The flood and the monkey

Where should I begin this sprawling story, with its hundreds of tiny swarming figures? Perhaps at the most tangible place, the royal palace of Lijiang.

Lijiang is a beautiful little town, the “Venice of China” – at least one of them, because the other is Suzhou on the east coast – at the foot of the Himalayas, the capital of the former Naxi kingdom. The Naxis (the Naxi natives who speak some English, at this point indicate with a small arm swing and a simultaneous shake of the head that the X matters) linguistically belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family, and ethnically to the Qiang stream which arrived from the far northwest here to the “tribal corridor” under the Himalayas sometime during the Tang era (618-907) as I wrote in the previous post. Their independent kingdom became part of China with the Mongol conquest, but even after that they lived in splendid isolation for a long time. According to Peter Goullart, to be quoted below, even in the 1940s there lived no Han Chinese among them, and very few of them knew Chinese. In the Ming era, their chieftain was elevated to the rank of tusi, i.e. a prince or king appointed by the emperor, but this rank was then eroded by the Qing dynasty which in 1723 took direct control of the area, and by the republic, which in 1912 incorporated Lijiang and its region into the Chinese administration.

Nevertheless, the royal palace built in the Ming era still stands prominently on the hill in the middle of the city. Its tower is clearly visible from any point in the old town.

The illuminated royal palace on the hilltop, seen from our hotel terrace

Here I must release one of my colorful characters, who would fill a whole chapter in his own right. Peter Goullart, né Пётр Гуляр, the Russian-born and American-Chinese-raised adventurer, had a splendid and enjoyable career in interwar China, touring eastern Tibet, spending nine years in Lijiang as a local economic development agent for the national government, learning a host of local languages, interacting with a thousand local figures, and publishing colorful and humorous memoirs about all that, after the Communist government kicked him out of China. Each chapter of his book Forgotten kingdom. Nine years in Yunnan, 1939-48 (1955) saves a day of preparation for the tour guide on the tea-horse-route. In it he writes about the palace:

“An elegant street not far from the Copper Square led to the palace of the Mu kings. A triumphal gate across the street marked the beginning of this aristocratic quarter. The palace itself was a rambling structure in Chinese style and was used as the District Primary School. Adjoining it there was a series of walled houses where the ex-king, his family and other royal relatives lived. A great stone arch, elaborately carved, was in front of the royal compound and bore two Chinese characters, ‘Loyal and Righteous’, bestowed on a king by a Ming emperor in the seventeenth century. The title of king or chief, still used by the people in reference to the head of the Mu family, was really an honorary one. During the Manchu dynasty the feudal status of the king had been abolished and Likiang became a fu magistracy. For a period the Mu kings continued to rule as hereditary fu (senior) magistrates, but even that was taken away from them and a succession of Chinese magistrates began. The Mu dynasty traced its origin as far back as the glorious Tang dynasty and produced many heroic and just rulers, interspersed with a few bad ones. Towards the close of the Manchu dynasty the royal family of Mu was well on the road of degeneration. They had absorbed the then new-fangled fashion of smoking opium and other elegant vices of the Chinese court and their downfall was rapid. Deprived of the revenue from their vast estates, the members of the royal family resorted to selling, one by one, their accumulated art treasures and the precious mementoes of their ancestors, to satisfy their insatiable craving for opium, and it was alleged that some princes had sold even their furniture and wives’ wedding dresses. All the prestige and standing of this illustrious family had gone with the wind.”

The street, the ornamental gate and the aristocratic quarter mentioned in the description all exist still, and I would be only slightly surprised if the salesperson in the back of a shop whispered to me that he is an all-surviving member of the royal dynasty. The royal palace also stands, but its furnishings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guards, who, for lack of a better idea, tried to prove their loyalty to the Idea by kicking a dead lion. After it was discovered in the 1980s that the Idea had been falsified without Chairman Mao’s knowledge, and the Gang of Four were found to be responsible for this, the country breathed a sight of relief and began to restore at least part of the destroyed cultural heritage.

