A Day of Words: Viaxe improvisada 1910. Parque do Pasatempo

“I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.” 

― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Ás agochadas, á mantenta,  con crueldade e sen querer... pasa. O do reloxo e o do pulso. O das agullas e o das veas. 

A memoria, cómplice, enguedella latexos e tic-tacs. Cunha calma atroz, císcaos por onde lle peta. 

E nós, inocentes buscadores de instantes sentados do revés nun tren que xa pasou polo que estamos a ver. 

Berger tiña razón: como casar o que se sabe co que se ve? 

Cartel ©José Souto

Con mimo e dedicación, a xente da Asociación de Amigos do Parque do Pasatempo, coa colaboración do Concello de Betanzos, organizou o pasado sábado 24 de agosto unha romaría indiana con coches de época, pregón, xogos populares, concertos, fotografía e visitas guiadas.

Suso Martínez foi o encargado de dar o pregón

O cartel de José Souto Santé é toda unha metáfora: Juan García Naveira mirando o seu reloxo de faldriqueira para ver se lle é hora de resucitar para esta romería indiana. Ou é que estará contando o tempo que lle queda ao "capricho de un indiano"?

Ineludiblemente, pasa o tempo por nós e tamén polos lugares que habitamos, ese tecido comunitario alén do noso pequeno nicho que chamamos fogar. Os efectos da idade fanse notar e cómpre unha labor de reparación e conservación para manter e proxectar cara ao futuro a relevancia dun espazo máxico e singular como é o Parque do Pasatempo.

Visita guiada a cargo de José Souto

O parque hai que miralo, como dicía Berger, relacionando o que se sabe co que se ve. E non é fácil porque hai cousas que non sabemos, e por outra banda, no Pasatempo ás veces hai cousas que non se ven ou que hai que mirar doutro xeito.

A filosofía subxacente é a liberdade, o poder de elixir. Sempre hai un par de escaleiras, dous camiños ou varias opcións. Dá o mesmo por onde vaias - ao final has chegar ao destino. Porén, para os que descoñecemos os detalles da historia e do contexto, a sensación pode resultar desconcertante, como a de estar dentro dun cadro de Escher.

A xira de José Souto levounos polo "camiño da luz" que xa anticipara Suso Martínez no seu pregón. Co seu foco foi ensinándonos a mirar, iluminando serpes enroscadas, unha boca do inferno que tamén é peixe, figuras de animais agochadas nos muros, cunchas que noutrora relocían, masóns que esconderon as súas pegadas aquí e acolá, as 33 plumas dunha ave, un buzo con afán didáctico, un león dinamitado, pedras misteriosas, un escultor que reinventou unha peza, plantas invasoras, cervos sen cornamenta ou nenos sen pernas que xa non se ven.

Non faltaron tampouco lendas, historia e contexto nun roteiro que foi tamén descuberta, viaxe e aprendizaxe, moi ao modo masón. Ben falemos de tres niveis, ben de trinta e tres graos, para coñecer os segredos do parque non abonda cunha soa visita. Como moito, pasaranos como cando estamos no interior dun dos pozos, podemos entón mirar cara arriba e ver as terrazas que hai e ser conscientes de todo o que nos queda por descubrir aínda.

Neste xogo semidisparatado de Jumanji á galega que nos propoñen desde o Pasatempo, a todos nos toca xogar e tirar os dados nunha partida onde as claves ben se nos amosaron o sábado: Sostibilidade, comunidade, coñecemento, beleza e diversión.

(De seguido deixo unha pequena colección de fotos da miña primeira visita ao parque en outubro de 2015).

