A month after his death, back in 1694 more or less, the roads of Japan longed for the footsteps of his straw sandals and the words he left hanging from the roofs of the homes that took him in. Like these:
Days and months are travelers of eternity.
Thus pass the years.
Those who navigate the sea or ride horses across the land are forever traveling, until they succumb under the weight of time.
Many are the men of old who died along the way.
I have only succumbed to the temptation of clouds, the vagabonds of the sky.
December 28. NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE
Oscar Niemeyer began the year 2007 with one hundred years under his belt and eight buildings under construction.
The liveliest of all architects had not tired of transforming, project by project, the skyline of the world.
His aged eyes were not fixed on the high heavens that humiliate us; they gazed freshly, happily at the drifting clouds, his source of inspiration for the next creation.
In the clouds he discovered cathedrals, gardens of incredible flowers, monsters, galloping horses, birds with many wings, exploding seas, flying foam and undulating women who offered themselves in the wind and with the wind flew off.
Every time doctors put him in the hospital, believing his time had arrived, Oscar killed his boredom composing sambas and singing them with the nurses.
And that is how this cloud hunter, this pursuer of fugitive beauty, left his first century of life behind and kept right on going.
December 29. THE ROAD IS DESTINY
The drinking was copious when we bid good-bye to the departing year, and I got lost in the streets of Cádiz.
I asked how I could get to the market. An old man peeled his back off the wall and very grudgingly replied, pointing nowhere: “You do whatever the street tells you.”
The street told me and I made it home.
A few thousand years before, Noah navigated without compass or sails or even a rudder.
His ark drifted wherever the wind bade him, and he was saved from the flood.
December 30. WE ARE MADE OF MUSIC
When I cock my ear
I hear tunes that come from far away,
from the past,
from other times,
from hours that are no longer
and from lives that are no longer.
Perhaps our lives
are made of music.
On the day of resurrection,
my eyes will open again in Seville.
— Boabdil, the last king of Muslim Spain
December 31
VOYAGE OF THE WORD
In Rome in the year 208, Quintus Serenus Sammonicus wrote Liber medecinalis, a book in which he revealed his discoveries in the arts of healing.
Among other remedies, this physician to two emperors, poet and owner of the best library of his time, proposed an infallible way to avoid tertian fever and keep death at bay: by hanging a word across your chest day and night.
The word was “Abracadabra,” which in ancient Hebrew meant and still means, “Give your fire until the last of your days.”
Index of Names
ABC, 271
Abraham, 59
Acosta, Juan Pío, 56
Adam, 22, 125, 384
AES Gener, 329
Afghanistan, 137, 180, 313, 327, 369
Africa, 38, 62, 96, 107
Aguilar, Juana, 40
Alabama, 7
Alagoas, 71, 103
Alaska, 88
Aleksandr, Prince, 260
Aleksandra, 260
Alexandria, 190
Alice, 217, 311
Allah, 20, 76
Allende, Salvador, 272
Alvarado, Pedro de, 243
Amaru, Túpac, 152
Amazon, 97, 381
Ameghino, Florentino, 294
America, 4, 26, 245, 307, 311, 312
American Psychiatric Association, 112
Amsterdam, 246
Andalusia, 118
Andes, 86, 192, 235
Andrei, Prince, 260
Anselmo, Lance Corporal, 9
Anthony, Susan B., 186, 187
Antigua, 389
Aphrodite, 45
Appalachians, 174
Aqualtune, 71
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 76
Aranha, Felipa Maria, 71
Araracuara, 84
Arbenz, Jacobo, 127
Argentina, 12, 13, 53, 73, 92, 161, 182, 183, 198, 293, 370
Aristotle, 76
Artemis, 218
Artigas, José, 277, 278
Aswan, 190
Atahualpa, 171
Athens, 222, 265
Attar, Farid al-Din, 386
Auschwitz, 162
Australia, 23, 26, 50, 79
Austria, 163, 271
Aventis, 49
Ayacucho, 36
Azurduy, Juana, 247
Baghdad, 5
Bahia, 71
Baker Street, 160
Balaam, 59
Balaguer, Emma, 305
Ballestrino, Esther, 132
Banderas, Antonio, 352
Barbosa, Moacir, 215
Barings Bank, 63
Barnum, Phineas T., 206
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth, 25
Barrett, Rafael, 9
Barrett, Soledad, 9
Bashō, Matsuo, 393
Bay of Pigs, 122
Bayer, 49
Bayer, Osvaldo, 53
Beatles, The, 47
Beijing, 48
Belgium, 271, 329
Bell, Joshua, 14
Bellarmino, Roberto, 158
Benedict, Pope, 162
Benga, Ota, 155
Benguela, Teresa de, 71
Berlin, 17, 62
Bernal, Lorenzo, 172
Bernays, Edward, 104
Bianchi, Francisco, 91
Bible, the, 59, 63, 76, 125, 205
Black Corsair, the, 281
Blagojevic, Petar, 163
Blanco, Hugo, 349
Bly, Nellie, 348
Boabdil, 396
Bobadilla, Rosa, 285
Bolívar, Simón, 244
Bolivia, 28, 73, 308, 309, 314
Boninsegna, José Antonio, 370
Boniperti, Giampiero, 212
Bonpland, Aimé, 204
Boop, Betty, 251
Borges, Jorge Luis, 125
Borneo, 226
Botswana, 297
Bouazizi, Mohamed, 383
Braslavsky, Guido, 92
Brazil, 9, 24, 39, 44, 56, 71, 103, 209, 211, 215, 216, 361, 373
Brecht, Bertolt, 125
Bretton Woods, 223
British Air Council, 26
British Empire, 63, 142, 182, 249
Broadway, 251
Bronx, 155
Brown, John, 368
Browning, Robert, 25
Bruno, Giordano, 158
Buenos Aires, 177, 178, 198, 247, 294
Buñuel, Luis, 73
Busch Circus, 292
Bush, George W., 5, 292
Butler, Smedley, 18
Cabral, Amilcar, 280
Cádiz, 395
Caesar, Julius, 5, 83
Caiboaté, 46
California, 91, 119
Calpurnia (Pisonis), 83
“Cambalache”, 139
Canada, 318
Canary Islands, 70
Cancún, 364
Cândido, João, 361
Cantinflas (Mario Moreno Reyes), 73
Cañizares, Manuela, 244
Capone, Al, 18
Caracas, 328
Cardano, Girolamo, 289
Caribbean Sea, 122, 256, 305
Carroll, Lewis, 217
Cartagena de Indias, 37
Carter, Howard, 143
Carthage, 265
Caruso, Enrico, 119
Carver, George Washington, 7