was once a man who lived outside the city walls. If you had committed a crime, if paid sins of ancestors, or just out of indifference or embarrassment he had retired, that is something that is not known. Might have a bit of it. Might have a bit of everything, because of the ugly and the beautiful, truth and lies, which he confesses and what is hidden, we build all our hazardous existence. Man lived outside the city walls, and such segregation, deliberate or enforced, eventually to a small degree of glory. But I could not help (actually, I could not) that their floating eyes that fog envelops everything melancholy exile.
sometimes tried to enter the city. He did, not by an irrepressible desire, not even tired of their situation, but by mere instinct of change or unrest unconscious. Always chose the wrong door, if there were doors. And if you ever believe you had entered the city, and perhaps it was as if the real city with no images of it, inconsistent, like a shadow in his eyes was becoming denser. And when that image is fading as the fog water follows the sun's light touch, was the wilderness around him, and in the distance, white and tall trees planted in the towers, and hanging gardens on the balconies, the walls of the city shone again inaccessible.
rumors coming from in there partying. So he said it, rather than the senses, imagination. Rumors of life would be, at least. No death is solitary contemplation of his own stubborn shadow. No dull despair the final word leaking at the time it would be, just a word, a key.
And then the man ran along the long walls, feeling, looking for the door, darkly, may have that promise.
Because the man believed in predestination. Being out of town (if it had real consistency) was for him an accidental and provisional status. One day, on the exact day, not before or later, enter the city. Or rather enter anywhere, as that is summed up his hope. The fog of melancholy night would be made a necessary evil, but provisional, because the fateful day would bring an explanation or maybe not even that. An end, a simple finish. An abdication would be enough already.
The man did not know that cities are surrounded by high walls (but are soft and trees) are not taken without a fight. I did not know the man before the battle for the conquest of the city would have another battle and lock win it. And in this first match would have to fight with himself. Nobody knows anything about each other before the action that will have to strive throughout. We know the power of the sea until the sea is not moving. We know love by love.
came the battle. As in the poems of Homer, the Gods also entered it. Fought for and against, and sometimes against each other. The man who struggled to live within the city walls and words crossed swords with the gods who were on their side. Injured and wounded. And the fight lasted long, long, long days, weeks, months, without truce or rest, sometimes alongside the walls, some as far away from them that neither the City saw or knew well and which prize would find the end of combat. It was another form of despair.
Then one day, the battlefield was free and clear as an estuary where the waters are at rest. Bleeding, man and God which had remained with him looked at those front doors wide open. There was a big silence in the city. Scared, man advanced. Beside, the god. Entered, and only after entering the city was inhabited.
was once a man who lived outside the city walls. And the city was the same. City of Joseph, if we want to give a name.
José Saramago.
traveler's luggage.
"Better to overcome oneself, to conquer cities." Prov 16.32
Version Good News.
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