Extraits

Scars

1. You think about how the shortest distance between two points is the length of a scar.

2. You think: the introduction is the father, the climax is the son, and the resolution is the holy spirit.

3. You read books that are much stranger than the books you would write if you wrote.

4. You think, as if it were a discovery, that the last point in the line of time is the present.

5. You try to go from the general to the specific, even if the general is General Pinochet.

6. You try to go from the abstract to the concrete.

7. The abstract is the pain of others.

8. The concrete is the pain of others colliding with your body until you are completely invaded.

9. The concrete is something that can only grow.

10. Something like a tumor, or the opposite of a tumor: a child.

11. In your case, it's a tumor.

They found the breast cancer when she was sixty-five years old.

They had to remove one of her breasts.

Not long after that, the Alzheimer's started.

She didn't recognize her children, or her grandchildren, not anyone.

She didn't even recognize me.

But she never forgot she was missing a breast.

Another thing, while I have the chance, about dogs and cats: parents want their children to be dogs, but children are always cats. Parents want to domestic are their children, but children are like cats: you can't domesticate them.

"We live in the country of waiting," the poet said then. There were several poets at the party, but he was the only one who deserves the title, because he tended to talk like a poet. More precisely, he spoke in the unmistakable tone of a drunk poet, of a drunk Chilean poet, of a young, drunk, Chilean poet: "We live in the country of waiting; we live in wait for something. Chile is one giant waiting room, and we will all die waiting for our number to be called."

Which of Mr. Segovia's following statement is, in your opinion, true ?

(A) You weren't educated, you were trained.

(B) You weren't educated, you were trained.

(C) You weren't educated, you were trained.

(D) You weren't educated, you were trained.

(E) You weren't educated, you were trained.

I wasn't there but my absence was.