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Publicación literaria trimestral bilingüe ~ A bilingual quarterly literary publication
n ú m e r o d e v e r a n o - # 1 1 , 2 0 2 4 - s u m m e r i s s u e
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l a n a d a : n o t h i n g n e s s
We live in a society where we don’t have time to think… where the nothing –shopping, watching TV– has become a something, and the something –relaxing, meditating, sharing– has become a void in need of being filled. Our minds, our souls, have slowly been corrupted by materialistic nothingness that has been created for us, billboarded in front of our eyes and printed, tattooed on ourselves by advertising, marketing and vulture capitalism. The remote control of our world only has two buttons: play and fast forward, but the one we’re all looking for is the pause.
-On Palestine, by Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
No quería ni podía pensar en nada, ni sacar ninguna
conclusión. Solo podía mirar y respirar, porque su cuerpo
lo hacía automáticamente.
Un tiempo indefinido se cumplía de un modo cíclico,
el colectivo llegaba y se iba, la parada quedaba vacía,
y se volvía a llenar. La gente que esperaba cargaba siempre
con algo. Llevaban sus cosas en bolsos, en carteras,
bajo el brazo, colgando de las manos,
apoyadas en el piso entre los pies. Ellos estaban ahí para cuidar de sus cosas,
y a cambio sus cosas los sostenían.
–Cuarenta centímetros cuadrados, Samanta Schweblin
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
-Lao-tzu (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
~
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man (final stanza)
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