Bosons

Like any other day, I was waiting to go to lunch. I looked at the time on my phone. I saw the number: “12:51”, and I was transported there:
I'm listening to that song by The Strokes, “12:51”. I’m with my first love on an improvised picnic in her backyard. She's holding one headphone and giving me the other. She’s saying “Here, here. Listen!"
She is so proud of herself. She has been learning English and finally translated a complete song by ear.
She pronounces slowly, “Oh really, your folks are away now? Alright, let's go, you convinced me”
She repeats in Spanish. “¿En serio? ¿Tus viejos no están en tu casa? Bueno, vamos, me convenciste.”
“Do you remember?” she asks me. “It’s like you told me that time, after our first kiss.” She smiles.
I never look for the number, nor seek for the song on my iPod. But when it happens, when the song appears in my ears, or when I encounter that number on my phone, I find myself in that backyard, in that improvised picnic under the sun, forever young and in love, holding a Coke bottle and her smile.

Years later I was living in Germany. I had not seen her for almost a decade.
I was reading about futurology when I got her E-Mail.
She sent me a link for the live streaming of a press conference in Switzerland. The news was that they had measured something moving faster than the speed of light.
She wanted to ask me something: “I remember once you told me that we would never be able to go back in time until we find the way of moving faster than the speed of light. What do you think? Will it be possible now?”
And I realized her 12:51 was that talk we had, one night, walking the streets, also in love, chatting about time, space, memories and how to prevail over them. She was collecting bosons from our shared past, like every time I found “12:51”.
It was the only time we wrote each other. I answered her: “We must wait for more studies in the field, but these are hopeful news.”
We haven’t written each other ever since.

Inflexion

Inflexion

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Albert Camus

It started like any other Sunday morning. I woke up, took a shower and went downstairs to McMurphy’s, a kind of Irish bar in the corner of my street named after One flew over the cuckoo’s nest protagonist. On Sundays I typically worked there in my novels, while reading, thinking, watching Germans in the wild and enjoying a big breakfast by myself. But that Sunday I thought she might be there. She was a waitress I knew since I moved to Braunschweig to do my PhD in Artificial Intelligence. I call her the magic blonde, because I still hadn’t had the courage to ask her for her name. No hurry, I think. It’s only been three years.

I like her eyes. I had put them (and her) in many micro-novels that I had written in McMurphy’s. I see her as some kind of guardian angel, who doesn’t know how much she’d helped me just by the mere act of existing.

When I arrived I noticed she wasn’t working that day, and that a bunch of old people were mingled around the school in front of the bar. School on a Sunday? I asked myself. Election day, I remember. That’s right. Europe needs an inflexion point, a before and after moment in time to believe that something new and better might happen in this already too old to care continent. Descendent from Italian and Spanish and raised in Argentina during its return to democracy I have an interesting perspective about the old and the new, politically and culturally speaking. I have unique insights, so I abstained from voting.

Magic Blonde was not there, so I got myself into a sloppy position over one table and started reading. I had three books in my bag that day. The first book to come out was my second novel, which I was rewriting after ten years. The second one was Macendonio Fernandez’s The Museum of Eterna's Novel. And the third one was Mr Gwyn, by Alessandro Baricco. I was checking on of the many prologues that constitute the eternal novel by Fernandez when I found such a clever quote that I had to take my phone out of my pocket and made a picture of the page. Digital conversion of analog literature, I laughed to myself, while feeling dumb because of the unexpected expression in my face. “Self-referenced jokes to entertain myself” sounds like an epitaph for my literary work. Looking up I found myself facing Magic Blonde in her civilian clothes, next to an older version of her that must have been her mother. She didn’t greet me and I froze with stupidity. Magic Blonde was introducing her mother to the waitress that was actually working that day, while I tried to avoid hearing her mysterious name by accident.  They were talking about a flea market, or something like that. My German skills were not as good as expected for someone living already three years in Braunschweig.

I closed Fernandez’s book and opened mine. I corrected some sentences and added footnotes, longer than the actual chapter, refusing to look up until Magic Blonde and her mother were not there anymore. I felt the shame of inventing a roll that I didn’t have. She said goodbye and I looked up wishing she were talking to me to witness her hugging the current waitress goodbye. She’s a hugger like me, I thought.

After finishing my breakfast I went for a walk. Sunny Braunschweig made me think of life as a time-variant function. I guessed that my life’s inflexion point would be the moment when Magic Blonde would finally admit that she was waiting for me to say, “Hello. I’m Fede and I’ll be here all your life”.

I have recurrent dreams of a woman covering my eyes from behind asking: “Guess who?” In my dreams I always answer “Finally!” knowing the long waiting is over.

In the theater park I watch people enjoying themselves in small pedal boats through the Oker River. Three years here and I’ve never done that, I reflected. I would with her, I told myself. It’s not that I don’t want to live these things; it’s just that I don’t want to experience them alone. I opened Mr Gwyn and read about another lonely writer.

I’ve worked in Artificial Intelligence and studied psychoanalysis in my free time. And I’ve read books and watched as much TV and movies as possible. For me, all media conceive their own narrative principles. And by obsessively studying them I can find structures to help me create my own, while waiting for my inflexion point. To wait is to learn how to depend on others. Like Lacan’s big Other, fascinating as his “subject-supposed-to-Know” (SSS). I think of that mixture construction proposed by Lacan between patient and analyst as a kind of convergence between entities that can also occur in books, songs or films. And I look forward to my own SSS through my books.

I was thinking about all that when a sentence beautifully shouted at me. Holy shit, I reacted. Who is this writer? I had bought the book in an airport in Argentina after visiting family months ago but I didn’t remember why.

I checked the flap of the book.  Oh, sure, “Ocean Sea, Silk”. I’ve read him. I’ve felt the SSS. I kept reading. “...Holden School.” Funny, I thought, imagining a school filled with Holden Caulfields, calling each other phonies. I’d rather be in a Seymour Glass School, I joked. Thus that institution would not last long; at least not longer after “Banana Fish’s day”.

But what does this school teach? I took my phone and googled it. Turin, I read. Interesting. I’ve just been in there presenting my research in Instituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica a couple of week ago, during the 8^th Workshop on Analysis of Dynamic Measurements.

And then it happened. Just like it happens in movies before the climax (Studies had shown it tends to be in the 68 % of the whole progression of the narrated fiction) everything stopped. “A school for storytellers”, I read aloud and my eyes watered. I could still see the people pedaling away, only blurrier.

All my life I’ve lived waiting. I thought I waited for a woman. The myth of love, Plato’s Symposium and all that shit. But it wasn’t that.

I haven’t noticed it till today, May 25^th, 2014. I’ve been learning to live economically comfortable to find free time to actually study narrative and write. Over the last fifteen years I’ve written almost everyday. I’ve been written many novels; some unfinished, some personal, some bad, but all mine, and mostly for me. I’ve only self-published a couple, almost a decade ago. The rest has been private because I couldn’t find the place for me to tell these stories nor to have someone interested in reading them. I’m the definition of self-taught by default, not by choice.

Until now. Suddenly, I’ve found Holden School. I want to live in Turin and learn where it seems I can be myself. I’ve been between my hidden books and my scientific work. Now I’ve got a chance to show myself to the world.

That’s my story. It’s completely true; opened and honest. Fact-check it if you want. This text is about my triggering event, my inflexion point. Because the time-variant function that is my life found the point where the slope changed, making this numbed world feels special again.

This is the overwhelming truth. This is the story of my epiphany. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Thank you for your attention and consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Federico Grasso Toro

"Nothing Gets Crossed Out"

The future has got me worried, such awful thoughts.

My head is a carousel of pictures. The spinning never stops.

I just want someone to walk in front and I'll follow the leader.

Like when I fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush.

I started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs.

I almost forgot who I was, but came to my senses.

Now I'm trying to be assertive. I'm making plans.

I wanna rise to the occasion, yeah, meet all of their demands.

But all I do is just lay in bed and hide under the covers.

I know I should be brave,

but I'm just too afraid of all this change.

And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt.

I keep making these To-Do lists but nothing gets crossed out.

Working on the record seems pointless now.

When the world ends, who's gonna hear it?

But I’m trying and take some comfort in written words.

“Yeah, Tim I heard your album and it's better than good.

When you get off tour I think we should hang and black out together.”

