TE19 Iberian Adventure

My Plague Diary

He is not ashamed, but he is frozen.

And he will get more frozen until the last bone that’s holding out.

He won’t last very long.

Which film was that? I don’t remember. Don’t be ashamed, madame. Don’t be ashamed, monsieur.

Mercedes Sosa sings Gracias a la Vida – thank you to life – a song written by Violeta Parra.

Violeta Parra, sister of Nicanor Parra, committed suicide in 1967. A revolver. She fired into her chest.

Just over a year after Gracias a la Vida.

Nicanor Parra has that coarse humour: “asking a dying man the time / spitting in the cup of a hand.”

In the country is it as bright today as yesterday. Going out in the morning brings us luck on the days when there is fear of others and of things.

The day of the corn, or the “day of the hour”: “the holiest day of the year”.

A day on which you should not work or gripe.

Called the day of the hour “because there was an hour, at midday, when everything stopped”. 143