Day Two: The Center of Our Universe
Monday was the second workshop in the CERESO. The women were slow to arrive to class, and for a while I thought they might not come. It turned out that there was an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting at the same time, and that some women were occupied in the talacha, or cleaning. However, slowly they trickled in, alone or in pairs, and when class finally began, we had eight students.
The topic was representing urban space, as well as encounters and dis-encounters in the city. We read Borges’s “Delia Elena San Marco,” a beautiful poem in which a simple goodbye on a street corner provokes a rumination on the changing conditions of Buenos Aires’s urban landscape and the accelerated pace of city life, as well as the nature of time and eternity. One of the women commented that, when people leave the enclosed and sequestered space of the jail, with its controlled rhythm and orderly timeline, they can become overwhelmed by the hectic crowds and quick-moving tempo of the city streets of Mérida. We also spoke about how new technologies accelerate the pace of life. I remembered that a writer whom I met here six years ago while she was detained in the CERESO but who is now free, said that she felt that she was cryogenically frozen during her years there, and that after she left, she found temporary employment in a lawyer’s office, but that the first day she took six hours to write an email, because the technologies had changed so much during her absence from the outside world.
We also read Borges’s “Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires,” and talk about how Borges posits his own neighborhood, Palermo, which in his time formed part of the humble outskirts of the city, as the center of the universe. Finally, we turn to my Spanish translation of Sandra Cisneros’s poem “With Lorenzo at the Center of the Universe, El Zócalo, Mexico City.” The women notice how, again, the concrete becomes the cosmic and universal, how a simple goodbye comes to represent so much more, and how Cisneros ruminates about time and eternity, as Borges does. One of them expresses her opinion that the narrator views her relationship with Lorenzo simply as an affair, and reads aloud the line, “Ah Lorenzo, I’m a fool. Eternity or bust. That’s how it is with me. Even if eternity is simply one kiss, one night, one moment.”
We talk about the realism of the poem, both in terms of its realistic descriptions of the street vendors and commercialism of the zócalo, and in terms of its depiction of love. We also examine how the poem moves between the most elevated and exalted monuments and emotions, to the most minute and quotidian observations of the flotsam and jetsam of the city, and of human heart. The assignment is to write about a moment of encounter or dis-encounter and to also comment on the physical space of the city where it takes place, keeping in mind both the larger significance of the space and its realistic details, and also considering the relationship between the human interaction that takes place there and the characteristics of the space itself. Then we break up our circle of chairs and the women sit at tables to write. After twenty minutes, when I ask them if they’d like to take time to share before the class ends, they shake their heads and keep writing. “¡Todavía estamos escribiendo!We’re still writing!” they say. They do, however, hand in their assignments to me at the end of class.
The following is the writing of Sophie* who, despite the complexity of the assignment, followed all of its specifications in her moving and eloquent description of meeting her father for the first time, in a busy public park, at the age of 15.
Pasaron muchos años. Mamá siempre nos hablaba de él. A mí se me había borrado su rostro de mi mente. Estuve por cumplir 15 años cuando me dijeron que alguien me venía a ver. Una mañana me levanté y agarramos camino al lugar donde iba el encuentro, you iba con mamá. Cruzando calles, mi corazón sentía que se aceleraba en cada paso que daba. La gente corrían, otros caminaban. Mamá iba apresurada y mi cuerpo se movía pero mi mente volaba. [En el] parque los pájaros volaban y cantaban. Mi corazón se aceleraba más por el miedo y la incertidumbre. [Hubo] gente sentada [e] indigentes caminaban en busca de comida. La música de todos los géneros se escuchaba, el jóven cada día más le subía el volumen. Mamá [estaba] desesperada, yo sentaba sobre el raíz de un arbol en medio tierra rosa. ¡Huay! Como me encanta el olor a la tierra mojada. Las horas rasaban. De lejos venía un hombre. Vestía pantalón de mesclía y una playera y tenis [y] traía unos regalos. Mamá cambió su cara [y] me dijó “Levántate de allá.” Él se acercó mirándonos a los ojos los tres. Un ‘hola’ fue el saludo. El caminó hacía a mi, me abrazó, me dió las bolsas de regalo. Yo no sabía si responder al abrazo o rechazarlo. Mamá me miró y me dijo, “Es el papá.” Readings: “Delia Elena San Marco,” Jorge Luis Borges “Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires,” Jorge Luis Borges “With Lorenzo at the Center of the Universe, El Zócalo, Mexico City,” Sandra Cisneros Writing Assignment: Write about an encounter or dis-encounter, thinking also about the physical space where it took place. Consider external physical space as a reflection of interior thoughts and feelings.