Cos I've been feeling sentimental for days gone by.

All those summers singing, drinking, laughing, wasting out time.

Remember all those songs and the way we smiled,

in those basements made of music.

But now I've got to crawl,

to get anywhere at all.

I'm not as strong as I thought.

So when I'm lost in a crowd,

I hope that you'll pick me out.

Oh, how I long to be found?

The grass grew high. I laid down.

Now I wait for a hand

to lift me up, help me stand.

I’ve been laying so low

Don't wanna lay here no more…

But if everything that happens is supposed to be,

and it’s all predetermined, you can't change your destiny.

I guess I'll just keep moving. Someday, maybe, I'll get to where I'm going.

Conor Oberst

  

Institutions (06.10.2014)

Year 1: The Party

1. Introduction to the party.

 It started as a joke. I remember it clearly. Hamburg in December tends to be very cold. So anything involving shared alcohol and socialization is welcomed. It was New Year’s Eve and I had no date, so I decided to create around me a group of people to chat away the year. My friend’s flat was close to Beatles-Platz. It was a big place with tall windows facing Reeperbahn (Hamburg’s the red-light district). Around twenty people were mingling. So I put myself in the middle of the group proclaiming: “I’ve found the solution to all political problems in the world!” I had everyone’s attention. The next sentence had to be clever, deep and also engaging. “This huge apathy that most of the people suffer must not be fought, but embraced.” Silence. “Is that your solution?” someone eventually asked. “Of course not.” I said, “It’s just the first step. After admitting that most of us don’t give a shit about politics and we would probably never care about it, then and only then we can go on to the second step.” “What’s that?” asked someone already buying my idea before hearing it. “We must give all the political power to the gay community.” The silence in the room was sudden. I immediately thought it was due to the presence of Florian Schmidt, an openly gay member of Die Linke (the left party in Germany). He was staring at me. Everyone was waiting for his reaction, and he was waiting for mine. “You could be the leader, Florian!” I proclaimed almost shouting. A few hours and many beers later Florian promised me to write a draft of the proposal. In exchange I promised to subscribe to Die Linke and help him. Three months later we were both co-signing what we decided to call the Pink Law.  

2. The dark times come with black lists.

 July was confusing for all of us, but specially for me. The Pink Movement – as they started calling the activation of the Pink Law – was born in a broken regime. The Pink Law forces all political participants involved in the creation of new politics and legislations to be openly gay. In my mind nothing important nor transcendental could come from this, just a little jump in politics involvement from the gay community. And since I was one of the two co-writer of the law, me not being gay was an on-going controversy in both side of the matter. Any word that came out of my mouth was recorded and and maliciously interpreted, to the point that I decided to stop talking. Every interview seemed to be a hunting exercise to “catch me in the act” and to accuse me of homophobia, destructing the momentum that the law was finding. Away from the spotlight I tried to focus on the little details that I called the collateral loopholes in the law. There were already rumors about black lists of politicians that were secretly bisexual but openly gay, just to have access to this new source of power. Suddenly everyone was talking about politics. The gay community was actively presenting new laws and policy changes every day. And the politically active none-gay community was also involved in a surprising collaborative manner. When the Pink Law was passed as one of the first all-states European Law in Brussels that September there was nothing else I could do, except to escape. The Pink Law was about to pass in the United States of America, so I decided to go to Washington D.C. to visit some friends. Officially I was following the viral growth of the law, but I was secretly planning to escape the party and politics to go back to my hometown, a small Mexican city, close to the Arizona border, called Simpleza.  

3. Tension is the state of being stretched tight.

 In the old country, as I like to call Mexico, an ocean away from Die Linke, things seemed simpler. Skipping the Empire itself that the US constitutes, Mexico and the rest of Latin America remain in an eternal 20th Century. After flying to Arizona I took a bus to cross the border. Further south time seems to stay still. In a short amount of hours I was there, crossing the sign that welcomes everyone to Simpleza. At first I wandered off for hours in the small city, observing all the details that I’d found new. Nothing had properly changed after the Pink Law in my hometown, I noticed. No one is a prophet in his own land. And also everything arrives late to Simpleza, especially progress. My old house was still there. It felt the same as years before, when I thought I’d left it for good. I’ve read novels and I’ve watched movies about people going back home after years abroad. Pure fiction. I’d often had the fantasy of arriving back unannounced, taking a taxi to the city; getting coffee with milk in a typical “Cafetería” close to the main square and then taking the perpetually late bus to get to my neighbourhood. The fantasy always ended there. With me sitting in the bus, realizing I was returning to that old place I used to hate, but with an adult sobriety; staring from above the daily suffering of living in such an awful town. I would be above it all because in those fantasies I was always married with children, living in Europe, and happy. Also I remember that in my fantasies I was always working in Europe as an astronaut.  

