Selected Cronicas

IDLE CONVERSATION

I was having a cup of coffee in the kitchen when I heard the maid through in the scullery humming the loveliest melody. A melody without words, a sort of cantilena and full of harmony. I asked her who had written the music. She told me: Nobody, it’s just a silly tune I made up myself.

She did not know she was creative. Just as the world does not know it is creative. I stopped drinking my coffee and began speculating: will the world become even more creative? The world is unaware of itself. We are so backward in relation to ourselves. Even the word creative will no longer be used or even mentioned: things will simply be created. We are not to blame — I went back to my coffee — if we are thousands of years behind. To think of ‘thousands of years hence’ almost made me dizzy, for I cannot even be sure what colour the earth will be. Posterity exists and will eliminate our present. And if the world recreates itself in cycles, let us say, are we likely to revert to the Stone Age so that everything may repeat itself all over again? It wounds me almost physically to think that I shall never know what this world will be like thousands of years hence. On the other hand, I continued to reflect, we may be crawling but we crawl in haste. And the tune the maid was humming will dominate this new world: for people can be creative without even knowing it. Meanwhile, we are as parched as a dried fig which has scarcely any moisture left.

Meanwhile the maid is hanging out the washing on the clothes-line, still humming that tune without words. The melody pervades me. The maid is dark and skinny, and lodged inside her is an ‘I’. A body separate from other bodies, and that is called an ‘I’? It is strange to have a body in which to lodge, a body where liquefied blood flows incessantly, where the mouth can sing, and the eyes must have wept so often. She is an ‘I’.