Imbued with the work and thought of Yukio Mishima, this book opens a dialogue with the Japanese writer and with the maxims of the Hagakure, the ethical code of the samurai that understands death as a discipline of the spirit rather than as a denial of life.
In Zenda we reproduce a fragment of the long poem that comprises Pido el fin de la vida (La Bella Varsovia).
***
I seek the end of life.
I seek the end of life in times of peace.
I seek the end of life
against everyone and in favor of the angels.
What reasons do I have to be like everyone else?
Why should I remain in your company?
Can’t I escape when the party begins?
Can’t I defend my solitude
with my heels dug into my buttocks,
my slipping feet
and my back bent like a carpenter’s square?
Can’t I swallow my birth certificate?
Can’t I devour myself, devoured?
Can’t I dance with needles in my knees?
Can I not love the end of life?
I seek the end of life
even though sometimes the pains leave me without strength
to write with my own blood on the tablecloth
after licking the tail of the last mouse.
My neural connections are infinite mouse tails.
I seek the dazzling end of life, I seek to overflow,
I seek a sincerity that would move the gods to tears.
I seek to unfold the universe before me
without the cloud of the glaucoma of pettiness,
without uttering the names of the judges,
without cowardice climbing the castles.
I seek the end of any address or residence.
I seek the end of life because I harbor the decision of madness
and I seek the end of life out of pride in madness.
I claim the right to a just and radiant frenzy,
full of courage and valor.
If you strike your head hard enough against a white wall,
you will see the reddest sun ever born.
I seek the end of life to awaken beauty once and for all.
I seek the end of life as a creed.
I seek the happiness of the end of life and I seek the end of life,
I seek the celebration of adversity and of pain,
“When the water rises, the ship is higher,” says the Hagakure.
“When you find yourself in adversity or misfortune strikes, rejoice and leap for joy,” says the Hagakure.
I seek the end of life for immense joy amidst the horrid hills of adversity.
This is my time of glorious misfortune and glorious adversity.
I seek the end of life for glorification.
I seek the end of life to leap for joy to the last bound.
Without the turtles of hope and without obligations.
Without the staff of command that strikes and says “You stay here.”
I seek the Olympic end of life.
I seek an inverted flight to time who crashes fastest when leaping from rooftops.
I seek to wash the blood from the pavement with my tongue.
I want to keep forever in my mouth a candy that tastes of instinct.
I want to carry Olympic ashes inside a gold medal shaped like a tomb.
I want my pussy to be black as a pistol.
I want to kill the beast of fellatio after fellatio.
I want to have a mane of dead fish.
I seek the end of life to distinguish the real from the false,
without waiting for understanding,
nor for advice,
nor for recovery,
nor for health.
I want to die in full view of everyone.
To give the boulevard’s children colorful balloons tied with my guts.
Let my head roll around the schoolyard so they can play a game, kicking my damned head.
Break out with a slap after another onto the mole of shame that runs across my face.
I seek the end of life as triumph, not as failure.
Living is not winning.
Dying is not losing.
I demand an intramural space without conditions and without double standards; extramural life is finished once and for all; I spit on guilt and I spit on shame.
I demand the construction of an altar for the one who wears the beautiful plume-covered robe and ascends to the heavens guarded by a court of punk seraphim.
I crave a punk eclipse.
I crave a punk breakfast.
I seek a punk suicide.
I request a beekeeper with tears.
I seek the pure, unmixed power of the end of life, by hanging, by poisoning, by gas, by being thrown into the water, by plunging from heights, by knife, by pistol, by overdose.
I seek the scream of the end of life. Screaming will be like breathing. Dying is still life.
Jumping from the top of a skyscraper is still life; bleeding out with veins cut is still life; falling asleep to never waking is still life.
I do not ask for dignity. I ask for honor.
I seek a columbarium of gold bread and I ask for a prayer that can be eaten whole, like fruit, even with the heart and the skin, without spitting anything out, not even the worm, keeping the stark white worm peering between the teeth and the windows.
I ask for a floral-quadrant respect, the nautical rose of the course line shedding petals at the feet of the corpse rotting under a scorching sun.
Tama, oh, oh, oh, Tama!
I seek honors.
I seek reverences.
I request rare genuflections for those saints I have already seen depart,
I crave dances and Chinese fireworks of display,
and chocolate eggs with a gold tooth inside.
And they are:
those who hanged themselves in their bedrooms on a Christmas day,
those who threw themselves from a window on leaving work,
those who cut their throats leaving the bakery, mixing their blood with flour,
as if saying “This is my body, eat of it,” or those who threw themselves directly into the sea, abandoning a hospital bed.
I seek the end of one life and of another.
And I seek the end of yet another life, again and again.
I seek the unlimited end of life.
I seek the end of life in the face of the violence of banality.
I seek the end of life in the face of the violence of entertainment.
I seek the end of life in the face of the violence of optimism.
I seek the end of life in the face of the violence of censorship.
I seek the end of life as part of philosophy and verse.
I seek the end of life as part of knowledge to acknowledge that we are nothing and that we nonetheless did everything.
Transcend the limits of reasoning with delirium.
I seek delirium as an artistic discipline.
I seek to recognize the beauty of the suicidal.
—————————————
Author: Angélica Liddell. Title: Pido el fin de la vida. Publisher: La Bella Varsovia. Availability: Todos tus libros.