Year 2: The casket

1. Introduction to the tyranny.

 Traditionally in the Western world it was the village carpenter who made the caskets, when needed. He was also in charge of managing the whole funeral. Therefore the design and workmanship of old caskets would typically reflect the skills of that individual carpenter, always regarding to the available materials at that particular time. In recent centuries, caskets became an obligation to attend to. And with that the cheapest, thinnest possible pinewood ended up being the most common and popular choice. It was only recently that steel coffins appeared on the scene. Nowadays the process of buying a casket can start in the most unexpected of places. I went, following the doctor’s suggestion, to CostCo, the big supermarket chain where anything can be bought. Its slogan (“Simplifying home and life”) falls short regarding death. Even its mission statement (“To continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices.”) should be updated adding at the end the phrase “… and beyond life”. It’d been a couple of years since CostCo crossed the southern border and installed a gigantic mall outside Simpleza. Most small markets were dying anyway, since people in town had started to buy most things online. Only specialized stores had survived close to the main square: one of many details that I'd noticed during my year back in Simpleza. In modern times everything seems to be mass-produced. And apparently caskets are not the exception. For less than a thousand US dollars one can buy a standard steel casket.  

2. Tyranny comes with tyrants.

 The employee asked me to describe the disease’s body composition. Only at that point it stroke me that my father, after almost a year of hosting me in my old house - “My” old house, he’d correct me every time he overheard me talking in the phone - had died while watching TV on New Year’s Eve. I was watching with him, thinking about how two year previous to that night I had started the biggest political movement of the new century. I didn’t notice that he was dead until the morning after. When I woke up I heard the TV on. I went to the bathroom and then I noticed the feet of my father, aiming to the screen, exactly as I saw them when I went to sleep the night before. My father never allowed me to pick anything when we used to go shopping together. I remember trying to sneak things under his omnipresent radar to eventually fail arriving to the cash register. I was a kid. I thought that if I tried hard enough I would con my father into getting me something that I really really wanted. His policy was pragmatic: “We don’t buy things we want, son. We buy things we need.”  

3. Tyranny is a state under a cruel and oppressive government.

 My little brother was called Roberto, but he asked everyone to call him Bobby. Since he’d read about Robert Kennedy he was extremely proud of being related by name to that historical figure. My father hit him only once in front of me. I remember it very clearly, because it was short after I arrived back to Simpleza. It was July and we were all living together in the old house. I heard someone shouting and whining. I wasn’t sure if it was only one person or maybe two people, so I walked outside to the front yard. My first surprise was that there were not two but three in the scene: My brother, Bobby, was whining; my father, stoic and silent, was hitting him senseless; and a third man, unknown to me but strikingly similar to Robert Kennedy, was shouting to my father to stop. I guess now that it all made sense then. At that point I remembered all my father’s homophonic commentaries, maybe the main reason for the Pink Law. But I also understood something that I didn’t really think before that scene: My brother was gay. In September we buried Bobby: Suicide by overdose. My father forced me to go with him to his old carpenter friend and we made together with help from his friend the casket for my brother. To build the eternal resting place of my secretly gay brother broke me more than anything in my life. There were not enough Pink Laws in the world to helped me with the pain.  