The palace’s wooden staircase was replaced, but all traces of the probably Qing-era frescoes on the walls of the main hall on the ground floor have disappeared. The curators therefore decided that, in the changed ideological atmosphere of the 2000s, they will put the folklore of the local indigenous population on the walls. Previously, the nationalities were considered a kind of sand in the well-oiled machine of communist China, but by this time they had found their place in the division of labor of advanced Chinese capitalism. They became the exotic element that attract wealthy Chinese tourists from the east coast – managers, entrepreneurs, party cadres, pillars of the new order – to visit the western and southwestern regions of the country, designated for tourism, and while resting here and renewing their productive forces, they also contribute with generous spending to the development of the countryside and strengthen the cohesion of China’s regions. In this approach, the nationalities dance or work like stylized cheerful children under the sun of Red China. Managing their own affairs as adults is not their job.

This approach is visualized on the walls of the ground floor of the Mu Royal Palace, where the flood story of the Naxi mythology is painted in eight panels, in a style combining this naive ethnic version of socialist realism with the figures of Naxi Dongba drawings.

Another unknown in the equation: what are Dongba drawings? The Naxi developed their own pictographic writing system sometime in the first centuries AD, primarily for recording ritual texts to be recited. In this script, funny little animals and sketchy human figures bustle around, like in a Busy World book. Here is an example of this script, the “Dongba Genesis”, which narrates human history from the flood to the re-foundation, on which the new frescoes of the royal palace were also based:

These photos come from the 2023 Leiden publication of the manuscript, which also includes their transcription and translation. The translation of the very first picture group, the title page, looks for example like this:

Based on the “Dongba Genesis”, the story of the eight images is as follows:

In the beginning, heaven and earth were one. A pair of divine birds laid a nest of eggs, from which nine strong brothers and nine wise sisters hatched. Together they separated heaven from earth, built a house, plowed with white deer, and rode on tigers.

Since people had mindlessly destroyed the mountains, forests and waters, the gods sent a flood upon earth. Only one exceptionally pure-hearted man, Coqssei-leel’ee, survived the flood by sewing himself in a yak skin. After the flood passed, he sought a mate, and a beautiful forest spirit seduced him, with whom he fathered animals, until the spirit eventually abandoned him.

Coqssei-leel’ee set out to find a new mate, and met the goddess Cheilheeq-bbvbeeq, who was also coming down to earth in search of a mate. They fall in love at first sight, and the goddess’ cranes fly them into the sky.

The heavenly father Zzee’laq-epv does not want to give his daughter to a man, and sets the man a series of impossible tests, which he solves by listening to the goddess’ advice. In this picture, he must clear the forsts of ninety-nine mountains, replant the mountains, and deliver the fruits of the new trees to the heavenly father, all in a single day.

He must then hunt a mountain goat on dangerous rocks, catch fish from a dangerous lake, and finally bring three drops of tiger’s milk to the heavenly father, who then has no choice but to give his daughter to him.

Coqssei-leel’ee and Cheilheeq-bbvbeeq return to earth with the abundant dowry received from the heavenly father.

The man and the goddess settle on earth, but they forget to offer a sacrifice to the heavenly father and perform a purification ceremony, and thus various troubles befall them. According to the manuscript, they have no children, and according to some oral versions, although they have three sons, all three remain mute. Finally, they figure out the reason and perform the purification ceremony. This ceremony is the actual subject of the Dongba manuscript, the whole story was just an introduction to it.

After the purification ceremony, the three boys start to speak, but in three different languages: Tibetan, Naxi and Bai, which are indeed linguistically related, but more importantly, the languages of three peoples of common nomadic Qiang origin living side by side.

Since the manuscript ends with the text of the purification ceremony, the last image is a modern addition, intended to express the friendship of the country’s peoples. I am surprised that a representative of the Chinese Han nationality was not depicted in it. Perhaps he is the heavenly father himself.

There are many versions of this story, not only among the Naxi, but also among the surrounding peoples. For example, the Mosuo people, who live in a matriarchal society around Lake Lugu, tell a version in the excellent anthropological survey 泸沽湖畔的摩梭人 (The Mosuos of Lake Lugu, 2012) – from which I will quote in a later post –, in which the goddess’ evil sister envies her luck. In the form of a red deer, she lures the hunting man into the forest, then appears to him in the form of a woman, and offers him fresh water. The man drinks the water, which plunges him into a long twenty-year sleep.

Back home, the goddess waits in vain for her husband, and finally asks the monkey to find him. The monkey pretends to search heaven and earth, then returns to the goddess and says he cannot find him anywhere, he may have gone back to heaven. But he, the monkey, is here on earth and is ready to marry the goddess. The latter marries him. When the man wakes up from his twenty-year sleep and returns home, and sees what has happened, he kills the monkey, but spares his wife’s children by the monkey out of love for her. Thus, humanity after the flood originates not from a real man, but half from a goddess and half from a monkey.

