THE LEGEND OF THE GOLDEN

From the sky, cities were seen as huge swarms of cells that glowed and darkened permanently. The shadows advance or retreat to the swaying of the winds that seemed to accommodate the new circumstances. The shadow of death had left us. The struggle of science , doing research with its thousands of eyes in the depths of living beings, and listening in the different forms that it presented, they could never defeat it. It didn't matter that they cornered her momentarily. She multiplied because she needed her shadow to hover over all of us. Some despised her and amused themselves by calling her at the wrong time. Yet she was rushing to do her duty. He quickly organized his abode. Then came the rigidity of the body, and very soon the worms merged with it into a new being that was integrated into nature. He patiently spun the decomposition of one life, transforming it into another, until it became part of the matter from which it had been germinated. He enjoyed all of this. I can't ...

Everyone knows that the first forms of life appeared at the bottom of the ocean, and then populated the earth's surface . It is no coincidence that most of our bodies are made up of water, and that without it none of the living beings that we know can exist. Furthermore, who can assert against the fact that, just as man has wanted to fly, he has also wanted to live at the bottom of the sea. At least we all want to know that liquid and majestic mass that moves on the surface of the earth. Now, you may wonder why I am telling you this story. It happens that it is about many insatiable fishermen who wade through rivers and seas in search of fortunes. In the sea I have seen the scientific advance used to satisfy the human appetite. In return, I never tire of observing the sky and counting the stars that make up the constellation Pisces . I don't need nets or lures for fish. I dive into the ocean in the dead of night and find the fish in the starlight scales that shine in the sky...

My residence is in the gloom of the finite and infinite. Light and shadow are my companions through becoming without beginning or end. From me the constellations came out into the immensity of the void to return in a concentric sphere to the jaws that like a black circle absorbs all matter. Above space I build the floating palaces of stars, planets and constellations that move like clouds for centuries impossible to count. Sometimes I let the world go on throbbing with fire. Others, that it walks under the glacial cold that crushes the fire and makes it solid. From time to time I ride the steed of speed and light through the gardens of outer space, sowing life on the planets that collect water in their vessels. My breath, I distribute it in bulk. Life lulls in my eyes of fire. Intelligence overflows beings because I allow it. There is no man or living being that is a product of mine. Life is so ephemeral that a single breath was enough to wander through space. As my years are infinite,...

The model wants to move. She is tired of being in the same position. He winks at the painter. Through the window you can see a sunny day. He moves his hand deftly. She speaks intensely. He has never been able to like such little music. He tells about a tragedy in his personal life. One day when I was accompanied by a friend, two guys armed with knives came out. They were going through a desolate part of the city where there is only stubble and streets that look more like extensive pastures of sand and stone. -Go away, they tell the friend. -Yes, do it, answered this one. Outside, the owner of the house knocks on the door. He threatens to bring in the police. They cannot live in the room without paying the rent. It plays the ignorant. With her clothes stained with oil, she only has her eyes and her heart for the model. She replies that they will pay her with the proceeds from the sale of the painting. The classical music broadcast on the radio inspires him. Some houses can be seen in th...

The departure left an immense cloud of steam at the station stop behind the sparks produced by the wheels as they moved on the rails. Nobody, nobody knew at what moment he would leave. It was as if the vision of the train disappeared for the passengers who did not manage to board in time, and who also wanted that imaginary adventure. We only realized that we started when the porter let us enter through the door of the car near the driver. Access closed, there were no more questions to be asked. The train was going at incredible speed. It crossed the space without allowing us to quantify the elapsed time. We passed the cities with their neon lights illuminating us at nights that rather resembled astronauts who, without the force of gravity, floated in outer space among the bolides of light that like blasts of air expelled the stars that were moving away in the immensity of the firmament. Sweaty we went through the rails carried by the framework that crossed the distances hurting the voi...

Last night in a lonely alley I tried to rob the guy I'm telling you. It came tumbling from side to side. I walked over quickly and grabbed him by the flap of the jacket, while it pulled him close to the wall. He asked what if I killed those who didn't have a penny in their pockets. -I said yes, even with many money. He proceeded to get rid of the jacket and shirt. He showed me a stain on his heart, in case I had a revolver. -I answered no. Then he pointed to his right side, at the end of one of the floating ribs, in a wound that was bleeding. He told me to proceed. I did it ruthlessly with the knife in my hand. Dumbfounded I looked at him. It was the same. Without saying anything, he continued on the path he was leading. If you believe as I do, it could be Jesus Christ who made me such a charade.