Year 3: The call

1. Introduction to closure.

 It’s been good for me to write everything about those two years. This last year has been great. I guess the myth is true: When love arrives the clarity that comes with it helps to sort the past, because all things must pass; because all things must end. To write about those two years had helped me understand my behaviour during the whole process. After reliving Bobby’s death it makes so much sense for me to intuitively buy the standard steel casket for my father in CostCo, “Simplifying home and life”. The interview and the article felt like a good closure. A profile piece for The New Yorker Magazine: The life of the straight man that has done more for the gay community. And my own personal journey in form of an article written by me: “Through the looking glass of the Pink Law.” The deeply disturbing family affair probably helped to put my article and the profile in the magazine. Both were published in the first week of December. Two years have passed after the Pink Law in America. Almost one year after my father’s death. I am in love and feeling I can start fresh. Barbara, a social activist eradicated in New York after Venezuela Civil War, has helped me to become a consultant. And in the process she had helped me also in a deeper way. They’ve been the best three months of my life. The Pink Law modified politics in a way no one really ever expected. And now all around the world new parties come out every day, focused on the potential Pink Global Government. Our strategy, as I explained in my article, is to make policies to be dealt “properly”. We loved the context of it all and the term, Barbara explained to the interviewer. At first I thought we should have said “accurately”, but soon enough I noticed what Barbara meant. The people looking up to us are waiting for something more definitive and extreme. To proclaim our cause the “proper” one gave us all the accreditations that this generation needed from us. The next generations will believe it, because they will be born in it. The next step is to reconstruct the banking system worldwide. Up to this point the new policies are holding and restricting many of the old risky bank costums, but a complete reconstruction is needed, if we wanted to allow “proper” (there’s that word again) growth to the future generations. The idea is old, much older than any of us. But finally with “proper” management the sky is the limit and there’s a hopeful horizon in sight.  

2. Closure comes with time.

 I thought she knew. But it was after the last meeting with The New Yorker’s interviewer that she stopped me and asked me about the message. She might have overheard me saying to the reporter that the first day of this year, I found a lost call in my phone. It was my father’s number. Probably the last call he ever tried to make. Recorded at 1 AM it ensured me that he was alive when I told him goodnight before going to bed that night. “What did the voice message said?” the reporter asked. “I’ve never heard it. It has helped me to keep on going.” The reporter was very happy with my explanation, but Barbara needed more. I told her how my father had become in my mind the old world itself; the symbol of everything that is still wrong. My new and strong commitment to the Pink Global Government to try to solve the problems of the world is strictly based on my anger for him. Her eyes wetted. I thought she felt part of my new life and was moved to tears, but it was something else. While crying she admitted that she had deleted the message. She was planning a surprise trip for us during the Christmas break and in doing so, she had had stolen my phone. I refuse to change my German telephone number, even after living a year in Mexico and almost another year in New York. She had had erased all, even the voice messages. She didn’t know. She was devastated. And I was shocked, but for the wrong reasons. I didn’t care about not being able to listen to the message. That was a bigger shock than the “sad” news of her deleting it. Barbara was helping me, even with her mistakes.  

3. Closure is the process of closing something, especially an institution.

 It is New Year’s Eve again. Three years have gone by. It’s the perfect start for a new era. I am proposing to Barbara tonight. I have it all planned. She comes into the room with a huge smile. I want to tell her now, but I can’t. It’s so incredible to love someone like this. She’s the cause and the objective of my love. I’m desperate to ask her now to marry me, but I can’t. And I’m so happy about it that I want to tell her, even though it would spoil the surprise. I want to share everything with her. I’m finally detached from the shadow of my father. She gives me the phone. Her smile is enormous. I write this sentence and then I take the phone...

 (… ehm. I speak English, ok? I know you like English more, son. I want you to know that I loved your brother… Very much… I don’t care he was gay. I don’t. I love Bobby. I am proud of him... I am not like you... I don’t know how to say what I feel. We do what we need, not what we want. It was never about him, it was always about you. I hope you learn. I hope you understand that we are all equals. I wish you would stop imposing... Stop segregating... Stop your anger...)

