.
Suavemente
Ella bajó del tren
Y en el pabellón
Ella aguardaba con sus pétalos
.
Era la suma de las cartas
Una visión que trajo el humo
.
Sus manos seguían tibias
Del café latte sin azúcar
Que pidió antes de abordar
.
Hizo un ademán de hablarme
Y sus labios pronunciaron algo
Casi pude adivinar lo que decía
.
Pero su voz no estaba ahí
¿Cómo podía estarlo?
Si jamás la había escuchado
.
Blues, oh blues
Que te derrites
Fantasma
.
Que te pierdes y
me pierdes
por
las callejuelas ocre
de San Miguel de Allende
.
Voy existiendo a ratos
Sin llanto y sin sonrisas
Preso de tu aroma
y de tu cabello corto
.
Contra la arena
Sientes su aspereza
En tu nuca
Y recuerdas tus castillos
.
Política y nada más
se entierra con
La espuma marina
.
Los recuerdos quedan
En la superficie
.
I
Soy en los haberes
Fractura que no
Deja de e x p a n d i r s e
.
Si
Sólo pudiera saltar
Un latido de tu
Pecho
.
Cortarlo por tres
cuartos y detener
Este espasmo
Del corazón
.
Un latido sin
Ritmo, que me causa
tenerte y
No
.
Muerte
Que-me alcanza
Tras el sonido de
Tambores
.
Tú
Te tumbas
.
Prometeo es libre
Pero prefiere sus cadenas
O más bien ya se acostumbró a ellas
Al estilo de José Arcadio Buendía
.
Será que tu llamada más que tenue
Está vacía
Vacía de ambos y de cada uno
Pero repleta de ilusiones
.
Y qué decir de mi llamada
Tan monótona y sin sentido
Tan de un loco sin remedio
.
Qué será del cielo
Que ha olvidado sus colores
O del sonido
Que se ha sumergido en el mar
.
Aura eres, de los ayeres
Te quedaste entre las paredes
Sobre la cantera y el aroma a olvido
.
Te mire entre los árboles
Me pareciste un latido familiar
Un libro con final abierto
Tú de pie y yo sentado
De espalda al mismo cielo
.
Podría alcanzarte
Jamás y para siempre
Tantas veces
Enarbolado de tus raíces
In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures—which permeate Western media—have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.
The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general—arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.
Amen.
— Aaron Freeman (via stuff—n—things)
