Alex Waterhouse-Hayward: Punto y aparte

Memory for me is a recurring incident that surprises me when it simply happens, particularly when there is an element of association.

In my current obsession in reading Julio Cortázar’s complicated and convoluted novel, Rayuela I stopped at the following. I will attempt to translate it after.

“Pero este mate es como un indulto, che, algo increíblemente conciliatorio. Madre mía cuanta agua en los zapatos. Mirá, un mate es como un punto y aparte. Uno lo toma y después se puede empezar un nuevo párrafo.”

Rayuela, Capítulo 28 – Julio Cortázar

“But this mate is like a pardon, man, something incredibly pacifying. Goodness how much water i the shoes. Look, a mate is like a new paragraph. One drinks one and afterwards one can begin a new one.”(my translation)

As a little boy in Buenos Aires in school we had to take dictation. The teacher would read something. After each sentence she would say, “punto seguido”. This meant that although she had finished the sentence our period would represent the end of a sentence and the beginning of a new one but not a new paragraph. A new paragraph would follow the teacher saying “punto aparte”.

Perhaps I had not heard that term as I read in Cortazar’s novel since that boyhood of mine. An yet the memory came rushing in along with the aromatic smell and comfort of holding a mate in one hand and sipping from the bombilla.

In this quarantine, these memories shower me with a nostalgia that can presently not be satisfied.

More Cortázar

Toco tu boca

El beso
Pero el amor esa palabra
A un dios desconocido
Del colorado al amarillo
Reunión con un círculo rojo
La protección inútil
el tubo de dentífrico
Tu corazón desconcertado

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

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Monday, May 25, 2020

Punto y aparte