Sobrevivir y otros complejos. Mariana Romo-Carmona

      

      Poemas en dos idiomas: Prólogo

      Hace mucho, mucho tiempo, cuando yo era niña, los autores de libros no sacaban buenas fotos. Esa es la verdad. Verdad? Because they weren’t necessarily photogenic or even beautiful people. Habían fotos borrosas de escritores en los periódicos, en blanco y negro and pixillated so you could get lost in the face of Gabriela Mistral, no longer looking at the real shadow beneath her eye, o el rictus de su boca, sino el lugar donde el espacio blanco makes contact with the black space. El espacio de las páginas amarillentas of a newspaper. Sometimes there were photos of writers taken after a conference, standing together, arms comradely over shoulders or stiffly formal, sentados tras un micrófono y un vaso de agua, con los codos en la mesa.

      And from these historical bits of real life, quite often, an editor would choose an indelible portrait to place on the back cover of a book. Pero para mí, escribir was a state of mind.

      Una vez, en la escuela primaria, la Arriarán, un lugar mítico que me formó más que mi propia madre, our teacher sent two of us to interview an author in his home. It was a great honor, of course. Debe haber sido en 1963, when the author had recently won a literature prize. Fuimos con cuadernos y lápices. Benjamín Subercasaux was a real writer who lived near the school and we could walk from there to his apartment. La profesora lo debe haber llamado, found his number in the phone book, and he simply agreed to talk with two fifth graders. The photo on the back of his books no era foto espontánea, it seemed taken by a photographer. Se veía serio y respetable. Y mi secreto es que ya sabía que dentro de mi existía un escritor, tal vez con lentes y bigote, the serious type, but definitely me, walking with my classmate to the interview, notebook in hand, navy blue pleated skirt and sailor jacket with three red piping stripes, trenzas largas con cinta blanca y zapatos negros and white socks. The writer spoke extemporaneously about life and the new generation— mine, ours! I couldn’t write fast enough, I never could, y era obvio que él esperába que copiáramos sus palabras verbatum. Intenté garabatear la mayor cantidad de palabras que pude until my hand cramped. I remember he said, “Cada día, nuestro mundo… blah-blah-blah…”. I listened to his ideas. I watched him, fascinated, su mente, sus pensamientos convirtiéndose en palabras.

      I don’t know how I knew, or why I wanted to, ser escritor. No sabía cuando podría comenzar, but I know that every word I’ve written for the past fifty years, buena o mala, ha salido de mis átomos, creating me from the inside out. I think I am older than that writer was, then; I am two years older than Gabriela Mistral was when she died… y me pregunto, cómo se llega a la fotografía que muestra el alma, ahora que ya he aprendido a escribir? ¿cuál es la relación entre el vivir y el escribir when one is approaching time? I don’t know, but I think that if one has chosen to be a writer, es porque al llegar al momento en que tu imagen, that photo, the way other people see you matches the way you feel, entonces, finalmente se puede vivir.

      Preámbulo

      “Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto…”

      Violeta Parra. 1917-1967