A brilliant ending to the story, which in a way anticipates Romanticism by explaining the animal and divine that reside in man at the same time. As Okudzhava sings:

Красивые и мудрые как боги и грустные, как жители земли

Beautiful and wise like gods and sad as the inhabitants of earth.

Bulat Okudzsava: Песня о московском муравье (Song about the ant of Moscow, 1959)

Traveling in Mosuo land and visiting the Mosuo Museum in Daluoshuo, built in a former matriarchal large house on the shores of Lake Lugu, I am shocked to see that in the main hall of the house, where idols of ancestors are usually erected, the statue of a monkey stands on a small column. Could this people have gone so far as to acknowledge their descent from a monkey, ahead of Darwin, and pay homage to their male ancestor?

The Chinese description displayed next to the statue, however, tells a different story. According to this, the man who survived the flood did not meet his goddess mate on earth, but in heaven, where he was guided up by the wise old monkey. This is why the Mosuos venerate the monkey according to the local version of the Dongba Genesis, which is obviously different from that of the anthropologists.

Metro

The metro is a network system of linear spaces where masses of people come together, pass through, and part, while in motion through an underground system of escalators, tunnels, platforms and corridors, with the objective of each person getting from a point A and arriving to a point B.

As an underground system, the metro is necessarily a space apart from the happier face of the city in sunlight, being confined beneath it to dark, meandering passages, and comprising a Hades, an underworld, with rats and dirt and clotted grease. The metro, despite its historical novelty, feels ancient. A clinging smell hangs in the air, a mixture of electricity, sweat, sausage, and machine oil. It is a kind of wormhole that sucks up human particles on the surface, and then spits them out elsewhere. Its riders submerge, as if in a submarine, and each stop, each rise to the surface, is a new little world, a planet unto itself, a unique urban context. The metro strings them together like a necklace of pearls on a black thread.

Subjectively, the metro is a particular set of sensations involving rhythm and kinesis, muscular control modulated by visual and auditory stimuli, and individuals moving through its linear spaces behave in the manner of a particle stream. A person moves either with or against the flow, an invisible, but particularly salient force. One feels it rather strongly in the legs and in the torso, a momentum of the physical weight of the body, and its intentionality, dynamically altered in close coordination with all the other passing human particles, each also with their own moment and intent. It is self-arranging, and thus somewhat chaotic, and hence, unpredictable. People rush, generally plowing forward, and observing cues that land them in the right spot. Someone might stop short, an outwardly random event, and it is instantly perceived by fellow particles, if they are alert, and they adjust accordingly. But in the main, flow predominates and the sharp edges of all other forces are smoothed away in submission to its bidding.


I was met with a stark example of this flow once in Saigon, where I was confronted with the normally straightforward problem of crossing a major street. A gapless, stopless, torrent of traffic raged, like water in a bursting river, like corpuscles in a bloodstream. Crossing flows of traffic were delicately interleaving at the intersection, rather that stopping and taking turns. How to get across? Anyone reckless enough to dare to venture into this cosmic inevitability would surely be trampled beneath a hundred bicycles, a dozen motorcycles, a car, or a city bus. Sensing my perplexity, an old man came and stood at the edge of the street next to me. With a look that said, “Watch how I do it!” he started across. Encouraged by his intrepid example, I followed. Enlightenment came. I immediately understood that to keep moving at a regular speed was safe, but one must never, ever stop. Stopping in flow introduces a random event; it creates unpredictability and chaos. Just keep moving. The flow is all.


In Kiev, once, the opposite happened. Trying to enter the metro at the train station, I saw a crowd of hundreds of people funneling in through a single open door of the metro station. An entire wall of maybe ten doorways was available, of these, nine were locked tight. Overhearing a conversation, I came to understand the meaning of this conundrum. Overcrowding on the metro platform was so common in Kiev, that it was dangerous to let too many people onto the platform at once, lest someone be accidentally pushed onto the tracks. This was the simple solution, use brute force to reduce the flow so the overcrowded trains could carry riders away at a rate that brought an equilibrium of safety.


