WEBVTT

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A man from the village of Neguá,

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on the coast of Colombia,

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managed to rise up in the sky

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and back he told:

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said that he had contemplated, from up there,

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the human life

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And said we are

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a sea of little fires

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The world is that, revealed:

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a bunch of people,

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a sea of little fires,

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There are never two of the same fire

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Each person shines with self light, amongst the others

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There's big fires and little fires and fires of all colors

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There's people of serene fire, that doesn't even feel the wind,

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and there's people of crazy fire, that fills the air with sparks,

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Some fires, silly fires, don't iluminate or burn

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But others...

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others burn life with so much desire

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that you cannot look them without blinking,

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and who approaches ignites.

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I would like you to talk, Eduardo,

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of Latin America, how do you see it today and how you see the world today

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Well, its a little complicated

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answer a question that covers Latin America and moreover the world

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I'm glad that you're not going to ask about Jupiter, Mars, the Moon...

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I guess that on our region we're living a very interesting period, beautiful

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very creative, very fertile

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Difficult to understand, sometimes,

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mainly when you look from outside and from above

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Things that we truly understand

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the things that we can understand with the reason and feel with the heart,

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are the things we're capable of looking

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from inside and from below

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If we look from above, with the charactheristic arrogancy of our democracy teachers

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from United States or from Europe

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and if beyound looking from above, we look from outside, we don't understand anything

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And don't understand anything for a reason, for a very important reason:

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It's that we're the region of the world that, probably, its the most diverse of all

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It's the home of the human diversities

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And this, that for me is a virtue, seen from outside and above is considered a serious defect

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Why? Because if you don't fit in the model from above and outside

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believe that is democracy, so here there's no democracy

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And the truth that proves that here democracy exists

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is that this is a kingdom of the contradiction and the diversity

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where its mixed and sometimes disagree, all the colors, the smells and the pains of the world

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There was a north-american poet, a woman, that died some years ago

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she was called Muriel Rukeyser

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She said a sentence, that for me, always seemed splendid to me, she said:

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"Yes, Yes fine, this thing that the world is made of atoms...

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the world is not made of atoms, the world is made of stories", she said

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I believe that yes, the world must be made of stories

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because its the stories that we tell, that we listen, recriate, multiply

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its the stories that permits to transform, the past in present

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And, also, permits to transform the distant into near

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what's distant into something close, possible and visible

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How was these losses and how did you face them and overcame them or not?

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The deaths?

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Losses in general

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Losses?

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The losses of things, I confess that never really matered to me

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But the losses of people yes, they hurted

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and, in some cases, lefted a little hole very difficult to fill

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But, well, this world is built like this

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its a fabric of encounters and missing

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of losses and gains

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and the best of my days is the one I didn't live yet

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each loss corresponds to an encounter that I still didn't have

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And luckily the reality is generous and doesn't fail on this

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Indeed I write to celebrate it

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and celebrating it I denounce everything that prevents us from recognizing

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on others and ouselves

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the multiple colors of the terrestrial rainbow

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We are much more than what people tell us we are

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The fear threatens

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if you love, you'll have Aids

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if you smoke, you'll have cancer

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if you breath, you'll have contamination

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if you drink, you'll have accidents

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if you eat, you'll have cholesterol

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if you speak, you'll have unemployment

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if walks, you'll have violence

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if thinks, you'll have anguish

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if you doubt, you'll have crazyness

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if you fell, you'll have solitude

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One of the most beautiful indigenous stories from Latin America

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tells that the maya's gods tried lots of times to create the woman and the men

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because they were very bored, the gods, and they wanted to have someone to talk to

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So, they made us from lots of different ways and failled, it was a disaster

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until they found a way that we were what we were, made of corn

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The maia gods made us from corn and that's why we have all the colors, like the corn

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not the transgenic corn nor the quimic that is being sold to us right now

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But, before they get to the corn, the maias god tried, for instance, to make the woman and men of wood

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and they were just perfect, but they had a grave inconvenience: they didn't breath

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and as they didn't breath, they didn't have words to say

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because from the mouth nothing was coming out

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and I always tought: if they didn't breath, they also didn't have dismay

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To have breath, you must have discouragement

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In order to raise you have to know how to fall

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in order to gain you have to know to lose

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and we have to know that life is like this, and that you fall and rise lots of times

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and that some people falls and never raise again, usually the most sensible

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the easiest to get hurt, the people that most pain feels to live

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the most sensible people are the most vulnerable

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And in exchange, these motherfuckers

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dedicate themselfs to torment the humanity, live very long lifes, they never die

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because they don't have a gland, that actually is very rare

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that its called consciousness

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and its what torments us through the nights

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Sleeping, saw us

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Helena had dreamed that we're in a queue

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a long queue in an airport, like any other airport

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and each passanger was bringing under their arms, the pillow where they had slept the night before

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and the pillows were passing, one after the other, through a machine

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that read the dreams on the pillows

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It was a machine detector of dangerous dreams

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for the public order

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The XX century, that was born announcing peace and justice, died bathed in blood

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and left a world much more unfair than the one it had encountered

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The XXI century, that also was born announcing peace and justice

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is following the steps of the last century

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On my childhood, I was convinced

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that everything that was lost on Earth, would go to the moon

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however, the astronauts didn't found on the Moon

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dangerous dreams, or betrayed promisses, or shattered hopes.

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If they're not on the Moon, where are they?

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Would it be that they got lost on Earth?

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Would it be that they hide on Earth?

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And are waiting, waiting for us?

