2023-08-04 22:29:16
Part I. In the soft forest of our brains.
wood and memory
I once saw a brain in a container, it was in the Anatomical Theater of the University of Coimbra, it was a soft, soft shape and it floated in formaldehyde. Studying the brain I have learned that memories are not stored in any specific place, that we do not have a physiological space in the brain to store them. I have learned that memories and thoughts are connections that, just as they are established, can disappear. In other words, memory is made of traces left by what we have experienced in that material so soft that it seems impossible for anything to remain engraved on it.
For some years now, words have disappeared from me, and memories without a date, without time, appear. I freak out with the feeling of emptiness that runs through my body when something has no name, no time, even if it has temperature, smell and image. It’s the closest thing to seeing a ghost I’ve ever experienced in my life. Things without time, bodies without a name, a decapitated reality that tells me that losing one’s head is physically possible, that it is unlikely to keep it among so much jelly, nothing seems imagined to last in that mass that I saw floating in that box.
So it is that in the face of so much expiration and so much oblivion of shit we have decided, by mutual agreement, to become wood. Hardening ourselves so as not to forget one more name, not to forget a single time, not a face, we have decided to preserve each one of our memories hard. We repudiate the gelatinous softness of our brains that cannot keep what they have, so we are going to become wood and memory to keep everything that happened and happened. We have decided to become wood like those thousand-year-old trees that keep everything they experienced in their rings and that are so old that they no longer know how to die.
and they stay
They stay
They stay
stay
And when it’s wood you can run your fingers through all my memories, I don’t know how long you can keep me in your head. Because all those who have skin are going to forget, all of us who have brains remember to forget.
Don’t touch me and so you don’t forget me.
Oh mom! (the song)
when I become firewood
There will be no rhythm so that I don’t feel like dancing
there will be no rhythm because the rhythm eats up my time, it eats it up, it eats it up, it eats it up,
there will be no panting so as not to get tired,
there will be no gasping so as not to run,
there will be no orgasms so that I do not want to stay,
when i become firewood
there will be no methylation so as not to die,
there will be no blinking so as not to lose myself,
there will be no jokes so as not to scatter,
there will be no tickling because there will be no skin,
there will be no choking because there will be no drinks,
there will be no anxiety because it better not be,
when I become firewood
when I become firewood
when I become firewood
when we are firewood
there will be no macaroni because we will never make it to the table,
there will be no tears because there will be no eyelids,
there will be no lightness because lightness is a liar,
there will be no lightness because everything weighs… Everything weighs an egg
there will be no sighs because the air will only be outside,
there will be no muscles because it will be the air that will move us.
when it’s wood
there will be time ahead,
there will be slow thoughts that will dig into the fire
(without burning, without burning),
there will be insects because we will protect them,
there will be asymmetries that make us understand things,
there will be a balance, a shitty balance maybe, but a slow balance.
when it’s wood
there will be patience to harden the eyes,
there will be nests for other things, whatever they are,
there will be rot in my body, but it will not kill me,
there will be detachment of everything that was caught and is losing and was caught and is losing.
Some say that the nature of things is lightning, but the nature of our things will be wood and only your time will come to set me on fire.
Only time and sadness will come to set us on fire
Part II. If there are more than two, they are no longer arms, they are branches.
The people of this forest think that, when dying, the soul leaves the body and dances up to the heights to descend later and settle in the roots of a tree, where it will remain waiting to be reincarnated.
If the soul is separated from the body without having learned to dance, it could not rise to the heights. So it seems logical that she learns to do it while she’s still attached to him, right?
Letters to the years of nostalgia, Kenzaburo Oé
We have decided at this precise moment, to become wood. Go drying every drop of liquid from our body until we stay stiff and dry. Like those trees that don’t know how to die
and they stay
and they stay
and they stay
stay
We have decided not to move, almost like those trees that do not move or die. We exchange time for movement, we exchange our movements for time.
stay still but stay
stay
stay
We are going to keep on our feet getting fat without end, when we are so fat that we can’t with our wood the wind will knock us down and then it will be the earth that will have us and we will no longer have to have each other.
and we will stay
we will stay
we will stay
we will remain lying down like those trees that fall to stay
Stay lying down, but stay.
Stay still, but stay.
Stay rigid, but stay.
Stay dry, but stay.
Stay down, but stay.
#trees #Elena #Córdoba