When in the flow, little conscious thought is needed to obey it. Instinctively one seeks to hold momentum and personal space, observing signs, pausing only at points where one is in need of finding bearings. We pass like phantoms beneath harsh lights of mercury vapor, and our faces, bled of color, only dimly recognize one another as fellow humans. Tight within our sensate imaginary cocoons, the psychic shells that float through space along with us, we are sometimes, in this place, as alone as we can ever be. Our tribal brethren are reduced to merely the cold stream of their firmer embodiments, a charged plasma alongside which we slide, and usually, ignore. Perhaps we do so too easily.


The short film Metrum was made by Ivan Balaďa in 1967 under the Czechoslovak Army’s film unit. In it, Balaďa’s camera wanders the Moscow metro system, purposely moving against the crowd so we can study the faces and postures of thousands of passing people, finding on them a thousand worries, quotidian and existential. In counterpoint to the incidental sounds of the metro and shoe heels tapping on hard pavement, we hear choral singing from the Orthodox mass. Conceived by its producers as a propaganda film to extoll the metro, when Balaďa’s piece was finally screened, it was shelved by censors.

An endless rain of passengers descends and ascends the escalators, like the ladder of Jacob, in what, a grotesque parody of the cycles of nature? Because the camera is always in motion, a sea of heads becomes a sea of souls, yearning, striving, struggling souls; here is our parody, the metro is the path of the soul through life. Some figures are silhouetted, dark, secretive; other faces find the light and we can read something of their character. They are anonymous in their numbers, each one is everyone, a symbolic being. Early, the camera finds and briefly follows a pregnant woman the passage; later in the film another woman cradles a sleeping child as she waits for her train, a pietà. A lone passenger scrutinizes a schematic map, trying to find the one true answer. An abrupt cut, and a train roars into the station, shimmering with light and the squeak of brakes, the same kind of wagons that, not so long ago, ran on Prague’s metro lines. People get off and on, and the flow continues.

The final shot leaves little doubt. We emerge from a tunnel, and the overexposed frame blinds us with white light, recalling the stories survivors tell of their near-death experiences.


In the early 60s, Soviet singer-songwriter Bulat Okudzhava (Булат Окуджава) wrote and performed Song of the Moscow Metro (Песенка О Московском Метро). Its themes, instinctively or purposely, are strongly echoed in Balaďa’s film.


Bulat Okudzhava: Песенка О Московском Метро

Мне в моем метро никогда не тесно, потому что с детства оно, как песня, где вместо припева, вместо припева: – Стойте справа! Проходите слева! Порядок вечен, порядок свят. Те, что справа, стоят, стоят. Но те, что идут, всегда должны держаться левой стороны.

In my metro, it is never crowded, because since childhood, like a song, sings its choir. The choir sings: “Stand to the right! Walk on the left!” The order is eternal, the order is holy, Those on the right, they stand, they stand. But to those who are walking, you must always walk on the left-hand side.

The American soldier

We have already seen, that some countries, which in times of peace so hardly give the passport to their own citizens, in time of war liberally distribute it even to the enemy, promising conditions worthy of man in the voluntary captivity, and return to their families after the war.


We do not know whether the Front of Liberation of Vietnam exhausted from the Soviet example or from their own inspiration to distribute to the American soldiers passports enhancing the voluntary surrender. But it is certain that they knew well the two things which arouse the interest of the U.S. military.

Quyêṫ thâṅg = Certain victory. An U.S. military operation launched in March-April 1968

It was already the innovation of the Vietcong that for the conditions worthy of American man they also requested some military training in exchange.




We do not know how many U.S. soldiers took advantage of the tempting option, and to what extent their transferred knowledge contributed to the victory of the Vietcong. In fact, to be honest, we do not even know whether these life-saving passports, which in recent months have been seen around the American net, reached them at all. Indeed, in a Russian site publishing the last document on the basis of a U.S. source, the first commenter calls the attention that the picture of the girl is identical with the third photo of a contemporary Thailandese beauty site. And although we know that Far Eastern women long retain their youth, nevertheless it is almost forty years that these passports have become obsolete.


We also do not know, if the passports are contemporary counterfeits, whether they were made by Vietnamese to mock the Americans’ greed, or by the Americans, built on the topos of Asian prostitution.

But in order we should not leave completely empty-handed, here you are at least the song of Bulat Okudzhava on the American soldier, a tangible historical document, with an actual historical past, almost contemporary to the above passes.