Para saber máis:

• O blog Parque Pasatiempo
• O blog do ilustrador José Souto Santé
• Noticia sobre o evento na CRTVG (25/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre o evento en La Voz de Galicia (25/08/2018)
• Reportaxe de La Voz de Galicia (25/08/2018)
• Reportaxe sobre o evento en El Ideal Gallego (25/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre o evento en La Opinión (24/08/2018)
• Entrada na web do Concello de Betanzos (24/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre o evento en Cadena Ser (24/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre o evento en El Ideal Gallego (23/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre o evento en La Opinión (15/08/2018)
• Noticia sobre a declaración do Parque do Pasatempo como BIC (20/03/2018)

Letters in Books: The Sense of an Ending

Dolores López had been recommending this book for years now, Raquel Pastoriza had read Love, etc. a while ago and also thought I would enjoy it... and finally, I found the time for Julian Barnes (1946) in my life. It did not disappoint.

The Sense of an Ending is a short novel where Anthony "Tony" Webster, a middle-aged man, reflects on his 1960s' schooldays with his clique and his gang of friends, followed by university, marriage, fatherhood and divorce. It may seem like Tony had a respectable life and he is a decent person. However, a letter from the past shatters this seeming respectability and moral uprightness, confronting him with the consequences of his thoughtless behavior and de-stabilising his perception of himself and his past.

The novel addresses serious, poignant themes: the dark side of love, our capacity for jealousy, obsessions, the quest for authentic love, one's memories and sense of self. 

Barnes' prose is elegant (he was a lexicographer, and you can tell), witty and playful, employing postmodern writing techniques - an unreliable narrator, a self-conscious linguistic style, a mix of different narrative forms- all of which contribute to highlight the subjectivity of "truth" and "reality".

I absolutely loved the underlying psychological realism of the novel, especially when dealing with the construction of memories, or rather, reconstruction, coloring those memories with bits of life experiences, and integrating things we do remember in detail with things that are generally true. Tony warns us about this manipulation throughout the book, from page 1. We are all susceptible to having "false memories", memory distortions:

"... what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you  have witnessed" (p. 3)

"History is that certainty produced at the the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation" (p. 16)

"I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time" (p. 41)

"We were already turning our past into anecdote" (p. 53)

"History isn't the lies of the victors (...) It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated" (p. 56)

"We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase" (p. 88)

"How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts?" (p. 95)

"My brain must have erased it from the record, but now I knew it for a fact" (p. 119)

"(...) something else - happens to the memory over time. For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions" (p. 120)

"We live in time - it holds us and moulds us - but I've never felt I understood it very well" (p. 3)

Letters, e-mails and written communication are key in the book, provoking a plot twist, leading to a reexamination of previous concepts or memories or asking for help in a quest:

(about Robson's suicide note) "As for his suicide note, which according to rumor (Brown again) read "Sorry, Mum" , we felt that it had missed a powerful educative opportunity" (p. 14)

"We wrote letters to one another, as people - even the young did in those days (...) And writing to ano another seemed to have recalibrated the dynamics of our relationship" (p. 19)

"In the second week of the summer vacation a letter arrived with a Chislehurst postmark. I inspected the unfamiliar handwriting  - looping and slightly careles- on the envelope" (p. 38)

"About halfway through my final year, I got a letter from Adrian" (p. 40)

"I took the nearest postcard to hand (...) [and] burnt his letter in an empty grate (melodramatic, I agree" (p. 42)

"It was one of those long white envelopes with my name and address shown on a window" (p. 62)

"Dear Veronica", I began, "Your brother has kindly given me your email address..." (p. 80)

"I knew it was authentic. Adrian wrote in a distinctive italic hand with an eccentric 'g'" (p. 85)

"Imagine someone, ate at night, a bit drunk, writing a letter to an old girlfriend. He addresses the envelope, puts on a stamp, finds his coat, walks to the postbox, shoves the letter into it, walks home and goes to bed" (p. 105)

The novel is really short, but the story unfolds slowly. It is intentionally ambiguous at times as Barnes explores choices we make, different levels of responsibility, being human and the effects of time on one’s memory. And by the end of the book we couldn't agree more with the last sentence:

"There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest" (p. 150)