Loop

Loop

Brenda Lozano

Loop

Translated by

Annie McDermott

For Diego, Emiliano and Patricio

‘For love is ever filled with fear’

Letter from Penelope to Odysseus,

Heroides, Ovid

‘Sea, oh sea, you’re the homeland of waves,

the waves are sea-children.

The sea is their mother

and their sister’s the notebook.

It’s been that way now for many a century.

And they lived very well.

And prayed often.

The sea to God

and the children to God.

And after, they resettled in the sky.

From where they sprayed rain,

and on that rainy spot a house grew.

The house lived well.

It taught the doors and windows to play

shore, immortality, dream and notebook.

Once upon a time.’

‘The Song of the Notebook’, Alexander Vvedensky

‘A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep,

And I could laugh; I am light, and heavy. Welcome!’

The Tragedy of Coriolanus, William Shakespeare

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Today a dwarf smiled at me.

As a girl I thought the electric pencil sharpener was what separated me from adult life. Between the blue plastic pencil sharpener and the electric pencil sharpener – in my father’s office or on the teacher’s desk – stretched the distance between childhood and adult life.

At a dinner party when he was twenty-one, Proust was asked some questions. Among them, what his favourite bird was. The swallow, he replied. Proust didn’t invent the questions known as the ‘Proust questionnaire’, but his answers were so good they made the questionnaire famous. Proust responded to the questionnaire on two separate occasions. He was fifteen when he was asked his favourite colour. ‘The beauty is not in the colours, but in their harmony,’ he said.

At fifteen I still thought the electric pencil sharpener separated me from adult life. If I’d been asked my favourite colour I would have said the colour of my blue pencil sharpener, but Proust’s favourite bird is also my favourite bird.

If I could turn into any bird, I’d choose a swallow.

Change. Unlearning yourself is more important than knowing yourself.