Travelers just want to make it to port and then leave again, never to stay. At ports, life is a dull parody. There are pianists, clowns, and all manner of contrivances to entertain those who travel. There are love affairs to get you through your solitude and made-up games to waste your time.
At the dusk of dreams, a seaman always catches a glimpse of that magical sensation that life begins at the edge of the abyss that separates one world from the other. The world of the dead who seem alive and the world of the living who pretend to be dead.
Adventure lies beyond, in the Sea of Nevermore, where Somebody never forgets he is Nobody. The seaman has no interest in the news that’s going around in the Land of Always. In that land, reality is just fashions the treasurer collects in the coffers of absence.
Every day we are forced to choose between being the warrior-pirate-madman-alien or the snot-snorter who just wants to get married-write the book-rent the apartment-buy marijuana to fill his emptiness with refuse.
It is more comfortable to travel in a wheelchair down the highway of controlled emotions. It is more comfortable than hobbling down unknown paths. It is more comfortable to settle into the asylum of habit than to keep reconnoitering our fear of darkness.
This December 31st, one of those days when the gray of absence attains its greatest brilliance, might be a good time to glimpse that perilous breakwater once again. And so, I raise a glass with you, my friends, in hopes that tonight we might meet in the imaginary space of our dreams.
I raise a glass to all those who insist on remaining ignorant of the mystery of existence. May they close their eyes as they toast, and when they open them again, may the setting be another and the work wonderful.
I raise a glass to those intrepid few who are sad today, to the wanderers who think they are lost, to the rebels who are resigned, to the persecuted who meekly keep their secret. May their worst goals be achieved. May they find joy in their worst moment. May they continue being stowaways hidden in the folds of the collective nightmare. May they never be found, may they always make it on time or may time not exist such that they might make it.
I raise a glass to my invisible friends, those who know they don’t know, those who, wanting to live, live only wanting.
May they found their kingdom, may they find their magic, may they throw their party, may they never be lost. And, if not, may the world rot in the hell of which they warn us.
Enrique Symns
Cerdos & Peces
January 1987
Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon
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