—.OTRAS REALIDADES.—

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Now that you do not seek after me, why do I stay for you?

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Sometimes I think that in each waking life I learn the same lessons. How could I know, since on waking I have only shadows from past lives, no details? That is, languages and skills accrue from life to life; but what else do I discover and then forget? Do I progress over and over down the same path from ignorance to knowledge? I feel that I am in the midst of such a progress now.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«The trouble was that an identity so well tailored as this one induced an inevitable reluctance to cast it aside. The fit was too perfect...

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Some experiences one seeks only once. I do not wish to do again what we did then. I never consider flying back East and visiting, or dialing your number on the telephone from here. What I like is that we were separate, and then together, and are now separate again, and can each separately think back on that time. I like the feeling of sharing a secret. Secrecy is natural to me, comfortable, reassuring.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«He was a ghost, a phantom, without hunger but knowing that he must feed soon or die; knowing that he had lived before though not just when or how...

Sredni Vashtar fue al combate,

rojos eran sus pensamientos, blancos eran sus dientes.

Sus enemigos pidieron la paz,

pero él les trajo la muerte.

Sredni Vashtar, el Hermoso.

Los pensamientos rojos no me resultan desconocidos y comprendo muy bien este poema; pero jamás habría sido capaz de crearlo. Puedo convertir ideas en palabras. No puedo hacer arte con palabras. Quizá las palabras sean el medio equivocado. El habla es un invento humano, utilizado para intercambiar interminables retazos de cotilleos, quejas y deseos. Creo que para mí el habla es algo adoptado. No es una herramienta que me resulte natural. ¿Tengo algún medio propio?

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«I found this poem in a story by Saki:

    Sredni Vashtar went forth,

    His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth

    were white.

    His enemies called for peace, but he brought

    them death.

    Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

No stranger myself to red thoughts, I understand this poem well; but I could never have produced it. I can map ideas in words. I cannot make art with words. Perhaps words are the wrong medium. Speech is a human invention, used to trade endless scraps of gossip, complaint, desire. I have adopted speech, I think. It is not a tool that comes naturally to me. Do I have a medium of my own?

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«I learned today that the department head here has a machine called a “pacemaker” in his heart. Complete replacement of the body’s systems by means of new technology in order to avoid death seems to be a current human goal. If my body systems do not, when damaged, repair themselves or regenerate, I cannot have them replaced. Someday, surely, I must die.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Anyway, it looks as if we’re a pair of complementary neuroses that met, grappled, and are about to pass in the night. So I want to say goodbye on that score. I hope you won’t hold it against me that I did this before you decided to do it yourself.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«The Japanese say that in middle age you should leave the claims of family, friends, and work, and go ponder the meaning of the universe while you still have the chance. Maybe I’ll try just existing for a while.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Many creatures are dying in ways too dreadful to imagine. I am part of the world; I listen to the pain. You people claim to be above all that. You deafen yourselves with your own noise and pretend there’s nothing else to hear. Then these screams enter your dreams, and you have to seek therapy because you have lost the nerve to listen.

— El tapiz del vampiro, Suzy McKee Charnas.

«Have you never had to leave behind an existence that suited you better than the one you moved on to?

— Un mundo feliz, Aldous Huxley.

«He’s being sent to an island. That’s to say, he’s being sent to a place where he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who’s any one.

— Un mundo feliz, Aldous Huxley.

«His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty, and cold...

— El hombre de la plata, León Arsenal.

«Whoever doesn't have a name, doesn't have a place in the people's memories neither.

— Fiesta, Ernest Hemingway.

«Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

— Fiesta, Ernest Hemingway.

«We should not question. Our stay on earth is not for long. Let us rejoice and believe and give thanks.

— Fiesta, Ernest Hemingway.

«… don't ask me a lot of fool questions if you don't like the answers.