Selected Cronicas

BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT DISTRACTED

They felt slightly inebriated as they walked together. They felt that happiness which comes when your throat is dry and you discover to your surprise that you have your mouth open. They inhaled the air ahead of them and just to have this thirst was almost satisfying. They walked through street after street, conversing and laughing; they conversed and laughed to give substance and weight to this lightheadedness which was the happiness of their thirst. Because of the traffic and crowds, they sometimes touched, and as they touched — thirst is grace, but those waters a secret beauty — as they touched the brilliance of those waters shone, their throats becoming even drier with wonder. How they marvelled at being together!

Until everything transformed itself into denial. Everything transformed itself into denial when they craved their own happiness. Then the great dance of errors commenced. The ritual of mistaken words. He searched without seeing; she failed to see that he had not seen, she who was nevertheless present. He who was nevertheless present. Everything went wrong, and there was dust everywhere on the streets, and the more they wandered, the more bitterly they pursued their goal, unsmiling. All this simply because they had been attentive, simply because they were no longer sufficiently distracted. Simply because they had suddenly become demanding and stubborn, and wanted to possess what was already theirs. All this because they wanted to give something a name; because they wanted to exist, they who already existed. They were then to learn that unless one is distracted, the telephone does not ring; that it is necessary to be out for that letter to arrive, and that when the telephone finally does ring, the wasteland of waiting has already disconnected the wires. All this, all this, because they were no longer distracted.