On the vale of tears… and laughter

There’s a Latin-American song I like very much. Its title is Cucurrucucú Paloma and tells the story of a dove who cries endlessly for the love of his life. The thing I like the most is that the lyrics refer to this longing as a ‘pasión mortal’ that eventually kills the dove. But, I say, is not life in general a mortal passion?

On the one hand, yes, you want to live; on the other hand, the more you live the closer you’re to death. It’s like the story Paul Auster tells in his Trilogy of New York about the explorer who was trapped in his igloo for a number of days. Every breath he exhaled freezed to the inside of his igloo. So with each breath the walls got thicker. Not breathing meant dying, and so did breathing.

I don’t want to sound tragic, though. Quite on the contrary, in three hours it will be my twenty-eighth birthday and I like what I see and have. Also, and this is perhaps what proves that life is a mortal passion, I look forward to growing up, travelling much more, eating new dishes, drinking (increasingly better) red wine, reading lots of books, watching many more films and operas and enjoying the company of my friends and relatives. And then, oh well…