Coração Acordeão

«... Además me presentaron a X. Es idealista. Ibamos por un camino de árboles. Hacía viento. Al idealista se le voló su sombrero verde que se le confundía con el pasto. Corrió tras él, y al final lo pisó...»

«— Soy como un jugador de tercera división — se queja Luder —. Mis mejores goles los metí en una cancha polvorienta de los suburbios, ante cuatro hinchas borrachos que no se acuerdan de nada.»

«[...] what appears to be popularity is often just saturation.»

ARS POETICA #3

A CERTAIN DISCIPLINE OF ATTENTION

ARS POETICA #2

«[...] eliminado el enemigo y su manera móvil y nómada de existencia, se requería, en el marco de este proyecto civilizador agroexportador [...], cercar las nuevas extensiones vacías de tierra, y así convertirlas en propiedades privadas y en recursos útiles. Esta necesidad fue contemporánea a la invención en el Oeste norteamericano del alambre de púas. La enorme extensión ganada a los indios explica que, a fines del siglo XIX, Argentina se volviera el mayor importador del mundo de alambre de púas. Entre 1878 y 1904 compró la increíble suma de 1.800 millones de kilos, cantidad que hubiera alcanzado, calcula Noel Sbarra en su Historia del alambrado en Argentina, para alambrar 140 veces todo el perímetro del país y 47 veces la circunferencia del planeta Tierra.     Es notable que, al mismo tiempo que la literatura creaba la figura del gaucho y exaltaba su cabalgar indefinido por la llanura (la ida y la vuelta del Martín Fierro son, respectivamente, de 1872 y 1879), el alambre de púas terminara para siempre con esta forma de vida. En Las víboras, obra de teatro ya de 1916 del dramaturgo Rodolfo González Pacheco, un gaucho se lamenta:     ¡Qué curioso! Un alambre, un hilo ¡un hilo! Ha bastado un hilo de alambre para matar el lirismo de esta tierra ¿No le parece a usted, Padre, que ahora el gaucho tiene la tristeza de un bicho enjaulado?»

SO I SANG ALONG

«He asks your attention. That is all any composer should do, ask your attention. You may not like what he does, but it is you who do not like it: it is not for your entertainment. That's the fun in it. "Composing's one thing, performing's another, listening's a third. What can they have to do with one another?"     The book is dedicated "To Whom It May Concern". That leaves you out or in.»

«[...] Lately I spend most of my time up on the roof. When I wake up I take my coffee there while I smoke and talk to friends on the phone, and throughout the day, after every attack, I go back up to see where the missiles hit. Neighbors have also started showing up on the rooftops nearby, and now I have developed "rooftop relations" with them, these people whom I rarely met during the many years I have lived in this neighborhood. Now I know that the man living to our right has a brother who works at a factory in a particular province, and every time we hear news from that region our hearts sink. Now we all know that the tall, quiet old man on our block—who can look at the flames rising from oil refineries and depots and immediately recognize which materials are burning—used to work on oil rigs in the Persian Gulf forty years ago, during the Iran-Iraq War.     Today, on the ninth day of the war, the rooftop is not as busy as it used to be. Most of the neighbors have either left the city or lost interest in coming up to check things out, or perhaps they are hiding in their apartments out of fear. But the auburn-haired young woman a few buildings away still shows up on the rooftop whenever a missile falls, wearing an orange hoodie, holding a coffee cup and a cigarette that looks slim and long from this distance, asking me where it hit.     I try to guess the location of every explosion, calculating its distance and position relative to one identifiable high-rise or another, the lights of the highways, the city billboards, and public or government buildings. With every explosion in every neighborhood, I wonder: Is the smoke coming from the Sattar Khan area? Oh yes, T. lives there. I call T. and ask after him, N., and their old cat. When they hit the Shahran oil depot I call D. to make sure the flames have not reached their house. When Enghelab Street is hit I call an old artisan who keeps a workshop near there, because I fear those dilapidated buildings will not hold up against the force of the explosions. When B-2s drop heavy bombs on the military base downtown, I call the old poet who lives close by, a man so skinny and fragile that even his frail penciled handwriting seems to be disappearing from the page with every moment.     It is the same whenever news arrives from any other corner of Iran. When they hit Shiraz, close to Hafez’s Mausoleum, I call the family friend who is lucky enough to live near the beautiful gardens of the tomb of our beloved poet. In the port of Bushehr many have already left town, so expansive have the attacks become, except for one friend who loves the city with all his heart, who wanders the streets in the morning and recounts to me what he has seen when I call at night. On the fourth night of the war the largest explosions to date erupted there. That night he told me about going out to check on the city after the bombardments and seeing a lonely man in the airport square, carrying to his car only a backpack and a Nowruz water bowl with a goldfish swimming inside. [...]»

«[...] the maxim attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, supposedly uttered as his foes were abandoning high ground in Austerlitz: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake".»

BESIDE THE DEAD MAN

TRÊS AFORISMOS DE JAMES RICHARDSON