Geography of Rebels Trilogy. Maria Gabriela Llansol

reformulation. What I embroider is an insect, I feel the urge to classify it, know its name and I am, for a few moments, sojourning within in the vast animal kingdom. A finger on the thread, I also fasten my eyes upon the fabric; I find that I see an expansive panorama, my eyes fixed on the velvety brown seem to look all around; I lift the needle from the felt, to me the movement seems similar to that of writing, but inverse.

      It was not I who traced this design I embroider but, making my way along it with the needle, I reconstruct the birth of the act of drawing; I lose the notion of time slightly as if my embroidery had come from an archive and was about to disappear within it. I situate myself historically alongside other hands that embroidered fabrics from another era. I wonder, when they find it, what meaning they will ascribe to the insect I encountered today. I pass from writing to embroidery, translating as if both were my speech; at times, I even forget I’m embroidering, in such a way that my fingers become dexterous and my thinking, reflected in the embroidery, a thought. With a book is written another book. As a book is vegetal.

      When the clock at the entrance fell out of step and the golden box filled with hours and the shudderings of sound, I realize it is time to change colors on the surface where I’m working. My hands close to my eyes, I notice, for the first time, the skin resting on my bones. She asked herself: “Will they come with someone?” “Will they bring someone?” She was then certain that they would bring someone and she arranged her hair for Nietzsche.

      Place 19 —

      Resting at the edge of the lake, she ended up smiling; someone had passed by like an illusion, in a boat and rowing — a shadow still unmet; I heard the sound of the water and the oars thrusting. She startled, would it be Nietzsche?; the same boat passed by again. She looked forward at the shadow’s solidity, particularly his head, where only his hair could be made out. She heard the sound of his voice: “You the semi-living who surround me, and enclose me in a subterranean solitude, in the speechlessness and cold of the tomb; you, who condemn me to lead a life it would be better to call death, you will see me again, one day. After death I shall have my revenge: we know how to return, we, the premature. It is one of our secrets. I shall return alive, more alive than ever.”

      She moved with him toward the house, through the thick silence that had followed. But it was a child’s shadow: — Where do you come from? From the body. From the place of memories and vibrations. — I don’t know what you mean — I have memories I don’t remember: they are the most beautiful ones; the vicissitudes of ideas and systems affect me more tragically than the vicissitudes of real life. — They sat down leaning against one another. Then, Friedrich N. lay down on Ana de Peñalosa’s lap, ready to fall sleep

      (I speak to myself and hear my voice resonating like that of a moribund. With you, dear voice, whose breath delivers me the last memories of any human happiness, with you, let me speak a minute longer. Is it you I hear, my voice? My future, which I will reach if they give me enough time…)

      for that night.

      She did not marvel when she saw the child sputter fire. She left him to go make dinner. On her way, she lit all the lamps in the great hall. Leaning out the window, she looked at them in the courtyard. Without any light, they were still writing: “It is the radiant night. There will not be many nights like this.”

      But those nights were repeated until her old age, which began on that day.

      Place 20 —

      To keep her company on the long nights when they did not come to see her, Ana de Peñalosa adopted a red and reddish-pink fish who retraced different paths in the water, already overcome by the spirit of dispossession in light of everything capable of disturbing his serenity. Ana de Peñalosa named him “reddish-pink fish,” or Suso. She examined him carefully during forgotten hours: his scales, the pink and the red. When she had spent a long time observing him and his itinerary, she saw the beginning of a line appear from his tail, like pearls. Like the beginning of a written work, she thought. But writing doesn’t let itself be characterized by only one comparison. This was what was written and quickly vanished: when, so many nights ago, I arrived at this house, I found a tomb covered with sage and other plants; here lies the friend of a man. Around the stone was a vast expanse of grass. Eckhart had not met Ana de Peñalosa. But Ana de Peñalosa had met him on the night when, embroidering next to Suso the fish, she had seen his sermons penetrate the water drop by drop, written in the undulations of the aquarium. It had been a cadenced writing, guided by the fish and the evolution of the shells: all living beings are pure nothingness.

      Place 21 —

      During the gentle time of her old age she had never forgotten

      the portrait

      of the adult

      Friedrich Nietzsche

      as a child.

      His straight, receding hair was his forehead’s place of remembrance. Broad forehead, short, brushed hair, protruding cheekbones. His abundant mustache fallen, the odd cut of his face. His musical voice; his slow speech; his prudent and meditative walk. His intent eyes betrayed the painful work of his thinking. They were, at the same time, the eyes of a fanatic, a keen observer, and a posthumous.

      As she was cooking dinner, she meditated that she envisioned a living writing she could take for an encounter. Meditating, she justified her own desire for solitude

      solitude is nothing more than the safeguard of writing when the desire arises.

      Solitude is the defense of the text.

      Sitting solitarily in front of Nietzsche, she observed him, at night: “It is night, the hour when all the welling springs speak more loudly.

      It is night: the hour when all the songs of those who love awaken.

      But being surrounded by the light is my solitude.

      But I live in my own light, I drink the flames that escape from me.”

      Place 22 —

      Looking at the windowpane, she saw herself portrayed in it. Through an optical illusion, the two of them were outside the house; on the opposite side of the river, where there is a large knot of ancient, multicolored trees.

      The one in the center stood out, red — amidst them all lay the red; then, sunken in a filigree of green foliage, a white shrub; and farther away, always among the multitonal green, pink and yellow shrubs.

      — If you have come to die, come die in my room. — Entering into ecstasy the delicious mornings serenaded by the equilibrium of the mornings

       it is a young woman’s bed

       with room for

       a single body;

       it is the time of darkness:

       all day the sun remains

       beyond the horizon;

       during that time,

       the temperature falls

       slowly,

       without stopping.

       If my sons come,

       if I hear the beating of oars,

       I will go down to the garden

       and tell them:

       someone is dying,

       and doesn’t want to see anyone.

      He had the habit, on his walks, of burning in a fragment of time. Stroking the tender shrubs — those that haven’t yet grown; when the wind blew and it was autumn, the leaves moved quickly, evoking the sound of footsteps, or an eagle. The cold in his hands always astonished him and he stopped to write a few aphorisms, as if he washed them; that morning (just before noon) he would take an unknown path. The sun, that sun, known, went away and came back. Shortsightedly, he was almost out of ink and he had to select and condense his thoughts. He stretched out on the ground, and a shaft of sun scorched him with its subdued brightness. The tops of the trees, always different, filtered the sharpness of the return.

      Ana