With this quote from Franz Kafka begins “A Man Who Sleeps” the second novel by George Perec published in . In it a young sociology student decides one morning not to get out of bed to go take an exam at the university. university. Locked in his five-square-meter Parisian attic he decides to stop having contact with the world. Absurd and tragic. Narrated in the second person it makes us all protagonists of that confinement. Like the student trying to sleep in his attic we close our eyes again hoping that something has changed but everything remains the same after so many days. Although we can't be entirely sure. In a short time we have lost the normality of being able to walk down the street. You keep talking and talking on the phone on WhatsApp on Twitter. You don't say anything new either because you don't know much either.
You cackle and try to look for the hidden ball. You sense the trap. You lie down on the couch again. You no longer feel like making more video calls nor talking or thinking. You've even lost the desire to go out and scream. You hope that on a day like this CXB Directory sooner rather than later you will discover with surprise and fear that you can go out again and that everything is fine. You don't know if you'll learn to live outdoors again. At the moment you try to listen to any noise on the street. You look for clues of life around you. Noises of taps the smell of food rumors of conversations footsteps upstairs a bird waking up. That's your life now. You take inventory of the things we have left over. Too many. If during this time they have not come out of their rest they will probably never come out again.
You have traveled a lot and what you brought from your trips rests on the shelves full of books that you did not read and that perhaps you will never read. You can't open the door. You can't throw them out the window. You discover some borrowed books that you would like to return immediately. Personal and library sanctions have been suspended. You seem used to this life. The other one seems too far away now. You look out the window and it's not like you feel like leaving here anymore. You look for excuses regrets or longings that force you to stop being like that “Sleeping Man” by Perec. The coffee is too bitter. You were looking for a space to stop and reflect. Now that you have it it is not among your daily priorities either. You don't have much time to think either. Twenty-four hours a day are not enough.
發表於 2024-3-14 14:25:16
