Lists of things

Lost in this week's news was the passing of Ernesto Sábato, Argentine writer, engineer, philosopher. It's worth checking his Times obit if you're not up against the pay wall.

Uno y el universo, Sábato's first literary endeavor, is one of my favorite lists. It reads like an encyclopedia of philosophical ideas, in alphabetical order, that were important to Argentina in 1945. Sábato had a handle on the imaginary nature of our experience.

Si tuvieran corazón las autopistas...



A list of Fito's mythical heroes, if they were to come back:

Si volvieran los dragones, Robin Hood,
las amazonas, Marco Polo, Nosferatu, Garcilaso,
Casanova, Buster Keaton, Mata Hari, Don Quijote,
Macedonio, Moby Dick, Los Bucaneros,
Nostradamus, Celedonio, Sargent Pepper,
Goyeneche, Sitting Bull, La violetera,
Janis Joplin, Doctor Jekyll, D'Artagnan,
la primavera, el Cantar de los Cantares, Greta Garbo,
el Tempranillo, Babilonia, Julio Verne, Camaron,los conventillos, gulliver, Sierra Maestra, Bonny and Clyde,
La Magdalena, Camelot, los alquimistas,
Atahualpa, Bonavena, la tetona de Fellini, Bakunin,
las ilusiones, Espartaco, Mesalina, las cigueñas,
los bufones, Si volvieran los dragones.

My myths are more about places than people. Instead of song or encyclopedia, I would draw a map. Here:

My great grandma's house in Severy, Kansas, my imaginary married life in Corona, the bike path that I use to commute to school in Eugene, the community gardens where I plant in Flushing, East Elmhurst, Eugene and Portland, the line between the shade/sun in Prospect Park, laguna Queushu, Coney Island, a road trip from Arizona to Oklahoma, the Manhattan-bound L, the moment of flight at that lake in Uruguay, Bushwick.

99 years- imagine that.