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🦋 Creativity

Two more pieces from Bocas del tiempo:

One Body

Leaning on their white walking sticks, buoyed up by a slug of booze, they made their way somehow or other through the streets of Tlaquepaque.

It looked like they were on the brink of falling over, but no: when she stumbled, he held her up; when he staggered, she straightened him out. The two walked together; the two sang together. They always stopped in the same place, in the shadow of the gate, and sang in their broken voices, old Mexican airs of love and of war. They were playing some instrument, maybe a guitar, I can't remember, it helped them stay near the key. Between songs, they would shake the dish where they were collecting coins from the respectable public.

Later on they left. Their walking sticks in front of them, they passed through the crowd under the sun and lost themselves in the distance, ragged and torn, arm in arm, supporting each other in the torrent of the world.

The Kiss

Antonio Pujía chose at random one of the blocks of Carrara marble which he had collected over the course of the years.

It was a tombstone. It had come from some grave, who knows from where; he had not the slightest idea of how it had come to his workshop.

Antonio lay the stone on a stand, and went to work on it. He had some rough idea of what he would sculpt; or perhaps he had none. He began by wiping clean the inscription: a man's name, his year of birth, the year of his passing.

Next, his chisel bit into the marble. Antonio found a surprise, what he had been hoping to find inside the stone: a vein in the shape of two faces touching one another, like two profiles touching at the foreheads, nose touching nose, lips touching lips.

The sculptor obeyed the stone. He went on excavating, gradually, until he completed the relief contained in that stone.

The next day, his work was done. And then when he raised the sculpture up, he saw what he had not seen previously. On the back of the stone was a second inscription: A woman's name, her year of birth, the year of her passing.

posted evening of Sunday, June 13th, 2010
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