voices

there are two kinds of loneliness in the world: one is when there are no voices but your own. the other is when there are too many voices.

if you have ever been in the mountains, if you have heard your voice lost in the ocean, if you have lost yourself deep in a cornfield: you know the first, when you can hear nobody and nobody can hear you.

the second is much more common, given that people (and voices) are usually packed together in cities. tonight the voices in buenos aires are deafening.

i hear the restless voices of doormen in stony apartments. further on, cops on night shift and janitors at the bank.

upstairs, mothers and babies mumble to each other, hand-in-hand. a voice on an answering machine echoes through an empty apartment. lovers and siblings quarrel.

i walk past cafes with tables of wood and characters of stone. a young woman with eyes like a doe reaches for the hand of a young man: talk of nothing and their first hopeful cup of coffee. out front, old men rehash old subjects with new names.

father pushing a stroller. families sleeping in doorstoops. teenagers washing down cigarettes with bottles of beer. empanada deliverymen chatting with men selling newspapers, chatting with men selling flowers. people of all sorts waiting for the bus. the sound of all these voices and my footsteps, quiet, one in the morning, buenos aires.

previously there was The first unglued.org excursion
afterwards you have free-dom

comments

• navigate
• « previous item
• next item »
• present
• past
• weblog
• chronicles
• images
• content
• herald timeline
• subway bg
• etcetera
• about
• colophon
• cambiar idioma