"Un día..."

Andas por esos mundos como yo; no me digas
que no existes, existes, nos hemos de encontrar;
no nos conoceremos, disfrazados y torpes
por los caminos echaremos a andar.

No nos conoceremos, distantes uno de otro
sentirás mis suspiros y te oiré suspirar.
¿Dónde estará la boca, la boca que suspira?
Diremos, el camino volviendo a desandar.

Quizá nos encontremos frente a frente algún día,
quizá nuestros disfraces nos logremos quitar.
Y ahora me pregunto... cuando ocurra, si ocurre,
¿sabré yo de suspiros, sabrás tú suspirar?

Alfonsina Storni

Una de las escenas finales de la película 

«El fabuloso destino de Amélie Poulain»

The Universe in a chestnut shell

I remember the autumn walks with my mother and brother, again is Stara Zagora. Our favourite thing was picking chestnuts. Those trees, for me were directly related to the city, there was their natural habitat. And it was a true miracle, having found a chestnut still its shell, to peel it and hold it in your hand, so warm and fresh and pure... 

I think this is another childhood treasure, along with book stores, that I still cherish – something so simple, and yet marvellous!

© 2015, Cristiana Bobeva

* * *

[…] It is a sunny fall afternoon and I'm engaged in one of my favourite pastimes – picking chestnuts. I'm playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. […] The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, trough its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I'm holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me. 

Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation

On whose threshold we stand humble acolytes...

The paragraph that I leave you here brought to my mind a very vivid memory from my childhood, although a bit different from the text above. When I was little, every time my family visited my father's home town – Stara Zagora, the two of us with my brother had a very important ritual. We just had to visit one of the big book-stores in the city called Pingvinite (The Penguins). I was so indescribably happy to smell the aroma of new books, to choose The One that I would bring home with me... I believe I still have this obsession with book-stores.

© 2015, Cristiana Bobeva

* * *

Every two weeks or so, my mother takes me to the library to provide for my next fortnight's reading. Every time, I anticipate the event as if it were a trip into Sesame itself. The library is located in a narrow, old street, in an ancient building, which one enters through a heavy wooden door. The interior is Plato's cave, Egyptian temple, the space of mystery and magic, on whose threshold I stand a humble acolyte. It is yellowly lit, smoky with dust and respectful whispers, and behind the counters, which stop the customers from entering farther, it reveals deep, ceiling-tall rows if shelves. When your turn comes, one of the guardians of the mysteries – most of them bespectacled women in black, satiny versions of a nurse's uniform – approaches for a consultation. My mother mentions some author or title she's interested in. And as for me – what might I want to read next? And adventure story? A boarding school novel? Something historical? The very thought of these possibilities makes the next two weeks a terrain of potential pleasure. The guardian then quietly vanishes into the cavernous interior, to emerge with a sack of musty, yellow-paged volumes. I open them; I sniff their aged smell; I read a few words; some of them have illustrations at which I look greedily; then I have to choose from the riches of Araby.

Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation

Cuando el libro es como una caja de recuerdos

Acabo de leer uno de los libros más raros con los que me he cruzado. A ratos me aterraba, a ratos me aburría, pero, de alguna forma quizá un poco extraña, traía en sí tantas cosas que me llevé de Cádiz que me fue imposible dejarlo.

El librero Juan Manuel Fernández (una de las personas que más saben de literatura en Cádiz)
frente a su librería Manuel de Falla, en la plaza Mina,
de donde me compré La insoportable levedad del ser de Milan Kundera.

Como los pájaros...

Me recomiendan un libro, yo confío y me encuentro con esta preciosidad que os dejo aquí. Y... ¡lo importante que es el trabajo del traductor! En búlgaro, la novela no me gustó nada, en castellano - me encanta. 

* * *

No es la necesidad, sino la casualidad, la que está llena de encantos. Si el amor debe ser inolvidable, las casualidades deben volar hacia él desde el primer momento, como los pájaros hacia los hombros de san Francisco de Asís. 

La insoportable levedad del ser, © 1984 by Milan Kundera

Traducción de Fernando de Valenzuela Villaverde

Tusquets Editores, S.A.