Cinema Memoirs (2004)

There’s a small movie theater, on a hidden alley, near a quiet street, in the middle of a town. It makes special screenings on Sunday’s afternoons. The other days it’s closed. The tickets are too expensive. But the owner knows that people are always willing to pay anything for this chance. Cinema Memoirs – that’s the movie theater’s name – is not well known. The owner and his assistant are the only workers there. Every week they rotate their functions. One sells the ticket and the other one operate the projector. To go to Cinema Memoirs is a luxury that one can only experience once in a lifetime. The policy is clear. It prohibits categorically a viewer to enter twice to the projection room. The procedure to follow if one wants to watch a movie at Cinema Memoirs starts on a Monday. That’s when the film for the next Sunday is assigned. Whoever calls first and reserves the theater is the privileged viewer of the week and decides which film will be shown. Other callers have to wait one more week and pry for better luck. On Tuesday, the assistant visits the home of the privileged viewer of the week and performs an inventory. He writes a detailed list of all the material possessions of the viewer. The owner decides on Wednesday, with the help of that list, the price for the ticket. It is usually half of all the viewer’s possessions, although it feels always cheap. On Thursday, all the necessary legal paperwork is done to ensure the payment as quickly as possible. On Friday, the owner and his assistant search for the requested film all over town. Sometimes the movie is easy to find. But other times the request takes them urgently to another city. Saturday can be a day of rest or a last minute journey to find the film. On Sunday, there is always tension in the air. The viewer meets with the owner and his assistant for lunch. And every week – it doesn’t matter who the viewer is – there’s the same conversation. The owner tells the history of Cinema Memoirs; of how he built it with his own hands and brought the ancient projector from a small forgotten town, placed in the end of the world. After that, while they are eating dessert, the assistant proclaim the rules of Cinema Memoirs: 1 - The privilege of watching a movie in Cinema Memoirs will be enjoyed only once in a lifetime. 2 - Any movement – slow or fast – towards the second seat will be punished automatically with the projection detention and the expulsion of the viewer from the theater. The ticket fee is – in that and any other case – non-refundable. 3 - Any word spoken aloud by the viewer – directed or not to the second seat – shall be punished, as explained in the rule number two. 4 - Summing up the two items above: the viewer can only look ahead at all times during the projection and if he or she wants can laugh or mourn in relation to what it’s seen on the screen. 5 - After the screening is finished, the viewer will wait for the theater lights to be switched on to stand up and leave. Then, there are ten minutes of silence. After that, the viewer is allowed to enter. The owner or his assistant waits with the ticket. The viewer leaves his empty wallet, as a token payment, and takes the ticket given in return. The projection room has only two seats. The viewer sits in one and waits for the lights to go out. It is then, when it happens. The viewer cannot move anymore. The movie is about to start. At that point the second seat is occupied. And so, throughout the duration of the projected film, the viewer will be accompanied by his or her loved dead one. The viewer can only watch him or her sideways and cannot speak or touch him or her. Nevertheless, the viewer thinks, the price for the ticket is worth it. When the lights are on again, immediately after the end of the projection, the second seat is empty and the viewer is usually crying.

(Drought Conditions) [microstory]

I've been up a while, watching the west wing, thinking, asking myself what am I supposed to be or do. Dunno if I'll go to Wolfenbüttel today or not.
When I feel lost or disfunctional my only comfort are these words:
"At least I am mine"

Introducción a la literatura grassiana (extracto)

Introducción a la literatura grassiana

Para verlo en slideshare pulse aquí.

Sed de cambiar (anticipo)

Mi novela 3, La Llave, tiene muchos niveles y lecturas, como cajas chinas con cuadros dentro de cuadros. Dentro de uno de esos niveles encontré un texto que me parece digno de ser amputado y presentado aparte, para consideración general, como modo de anticipo y de paso para reabrir mi blog después de mucha ausencia.

En pocas palabras, me interesa generar un diálogo.

Quien quiera decir algo, será bienvenido.

FG

-----------------------------

Sed de cambiar

Ensimismado en la pena clásica de olvidarnos Federico Grasso relee El Tiempo Se Estaba Acabando Para Ella. No hay hombre que rinda un continuo homenaje a sí mismo como él. No hay sed de crecer en un autor como Grasso, sólo sed de cambiar.

Con los ojos rojos y entrecerrados Grasso concentra su mirada en renglones prácticamente inexistentes. En el color de la tinta hay un verde flameante. El libro entre sus manos ha dejado de ser un mensaje para volverse un producto de consumo. Y él ya ha consumido demasiado.

Para ser sábado por la tarde el Servicompras está muy tranquilo. Los ojos le arden. Su cabeza no. Cree estarse sintiendo mejor pero se desploma sobre la mesita amarilla. Grasso, inconsciente, se pregunta qué hace y para qué.

