XVI / Manón Kübler

XVI

we were a secret squad that year, a retinue of men and women with the character of astronauts or teachers. a mysterious confederacy, a brotherhood of daily communions, the die cast, the apology or the peculiarity overwhelmed in ordinary and pathetic states of being. we wanted to grow with the glory of hardcover editions, magic biographies. we belonged to the frugal readings of borges, to reverón’s paintings, to russian cinema, to polish theater. we aspired to the names another might find perpetuated in eminent figures, on some city wall, in some mysterious and damp newspaper. we made no man’s land in the city of commons; we engendered repeated anecdotes in cafes that disappeared a hundred years ago, with the death of their tongues, perhaps. we deposited credits and tributes in prophets of “culture” with poor mouths because we were an excess of frozen ideas, of insipid gestures accompanied by citations. the baroque standing with artaud and freud walking hand in hand, it was said. we were undoubtedly inclined toward vanguards, a mockery of the true center, periphery of nothingness, for an episode of efforts and leaps, a spitting in the face of the anonymous who make their ideas collapse in the ministries and in managements. we nourished a lexicon of spent and unknown words. we were the fashion and have already passed.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }