2024-01-07 08:33:00
The years do not pass in vain, especially in the life of a writer. At seventy-one years of my age I sometimes feel the burden of the passing of time. Like the Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre, I can say that “I have terrible health.”
At night, when my joints hurt, I remember César Vallejo’s poem in which he says that “death has been happy and has sung in his bone.”
Frequently, very bad winds bring me news of a friend who has died, and that makes me sick and reminds me that the life of men on earth is fleeting; which is nothing more than a dream, a mirage.
Many years writing texts and poems on the most different themes and, now, without me realizing it, the time has come to write an autobiographical novel of my young years in Bahía Blanca, something that clearly speaks that perhaps it is the testimony of a man that is leaving.
I sleep little at night anymore. I think a lot. I reiterate. I forget names. I get tired. I seek the help of the “negrito”, my cane. I get sentimental and remember things from my childhood time.
But advanced age also has its compensations. Lots of time to read and write, watch good movies, walk under the shade of the old groves, have coffee and toast with butter for breakfast in the morning. Look at the stars on summer nights. Enjoy the grandchildren. Talk about art and history with my children. Share the table with friends. Knowing that Irma, my partner, is by my side. Feel the whispers of the Lord. And like Amado Nervo, be at peace with life and with others.
Few things bother me anymore. I have left my anger like the prophet Jonah under the gourd.
And this being satisfied because I have been all the things I had to be. Therefore, because I have always forgiven wrongs and offenses, I have a clear conscience and a peaceful heart.
I’m already in the stirrup. I remember Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, when he said “that he had run the good race; to Saint Martin feeling that “the ship is about to reach port,” hoping, perhaps, like the Emperor Hadrian, “to enter death with his eyes open.”
I am fulfilling the old command to write. More than sixty years dedicated to literature have given me many things: friends, some awards, readers; and that insurmountable magic of writing even if sometimes it is with labor pains.
Now, someone in some public place always calls me “grandpa” and I am happy. I don’t like “senior age”, “senior adult”, or other similar terms. I prefer to assume with dignity that I am going through old age.
Some things will remain in my mind: I sense that for my beloved country, like Moses, I will no longer see the orchard of a promised land; enter the Legislature of Río Negro; Travel and meet other people and other latitudes.
At my age I think I know that “the world is wide and foreign,” that there are people who are of no use to either God or the devil, that pride and flash do a lot of harm, that “everyone is as God made him and sometimes much worse.
I was always moved by a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo that talks about the decay of things and life and that they are precisely “signs of death” that is near.
“I looked at the walls of my country, / if once strong, already crumbling, / of the race of age tired, / for whose bravery is now expired. I went out into the field, I saw that the sun drank / the streams of ice unleashed; / and from the complaining mountain the cattle, / that with shadows stole the light of day. I entered my house: I saw that stained / from an old room were remains; / my staff more curved, and less strong. Overcome by age I saw my sword, / and I found nothing to look at / that was not a memory of death.
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#years #vain