DELITESCENT

 

Delitescens is a beautiful Latin word meaning to hide and in the midst of so much noise and screaming, many of us have no other choice but to hide.

We fled to the desert looking for an apartment that would distance us from the media horde. The loudspeakers of the ether keep referring to the Corona Virus. It has become the fray and trough of the media. I'm not making this cataphasis or affirmation out of hand, I'm not crazy either, although sometimes I look back with anger and feel the sting of memories that hurt me.

My soul is raw and that's why I write from this catabulum. zaquizamí literary zulo, watering hole and refuge or stable in the basement of my home converted into an oratory, smoking room, desk, library and apiarium (apiary) where I drink the attic sweetness of the honey of the word.

All that is no longer useful for anything is to my liking. They say that I am a man who lives in yesterday and I take refuge in the machicolations of the old wall of York sentinel in my embrasure listening to the evolutions of the River Ouse that flows until wedlock with the Thames, the winds change. Yesterday we had milk, today the terral is blowing and you, Etsi, where will you be? What will have become of your life? You married? like me. And yes, I went through the vicarage again, but this second substitute love for what you and I had was a bitter pill, I put a cross on my back, I rented an Aragonese mule that kicks me every day, I hired an executioner. Noramala, because my second wife became my henchman. She became the arráez that whipped my back with the whip of ignominy and I have been paddling through the seven seas under the shadow of that whip that whips the poor unsuspecting comitres condemned to galleys. It is the fate that awaits the insane and the criminal. I regret my luck because far from you this is not life. Fate treated me cruelly, although I think I deserved it for the mistreatment I gave you, the jealousy, the voices, the recriminations. I live surrounded by papers and written words that the wind will carry. Sometimes girdled with a bundle, I sing the trade. Hear us God. I had a sweet tooth for words because I firmly believe in the axiom that in the beginning was the Word and words keep a bit of that divine breath. Am I crazy lost? They have all shed their skin (versipelis) I continue to adhere to my principles. Am I a diamond in the rough or a flower in agraz which has not quite matured? Quiet. The peristyle is still in its sheath. It dawns every day. To all this is directed my cry against the sidewalk preachers. The emulators of Fray Gerundio de Campazas have returned to the gatherings. They no longer speak of eternal life but of methods to preserve health. Radio Carcamal vociferates against toxins and Don Rafa turns his cape into a coat, vociferating against the dangers of cancer, crassitude, sedentary life and lack of exercise. The whole country puts on their sandals and runs down the sidewalks. A barrage of information tells us about the dangers of Covid, which has become the driving force of the system. Internet pages are a perpetual obituary that brings us every morning the list of the deceased. Against the grain of his sermons, I am not going to quit smoking no matter how much these gentlemen thunder my meninges warning me of the dangers of tobacco, there will always be an enemy in perspective, someone to fight against. Once it was the Russians. When I lived on the Island of the Dead (Staten Island) I was always on the job site listening to the news from Manhattan Radio WW700W7. This station from time to time interrupted its broadcasts. An alert siren sounded and at last the smug voice of an announcer emerged to make a call:

—Dear listeners, this is an alert drill. Attention. Attention. If it had been a real emergency, we would give them instructions on how and where to go to one of the different shelters on this island.

I was scared to tune in to such a message. I was thinking of the war of the worlds. They are already here. The Russians are coming. As in Wells's War of the Worlds that spread panic in that capital. I thought that we live in a world in which fiction is intertwined with reality and in the supremacy of the media to dominate the masses. He was Jimmy Carter's America, a disciple at the Annapolis war academy of Admiral Rickover, a specialist in intercontinental missiles. It was the 70's when the Yankees lived in full effervescence of the wars of the galaxies. The Soviets were the bad guys, just like the virus and tobacco are now. Ronaldo Reagan won it and it would determine the fall of the USSR. For my part, poor little Spaniard born in a provincial city, an episcopal city like York had landed since the Middle Ages on the Big Apple, the emporium of the future, the automatic city that Julio Camba said. He was nothing but a ruinlicker