Piranha

"To live almost alone attracts, little by little, the absolutely alone."

Maria Gabriela LLANSOL

To speak of what I see.
To speak of what the other person tells me.
To speak of what can be spoken.
 
– And if there is not enough space for attraction, my love,
It is because it is gone.
It is floating now.
 
What can be spoken of and is not visible?
Someone said: Death.
Another said: Love.
And a third one said: Laziness.
 
Take your own limits as your object.
 
See what can be seen.
See what someone else saw:
 
– “All colors will agree in the dark.”1
 
The light is not seen.
I only see it when it shines on something.
 
The word is not intelligible.
I only understand it when it finds itself on something.
 
– Do not confuse me with a quotation.
Even before the names existed,
My function was already very clear.
 
Piranha is a carnivorous, freshwater fish
from South America.
Its etymology is debatable.
 
– This is what the Primitive People remember
before the arrival of the Modern Man.
 
Pirá = Fish + Anha = Evil = Devil Fish
Pirá = Fish + Ranha = Tooth = Tooth Fish
Pirá = Fish + Ánha = Scissor = Scissor Fish
 
For this period of confusion,
the New World arrives by ship.
When the phase of the Good Savage comes to an end,
the Piranha becomes independent.
 
– Devil Fish inscribes itself in the mind.
Tooth Fish inscribes itself in the body.
Scissor Fish inscribes itself in the culture.
 
Little by little its figure takes shape.
Traditions are seen from a distance.
All Souls’ Day is born
along with the first generation of Brazilian Piranhas.
 
– I am here. I hear you.
 
The band no longer recognizes itself.
The new scientists embrace Voodoo Theology.
After bleeding good slaves,
the piranhas start dancing.
 
It always rains on All Souls’ Day.
New lakes are formed.
The piranhas are separated from their bands.
The word for nostalgia is created
as the symbol of a national conquest.
 
The lakes cannot support the fish for long.
The sun quickly dries whatever overflows.
The fight for space results in a bitter battle.
The piranhas become experts of great disasters.
 
– What does not interest others is mine.
 
Among the new crowds,
the desire to be here or there grows.
The idea of delay reaches the lakes
as well as the loss of the erotic function of the word.
 
– The chance of survival in these lakes is as slight as it is in the others.
If before we served an empire, now we are our own empire.
The impossibility of existing beyond the lake is as strong as resisting the mainstream.
If one day we thought of indistinction, that moment has arrived:
We are as sad as all the others.
Our misery is starting to age.
Now we are one. An almost religious certainty.
So good as to be ironic.
 
A soup of piranhas is an aphrodisiac.
The movement of its tail increases the commercial transaction.
Its fame arises among certain narrators, but personally
it does not appreciate this.
 
– I am tired of filling my stomach with live people.
I am going to opt for the dead.
They are lighter.
The spirit has already left the body.
 
The fame has become palpable,
but it does not always correspond to the appetite.
It prefers to remain in the shadows not to feel hunted
and it blushes when somebody touches on this subject.
 
– Do not ask me what I came to do here.
This is a very difficult question.
And, if there is still anything new in this story,
it is my wish to stay.
The questions are still mine, my love, and if they are yours too,
the world will seem even more frightening to me.
 
The idea of a band acquires other meanings.
The community in the lakes disperses.
The Piranha is no longer hungry.
 
– Come, my love,
cast yourself up.
Because the lake you aspire to
no longer exists.
In our days, courtesy is a bit obscene.
 
Day and night, light and shadows.
Other new generations are beginning to appear.
Some fish become symbols.
Some narrators lose their tonus.
Some fish evaporate with the water; others become earth.
Some narrators vibrate in the waters; others become earth.

Today it is raining heavily.
The earth is formless and empty.
Darkness extends over the surface of the deep
and the Spirit is hovering over the waters.
The voice of the narrator has disappeared.
The Piranha has eaten the novel.

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1 BACON, Francis. (1696) Essay III., Of Unity in Religion. The Essays or Councils, Civil and Moral.

Translated with Benjamin Trivers