The magician has been harassing man for centuries. Live in the immensity of the void sheltered from the sinister shadows left by the lights of the stars. It levitates its shadow through the centuries and lets us reach its magical breath in strange sounds that blind us with its hidden forces. The fight against these has always been because it is not a mortal enemy. His stubbornness in colonizing human mysteries made us do a thousand times all our intelligence, so as not to fall into the darkness of the cosmos.  On that occasion the invention of fire served to light the torches in all corners of the planet that dazzled the conjurer and forced him to illuminate the shadows that travel in infinite space. Knowing his failure, he built an imaginary mirror located between the lights of the stars, and made the lights travel fleetingly, breaking our hearts. That was how everything we did fell apart and the matter turned out to be an enchanted dream. We also had to break that spell, because ...

For centuries the human being made life impossible on earth. Atomic tests, acid rain, radioactive waste, deforestation, global warming, evaporation from the sea, etc .; they made the planet the garbage dump of the universe. And also during all this time the man who put satellites after satellites around the earth managed to build immense swarms of rings that revolved around it. Thus they were building countless artificial cities that housed the vegetation and fauna that they could save. Now man lives in an artificial world, waiting for the day that he can return to what was once his paradise.

While they were making love, in another region of the earth, a false alarm caused by a series of technical failures that coincided with the verbal confrontations between the heads of the great powers caused that the electrical flows   to be unleashed between the electrical flows of the computers the automatic order to fire anti-missile rockets. The announced world war had begun. Clara and Nestor, ecstatic, saw the reflection of the light that suddenly illuminated the earth through the window of the room. A slight heat invaded them, since the explosions had been from the other side of the earth. They believed it was dawn. The large fire mushrooms only gave them time to dress and go out into the street scared. Great human tides did the same in other parts of the globe. The couple without understanding what was happening, hugged each other. The same man was the exterminator of his own fellow men.

The bomb exploded silently. Without making a sound, it raised a cloud of dust that swept across the land. One dog turned into thousands of puppies. One cat in other thousands. And so on. So the world got bigger by making living and inanimate things smaller. Man multiplied and spread in the universe. The same bomb forced him to disable the rest because they no longer served what they were created for.

Aura, she said in my ear: -Varga Vila wrote "Aura o las violetas", in honor of the love he feels for me. I hugged her and gave her a kiss trying to keep the jealousy out of my head. I took her to a small hotel in the Santafé neighborhood, and we made love. I promised to tell Vargas Vila about us, so that he would have no illusions. He insisted that I tell him nothing. I nodded my head. I cleared my throat a bit, and we made love again.

- Mommy! Mommy! The mirror makes faces at me. -Don't be careful my love. Sitting on the seat of the mother's dressing table, she rubbed the glass with her hands, winking at him and looking at the trees and mountains that reflected the mirror. -Mirror, mirror, it said. I would like to enter and know your world.  He gladly accepted. She felt smaller than before. Inside he found a cat and mouse playing like two old friends. Those were the times when cats no longer ate mice, and they did not have fleas or transmit diseases. They were guinea pigs in scientists' labs. He jumped into a drop of water vapor rising from the damp earth to the clouds. This is how he got to know the natural flora and fauna of the land. Later he returned in drop of water that fell on a petal of one of the roses in his home garden. - Mommy! The mirror keeps making faces at me. -Quiet little daughter; make faces at him too. And the girl happy because the mother did not notice the  stroll ...

With each step he takes, it seems that he is going to lose his balance, and yet when he takes the other, he returns and recovers it. "How cold he feels, the friend tells me." It was really cold. With what the money lasted us, we had a few beers. We talk about his profession. He was a doctor. Doctor of the National University. It ended a few years ago. Right now he is working at the San Juan de Dios hospital. He's the head of the psychiatry department. That said. Talk about medicine at all times. That his father did not want him because he was born on December 24, and because he was very Catholic, he never accepted that his son was born on the same day as Jesus. "Waht  a silly, he kept saying." He was - according to him - very dedicated to science from a very young age, so much so that he made the smallest instruments that man has imagined. But the great industry stole part of his inventions, and here he is as an employee in one of the best hospitals that Colombi...

