There Was No Room in Their Imagination

That night they did not go out to work at sea. While the men went to find out if anyone was missing in neighboring villages, the women stayed behind to care for the drowned man. They took the mud off with grass swabs, they removed the underwater stones entangled in his hair, and they scraped the crust off with tools used for scaling fish. As they were doing that they noticed that the vegetation on him came from faraway oceans and deep water and that his clothes were in tatters, as if he had sailed through labyrinths of coral. They noticed too that he bore his death with pride, for he did not have the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of men who drowned in rivers. But only when they finished cleaning him off did they become aware of the kind of man he was and it left them breathless. Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen,
but
even though they were looking at him
there
was
no
room for him
in
their
imagination.


















text: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an excerpt from the short story "The handsomest drowned man in the world"
image1: Yves Klein untitled monochrome blue
image2: Yves Klein
image3: Yves Klein pure intense ultramarine pigment (Guggenheim Bilbao / installation)

Tue, Dec 7, 2010  Permanent link

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