VIDA

Vagaba desde hace unos años por mi propia vida. Me dejaba llevar por la inercia del ser humano, escondiendo tras la risa un vacío existencial que dolía profundamente. Ya nada ni nadie me haría sentirme motivada.
Una tarde entre rutina y chistes necesité ayuda y, al solicitarla, volví la cara hacia abajo y mis ojos se enfrentaron a una mirada que me infundió energía. De repente sentí como mis párpados bajaban al mismo tiempo que subía un calor intenso a mis mejillas. Desvié la mirada y pensé: "un lapsus". En cuestión de segundos intenté de nuevo enfrentarme a lo que parecía un halo de vida para mí. Miré de nuevo y allí estabas tú, agachado explicándome no se qué.
Noté cómo me ruborizaba de nuevo al confrontar tu mirada, lo que te incomodó e intentaste aguantar el tipo.
Desde ese momento te buscaba sin moverme, observaba cada gesto, cada detalle de tí. Sentía la necesidad de vivirte. Sabía que te engatusaba mi interés, pero...
Tras un mes de miradas correspondidas no sucedió nada más... y esa vida en mi fue desaparenciendo.
Ahora sigo mi rutina; pero me has hecho creer que todo no está perdido. Por esto, y por todo lo que me has hecho sentir sin saberlo, te doy las gracias.
Silvia R.S.

Against fashion

"...'for art's sake' alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence. I know that there are men who, having nothing to say and nothing to write, are nevertheless so in love with oratory and with literature that they delight in repeating as much as they can understand of what others have said or written aforetime. I know that the leisurely tricks which their want of conviction leaves them free to play with the diluted and misapprehended message supply them with a pleasant parlor game which they call style. I can pity their dotage and even sympathize with their fancy. But a true original style is never achieved for its own sake: a man may pay from a shilling to a guinea, according to his means, to see, hear, or read another man's act of genius; but he will not pay with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him....
...All this academic art is far worse than the trade in sham antique furniture; for the man who sells me an oaken chest which he swears was made in the XIII century, though as a matter of fact he made it himself only yesterday, at least does not pretend that there are any modern ideas in it; whereas your academic copier of fossils offer them to you as the latest outpouring of the human spirit, and, worst of all, kidnaps young people as pupils and persuades them that his limitations are rules, his observances dexterities, his timidities good taste, and his emptinesses purities. And when he declares that art should not be didactic, all the people who have nothing to teach and all the people who don't want to learn agree with him emphatically."
Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman