SIN PIES NI CABEZA

Halfway between heaven and earth. Not too high, not too low. Or at least we would like to have that assurance. Knowing that the sun will continue to illuminate us, and at night, the moon and the stars. And down there, far below, the mud and the worms, which is some relief. It allows us to feel alive for a moment, half human, half divine.
Protected by demigods also half divine, half human, with whom we share bread and sorrow. Although perhaps I’m mistaken. We will never know exactly where the underworld lies. Nor, of course, where lies that place some call Paradise.

We’re in the dark, extinguished. Occasionally faintly illuminated, but never bright. Lit up by fleeting, ephemeral sparks that rise from our heads like momentary fires. And they flicker out again, as they enter the dense shadow. We live our lives confused, disoriented. Walking without heads or feet. Consumed by our misfortunes and our ailments. Our feet reluctantly drag our bodies because they don’t know where they’re going. Perhaps because our head doesn’t know how to guide us, how to lead us. It’s been trapped in the clouds and suddenly becomes a whirlwind, and it tries to see everything through the blind eye of a hurricane, or it simply decides to give up, to see nothing, to avoid vision, obscured by a thick tangle of absurd, chaotic, and incoherent ideas.

Tired feet wander freely, as if by themselves, trying to absorb some freshness, some freedom from their surroundings. Almost always barefoot, naked, as if they were not in the streets of a city but in the countryside, on the edge of a river, on the beach. The feet become longing, curious faces, wanting to see everything for themselves. Like strange radars, they search for paths on the ground and in the air. They peek out from car windows. Or they cling to a wall like the claws of a bird to avoid falling or being knocked down by an unexpected stumble. Or in a moment of rest, they transform into crab or spider legs, sometimes wanting to move forwards, backwards, right, or left. We grope in the darkness. Stumbling blindly. Because we have lost our compass, if we ever had one. There was supposed to be a bright horizon ahead of us, a range of possibilities, but it’s always remote, unreachable. We gaze out over the Malecón, the sea, without being able to glimpse the horizon, and then the faces of our feet turn their gaze in the opposite direction, pointing back at the city with their wet, blurry binoculars, but it’s also in vain. The horizon doesn’t seem to be there either. We stagger from one side to the other, searching for it, going round and round like dogs struggling in vain to bite their own tails. And sometimes the dizziness makes us vomit or a large puddle of tears forms on the ground. We try to reach something, but we don’t know what it is, let alone where it is. But we know we must search for it, pursue it, follow it. That’s why we anxiously look everywhere. Near or far. And if we’re lucky enough to guess a path, we follow it. Without caring much if it leads anywhere. We act like zombies, automatons, amidst suffocating heat from which no shade can save us. Unfortunately, not all of us fit in a refreshing bucket of water’s tiny ocean. (...)

"Tex fragment for the photobook 'Sin Pies ni Cabeza' by Orlando Hernández"