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FROM: Jueves
TO: Domingo
DATE:
SUBJECT: I’ll set everything up. Days and hours at her side, talking about love and imitating precisely the behavior and character of her father — dominant, sophisticated, and manipulative, but also attentive, well-meaning, and sometimes a little bit awkward — so she’ll want to take care of me as she would him. I won’t try to hurt her, on the contrary, I’ll try to protect her. Breaking down the memory of the old man, roaming the highway without apparent motive (as far as she can tell), B’s Porsche pulling over on the shoulder, B who is sitting in the back seat of the convertible, gesturing and speaking to the old man: Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the Mormon golf course? And she: a girl wrapped in a towel, chasing B, who at the same time, was chasing a towel wrapped around the small body of a girl. Days and hours acting like the old man, putting my hand on her shoulder so we walk at the same speed, buying her books that she almost likes, almost. Asking her if she enjoyed the movie she went to see with a friend. In short, loving her. Wrapped in towels, of course. And wet. Floating.
When and where is the meeting? I agree that we should create a system that avoids repetition of squares. I also think that if we had more time to develop the fragments the quality would be higher (I’ve never understood more time as necessarily resulting in longer texts).
Clearly we shouldn’t write for children, rather we should write like children (although this might frighten young readers), since it’s true that young readers are essentially indefinable (tending to shy away from fixed categories). There’s nothing worse than a children’s book written for mothers.
With respect to children’s books as objects, I think that, as a religious person, you might be interested in something I came across in my research. I don’t know if you know this, but one of the first publications exclusively for children was a hieroglyphic bible, that is, text and drawings laid out next to each other, so that a child could read it by describing the drawings (like comics in newspapers). The book is from like the seventeenth century and the pictures of it on the Internet are very odd. It’s called The Hieroglyphical Bible, you should check it out. I own a book by Lewis Carroll with a prologue by Leopoldo María Panero where he discusses at length why Lewis Carroll wrote for children. The text, written in a slightly schizoid way, is good, and since this theme interests you, I can lend it to you if you’d like.
Well, the words have run out, it remains only for me to give thanks.
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FROM: Viernes
TO: Lunes, Miercoles, Sabado, Domingo
DATE:
SUBJECT: I’ll want you like this: recalling what’s forgotten, your face poking out of a dirty pile of sodden towels, panting, sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly, and the saddest thing is that my cruel examination will last only a fraction of a second, because I’ll walk by on the avenue and in that moment look absentmindedly up at the window, seeing you covered with dozens of towels like a zombie. It won’t be an insult, just the opposite, the line of the horizon flashing in your pupil, hollow because you’re only here, I repeat, for a fraction of a second. I won’t be there but I’ll see you. Wretched. Remnant. Mine.
Cheers, it’s very important that we set up a meeting for the end of the week. We should decide what to do if people land on the same space.
Also we should roll all of the dice. The novel will be bullshit if we only have one day to write; I insist that our texts have a respectable period for development.
I am sending this message to you because I don’t know how the hell to send it to everyone at once, I need you to do that for me, thanks.
V.
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FROM: Sabado
TO: Domingo
DATE:
SUBJECT: She’ll enter the room and, as a blast of moisture hits her face, realize that it’s been locked all day. She’s been out in the street for a long time looking for B. She doesn’t know his face, or his name, just the initial. Still, not knowing why, she feels she’ll find him. The delicate shape of his head from behind, his shoulders, the name, the quiet, understanding smile, the difficulty speaking, the gelled and messy hair. He might turn around and suggest that they sit down, that they speak, that they search. A passing gleam in which name, face, moisture, laughter, three bears and a wound, a garden, a white stone among many, never alone, please, that gleam that lasts only a fraction of a second and as it appears someone else shares; everything will overlap, no, another word, it’ll come together, it’ll converge in the name. Soon, however, it’ll be of little importance, because curiously, as Rimbaud and the Evangelist simultaneously say, “life is elsewhere.” She’ll patiently retrieve the towels from the walls, she’ll hang them on the balcony, she’ll tell him on the phone how strange the prank was, again she’ll look for him until he comes.
What do I know? In any case, the fundamental thing is this: we’re not fucking infallible, being a Christian is not to be less wrong, or being wrong is not to be bad, or being imperfect is also compatible with success. Maybe you’ll meet someone who loves this fragility, the twisting, everything, someone who can also be this way, and everything will be fine. What I told you the other day makes sense, but it doesn’t have to be the truth.
Domingo, it’s very late. I’ve already written my brand new episode. Viernes has made you his secretary? I’ll do the same, please forward my chapter to everyone. We need to have a meeting, but this weekend I’m leaving and have to leave. I’d like to be at the fucking meeting. Would it be possible to have it sooner? I agree about the repeated squares, but only to a certain extent (it’s also fun to watch people organize things to make something new, in one way or another, that isn’t identical and fits in every way, variations on a theme, I don’t know, for some reason the stories sometimes cross each other but are in a way independent, right? Don’t you think?). The timing is a little problematic; it seems the trick would be to write something about the progression. I don’t know. Take care.
Sabado
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FROM: Domingo
TO:
DATE: 09/14/2002
SUBJECT: Wet towel. I remember it wrapped around you.
All I do is think about what someone said to me, about what I say, about what I’m saying, about what I’ll someday dare to say. I go to my room and write, I come to the silver room and write to you, later I lie down and pray. What I always want is to pray without words, but I’m nowhere near the “full-time mystics.” It’s just that sometimes words exhaust me. They are, how to put it, communication, tool, pleasure, and doubt. Forgive the complaints and the affectation. I can’t avoid it. That is to say, yes I can, but I must speak.