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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