de juegos idéntico; pero la sensación de no estar en el momento, me atormentó. Es posible el mundo sin ellos? Es posible mi mundo sin sentir su presencia aunque ingrata? Era una sensación terrible de nada en que seguir, la misma sensación al ver al tumba de tu ser más querido y no querer dar un paso más allá, un paso que nos aleje del momento.
Y fue lo que sentí lo que me produjo una sensación de flotar y de no estar. El desvanecimiento y la pesadez en mi mente. El recuero de mi mujer esquivando un beso a alguien. De mi hijo jugando sin mi presencia. Quise gritar, desgarrar mi camisa, pero lo que sentía era un adormecimiento, un letargo, un rigor mortis que me llenaba de ira y de congoja por mí mismo. Y toda esta vorágine de sentimientos y desencuentros me llevaban a un nuevo desierto. El ojo de la tormenta, quizá. Mi mente ya no soportaba más y tampoco quería más pensar.
Volví en mí mismo. Escuchaba bocinazos, gritos, y estruendo. El semáforo indicaba un verde que se volvió ámbar inmediatamente después que lo miré. Me recriminaban no haber dado marcha luego del término de la luz roja. Permanecí inmóvil hasta el término de esta nueva luz roja.
Por fin distinguía a una radio emisora nítidamente. Por fin mi mente estaba clara y no atorada en un bucle interminable que repasaba su carta. El auto-radio anunció las 7:34 PM. Será domingo? Llegué al centro comercial y sentí el ajetreo del lunes al término de la jornada de trabajo. Gente presurosa y el tráfico al salir del estacionamiento del centro comercial. Baje del auto con la sensación de haber llegado tarde, y en una orden psico-somática solo atiné a vomitar. La gente me observaba pero yo al fin pude disfrutar de una tranquilidad tenebrosa, aquella que sólo se pude sentir al haber escapado de la muerte.
Luego de aquel evento, sólo deje pasar el tiempo, tal como es él: testigo, juez, y verdugo. Hace una semana que retomé las actividades normales, la rutina de mi vida sin ellos. Pensar que parece ayer cuando tuve la suerte de tenerlos.
Sé que el mundo es cruel y muchas veces las promesas son rotas. Ahora no trato de consolarme con eso. Sólo sé que la auténtica verdad nunca es pronunciada, verdades a medias que se quedaron encerradas en nuestra habitación y que nunca traspasaron el umbral de nuestra puerta hacia la realidad, pues la verdad como yo la viví fue tan sólo un eco que retorna desde donde vino o a quien lo pronunció.
Ahora, solo recuerdo que cuando llegué habían dos niños negros jugando y una gorda al costado. El silencio llegó solo a pesar de las carcajadas infantiles. "(...) su sitio preferido en esta ciudad". Lo confundí? Creo que nunca lo sabré. La vida será grata con nosotros? Quizá con ella, pero no conmigo. Para mí, el nosotros será otro tiempo, otros "tu-y-yo".
Falls Church VA, Junio 2005
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