The Shape of a Pocket

And, in a glass case, two stones carved into round weights about the size of grapefruits. Every day Antonio as a boy did lifting exercises with these stones to strengthen his shoulders and correct the malformation of his back.

24
Will It Be a Likeness?
( for Juan Munoz )

    Good Evening. Last week I talked about the dog and we listened to some dogs barking. I suggested that this noise after the aeons of dogs’ association with man had something to do with spoken language. Something, but what exactly?
    A number of listeners have written me letters – for which I thank you – all of them about the way in which dogs communicate. Some of you sent photos to illustrate your experience.
    I gave you my opinion last week that the dog is the only animal with an historical sense of time, but that he can never be an historical agent. He suffers history but he can never make it. And then we looked together at the famous painting by Goya on the subject. And we decided it was better to look at paintings on the radio than on the television. On the TV screen nothing is ever still, and this movement stops painting being painting. Whereas on the radio we see nothing, but we can listen to silence. And every painting has its own silence.
    A listener from the Black Forest has written to ask whether, after the dog, we might consider the butterfly, and in particular the
Anthocaris Cardamines
, commonly known as the Fiancée. For this listener – although our principal subject this evening is something altogether different – we have recorded here in the studio the Fiancée in flight. And if you shut the windows and settle in your chair you will now hear the wings of the
Anthocaris Cardamines
beating in flight.
    Every butterfly too has its own special silence. For sometimes a sound is more easily grasped as a silence, just as a presence, a visible presence, is sometimes most eloquently conveyed by a disappearance.
    Who does not know what it is like to go with a friend to a railway station and then to watch the train take them away? As you walk along the platform back into the city, the person who has just gone is often more there, more totally there, than when you embraced them before they climbed into the train. When we embrace to say goodbye, maybe we do it for this reason – to take into our arms what we want to keep when they’ve gone.
    Excuse me, the telephone has just rung. You can’t hear it, can you? A listener asks what century in God’s name do I think I’m living in? Sounds like the nineteenth, he told me.
    No, sir, the one I live in is the sixteenth or the ninth. How many, sir, do you think are not dark? One in seven?
    Today everything everywhere on the planet is for sale.
    I’m selling. Here’s a back, a man’s working back, not yet broken. Did I hear an offer?
    What’s a back for?
    To sell wherever they need cheap backs for work.
    Bought!
    Every evening Goya takes his dog for a walk along the Ramblas.
    A heart?
    How come?
    Sixteen and healthy from Mexico.
    OK Taken!
    Then man and dog stroll home and Goya draws the curtains and settles down to look at CNN.
    A kidney.
    Bought!
    One male member and a uterus together.
    Together how?
    They stayed together. They were chased out of their village, they had no land and they were obliged to sell everything to survive.
    I’ll take the uterus.
    And the male member?
    Throw it away, plenty more where it came from.
    Difficult – they’re inseparable.
    NAFTA! Separate them!
    I’m not sure how.
    NAFTA! I tell you!
    Nafta?
    North American Free Trade Agreement.
    No sir, I live in this century which I can’t say is ours. And now, if I may, I shall return to the mystery of what makes a presence.
    When all the members have been separated and all the parts sold, what is left?
    Something more to sell. A whole is more than the sum of its parts, so we sell the personality. A personality is a media-product and easy to sell. A presence is the same thing as personality, no?
    Presence is not for sale.
    If that’s true, it’s the only thing on this earth which isn’t.
    A presence has to be given, not bought.
    Three hundred girls from Thailand.
    I’ll take them. Ask Melbourne if he’s still interested.
    A presence is always unexpected. However familiar. You don’t see it coming, it moves in sideways. In this a presence resembles a ghost or a crab.
    He’s let the dog out and the master has gone to sleep.
    Once I was in a train travelling to Amsterdam, through Germany, going north