 Chapter 1. Amparo   She was nuts the day his father kicked him in the butt, because he bent down to pick up the pieces of porcelain that the lunch plate was turned into. She was so mad that she often ran off naked into the street. So, the old man, in order not to let her out, would raise her to the roof of the house, which amused her a lot, because she would go not only on the roofs of her own, but also those of the neighbors, stamping her feet and screaming with her arms crossed over her breasts : - Motherfuckers ...! Son of...! Chapter 2. MARLENI To her, the day I yelled at her in front of my neighborhood friends: - Bye, mommy! He wanted to kill me with his eyes. - Mommy, your mother, son of ...! We all laughed, and we watched her stride away. That same day as always, I passed by at night, and I saw that he was chatting at the gate of his house with his sisters. They looked at me and smiled. It was when she was all serious she told me: -Walk to s...

  Has long hair. She wears a pleated skirt that covers her knees and a blouse that reveals her silicone breast. As he walks he outlines more than a woman. Say hello to another who is standing in the doorway of a cafeteria. - What was there woman, how are you doing? -Good, answers the other one. There are others that are standing on the sidewalks of the streets, or leaning on the walls of the hotels and brothels in the sector. The one in the story greets a passerby: -Goodbye, daddy. Go to a patrol radio and pick up your pace. The others move from their places. One of the policemen on the patrol radio yells: - Hey! You fag! What does a woman's dress do? -And that to you, what do you care? The others almost fell apart from the laughter.

I've always been a fantasy salesman. It all started with a friend who founded the first store of these and ornaments for wholesale sales in Bogotá. Before, they were sold in china shops and other businesses of different kinds. Although there were many manufacturers, none of them had the idea of ​​organizing a business dedicated to distributing them. That's how I started. He sold wholesale in the neighborhoods of Bogotá, or in nearby towns. Little by little I was acquiring enough clientele to sustain me. Before I had dreamed of being a legal professional, but the environment got me into this field. However, I was saving nothing. The wholesale fantasy businesses prospered until smuggling arrived that competed with the national one at a better price, and of better quality. Many manufacturers went bankrupt, while others progressed in San Andresito in such a way that they changed their businesses for theirs. To friend came up with the idea of ​​creating a shopping center that woul...

  I'm a salesman, and my job is to do it on buses. Before I´ve done others in the midst of that law of searching that life in the cities forces us to do. For days and months I saw how in some shopping centers groups of children, young and old, gathered, buying books, sweets, garbage bags and other trinkets that were offered at retail in different sectors of the city. I was very tempted by the idea of ​​doing the same. I thought it was an easy job, but no. The first time I boarded a bus to sell some books on natural medicine that gave me a good result after paying the ticket and asking the driver's permission, I lost part of the profits. Or rather: That was my first shift, as the salespeople say in slang. My first lesson: Never sell on crowded buses. Even though I won, when I came out several books got lost in the hands of unscrupulous travelers, and I still liked them. After that day I continued doing this type of sales on the buses. However, I risked going up where others ha...

Some believe I work with a transportation or survey company. Others, that I give the lucky number to the drivers. But no. I am a bus calibrator. Let me explain: For those who do not live in a metropolis such as Bogotá, a chaotic city where the fight for the penny reigns, and thus do not confuse me with the street children who stand on the corners of the avenues, and they hit with sticks the tires to check their pressure. No. My job is a new profession in this city. We are still few. Once I began to think that it would be a good business to tell each bus driver how long it took him another bus on the same route, or just tell him if he was going ahead and very close. Among this guild they themselves spoke of the fight for the penny. Well, one day I made up my mind. I got myself a notebook and a pencil and I started to write down the numbers of the bus routes and the bus companies in an organized way. It was not easy. Although not all do it, I have tabulated the tracking of buses and rout...

  They tell me female shoplifter. Since I was a little girl I have been like this. I accompanied my mother in this trade. While I was asking the owner of an establishment for an item, I wrapped it   up with thousands of tricks to entertain him, while very sneakily I went inside, rummaged in the windows and took out what I could, and especially the money. Without further ado we sneak away. Many times they caught us, but what could they do if I was a restless little girl. It seems that previously these were dedicated to stealing clothes. That was his specialty. While one was deceiving a merchant, the other hid some garment under the naguas and carried it between her legs. But no, now we take everything we can, even if it is a jewel, a radio, anything of value. We usually work in a group since we cannot do it alone. Sometimes my colleagues do theater, while one asks the owner for any merchandise, another grabs the other's face to mislead the customers, and thus sneak away with so...

