El tumblr de Nalu
Wouldn’t you love getting a letter on this envelope? Siempre soñé con recibir una carta con este sobre…
(Letter Ghost de Paul Klee en el MoMa)
Por colores, por idioma, por géneros…/ By colours, language, genre…
Cada vez que me cambio de casa, hay un montón de cajas pequeñas pero pesadas con un rótulo escrito a la carrera que dice “libros”. Son pequeñas porque, si algo he aprendido en doce trasteos en la vida, es que no hay manera de levantar una caja gigante de libros.
Poco a poco, los libros de la casa se han tomado una pared, dos paredes, una parte del estudio - sin contar los que andan regados por las mesitas de noche. Intento domarlos con viajes a las tiendas de segunda mano, pero ahí siguen, organizados de mala manera por idioma y por género.
Siempre soñé con una biblioteca llena de libros. Nunca me importó si vivía en casa o apartamento, si el barrio era bonito o si la casa era grande, pero tenía que tener biblioteca. En el fondo soy digna hija de mi papá, que siempre tuvo una biblioteca inmensa que fue catalogada juiciosamente por mi hermana.
Nunca la he podido tener ordenada, perdí la batalla contra el polvo, y todavía me falta mucho para que sea una biblioteca digna. Pero ahí están nuestros libros, los que reunimos después de que nos acompañaron en nuestra vida de solteros. Tenemos dos ejemplares de “El Hombre Duplicado” de Saramago que resultaron de esa unión (es un chiste malo, pero es verdad).
Allí están los libros que no logré conquistar y que ahora me miran con cara de reprobación con sus separadores abandonados en la mitad. Los que están leídos y releídos y amarillos y sucios de viajar en mi morral. Los que me robé y los que heredé oficialmente de esa gran biblioteca de mi papá que ahora está repartida en varias casas. Los que denuncian mis errores de criterio o mi favoritismo por un autor. Los repetidos que no soy capaz de devolver porque odio confesarle a la gente que me regaló algo que ya tengo.
Ahí está, de alguna manera, mi historia. Y la tuya, por lo que espero que me perdones si espío tu biblioteca. ¿Cuáles libros abandonaste y cuáles atesoras? ¿Cómo es tu biblioteca? ¿Cómo la tienes organizada? ¿No quieres compartir tu historia conmigo?
Every time I move house, I end up with a load of small and heavy boxes market in felt-pen “books”. They are small because I’ve moved 12 times now and I learned the hard way that you simply cannot lift a big box full of books.
Year by year, our book collection has taken over one wall, two walls, and one part of the room - and I’m not counting the ones lying by our beds. I have tried to tame it with several trips to the charity shop, but they’re still there, badly organised by language and genre.
I always dreamt of having a house with lots of bookshelves. I never thought about having a flat or a house, or living in a big place, or living in a nice neighbourhood: it just had to have books. I am the daughter of my father, who had a big library at home which was carefully catalogued by my sister in one of her school holidays.
I’ve never been able to keep it tidy or organised, have lost the battle against dust, and I’m years away of having a worthy collection of books. But I love it because these are the books of our single life joined together in one place. And funnily enough, we have two copies of Saramago’s “The Double” as a result of that union.
There they are, the books that I could never conquer and now look at me disapprovingly with their bookmarkers lost in the middle. The books that I have read and read again and that are yellow and dirty from travelling in my backpack. The ones that I stole and the ones I inherited from my parents’ home. The ones that give away my poor judgement or my favouritism for one author. And the ones that people gave to me and I already had, because I’ve never had the courage to tell them that I already had that book.
My books tell a story. And I’m sure they tell yours, and this is why you’ll always catch me spying at your books to find out more about you. Which books did you abandon and which ones do you treasure? What does your library look like? How do you organise it? Care to share your own story?
Cuando yo te abrazo no te abrazo sola,
te abraza conmigo una eternidad,
te abrazan los valles, las montañas y los vientos,
las flores del campo y el olor del pan.
Cuando yo te beso, no te beso sola,
azúcar te traigo del cañaveral.
Soy como la tierra para darte fruto,
soy de miel morena para amarte más.
La geografía de cada uno
La primera vez que volví a Colombia después de meses de ausencia, lo primero que se asomó a la ventanilla del avión fue el altiplano cundiboyacense – esa gran formación montañosa que consiste en, digamos, una montaña aplastada en la cumbre o en una llanura a gran altura, depende de cómo se le mire.-
Allí estaban las montañas, majestuosas y arrugadas, de color verde profundo, serpenteando el paisaje. Y el agujerito ese que lleva uno por dentro cuando deja su tierra se hizo un poco más hondo.
