Escobar writing sample
POSTSCRIPTCarlos René GarcÍa Escobar
It all began with the lunar eclipse. When we took count of ourselves, nobody had any shadow. The more we gestured, despite the pirouettes we made, our corresponding shadows never would appear.
It got worse when we tried to use electricity. But no. Nobody had a shadow anymore.
And then when the foreboding turned into fear, the fear turned into terror, and the terror spread for miles and miles, a general panic that provoked death for any reason at all; fear, fatigue, sunstroke, hallucinations, starvation and accidents of all types.
The normal processes of all the forces of life, of production, had already become lethal. Worse, when we took count of ourselves, the sun lacked the strength to cast human shadows.
Now, the survivors, we said little. We moved little and maintained a lost look. Nobody thought about what they were doing because already they were robots. We had lost the capacity of smell, of hearing, of sight, of touch. That’s why, suddenly, people began to die, as if by accident.
We had lost the notion of time, and of the eclipse we had no idea it had occurred.
We were forgetting already that we had shadows. Somebody or something had taken them from us. It had removed what gave us life. What made us live.
Myself, I too will forget forever this testimony I deliver now.
(from the book El Ultimo Katun; translated from the Spanish by current VSC resident Tom Andes, in collaboration with current VSC resident Alice Pedroletti)
