Literature

There's something about literature sometimes.
Between yesterday and today, I had an urge to illustrate a book that I've read three times and I'm in the middle of reading it a fourth time. It's a book by Javier Medina Bernal, titled "Hemos caminado siglos esta madrugada", it sits between my elbows as I type down this entry.
Sometimes it just sits on my drawing table, other times it sits on my night table, before I picked it up yesterday to read it, I hadn't touched it or thought of it for days. Somehow the book courts me and we are having an affair.

It's a small book, it's short and thin, with thin and white pages, the paperback is red. The title by default gets me, when night falls (the few times that I've stayed up late or all night) time seems to stop completely.
The orange streetlights, the stars and the moon if she's out make everything seem like a dream. And there is a dreamlike quality in what's written within the book.

For a reason that is unknown to me, I decided to draw on the book. I guess because the words are scattered across the pages, as poetry sometimes is and several pages are almost entirely white, with not more than ten words on them.

So today, I show off two drawings that I've made between yesterday and today and the passages on them.

On these two pages we have:
"Colonia mía, esclava mía,
guardiana y
verdugo,
condenada y niña libre mía y
sólo mía,
emergen de tu pecho raras señales de miedo
y lágrimas.
Todo se junta.
Todo.
O sea, las cosas se abalanzan desde frentes varios,
traen estallido y grito,
bolsas llenas de hormigas"

I've read this specific passage approximately one million times, because I freaking love it: "Semejante reflexión debió haber sido lo suficientemente llana para darme cuenta de mi destino de eterno solitario rodeado de faldas, debí advertir pieles desnudas, rupturas, inconformidades, hijos por doquier, pensiones alimenticias, abandonos, lágrimas, cuerpos jadeantes, decepciones, bofetadas, promesas rotas, hogares rotos, ojos rotos"


So, this tiny little thing, with fragile white pages, thin red paperback has stolen my attention from a lot of work that I'm supposed to be doing, work that is waiting patiently for me to finish it. In an impulse yesterday, I decided to draw on the book. Maybe I'm using it as an excuse to put off work, but like my man Trent sings: "you know me, I can't help myself".

Javier has a website: Javier Medina Bernal. He also happens to write and make gorgeous music.

And don't forget my page, either: Gabriela Handal