Bulat Okudzsava: Song on the American sodier

Возьму шинель, и вещмешок, и каску, В защитную окрашенные окраску, Ударю шаг по улочкам горбатым… Как просто стать солдатом, солдатом. Забуду все домашние заботы, Не надо ни зарплаты, ни работы – Иду себе, играю автоматом, Как просто быть солдатом, солдатом! А если что не так - не наше дело: Как говорится, родина велела! Как славно быть ни в чем не виноватым, Совсем простым солдатом, солдатом.

I put on the jacket, helmet, backpack, the camouflage-colored camouflage, I beat up the crooked streets with my steps: how simple it is to become a soldier! I forget all troubles at home, I don’t worry for salary and job, I go alone, playing with my machine-gun: how simple it is to be a soldier! And if something goes wrong – not our business: as they say: the homeland ordered it! How beautiful, not to be guilty of anything, only a soldier, a simple soldier.

However, the philologist wakes up in you, and after some research he reveals that the title of the song was originally just Song on the soldier. On the soldier, which in the Soviet Union of course meant the Soviet soldier. But the Soviet soldier is not like that. The Soviet soldier fights for the freedom of peoples. Thus the Soviet cultural policy banned the song. However, Okudzhava’s audience still wanted to hear it, and they shouted to the anxious master in the stage: “Let’s hear the song about the American soldier!” Consequently, the song got the green light.

However, on the American soldier we still know nothing.

Vals

Bill Hensley, violinista de las montañas, Asheville, Carolina del Norte, 1937, tomado de aquí

One-way publicó hace tiempo unas hermosas imágenes antiguas de violinistas, y nos da pie a publicar nosotros otras similares que guardamos con mimo, así como la canción más bonita que hemos escuchado sobre un violinista.

Violinista americano de las montañas, 1920, de aquí

Violinista de Navidad, Belgrado, 1919, de aquí

Papadakis, violinista de Creta, y Koutzourelis, tañedor de laúd

Kala Ramnath, violinista clásica india, hace veinte años

Tarjeta de visita del joven y prometedor violinista Jiří Jelen, Praga, ca. 1884

Tarjeta de visita de un cuarteto de cuerda, Praga, ca. 1905, foto de V. Donát

Tarjeta de visita del violinista y compositor checo Jan Kubelik (1880-1940) cuando era joven.
La inscripción, escrita en Viena en septiembre de 1919, está en húngaro: «Perdóname por
mi pereza. Mañana tengo un examen. ¡Gracias! Adiós, Aurel». Esto, por tanto, no fue
escrito por Kubelík, aunque él también hablaba bien en húngaro, y su esposa, la
condesa Marianne Csáky-Széll era húngara. Sus ocho hijos
fueron músicos; las cinco hijas, violinistas.

Orquestina militar austro-húngara, ca. 1900

Muchacha tocando el violín, tarjeta de visita. New Jersey, ca. 1870

Fotomontaje de Ruth Zachary sobre su abuelo, el violinista y luthier Alfred
Bowers, héroe de la Guerra Civil Americana, de aquí

John Flynn, «el Bard de Erin”, Wisconsin (*1840), tarjeta de visita, de aquí

Bulat Okudzhava: El Músico

Булат Окуджава: Музыкант Музыкант играл на скрипке, я в глаза ему глядел, Я не то чтоб любопытствовал – я по небу летел. Я не то чтобы от скуки, я надеялся понять, Как умеют эти руки эти звуки извлекать Из какой-то деревяшки, из каких-то грубых жил, Из какой-то там фантазии, которой он служил. А еще ведь надо в душу к нам проникнуть и поджечь. А чего с ней церемониться, чего ее беречь. Счастлив дом, где пенье скрипки наставляет нас на путь. И вселяет в нас надежду; остальное - как-нибудь. Счастлив инструмент, прижатый к угловатому плечу, По чьему благословению я по небу лечу. Счастлив тот, чей путь недолог, пальцы злы, смычок остер Музыкант, соорудивший из души моей костер. А душа, уж это точно, ежели обожжена, Справедливей, милосерднее и праведней она.

