Rafael Alonso: Marionete de restos

Once upon a time… — A king! — my little readers will soon say. No, children, you are wrong.

Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.

Carlo Collodi — The Adventures of Pinocchio

1. From when supposedly inanimate objects revealed their sentimentality

In fact, he immediately grabbed the sharp axe to remove the cork and chop it up; but as he prepared to take the first swing, he held his arm in the air because he heard a very low voice: — “Don't hit me too hard!” (...)

He picked up the axe again and gave the piece of wood a good whack. — “Ouch! You hurt me!” — shouted the same little voice.

•

The splinters and shavings that remained from the blows to the wood also spoke - and continued to cry on the studio floor. Bored and exhausted, the lord collected them like garbage. However, instead of dumping them, he nailed one on top of the other - and hung the garbage on the wall. Those that stubbornly remained were eaten by him.

• 

The desire was to preserve what had been rejected - to remake in a new form the parts sacrificed for the structure of another architecture - in an antithesis of the art of Kintsugi - instead of mending with gold to restore the form that was broken, to find gold in the loss of form, like a counter-technique that destroys in order to recreate - and preserve nothing. 

• 

The lord, overjoyed, immediately picked up the piece of wood that had caused him so much fear.

•

It is the painter's job to listen to the laughter or sobbing of the painting. I hear their chatter all the time. Many of them scream with fear before the cutting operations. There is a sadistic part to the operations, a pleasure in the cuts, the mutilations, the amputations. There is an even greater pleasure when the cuts are clean, and anger when I have to redo unclean cuts. 

• 

But before it could be handed over to the friend, the piece of wood jolted and slipped violently out of his hands. It crashed hard into poor Geppetto's slender shins. 

• 

What does a doorknob have to say anyway? What does a desk think, a button on a blouse? What does a pin or a tire remember? How can we understand, outside the borders of literature or the infinitudes of madness, that the most disenchanted objects, like a mere piece of wood, can have a temperament, a memory, a feeling or a lust?

2. From when paintings began to resemble clouds and clouds resembled elephants sleeping or crushing cities 

When these scraps were put together, they formed a strange teacup, which began to peek at us like clouds that draw a familiar face (embodying, in the fabric of waking life, the most disturbing nightmare) or like sleeping elephants. 

• 

On average, elephants sleep for only two hours and are capable of remaining without rest for up to 48 hours, making them the most insomniac mammals that exist.

•

They almost always sleep standing, only lie down every three or four days, and are able to dream. 

• 

(life is an old machine

that always shakes spits roars

about to burst into smoke

that needs space to work

so old that we do not even

recognize it as a machine

it looks like an animal, an amorphous beast

stain on floor a cloth fish on the ground

a melted elephant

one hundred years or much less) 

• 

— Because you are a stick puppet, and what is worse, you have a hard head. Upon hearing these last words, Pinocchio jumped up in fury, grabbed a wooden hammer from the bench, and threw it at the Talking Cricket. Perhaps he did not believe he could hit him, but as bad luck would have it, he got him right in the head, so badly that poor Cricket only had time for one last chirp-chirp-chirp, and then he was left there, smashed and stuck to the wall. 

• 

— Wooden eyes, why are you looking at me like that? Nobody answered. Then, after the eyes, he made the nose. Not quite finished yet, the nose began to grow: and grow, and grow, and grow. In a few minutes, it was already a big nose that would never end.

3. From when the machines began to complain, whine, whimper, throw themselves on the floor, knock over everything around them, feel ashamed, rethink their actions and beg for forgiveness 

at night the machines cry

pour out their feelings

through the iron openings

wires buttons screens boards chips

tears leak from the machines

perhaps a sigh will be heard

finally now they can

no longer need to be calculating after all

relieved

at night the machines cry

while animals

machinate 

• 

a puzzle that does not fit together, a competition without a task, a game that does not work, an immobile dispute, an unlimited gameboard, an engine that never fires, a collage of children with no shape or function: boxes tinged with nauseating mixtures and covered with pots, glasses and wires glued together, drawing a topography that is as obvious as it is indecipherable. 

• 

Brain in the chest

Heart in the head 

• 

When the palm of the hand sustained the entire weight of the collapsed body in a fall from its own height - and the humerus cracked in a continuous line that spread to the radius like a river or a mountain range - the sound that echoed in the skull was the crack of plywood crumbling through its many layers. 

• 

I have decided to make a beautiful wooden marionette: a wonderful one that dances, does sword fighting and somersaults. With it, I want to tour the world and get a good loaf of bread and a glass of wine. How is that? 

• 

Pinocchio closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. While the puppet pretended, Geppetto, with a little glue dissolved in an eggshell, stuck the two feet in place so well that you could not see the mark of the joint. 

• 

Brain in the foot

heart in the hair

4. From when all the colors of all things changed slightly in tone - and the world began to look like another world superimposed on the world we knew before

The colors that splashed out with each blow and were leftover unwanted after the finished marionette (and resurrection) slowly dripped down to the edges of the table, ran through the grooves in the floor, climbed the walls up to the windows, from where they fled and could never be trained again. 

• 

He dreamed of hanging gardens over commercial buildings, miraculous vines tinting the walls of hideous downtown buildings, flowers painting colors that do not exist and sprouting in the flowerbeds of avenues - as if colors could offer a new and greater meaning to life.

But the dreams did not stop there. When the coloring of the cracks in cities had finished, new pigments made their way into the streets and later dyed the staircases of buildings, apartment living rooms and bedrooms, office walls, parking lots, until there was nothing left untouched: on the beds of the houses, in the elevator shafts, from inside the toilets, in the public bathrooms, behind the counters of the stores and bars, in the pockets of shirts, through the teapot spouts, the silverware drawers, until there was no longer any place untouched by the new pigments. There was no more room for any person or animal or building or government or love plane. There were only colors. And that dream made him happy.