Eso era lo que extrañaba, las montañas. Al mirar este horizonte londinense hecho de cielo, techos y chimeneas, me hacía falta un poco de verde recortando el azul del cielo.
Una carga más para el equipaje que llevamos sin darnos cuenta, entonces . Somos también la geografía del lugar en el que crecimos. ¿O acaso qué extrañan ustedes?
**************************************************************************
The first time I flew back to Colombia after coming to live here, the first thing that appeared through my plane window was the “altiplano cundiboyacense” which is the high plains region where Bogota is (or “a large area of level land situated above sea level”, according to the dictionary).
There they were, the mountains, corrugated, green, majestic. And the small hole that you carry when you leave the place where you were born suddenly grew deeper.
I realised this is what I missed the most. While looking at the London horizon made up of rooftops, chimneys and sky, I missed the green outlines over a blue sky.
Can geography then be yet another thing that we carry through our lives? Are we also the geography of the places where we’ve been? What do you miss when you’re not home?
What do you see from the bus?
As you can i
magine, one of the first things I did when I first moved to London was to get on the top floor a red double-decker bus. Almost ten years later, I still go up the stairs with the same swift step.
You see, being able to watch the world from a high place matches a privileges I can only relate to the God concept they tought me when I was little, watching every little sin we commited from above. Not comparing myself to that, of course, but how about Queen of the double-decker?
From my above level throne I can see all the things humans do when they think no one is looking. From my throne I have seen you sigh, kiss, do that little dance, look at someone with desire and yes, do something a bit illegal. I have seen you admiring your new shoes while sitting at the bus stop thinking how beautiful your feet look like. I have seen you trying to teach your granddaughter the colours of the traffic light. I have speculated that you two must be sisters as you do exactly the same type of walk.
And then, sometimes, you have noticed that I’m watching you and have looked back. And I’ve shrunk and hid behind my window, because it’s only then that I realise that I can’t possibly know all your secrets and your stories. And that I don’t really know you and might never see you again. But then… Can you blame me for guessing?
And how about you? What do you see on your bus ride?
Aplastamiento de las gotas
Una gota de lluevia se deforma al caer, video de Emmanuel Villermaux, Aix-Marseille University
“Yo no sé, mira, es terrible cómo llueve. Llueve todo el tiempo, afuera tupido y gris, aquí contra el balcón con goterones cuajados y duros, que hacen plaf y se aplastan como bofetadas uno detrás de otro, qué hastío. Ahora aparece una gotita en lo alto del marco de la ventana; se queda temblequeando contra el cielo que la triza en mil brillos apagados, va creciendo y se tambalea, ya va a caer y no se cae, todavía no se cae. Está prendida con todas las uñas, no quiere caerse y se la ve que se agarra con los dientes, mientras le crece la barriga; ya es una gotaza que cuelga majestuosa, y de pronto zup, ahí va, plaf, deshecha, nada, una viscosidad en el mármol. Pero las hay que se suicidan y se entregan enseguida, brotan en el marco y ahí mismo se tiran; me parece ver la vibración del salto, sus piernitas desprendiéndose y el grito que las emborracha en esa nada del caer y aniquilarse. Tristes gotas, redondas inocentes gotas. Adiós gotas. Adiós”.
Julio Cortázar, Historias de Cronopios y de Famas
the tomtoms when it came time for that. You had to
run in order to get there first, and he would not.
So he always had a triangle. He does not remember
how they played the tomtoms, but he sees clearly
their Chinese look. Red with dragons front and back
and gold studs around that held the drumhead tight.
If you had a triangle, you didn’t really make music.
You mostly waited while the tambourines and tomtoms
went on a long time. Until there was a signal for all
triangle people to hit them the right way. Usually once.
Then it was tomtoms and waiting some more. But what
he remembers is the sound of the triangle. A perfect,
shimmering sound that has lasted all his long life.
Fading out and coming again after a while. Getting lost
and the waiting for it to come again. Waiting meaning
without things. Meaning love sometimes dying out,
sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives
silent in the middle of the world’s music. Waiting
for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence
as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much. ” - Waiting and finding, by Jack Gilbert
The perfect Saturday afternoon… http://twitpic.com/4uxut And the soundtrack… http://blip.fm/~5xp26
