July 2, 2009

Today's (surrealist) breakfast

This morning, I woke up, and the first word I read in that internal black screen we all have was "WEG", written in white fonts, the German word for "OUT". I opened my eyes and checked the time: 6am. I could hear the birds singing and saw the light outside. The day had already begun, but I could notice that it wasn't that clear. Stood up and went WEG.

AK told me once that there is a pound close to my place, so I decided to go to the forest and check it. No horses, no sheeps on my way. Just a very sleepy Asian woman delivering already some flyers house by house. Strange! Anyways... I found the pond in the middle of the forest and enjoy the troll.

Nobody, no noises, just birds, wind, that what we use to call Nature. Since I came back from the Azores I have been thinking much more about our (dis)connection to Nature. I remember when I was a kid, taking the small road into the wild, just 400 meter from our home, with N, our Huasteca nanny, and a machete to cut nopales to make quesadillas for dinner. Or going to the garden and eat peaches in sommer or figs before autumn without end. Or asking M to climb the palm and cut some coconuts for us.

Well, this morning I discovered a cherry-plum tree next to that pond (I just read that it comes from the Balkans!). It was very clean and fresh, and all the leaves were covered by little drops of water. The fruits were so good, that I ate in situ more than a kilo, and I brought home one additional kilo. On my way back, a big and yellow ball of fire was waking up. There was some kind of mistake. I came home, after one hour of walking in the forest, and it was only 5am.

So poor is my connection to Nature: I cannot be sure of the hour without a watch, despite all the signs. Unfortunately!


The sun of this morning and my thoughts about Nature reminded me of this portrait of poet James Edward, by Magritte. Here a short poem by him, who also lived in San Luis Potosí, falled in love with a Huasteca woman, and build a surrealist garden in Xilitla:

“I have seen such beauty as one man has seldom seen;
therefore will I be grateful to die in this little room,
surrounded by the forests, the great green gloom
of trees my only gloom - and the sound, the sound of green.
Here amid the warmth of the rain, what might have been
is resolved into the tenderness of a tall doom
who says: 'You did your best, rest - and after you the bloom
of what you loved and planted still will whisper what you mean.
And the ghosts of the birds I loved, will attend me each a friend;
like them shall I have flown beyond the realm of words.
You, through the trees, shall hear them, long after the end
calling me beyond the river. For the cries of birds
continue, as - defended by the coretege of their wings -
my soul among strange silences yet sings.”


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