Bulat Okudzhava: El músico Un músico tocaba el violín. Le miré a los ojos. No es que yo fuera curioso – estaba volando a los cielos. No es que estuviera yo aburrido – sólo confiaba en entender: cómo pueden estas manos suscitar estos sonidos de alguna especie de madera de alguna especie de tripas rudas de alguna especie de fantasía que él usaba – porque ahí debe haber aún alguna cosa más que penetra en nuestra alma que festeja con ella y que la salva. Feliz es la casa donde la canción del violín nos enseña el camino y nos da esperanza – todo lo demás irá de algún modo. Feliz es el instrumento, que se aprieta sobre el hombro huesudo cuya bendición hace que esté volando a los cielos. Feliz es quien, directamente, con dedos nerviosos y un arco afilado, como músico, es capaz de prender una hoguera en mi alma. Y el alma, esto es seguro, cuando ha ardido en este fuego, es para siempre más limpia más justa y misericordiosa.

André Kertesz: El músico ciego. Abony, Hungría, 1921. «El músico ciego. Mirad la expresión
de su rostro. Era absolutamente extraordinaria. Si hubiera nacido en Berlín,
Londres o París habría sido un violinista de primera clase»
(André Kertész: Kertész sobre Kertész)

Entre las imágenes de One-way solamente una no revela su título, autor ni año. Es una foto de André Kertész, tomada hace ahora noventa años a pocos kilómetros de Budapest. Sobre ella Andrzej Stasiuk escribe estas reflexiones en en su Jadąc do Babadag (De camino a Babadag, 2004 —traducción de Alfonso Cazenave):

Puede que todo lo que he escrito hasta ahora haya partido de esta fotografía. Es 1921 en el pequeño pueblo húngaro de Abony, a siete kilómetros al oeste de Szolnok. Un violinista ciego atraviesa la calle tocando. Le guía un chaval de doce o catorce años, descalzo y con gorra. El músico lleva unos zapatos destrozados. Su pie derecho está cruzando el surco que ha dejado un carro con ruedas de hierro. La calle está sin pavimentar. No ha llovido. Los pies del chico no están embarrados y la huella de las estrechas ruedas es poco profunda, apenas marcada. Gira suavemente a la derecha y desaparece en el fondo algo borroso de la foto. A lo largo de la calle hay una empalizada de madera y se ve un fragmento de casa: en la ventana se refleja el cielo. Un poco más lejos hay una capillita blanca. Tras la valla crecen árboles. El músico tiene los párpados entrecerrados. Va caminando y tocando para sí mismo y para el espacio ciego que lo rodea. Aparte de la pareja de caminantes, en la calle no hay más que un niño de pocos años. Aunque está vuelto hacia ellos, mira más allá, fuera del encuadre, como si a espaldas de los vagabundos estuviera ocurriendo algo más interesante que en la fotografía. El día está nublado porque ni las cosas ni las figuras proyectan sombra. EL vilinista lleva colgado un cayado del brazo derecho (sí, es zurdo) y su lazarillo algo que parece ua pequeña mantilla. Del borde de la imagen los separan unos cuantos pasos. Enseguida desaparecerán y enmudecerá la música. En la foto solamente quedarán el pequeño, el camino y la huella de las ruedas.

Hace cuatro años que esta foto me obsesiona. Donde quiera que vaya, busco sus versiones tridimensionales y en color y a menudo me parece haberlas encontrado. Así fue en Podolínec, en las callejuelas laterales de Lőcse/Levoča, en el incandescente Gönc, donde estuve buscando una estación de tren que resultó ser un edificio vacío y en ruinas, y hasta la noche no salía ningún tren. Lo mismo en Vilmány, en un andén abandonado en medio de los campos infinitos sumergidos en un calor sofocante, lo mismo en la plaza del mercado de Dilyatin, donde unas ancianas vendían tabaco, lo mismo en Kvasy, donde el tren ya se había ido y no había ni un alma alrededor, a pesar de que las casas estaban pegadas unas a otras. Y en Solotvyn, en medio de los pozos mineros inmóviles y cubiertos de un polvo salino, y en Dukla, donde del desfiladero soplaba un viento pesado y monótono. En todos esos lugares, sobre la pantalla transparente del espacio se superponía el André Kertész de 1921, como si justamente entonces se hubiera parado el tiempo y a causa de ello el presente resultara un error, una burla o una traición, como si mi presencia en esos lugares fuera un anacronismo y un escándalo por haber venido del futuro, lo cual, aparte de no convertirme en más listo, me hacía estar más asustado. El espacio de esta foto me hipnotiza y todos mis viajes sirven tan solo para al final encontrar el acceso oculto a su interior.