Friday, February 12, 2010

The Dance of The Gnomish Magistrates

I

Is there such a thing as a good beginning?

Which events has one to watch so one knows that the propitious time for a good beginning has arrived?

Life can seem very often as a string of events linked by causality in the same way the beads of necklace are linked by a thread. Or better yet, it seems like a series of events as intrinsically dependant on each other as the shape of a post on a balustrade seems to rule the shape of the empty space that follows it, and the empty space seems to determine the shape that the next post will have.

Sometimes it seems that every event in life, or at least its starting, is shaped by the outcomes of the event that precedes it, and that the small window of freedom each event has to unravel its own capricious nature is already shaping the event that will come to follow. It seems that one can safely succumb to the obsessive desire of designing life like an exquisite jigsaw puzzle, the same way Escher carefully planned his tessellations.



Seeing life as a fatidic cause-effect process can easily turn living into a miserable burden, one in which every small step must be obsessively weighed in fear of giving it the wrong shape, spoiling therefore the shape of the next step to follow. Seeing life like this can turn it into a paralysing and overwhelming chore. And a paralysed life is nothing else but death.

II

I remember when I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time looking at the amphora shaped balustrades that can be seen so often in Havana. They are everywhere: surrounding the marble porches of old mansions now turned into schools, walk-in clinics or government offices; sustaining the railings of balconies and stairways; underlining the stained-glass covered arches of the upper level of the cloisters.



I remember I used to enjoy walking along the balustrades letting my finger to run across the posts, feeling the rhythm of their arrangement in my hand, an almost musical rhythm. The faster I walked, the happier was the song that seemed to vibrate on my hand. I remember that after a while I would stop (I was a fat and lazy kid, so I would not run for a very long time) and then I would let my finger slide over one of the balusters, starting at the angular shaped head , following along the short and curved neck, turning to rub the spherical belly and then, following the same path in reverse, sliding it over the upside down neck that served as the curved legs of the post and finishing in the single squared angular foot.




Being a voracious reader of fairy tales as I was, it was not long until these peculiarly shaped balusters started to look to me like mythical characters, although confusingly ambiguous ones. Their head seemed very logical and even severe. In fact, it seemed to have a magistrate's hat sunken down to the chin. From this dignified head emerged a neck that was strong and powerful, that was masculine, but looking at its lyrically curved shape, it was easily seen that it was left provocatively naked, that it was arched and tense like the neck of a lover awaiting a kiss. Towards the shoulders the curve suddenly halted, reinforcing the idea that the neck was naked, giving rise to what seemed to be a thick quilted jacket, or even the breast plate of a suit of armour, forcefully curved into a comical belly that was almost ridiculous. From the waist of this gnomish body cascaded a feminine form that curved gracefully, reminding me the fitted dress of a beautiful Hollywood star, going to languidly land on a sudden cruel squared block.

The gnomish magistrates didn't seem to care for ridicule. Clad in their satin gowns, one beside each other, they kept arching their kiss inviting necks, their eyes hidden and surely closed under the farcical hats, so lost on the melody of their own inebriating music that they never noticed their feet had been buried in molten concrete.

Tending to see life as a perfect mathematical series (a curse that seems to strike the ones who dare to study Math after twelve o'clock at night) I remind myself very often that each event in life might also be seen like one of these characters that puzzled me so much when I was a child: a self contained entranced Universe, full of folly and ambiguity, but also full of vitality. Each one of them grotesquely beautiful and singular, seemingly immobile, yet immensely intense.

Very often the last of the gnomish magistrates was cut in half, because there was not enough space to continue the balustrade. Even for fairy tale standards this probably meant the unfortunate truncated gnome was dead. But still, it did not matter, because it was.

III

After worrying for so long not to tread on wet cement, my rhino soul has finally come to its senses. It has decided to hide its head under a hat, happily arch its neck and let itself dance the dance of the gnomish magistrates.

Let this blog come to life.

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4 Comments:

Blogger end of suburbia said...

the secret life of balustrades comes to life. gracias julio this is beautiful -

1:08 PM  
Blogger wcloister said...

Hey Greg! Thanks for dropping by. Glad you enjoyed it : )

Now let's see if I can follow my own advice or otherwise get frozen and turn this blog into a "one post balustrade".

5:17 PM  
Blogger Lisetg said...

I hope you don't do that!
you reminded me of Kundera. and I love your rhino (se hiela, no come nada, que de hecho te viene muy bien eso de 'se hiela', jaja).
En estos tiempos no recuedo casi revisar los blogs, asi que espero cuando recuerde de nuevo pasar por aqui encontrar algo tan lindo y lleno de la fantasia y sensibilidad que te caracteriza.
te quiero!

12:44 AM  
Blogger wcloister said...

Thanks Lisi!

Kundera! That's too generous. I guess I'm a communist born immigrant like him, so in that sense, we are alike. I have not been blacklisted yet, so still a long way to go. I should start by learning proper English the same way he could write beautifully in French.

No me había dado cuenta de lo de "se hiela". Genial! Verdad que ese Naricita tenía alma de poeta. (*sight*)

Gracias por los cumplidos y por el back link. Un beso grande desde El Yelo!

11:58 AM  

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