Standing in a challenging position, her hands on her waist, she angrily watches the woman who from the window of an old building reveals a dark and smelly room. It gives her the same nausea that she got when one of her mother's clients raped her. She listened to the advice of her friends who explain the importance of having sex without feeling the pleasure of surrender. She does it as a revenge for the mother who banded her and scratched her for trying to do the same as her. Therefore, wear makeup. She wants to feel more female than the mother herself. It doesn't matter if they notice her girlish face.

  Tired of navigating uncertain paths, he slowly strikes the soul and takes a deep breath to endure the mystery of death. Very slowly it breaks away the sweat of dreams. The ether splashes the room and flutters tremulously the environment caressing the universe that beats its stars between explosions of atoms and traveling lights. Quickly drains the sip of life eager to meet its destination after a hectic past. He haggles over the little that remains of his own, ready to indulge his feelings on the shore of the stars. This urges him towards the future without pause, leading him to look at his image in the reflection of the shower of stars that move in rhythm towards infinity. It is seen in another time without future or space. Cultivate the land with the dew of tears shed on beards weary from the rigor of yesteryear. It is progressively repeated in diffuse instants, as if death were the one suffering on the carriage of life. It has never been the same throughout history. His image ...

The other looks at me silently. I look at him with the same look. There is no handshake or talk that breaks the silence. We both recognize each other after knowing our existence for a long time. We have many things in common. But even so, friends get confused with our attitudes. They think it's me, but no, it's the other. Rather, it seems that we are playing hide and seek, as we have never met before. They hate me when they see me serious, and they hate my attachment to vain things. They like to see me as the other. We cross our eyes without saying anything, and they reflect the animosity we have for each other. I break that reflection into a thousand splinters wanting to end that chance encounter. I turn around and leave the room in a daze thinking about the common things that tie up our lives. I manage to hear the noise that the other makes reconstructing the mirror, in order to look at myself again and detest with equal or greater force everything that I represent. The oth...

Cassandra, the fortune teller, took to the streets and found a world different from the one she had thought. He decided that since the future was not very rosy for men, to sink his thousands of eyes into televisions. Since then, children and adults have left their imaginations in the hands of these devices. Cassandra, now, forecast the present.

The men closed the doors and windows to all renovation. They preferred to look through the slits at the witches who fled desperately on their brooms on full moon nights followed by heavy clouds, cursing cloaks of oaths and imprecations, and incantations, to exorcise the evils of the new winds. Toads, snakes, mice and other vermin were expelled from the mouths of heretics in the long night of the inquisition, which not even Goya with his paintings could against the wrath of God's judgments, which turned the just into sinners. . Many stories were woven around the men and women of that time. Some historians say that most of them surreptitiously set about making them fall into their traps, and that each one sought his own for himself.  They proceeded as follows:  "They left a glass of water in the middle of the edges of the blades of open scissors and thrown on the floor where he wanted to take them. In the middle of the night they entered delighted traps, and appeared eager befor...

I.  A gray spot follows a red moon until the light of day. When evening falls on the red smoothness, the moon becomes a gray spot.  II. Two red moons are coming fleeing from a gray spot.  One hides behind the laughing dawn, and the other travels through a dire storm.  The gray spot follows in their tracks and hunts them in a break from clarity.  They are instantly gray spots.  III.  A red moon lights up his face in the backwater that the breeze brightens. He hears the wailing of the gray spots and thinks they must have been red moons in his youth. Pummel the moans that go by the wind and the red moons appear happy with the punishment of aleve stain.  IV.  The three moons talk about the spot and do not realize that it returns again.  A murmur is felt in the water.  The gray stain covers the crystalline liquid, and strikes the moons with earthy darkness.  V.  Another moon absorbs the pollen of some roses and distributes i...

  It was a huge dragon. The warty, earthy body resembled a movable mound in the vast ocean. His skin glowed on full moon nights many leagues away. His eyes could distinguish any vessel that ventured through that dangerous sea. The still and silent air prevented him from spreading his beautiful wings to the wind. In the time of storms, the dragon easily waded through the waves and took advantage of the gusty wind to stretch its wings that would take it to other places. Many say that he cried his anguish with the snorts that for days he blew into the wind. It really was a nice specimen. It was the last dragon. The largest that ever existed on earth. When he put his head in the water, it curled furiously. Then the waves ravaged the shores. The last time this was known, it was the day that it appeared on the surface throwing fire from its jaws against the boats that were in one of the fishing seasons. with the fire that it expelled, it evaporated a good portion of the seawater, and...