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I would like you to talk a little bit about Montevidéu

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About how it is to live in Montevideu and about how you see Uruguai

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Montevideu is a city that I choose

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besides is the city where I was born

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but one is not condemned to choose the city where he was born

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and I choose it because its a breathable and possible to walk

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ie, its still possible to breath and walk on the city of Montevideu

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Its two hard luxuries to find in today's world

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and since I was little the teacher would tell me

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breath, Eduardito, its important!

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And you walk a lot?

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Yes, I do, I'm very much a walker

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Actually, I walk a lot the life, I really like to walk

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And you have a walking routine?

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No, what I like is to walk on the border of this that we call sea

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but in fact is kinda river/sea

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on the border of the water, I walk for hours

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and this way I save a fortune in psicanalyse

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I would like you to talk a little bit about something

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that I know its very important for you,

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the friendship

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yes, friendship is a form of love

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And like I was saying before, I think it exerts on the base of honesty

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because the other friendship, the one of "I love you very much" and "how beautiful you are"

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its not the true friendship

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Friends, when they're true friends, say what has to be said

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and this concerns people and the colective processes too

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So, friendship is sometimes difficult

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on this base, because it crosses complicated periods

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But, when we love for real, on love, on friendship, you love the lights and the shadows

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of each person or each place

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Wich you think it is, today, on this world, the role of literature, the role of art?

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The truth is that is very difficult to give an answer that doesn't seem

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pedantic or arrogant or that it doesn't seem that I attribute to the artists

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a privilegied role in the world

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Like if God kissed us on the cot and chose us to save the others

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I don't believe on this at all

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Don't believe in any type of aristocracy, either the talent one

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specially when the aristocracy of talent is auto-elected

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because its us, the literates, the artists in general

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that in the human zoo habits the cage of peacocks

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So we're continuously complimenting ourselves

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for our beauty and extreme intelligence that we have.

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And I disagree with this

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I think that the exercise of solidariety, when trully practiced, on the every day life

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is also an exercise of humility

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that teaches you to recognize yourself on others

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and to recognize the greatness hidden on the little things

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which implies to denounce the fake greatness on the little big things

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in a world that confuses greatness with little big

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Not long ago, in an interview that was made with me in Madrid

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a journalist told me:

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"Reading your books I feel

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that you have an eye on the microscope and the other on the telescope"

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and I thought it was a good definition of my intentions

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of what I would like to be writing

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be capable to look what is not looked, but deserves to be looked

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the little, the minuscule things of the anonymous people

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the people that the intellectuals usually despise

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this micro-world where I believe feeds for real the greatness of the universe

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and at the same time be capable of contemplate the universe

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through the keyhole, ie, from the small things being capable of looking the big ones

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to the great misteries of life

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the mistery of the human pain

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but also the mistery

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of the human persistency on this mania, sometimes inexplicable

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to fight for a world that is everyone's house and not the house of few

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and the hell of the majority

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and also other things

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the capacity of beauty

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of the most simple people, sometimes from the most plain people

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that has an unusual capacity of loveliness

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that, sometimes, its manifested on a song, on a graffiti, in a silly conversation

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the one that kids have

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what happens is that us, the adults, get occupied transforming them in ourselves

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and then we destroy their lifes

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but, we have to see what's a kid, no?

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are all pagan...

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Not long ago, I suffered a tragedy, my fellow died

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Morgan, my dog, my companion of walking

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that accompanied me also writting

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because, when I was losing my hand, I was writing for 18 hours already

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with his leg told me: "Lets go, lets go,

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life doesn't finish here, on books, come, lets walk together"

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and then we went the both of us

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and he died

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and I had been feeling a very bad music on my soul

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and, really, talking about losses, the loss of Morgan was very important for me

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it ripped a piece of my heart

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and well, I was very sad

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and I went for a walk here, on the neighbourhood

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and it was early, early morning, I couldn't sleep, so I got dressed, and went to walk

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and I stumbled a little girl, she must had two years, no more than two.

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that came playing on the opposite direction

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and she was greeting the grass, the little grass, the little plants

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"good morning, little grass", she said:"good morning little grass"

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ie, on this age, we're all pagans,

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and, at this age, we're all poets

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later the world occupies itself to belittle our souls

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that's what we call growing, developing

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I freed myself from the hug, go out on the street

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and on the sky, already clearing, it draws, finite, the Moon

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the Moon has two nights of age

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me, one.

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Is there still space for utopy in today's world?

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Yes, in the sense that gave her Fernando Birri

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in a sentence that, unfairly, its atributed to me

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In one of my books I quoted his sentence, saying that it was his

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but people atributed to me, poor Fernando, but its his

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We were togheter at the Cartagena das Índias, a beautiful coast colombian city

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and we did a lecture together on the university

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a little on the style of the nephews of Donald Duck

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each one started a sentence that the other finished

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and at the end, one of the students rise up and asked him, not me

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"What's the pourpose of utopia?"

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and he answered the best way

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I never heard a better answer

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he said that he asked himself this question every day

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what's the pourpose of utopia? Assuming utopy serves for something...

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He said: "See, utopy its on the horizon

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and if its on the horizon I'll never reach it

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because, if I walk ten steps, utopy is going to walk ten steps

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and if I walk twenty steps, utopy is going to put itself twenty steps further

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in other words I know that I'll never, ever, reach it

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what's the pourpose?

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For that, to walk"

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Eduardo Galeno was born on Uruguay in 1940

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On childhood wanted to be a football player

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In 1971 published "The Open Veins of Latin America"

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Currently he walks every day, while writting Helena's dreams