Matías Correa Díaz - Gonzalo Vegas - Luís Villagra - Diego Zapata - Ricardo Vivanco - Isis Zuñiga
Kamanchaka: The Promise of the Mist
(Autumn)
Dear Alira:
It's been a while since I left, I hope everyone is well at home. I don't know how much you can understand me, but I want this letter to give you an idea of what life is like in this place.
When I approached the Citadel, it presented to me as an illusion. An illusion founded in the territory that shelter it and that seemed to shatter during my journey, in the contrast between the expectation and the prejudice that originated my skepticism. I feel the heat, the light hits my eyes and it still seems distant. I see how nature has adapted over time and how the rules have not changed at all.
As I went deeper and deeper in, the humidity overwhelmed me with a shivery blow of heavy nostalgia. I could see its source in the heights, where the fog is retained and circulated through the rigid transit that permeated a greenish gradient to everything in its path touched, democratically, through the same roads with which I moved. I could see the agglomerated limits of the circulations that make up a constant drizzle environment that sustains our existence.
I observed the axis that begins and orders the fractions of districts under a sequence of dependencies, but the hierarchy becomes subtle in the alternate repetition of depressions and prominences. I watched the slow progress of its immovable appearance, which contrasted with the flow of the entrails inhabited by its residents, oblivious to the incremental organism that surrounds them. I also observed the inanimate entities responsible for the endless harvest of the raw material that shapes the whole, scattered among the pillars that articulate the foundations of the system in its expansion process.
Contemplating it is beautiful Alira, of a sublime magnificence.
With love, your brother.
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(Winter)
My dear Alira:
Something happened that I did not expect: The Citadel seems... indifferent, a feeling contrary to the ideals that gave rise to its foundation so long ago. Change is the only thing I notice constantly, but progress becomes imperceptible in its own success. There is no one to claim it as its own, there is no need for personification of prosperity.
Its development does not stop, but it has a rhythm, persistent reasoning and decisions are perceived. Decisions defined by a latent impartiality from the whole. The Citadel expands. It expands under its rigid systematization determined by its matter and the surrounding conditions. It expands with the sole purpose of continuing to expand. But it does not do it with triviality or ambition. Just does it. The residents are passengers in the process, passerby who serve themselves from the excesses resulting from the pure existence of the autonomous giant. Citizens come to it, attracted by its promise of prosperity. And it leads them in consonance with a plot that is between matter and inhabitants, through massive nodes that foster hierarchy by the means of its scale, attracting human collective to its domain.
When night comes, I reflect on what happened during the day, and it seems insipid to me. It causes me helplessness and I declare myself in denial to be a participant in its influence. I refuse to give in to control, directing the seemingly spontaneous origin of the situations that define every day, subtly composed of the forms that it builds around people's activity. The scenes are familiar, but indistinguishable in the context of their new reality. I notice in the people, in the streets, in their homes, in the market a desperate search to resemble the ordinary. The direction of the dependency is lost, as if the action of the parties were in tune, promoting the uncertainty of their relationship.
The nights give me clarity, my room becomes a refuge of the outer system, it is my only moment of peace, but when morning comes, when I go out, again that light reminds me that I am trapped, I cannot return, I cannot get out of here, for you and for mom, I can't come back. You know me, I always had a yearning for recognition, and I was a defender of our identity ... or so I think, because now everything is scrambled. Everyone here looks the same, like a nightmare where everyone you look at has the same face. No one is essential for her to continue existing. Everyone looks happy and carefree and here I am on the verge of alienation. But nobody cares about it, Alira, and nobody seems upset about the system. Since I am here, reality has become bland, common and intolerable. The past seems distant to me, I feel that if I resign myself, I will forget it and she will possess me. If eternity were like that I don't want to wake up.
Am I going insane?
PS: Take care of our mom.
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(Spring)Mommy:
Every day that passes I understand my brother more. Every day that passes, the story of agent Renato does not seem so implausible anymore, he insists that I shouldn't continue here and that I should return home with you, that the only thing they have found It is what appears in the photos, his abandoned clothes as if he had walked away naked towards the desert. I've thought about staying here to work so you don't have to. I’ll see what I can do, but I cannot wait to return, maybe there we were lacking bread but here the promise of eternal life can be even worse than death, what lies forever is not dead, but I think this place is not for people like us, seem like a delusion. I'm even starting to believe what men in the market whisper about missing people swallowed by the desert. They say that he is one with the dune now, that he became white sand, as grandmother used to say: dust you are and to dust you shall return. It seems funny to hear those things right here, where I thought there would be more certainty than doubts and there would be no remnants of the myths of aforetime. But the more time people spend here, that sad lethargy that brings the fog makes them less critical and less curious. The pain of others seems indifferent to them. So busy fulfilling their empty role, that the news of a missing person is an amusement, they don’t turn to see each other, they are only themselves, they live together, but without really looking. They are joined by superfluous and ephemeral ties. They live in the same place but in the end ignoring each other. I am afraid of becoming like this if I remain in here, that she transforms me with her charms into an empty puppet.
I want to think that she could not bend him, poet and sensitive, and that is why the desert swallowed him. Although perhaps, as a way of protest and despair he set himself on fire like Miño.
Be strong. Kisses, Alira
