escape my own associations, I left the Buddhist area behind and took one of the side paths to the right, which led into the heart of the park, crossing it diagonally.
Once again I discovered on the ground the kind of earth with which I was by now familiar: a worn, near-pulverized gravel that resembled dirty, powdery sand. As I walked along, the noises from outside became more subdued and, apart from the predictable trillings and screeches now and then, a threatening silence prevailed. I don’t know, to me the silence seemed the most visible proof of the falsity, or rather, the invention or manufacture, of an allegedly natural environment in the middle of a city. In the past, the park had probably been the site of farms or a post station, and then the city proceeded to engulf it. As I considered this, I realized that my dichotomous thinking was surfacing, because on the one hand, I love parks—or their funereal variant, cemeteries—and love them far more than any space devoted to natural habitat, or the alleged wild; but on the other, I never pass up a chance to slander them inwardly and verify, time and again, whenever I walk through them, the forced affectation that sustains them. At any rate, I suspect it’s a useless battle, lost in advance: who would have any interest in what I think about parks, or better still, who would care what I think about anything. That’s why, as I wrote before, I prefer untended parks, those that have been overtaken by neglect, because no one expresses any strong opinion about them and so they take on a still more autonomous life and, in that sense, presumably a more authentic one . . . Although of course, one can never know.
I now covered a long stretch on the diagonal path, where everything seemed to sleep, protected by the shade. It was an ideal path for walking aimlessly, indifferently. I kept seeing discarded candy wrappers and empty soft-drink cans on the ground. Some had been there for a long time, since they were weatherworn and had, in their own way, adapted to the colors in their surroundings. Because there were no benches or tables nearby, I surmised that on the weekends the path was heavily used. This made me want to know where it led to. From time to time I saw large trash cans, which were in any case brimming with papers and plastic bags. Not much else at all, besides the trees, the dry earth and the predominant shade. As had happened several times earlier on this outing, before long I spotted a light area toward the end of the path; and when I drew closer, some ten minutes later, I glimpsed a tableau that at first disturbed me, I don’t know why: over there a good-sized, tranquil lake lay hidden, and from where I was approaching I could make out some unexpected, gigantic swans, stock-still and arrayed as if in regimental formation. As I drew nearer to the water and the scene grew better lit, I felt a mixture of wariness and wonder. Wariness owing to something quite primal, for which I realized I wasn’t prepared: simply the size of those pedal boats in the shape of swans, which one associated more with some monstrous scale than with any idea of a replica or an amusement; and wonder because of the illusion of standing before an inanimate army, but one that seemed subject to a latent vitality, ready to awaken or be activated at any moment.
Once at the edge of the lake, amid thickets of greenery slanting out toward the water, which made for a certain difficulty in moving about, I could appreciate the grouping of swans in all its majesty and realism. They were some three meters tall, and despite their size, their bodies were perfectly proportioned, so that the stylized curve of their necks, famously praised by modernista poets, offered in these gigantic models a new and incontrovertible argument confirming it. The swans’ verisimilitude extended even to minor details, such as the color of their bills, a brilliant orange verging on red, with one exception alone, whose bill
Once again I discovered on the ground the kind of earth with which I was by now familiar: a worn, near-pulverized gravel that resembled dirty, powdery sand. As I walked along, the noises from outside became more subdued and, apart from the predictable trillings and screeches now and then, a threatening silence prevailed. I don’t know, to me the silence seemed the most visible proof of the falsity, or rather, the invention or manufacture, of an allegedly natural environment in the middle of a city. In the past, the park had probably been the site of farms or a post station, and then the city proceeded to engulf it. As I considered this, I realized that my dichotomous thinking was surfacing, because on the one hand, I love parks—or their funereal variant, cemeteries—and love them far more than any space devoted to natural habitat, or the alleged wild; but on the other, I never pass up a chance to slander them inwardly and verify, time and again, whenever I walk through them, the forced affectation that sustains them. At any rate, I suspect it’s a useless battle, lost in advance: who would have any interest in what I think about parks, or better still, who would care what I think about anything. That’s why, as I wrote before, I prefer untended parks, those that have been overtaken by neglect, because no one expresses any strong opinion about them and so they take on a still more autonomous life and, in that sense, presumably a more authentic one . . . Although of course, one can never know.
I now covered a long stretch on the diagonal path, where everything seemed to sleep, protected by the shade. It was an ideal path for walking aimlessly, indifferently. I kept seeing discarded candy wrappers and empty soft-drink cans on the ground. Some had been there for a long time, since they were weatherworn and had, in their own way, adapted to the colors in their surroundings. Because there were no benches or tables nearby, I surmised that on the weekends the path was heavily used. This made me want to know where it led to. From time to time I saw large trash cans, which were in any case brimming with papers and plastic bags. Not much else at all, besides the trees, the dry earth and the predominant shade. As had happened several times earlier on this outing, before long I spotted a light area toward the end of the path; and when I drew closer, some ten minutes later, I glimpsed a tableau that at first disturbed me, I don’t know why: over there a good-sized, tranquil lake lay hidden, and from where I was approaching I could make out some unexpected, gigantic swans, stock-still and arrayed as if in regimental formation. As I drew nearer to the water and the scene grew better lit, I felt a mixture of wariness and wonder. Wariness owing to something quite primal, for which I realized I wasn’t prepared: simply the size of those pedal boats in the shape of swans, which one associated more with some monstrous scale than with any idea of a replica or an amusement; and wonder because of the illusion of standing before an inanimate army, but one that seemed subject to a latent vitality, ready to awaken or be activated at any moment.
Once at the edge of the lake, amid thickets of greenery slanting out toward the water, which made for a certain difficulty in moving about, I could appreciate the grouping of swans in all its majesty and realism. They were some three meters tall, and despite their size, their bodies were perfectly proportioned, so that the stylized curve of their necks, famously praised by modernista poets, offered in these gigantic models a new and incontrovertible argument confirming it. The swans’ verisimilitude extended even to minor details, such as the color of their bills, a brilliant orange verging on red, with one exception alone, whose bill
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