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Cristóbal Gracia - y un jardin, la maquinaria de la descreencia y
I. Ingestion
The last time they saw him was in the Garden of Paradoxes. He spent his days among fake ruins, a putto di grotta, and the artifice of a stalagmite with a well fountain. Some say he got lost among the bushes; others say the earth swallowed him whole. What actually happened is that he descended into the well to search for the wishes that never came true, and he could not make his way back out.
Before, when he contemplated the dark waters of the abyss, he could make out the coins he had thrown in as currencies of intention. More than a reflection, he found eyes returning his gaze from the depths: it is at the bottom where failed longings accumulate. And everyone knew that each time he tossed a coin into the well, his wish was to transmute into a garden.
Now, in the entrails of the earth, he receives the coins of others. Plop, plop, plop—the wishes enter the water, but never reach the bottom. And when the ambitions of others are intercepted, the machinery of disbelief is activated.
II. Digestion
Surrounded by the eyes of desire, he understood that inside the well money functions irrationally. One hundred cents do not make a peso, nor a dollar, nor a euro. One hundred cents make a wish with a deficit of ninety-nine cents. The exchange rate is arbitrary, and for some reason the house always loses. Every promise is a debt.
Even so, he always paid the price of desire. The problem was that he was never clear about what he wanted. More than selfless longings, the coins implied ideological tension. Investing fragments while hoping to collect wholes. “Turn Pennies into Dollars with Our Penny Machines,” an absurd promise sustaining the materialist conception of history.
Once he stopped thinking in numbers, he began thinking in resources. Properly stacked, one hundred cents make a step. And one thousand cents make a staircase. Stimulated by the pile of accumulated wishes, he was able to climb the walls of the well. That was how he managed to invert—not an economic process, but gravity itself.
III. Excretion
Back again to looking from above downward, welcome be his gaze. Now he understands third nature: the garden as the domesticated wild, naturally artificial. Death drive suppressed through transmutation into garden. But he no longer desires; now he simply is. There are no more promises, no more longings, no more prices to pay. He is only there to be contemplated. What a grotesque landscape.
Conference Paulina Ascencio and MG
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Pequod — and a garden, the machinery of disbelief and…