“It’s only fair, it’s only fair,” thought Mister Calvino, while he continued to perfect this specific technical and metaphysical skill every Saturday morning.
Games
Since they hadn’t defined the rules, it wasn’t very clear:
“We need to define the rules to determine who won, if I did or if you did,” said Mister Duchamp to Calvino, once all the pieces had been gathered up and the game had been concluded.
“But now, after we’ve played?”
“There have to be rules,” insisted Mister Duchamp, “so that we know who’s won.”
“But who’s going to define the rules now?” asked Calvino.
“You or me.”
“Well, me or you?”
“You can begin,” suggested Mister Duchamp, “and then I’ll finish.”
“No,” retorted Calvino. “You begin; each one of us will formulate a rule alternately, and I will define the last one.”
“All right. Ten?”
“Ten rules.”
They then began, alternately, to formulate rules for the game that they had just played, each one of them trying to define the rules in such a way that, albeit a posteriori, one would emerge the victor.
“A study in Nature magazine has revealed that the Archaeopteryx, which became extinct some 147 million years ago and is considered to be the link between dinosaurs and feathered vertebrates, could fly like modern-day birds.”
So there was nothing new, thought Mister Calvino, putting down his newspaper. Contemporary sparrows and recent eagles flew like the extremely outmoded Archaeopteryx. It was said that they used exactly the same technique. Essentially, they rise up using the air (or keep stable once they reach the desired height) and don’t fall. Not falling was part of their nature, and they knew how to maintain it, which is not entirely a disaster. We could say that birds do not forget their essence: they have good memories. Ever since the age of the Archaeopteryx, they have not forgotten that particularly enviable talent of not falling, which is flying.
But one had to admire the excellent memory of the sparrow, who flew exactly like its ancestor the Archaeopteryx, though, on the other hand, one could also criticize a lack of evolution, obviously the outcome of an absence of new ideas. Thus, calling something that flew in exactly the same way as the Archaeopteryx conservative does not seem to be an outrageous insult. Conservative sparrows! Calvino exclaimed to himself. No new gestures, no unexpected progress in the past few millennia, nothing: in terms of locomotion they stuck firmly to an almost frightening monotony.
Over millions of years, their disdain for the force of gravity — which is an admirable trait — has been expressed in the same way — which has been criticized.
But here is a question that, at first glance, might seem quite absurd: Would modern-day birds know sounds that were unknown to the Archaeopteryx? Would they know new melodies?
This is not, in fact, entirely improbable, thought Mister Calvino, since the modern world was full of new sounds, noises that belonged only to this century or the preceding one: the noise of planes at the moment of take-off or even the noise that we imagine when we see the white streak of a plane that has passed by a while ago in the air; the sounds of typography machines that are so utterly different when they are printing a book of poetry or an essay — as though the machines were well versed in literature! — likewise, the sound when one turns the pages of a twenty-first-century novel, the sound of a Ping-Pong ball escaping four eager but clumsy hands on the floor tiles; the sound of the plastic of a cup that fearlessly falls from a height of three meters and survives, unscathed; or even, for those who paid attention, the sound of the two eyelids of a child who is unsuccessfully trying to master the art of blinking only one eye; in short, thousands of sounds from this century that are undoubtedly heard by the sharp ears of contemporary domestic birds and are then transmitted to wild birds who listen when they pass by a window. Ears that, along with the brain (nothing very refined, but which, despite everything, exists, requires space, functions), ears that then, along with the brain, digest these sounds they hear, and it is no surprise that the sounds they subsequently emit are a result of this digestion, since what is emitted is an effect of what is received — even in birds.
Yes — the contemporary sparrow could say, if it spoke face-to-face with the Archaeopteryx, from 147 million years ago — yes, it’s true that I fly in exactly the same way as you, but I — the sparrow would say — I know new songs.
One Morning
Sometimes, obsessed by methods, Calvino would say, “I am interested in the same thing in many different ways.”
At other times, obsessed by things, “I am interested in many different things in the same way.”
Sometimes, confused, “I am interested at the same time in many different ways in many different things.”
Today, upon awaking, lazy, “I am not interested in anything, however I do this in many different ways.”
He didn’t read, he didn’t write, he didn’t think, he didn’t tell stories, he didn’t mentally work out combinations between things: he sat, looked at his shoes, scratched his head, lay down on the sofa — first all curled up, then stretched out, his head first on one side, then on the other, first on his back, then on his tummy — he got up, went to the kitchen, drank a glass of water, looked out of the window, observed the weather, opened the window, put his hand outside, checked how cold it was, felt the wind, closed the window, straightened the key in a drawer, unbuttoned a button on his shirt, walked around the room, and then once again sat down on the sofa.
Some More News
Calvino opened that day’s newspaper. He became irritated, but not overly so. It had been clear to him for quite some time now: “This isn’t a country, it’s a business.”
Then he skipped to the last few pages, where he read the following news item:
Woman Hit by a Small Meteorite
A 76-year-old-woman was hit by a meteorite (the size of a hazelnut) while in her garden. British scientists believe that the meteorite was part of an asteroid situated between Mars and Jupiter.
“It is interesting to think that the universe, and some of its more distant parts, can have an instinctive flair for mischief, just like a six-year-old child,” thought Calvino. Just like some abominable kids throw water from a second-floor window so as to unerringly land on the bald head of an unfortunate passerby, the universe too has its very own old-fashioned catapult and once in while it entertains itself by launching a stone at a septuagenarian who made the mistake of stepping out of her house to take care of the three roses in her garden.