• 

In the movies of the past, the future is defined by materials, by the smoothness of surfaces, by angles and temperaments of things, and by colors.

• 

The colors were then swept up, collected and thrown away like the remnants of a carnival that was over - like ornaments that just moments before had represented the materialization of the party, of the best human spirit, and now were like the most unwanted leftovers, to be removed from sight as quickly as possible, and thrown into an incalculable pile of chromatic garbage. 

5. From when the puppet stood up and walked 

Pinocchio happened to fall ill. His sister was the same one who had poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. 

• 

Geppetto replied: "Does the day not have twelve hours? Those who walk in the daytime do not stumble, for they see the light of this world. When they walk at night they stumble, for there is no light." After saying this, he went on to tell them: "Our friend Pinocchio has fallen asleep, but I am going over there to wake him up." 

• 

Brain in the glass

Heart in the movies

• 

Geppetto, once again deeply moved, went to the tomb. It was a cave with a rock placed at the entrance. "Remove the rock," he said. The dead man's sister said: "Sir, he smells bad, it has already been four days." 

• 

The suture of the paint gives a finish and cohesion to the marionette of scraps. 

• 

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in linen bands and his face enveloped in a cloth. Geppetto said to them: "Take the bands off him and let him go." Many of those who had come to visit Maria, seeing what Geppetto had done, believed him.

6. From when paintings were sacrificed for the good of mankind and the verb became flesh and the wood lived happily ever after         

What shall we do to calm the sea? For the sea was becoming more and more tempestuous.

And Pinocchio said: "Lift me up and throw me into the sea, and the sea will calm down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you." However, they could not do it, for the sea grew more and more furious against them.

Then they cried out to the Lord and said: "Oh, Lord! We beg you; may we not perish because of the soul of this marionette."

And Pinocchio, quicker than ever, went forward like a rifle bullet. He was almost reaching the rock. But they lifted Pinocchio up and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased its fury.

Therefore, they feared the Lord with great fear; and they offered sacrifice to the Lord, and made vows. So the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Pinocchio.

The monster reached him. Inhaling, he drank up the poor puppet as if it were a chicken egg, and swallowed it with such greed and eagerness that when Pinocchio was sucked into the shark's body, he was hit so hard that he fainted for half an hour. And Pinocchio spent three days and three nights in the fish's entrails.                       

• 

The skeleton in the closet was exposed - not as a secret revealed, but in fact as a fracture that breaks through the skin - bones that reveal the structure, and therefore destroy it.

• 

PINOCCHIO MEETS AGAIN, IN THE BELLY OF THE FISH... WHO DOES HE MEET AGAIN? READ THIS CHAPTER AND YOU WILL FIND OUT!                                       

The more he advanced, the greater the clarity and definition. After a long walk, he finally arrived. And what did he find? I will give you a thousand chances to guess! He found a table set with a lit candle placed in a green glass bottle, and sitting at the table, an old man with hair as white as snow or whipped cream. He was nibbling on some live little fish, so alive that they sometimes escaped from his mouth.

— Oh, Daddy dearest, I have finally found you again! Now I will not leave you, never again, never again!                            

— So my eyes are not deceiving me? — replied the old man squinting his eyes — Are you really my dear Pinocchio?                                                  

— Yes! It is me! It is really me! You have forgiven me, have you not? Because you threw me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current of the waters surrounded me; all your waves and your swells have passed over me.

The waters have surrounded me to the soul, the abyss has enclosed on me, and the seaweed has wrapped itself around my head. But I will offer you a sacrifice with the voice of gratitude; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation comes from the Lord.

So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Pinocchio onto the dry land.                                   

•         

The cloths over the tits

Thongs over the dicks

Did not make us happier

It would seem 

•                                                                                           

That night, instead of going to bed at ten, Pinocchio worked until the stroke of midnight! And instead of making eight wicker baskets, he made sixteen. Then he went to bed and slept. In his dream, he seemed to see the Fairy, all beautiful and smiling, who after giving him a kiss, said:

— Well done, Pinocchio! Because of your good heart, I forgive you for all the mischief you have gotten up to today. Come to your senses in the future and you will be happy.

The dream ended there, and Pinocchio woke up wide-eyed. Imagine his surprise when he woke up and realized that he was no longer a wooden doll, but a boy like all the others. He went to look in the mirror and no longer saw the usual image of the wooden doll, but the lively and intelligent figure of a handsome young man with brown hair, blue eyes, and a cheerful, festive air. 

• 

night and day

wires, wood, paint, light bulb

low technology

•                                                          

— This abrupt change in our house is entirely your merit — said Geppetto.

— Why my merit?

— Because boys, when they are bad and become good, have the virtue of giving things a new and cheerful aspect, even to the inside of their homes.

— And the old wooden Pinocchio, where is he hiding?

— Look, there he is! — replied Geppetto, pointing to a large marionette leaning on a little chair, with its head turned to one side, arms hanging down, legs crossed and bent at the knees. It seemed a miracle that it stood upright!

Pinocchio turned to look, and after a while said to himself with great pride: “How ridiculous I was when I was a puppet! And now, how happy I am to have become a real boy!” 

• 

- a skull resting on a tibia a femur fitted into a humerus a phalanx screwed into a radio - the nose in the gap between the lips the chin in the pit of the eyes a breast in each armpit the feet between the legs the ear in the crook of the hand -

once again, Geppetto restarts his elephant.