Indo para a Colômbia eu ganhei um presente maravilhoso na revista Panorama das Américas da Copa Airlines. Havia o texto de um dos autores escolhidos no projeto Bogotá 39, que premiou os 39 escritores mais proeminentes e influentes da América Latina abaixo de 39 anos. O texto estava em espanhol e com tradução para inglês e eu transcrevi a versão em inglês aqui. Se tiver um erro de digitação é meu mesmo. O texto é do Carlos Oriel Wynter Melo e se chama: A LIGHT AT THE END OF A TUNNEL OF TREES If you look straight at the park as if looking into someones eyes, but beyond their eyes, imagining it or connecting it to a memory, it is possible to see trees form a tunnel and at the end, a bright light. If there is melancholy in the gaze, that light may bring forth varied interpretations. One interpretation could be that everything comes to an end. In the corner of the park there will be men wearing snow-white hats, children in their Sunday best, and maybe, a woman looking nowhere. To the right, beyond the park, watching over it, there will be a hotel. The building will be attached to others, like a group of friends with their arms around each other looking down. At street level, smaller friends, the grocery shops, will have their doors open wide. The sun will lie beyond, very far, behind the park and the town. The streetcar rails, like parallel strokes of a draftsman, will surround the par on one side. The people there, on the corner, will wait. Inexorably. Or will believe they wait. Really, they expect nothing. She waits, but doesnt wait, doesnt believe she waits, she thinks she waits in vain. He should appear at the arrival of the streetcar, yet she doesnt believe he will. Love has been a tightrope lately. So she doesnt wait: she is pretending to. She allows the daily inertia to push her to the day, the hour, that corner of the park, the appointment she believes will not take place. She looks toward the hotel, almost through it. She looks at the grocery shops. She looks at the people standing at each side: the kids, the men in white hats, and a couple of overdressed women. She looks at the tunnel made of trees, and the light at the end that slowly disappears. She looks at the rails, the curvy ones and the parallel lines on which the street car must travel. But, in truth, she sees nothing: memories distract her. For a moment she wishes there is no truth to her doubts, she hopes she is wrong; she wishes that at the agreed hour he will appear and the streetcar will continue on its impassive rails, and that the days will go on without a suspicion of change. But it isnt so, she refutes it in distrust. She betrays so that she isnt betrayed; she forgets so she wont be forgotten. And that intimate nostalgia, so prophetic, brings with it the inevitability of death. She imagines that years later, many years later; the corner where she now waits, its curbs and benches, will have lost their glow and simply hold a musty shadow. She imagines that the streetcar disappears or is different metal and bright colors. The automobiles drive over what were once the iron tracks and no one waits in the corner of the white hats (white hats are no longer fashionable), children, and overdressed women. She imagines that someone does wait. A lady, a woman who, in essence, is like her, a spinster raised especially for this moment, this agreed appointment, which she doesnt believe will take place. And she imagines the woman is dressed unlike her: she imagines her in a pair of loose pants, sandals, and a linen shirt. She imagines her waiting, but not knowing what to expect. And that vision, that certainty that nothing will remain - that nostalgia will remain - makes her feel lonely, lonelier than her loneliness. And she starts to wish with all her strength for him to arrive today, for the fulfillment of all his promises today, for him to appear an get off that streetcar, for him to embrace her, aware of the short time left before the future takes over and they are no longer as they are today. But she doesnt know if he will come and that is the most terrible issue. She doesnt know if he will find the same reasons, if he saw - in her tunnel made of trees and the light at the end - what she saw. She doesnt know if they concurred or if it was just the illusion of concurring. She imagines that the lady in loose pants, sandals, and linen shirt waits, that she waits willingly, with her best wishes; that she waits like she depends on what is to happen, she waits as if pleading. And she waits, but something scares her, something makes her blood turn cold, forcing her patience to run thinner year-by-year. It slowly dies, revealing that she has unknowingly resigned herself. Then she imagines that the woman is caught up by the hours, that bells announce that its time - the church still standing, beyond, tolls the bells - and one last hope brightens those invented eyes, but hope fades after an hour, give it death rattle after two, and lies down and expires after the third. And once again she is longing because she recognizes an inevitable death, an anticipated death, an omnipresent death, a timeless death, that will devastate the park, the tunnel made of trees, the buildings, that hotel, those shops, and the idle strollers. Then streetcar stops and her stomach clenches like a fist in mid-air, like a newborn curling into a shell. And the passengers step out, one at a time, one after another, until the vehicle is almost empty. And she foresees pain of a woman in the future who feels what she feels because time cannot change what is important, the axis it circles. Then one last passenger leaves the streetcar. He steps out as the tired streetcar breaths its last breath. He survives that passing instant. And she kisses him eagerly yet he doesnt quite understand her buoyancy; he doesnt understand her explosive joy: love has been a tightrope lately. But she kisses him, so sure that in doing so she is protecting the park, this park which will never be the same.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 01:26:20 +0000
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