nada’s Reviews > El idioma materno > Status Update

Writers of prose or poetry who own more than a thousand books begin to be suspect. Why do they write, I wonder. One should only write to palliate some scarcity of reading material. There where we notice something missing in our library, the absence of a certain book in particular, we can justify picking up the pen to, in the most decent way possible, write it ourselves. Writing, then, as a corrective. To write in order to continue reading.

CHILDREN SHOULD LEARN HOW TO read and write not by means of nouns (home, mother, tree, mountain) but through names: Luis, Susana, Juan, Filiberto. If I say mountain, the whole world knows what I am talking about, will imagine a mountain and could even draw one, but if I say Patricia, people will ask: What Patricia? Patricia is as much a word as mountain, Patricias exist as much as mountains do, but while all mountains seem to be similar to each other, and therefore can be drawn, not one Patricia looks the same as another. Learning how to write with terms that lack a precise reference, which do not refer to any specific object or idea, and that, like river stones, have lost their meaning due to the force of so much rubbing, will teach children to value the senselessness of words, to repeat them and nothing more, with bewilderment or joy, which will tune their conjectural capacity, language, and, incidentally, their ear. And in order not to fall into abstractionism and provide names with a seriousness beyond any reasonable doubt we have the names of the dead. Writing classes would be moved to cemeteries where the children would wander among the graves spelling out and memorizing the names of the deceased. Nothing like those names engraved on the tombstones (the purest there are, because they’re no longer used to name anyone now) to become intimate with the sound of words

despite the word mountain, no mountain looks the same as another, that everything is different from everything, and that life is made up of proper nouns. Only those names, by not falling for the lie of equivalence and likeness, provide us, through language, a way out of language, an inkling of reality in the world.

迎賓雞尾酒

我十四歲那年，全家第一次住進大飯店度假。前往阿卡普爾科的路上，我翻著那間飯店的簡介，看到「迎賓雞尾酒」這幾個字，便想像出一場為慶祝我們到來而準備的盛大招待會，就辦在某間交誼廳裡，或是泳池邊。雖然我並非不知道這事有多不合理，但看著飯店的照片——那些氣派的空間與花園、彷彿沒有盡頭的高度、一塵不染的環境、未來感十足的電梯——我斷定在那個地方，一切都遵循著一種嶄新而令人驚奇的邏輯。我倒不是以為我們一到，就會有一隊員工趕去打開一樓那間附有海景露台的交誼廳，在桌上鋪開巨大的桌巾，同時另一隊人逐一敲響每間客房的門，邀請其他房客來參加為我父母、我哥哥和我舉辦的雞尾酒會；我想像的毋寧是，在那間有海景露台的交誼廳裡，雞尾酒會是持續不斷進行著的，而我們一到，就會被引介給聚在那裡的人們，他們會圍成一個歡慶的圈子把我們簇擁在中間，和我們碰杯，問我們上千個問題。或許，誰知道呢，最早的迎賓雞尾酒會真的就是這樣，後來才縮減成一件沉重的負擔，因為一場永不停歇的派對，意味著得為那些負責迎接他人的房客免費供酒、或以極低價供酒。或許這些宴會一開始先被換成一個小圈子，只由櫃台人員、負責把行李送進客房的門僮和兩三個員工組成，大家匆匆舉杯向新來的客人致意，然後各自回去工作；直到最後，變成如今的模樣：一杯孤零零等在房間裡的酒，一杯我們在泳池畔啜飲的悲傷調飲，身旁是其他被太陽烤得發燙的房客，個個百無聊賴，而且和我們一樣，暗自期待著別的什麼。