La cultura nace del pueblo y no de un marginado como él. Se siente ajeno por decisión. Cree verse solo, inútil, sucio, desordenado y desprolijo.

Recuerda a Sabato. El individuo como representación de un movimiento histórico. Otra vez. Ser más por no ser. Ser el representante de una época es demasiada responsabilidad para alguien que se siente nadie. Prefiere ser el único representante de lo que le pasa a él. Quiere ser su propio pop y cultura y preguntarse ¿Por qué en toda la novela se repiten continuamente ideas y sucesos?

El paralelismo alimenta a las ideas concebidas y les da vida. Redundar. Paralelos que a la distancia se ven como bucles o hélices. No se puede decir que un cuerpo está vivo por estar compuesto por células. Tiene que haber un proceso de repetidas secuencias para decir que el cuerpo compuesto por una repetición de código genético casi interminable está vivo. Átomos paralelos que a la distancia se ven como bucles vivos.

Esta obra, este mundo, está vivo. No se le puede decir a un organismo vivo “Pará, pará. Eso ya lo hiciste.” Hay que dejarlo ser y hacer y apreciarlo como tal.

Es la poética de la novela, la perspectiva idealizada de repeticiones que componen un único producto final con inutilidad económica. Está dicho en R., ese cuento en AW. Está dicho en Todas son iguales, esa canción metaficcional de Andrés Calamaro. Y está siendo dicho, desde el principio hasta este final abierto, en La Llave.

¿Y dónde queda la indagación? ¿Por qué repetir superficies y no buscar en lo profundo? La vida de Federico Grasso en San Juan es la de un espectador crítico. Él sabe, ve y menciona el desacomodo económico: Mucho dinero en pocas manos, mucho poder en esas mismas pocas manos y muchos corderos fáciles de dominar. Ve en la provincia muerta una producción mínima, atosigada por el interés monetario individualista de no progresar.

Hombres y mujeres pedaleando en el aire para no morirse y otro montón igual, pero chupando de la teta del estado. Un pueblo que no se puede justificar pero que ya es ciudad. Un lugar donde el dinero y poder que se reparte entre pocos viene del gobierno. Un falso crecimiento económico camuflado en una circulación monetaria idiota: “Tomá diez, dame cinco. Mirá, mirá: recaudé cinco; debe estar re-bien todo esto entonces...”

Mucho poder que hace lo que quiere con la vida de los corderos y muchos corderos listos para vivir sin criticar o pensar lo que les dicen que son. Hijos de corderos que nunca van a poder elegir entre ser o no ser corderos, porque sus destinos se marcaron antes de nacer. Porque el dueño del pastizal será bastante estúpido, pero no es pelotudo, y los mantiene más estúpidos que él, para que no haya lugar para problemas.

Ese Grasso, dopado para tratar de calmar el dolor, no puede y no quiere indagar de más en eso que ve, menciona y es parte suya. En esos planteos conscientemente superfluos ve el espíritu de su búsqueda de respuestas, no indagando puntualmente, sino visualizando todo el panorama.

Porque no hay grandes problemas en el mundo. Todo lo que es y sucede es vivir y no hay verdaderos problemas en eso. Sólo un gran dilema incontestable, la pregunta pura que ningún hombre o mujer logra contestar pero igual se sigue preguntando:

¿Qué motiva los cambios impostergables, el deseo de crecer, la sensación de notarse desconocido y el anhelo a sentirse fuerte por enfrentarse a todo eso con lo que se pueda?

La ficción motiva la vida de aquel ser patético con ojos rojos que no puede sostener su propio libro, que ya hace rato se le fue de las manos, desplomado sobre esa mesita amarilla.

Ser un autor de novelas en San Juan es como ser uno de esos perros callejeros que dan vueltas por las calles gracias a que ya no hay fondos para esterilizar perros callejeros:

Un ente solitario e ignorado que no tiene futuro y cuya única función es subordinarse al tiempo hasta dejar de ser un sobrante por dejar de existir.

No es difícil entender entonces por qué Federico Grasso prefiere un San Juan con logias que se disputan el control imperceptible del mundo y no el San Juan real.

[Final alternativo de La Llave.]