  Lean, with a complexion tanned by the sun, sunken cheekbones, vacant eyes, with the usual cough, accompanied by another boy similar to him, every morning he collects the corpses thrown on the sidewalks of the avenues of a major city in India , without any grimace or gesture. He does his job like any garbage collector in our country. Sometimes he talks to his companion, in another he scavenges in the clothes of the dead from hunger, always chewing the straw that swarms in the air, trying not to hinder the cows that wander silently in search of the grass they might find in the streets muddy.

That night in a bush in the park we waited for the mother to come for her daughter. Squatting as we were we shone the lantern towards the center of the garden to see the event. A little bird fluttered in the sky just as the moon appeared. This is how he had told us before. He left us fond memories. Among which: How to play with animals, or mimic the whistling of birds. Now that many years have passed, I think of the girl of those times, transformed into one of the millions of stars of the night. I also imagine her accompanied by the mother of silver threads back to earth. Perhaps he will play with other children again and tell them other stories. It must still be the same, because in the gods the years are a few moments, while in the man they are a lifetime. 

 Come on, he said. -Where, I answered. -Come on, he reaffirmed. I followed her in a hurry, dodging the fireballs of light and the chaotic music of the universe. All the stars illuminated us and in his face I could make out how the gardenias bloomed in the garden of dreams. Very occasionally he looked at me with the fire of his pupils. - Happy? I ask. -Yes, I whispered. She sucked in some air, and blew it out to infinity. - What is your name? I inquired. - My name doesn't matter, he said. Let's move on. We embarked on the journey in the immense sea of ​​imagination. We feel great satisfaction because we have been recreating our steps for centuries.

To Andrés Escobar.  He died at the time and in the least expected place. Before the fans had booed him for his unfortunate participation in the outcome of a match in his last World Cup. He wanted to rise to fame, and fame killed him. He was murdered by a poor devil who bet everything he had on the failed game. Fatal mistake. When he died, death had haunted the conscience of that deranged murderer for days.

  It was Sunday and he did not have to pay for the hotel room. At dawn the establishments were closed, and as the police did not let the needy sleep on the sidewalks of the streets, in the hallways of the houses, or the buildings, he spent the night walking through the lonely streets of the city, shivering with cold, and very sleepy. The next day, very early in the morning, he went to the usual cafeteria to have a red. Later, while waiting for a friend who could probably get him a job, he headed to the library to read a book. Without realizing it, sitting in one of the chairs with his arms outstretched, he fell asleep. After a while he woke up. He called the librarian and asked why he didn't bring the book he asked for. - "I was sorry to wake you up, sir." He replied.

Everyone knows about the snow man. His footprints reappeared yesterday in the main newspapers of the world, reminding us of a legend impossible to forget. They are so big, that they can only correspond to a giant man, so massive, that sitting on a chair should be smashed. Well, these are stories that we weave around them. For my part, I do not want to see him fighting for life in the big cities, and it is also likely that if he comes down from the snowy peaks he could be turned into a pool of crystalline water. It would be a shame to see it drain away at the same time that human warmth is sowing happiness and sadness to the homos sapiens, and it would be intolerable to have to take care of it like any newborn after having endured its existence in our imagination for centuries. For this reason, I prefer to discover again and from time to time his footprints on the snow, to feel that he is very close, serene, looking at us in the blizzard of the immeasurably cold night, aware of his dest...

His eyes tear the air with the accumulated hatred that he carries inside. Through his dark glasses he looks at us sharply and senses the fear that our hearts harbor. He haunt in all corners behind the flowered jasmine. He stretch your nose to feel better. Any movement of the air follows it with its aquiline nose to the confines of the springs. It haunts us with gunpowder and the labyrinths of the indecipherable. Proud of controlling the subtle thread of our lives, from time to time he makes us breathe in filthy sewers without letting the throbbing of anguish crumble. He prepare the best in the cobweb that dislodges our meats at the gallop of slow sweat. He concocts a tidal wave and accuses us of letting him come before our astonished gazes. He puts on his hat and raincoat again ready to take a walk through our wounds. Wait for us to ease ourselves to start over with the rage that carries with it.