Celebration of Subjectivity

I had been writing Memory of Fire for a long time, and the more I wrote the more I entered into the stories I was telling. I was already having trouble distinguishing past from present: what had happened was happening, happening all around me, and writing was my way of striking out and embracing. However, history books supposedly are not subjective.

I mentioned this to Jose Coronel Urtecho: in this book I’m writing, however you look at it, backwards or forwards, in the light or against it, my loves and quarrels can be seen at a single glance.

And on the banks of the San Juan river, the old poet told me that there is no fucking reason to pay attention to the fanatics of objectivity:

"Don’t worry" he said to me. "That’s how it should be. Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. They are scared of human pain. They don’t want to be objective, it’s a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer."

by Eduardo Galleano, The Book of Embraces