Tuesday, January 18, 2005

goodbye gabby

a bit of a sad but unconfirmed news. gabriel garcia marquez, one of my favorite and definitely one of the best authors of all time, is retiring due to health reasons.

the following is his farewell epistle.

~~~

if for an instant god were to forget that i am a rag doll and gifted me with a piece of life,

possibly i wouldn't say all that i think, but rather i would think of all that i say.

i would value things, not for their worth but for what they mean.

i would sleep little, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light.

i would walk when others hold back, i would wake when others sleep.

i would listen when others talk, and how i would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream!

if god were to give me a piece of life, i would dress simply, throw myself face first in the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul.

my god, if i had a heart, i would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.

over the stars i would paint with a van gogh, dream a benedetti poem, and a serrat song would be the serenade i'd offer to the moon.

with my tears i would water roses, to feel the pain of their thorns, and the red kiss of their petals!

my god, if i had a piece of life, i wouldn't let a single day pass without telling people i love that i love them.

i would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and i would live in love with love.

i would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!

to a child i shall give wings, but i shall let him learn to fly on his own.

i would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting.

so much have i learned from you, oh men!

i have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled.

i have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the first time with his tiny fist his father's finger, he has him trapped forever.

i have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other get to his feet.

from you i have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when i keep them within this suitcase,

unhappily shall i be dying.

~~~

[sob] [sob] [sob]

2 comments:

  1. this is just a hoax! yey!Ü although he is indeed ill...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, the hoax was confirmed like this (according to my sis who emailed):

    Who Wrote It?


    Gabriel Garcia Márquez, 73, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982
    for his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. In 1992 he had surgery
    for lung cancer. In 1999 he collapsed from exhaustion, and rumors
    spread that he had suffered a recurrence.


    Is this Farewell a fraud, a sentimental exploitation, a tribute, a
    consolation? Gárcia Márquez's name is still on the masthead of his
    magazine, Cambio. This March, he wrote a strong-minded op-ed piece
    for The New York Times, Shipwrecked on Dry Land, about Elián
    González.


    In an article in The New Yorker last year, John Lee Anderson wrote:


    The widespread reverence that is felt for Gárcía Márquez amplified
    the rumors that began circulating early this summer about a
    mysterious illness that had overcome him. He was hospitalized for a
    week in the middle of June, and then he holed up in his apartment in
    Bogotá. He was said to be undergoing treatment for exhaustion, a
    nervous breakdown, or leukemia. Seven years ago, a cancerous tumor
    was removed from one of his lungs, and the rumors about what was
    wrong with him this time became more and more dire. On July 9th,
    someone pretending to represent a wire agency sent a phony news flash
    out through the Internet that he had died in Mexico City the previous
    evening.


    Gárcía Márquez says that he began feeling unwell last spring, and
    became so weak that he was in a state of collapse. He checked into a
    hospital, and once it was determined what was wrong with him
    (lymphatic cancer, although this was not acknowledged publicly for
    several months) he began to receive treatment and to feel stronger. .


    Glaucio Soares, who sent us the Farewell, writes:


    "There is a discussion on if GGM really wrote this. Regardless of who
    wrote it, it is beautiful and I think that it might, just might, help
    some of us survivors and those who help us to survive to have a
    better perspective."


    Garcia Marquez's works are listed on the site Macondo.



    ---and---


    Who Wrote It?


    Gabriel Garcia Márquez, 73, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982
    for his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. In 1992 he had surgery
    for lung cancer. In 1999 he collapsed from exhaustion, and rumors
    spread that he had suffered a recurrence.


    Is this Farewell a fraud, a sentimental exploitation, a tribute, a
    consolation? Gárcia Márquez's name is still on the masthead of his
    magazine, Cambio. This March, he wrote a strong-minded op-ed piece
    for The New York Times, Shipwrecked on Dry Land, about Elián
    González.


    In an article in The New Yorker last year, John Lee Anderson wrote:


    The widespread reverence that is felt for Gárcía Márquez amplified
    the rumors that began circulating early this summer about a
    mysterious illness that had overcome him. He was hospitalized for a
    week in the middle of June, and then he holed up in his apartment in
    Bogotá. He was said to be undergoing treatment for exhaustion, a
    nervous breakdown, or leukemia. Seven years ago, a cancerous tumor
    was removed from one of his lungs, and the rumors about what was
    wrong with him this time became more and more dire. On July 9th,
    someone pretending to represent a wire agency sent a phony news flash
    out through the Internet that he had died in Mexico City the previous
    evening.


    Gárcía Márquez says that he began feeling unwell last spring, and
    became so weak that he was in a state of collapse. He checked into a
    hospital, and once it was determined what was wrong with him
    (lymphatic cancer, although this was not acknowledged publicly for
    several months) he began to receive treatment and to feel stronger. .


    Glaucio Soares, who sent us the Farewell, writes:


    "There is a discussion on if GGM really wrote this. Regardless of who
    wrote it, it is beautiful and I think that it might, just might, help
    some of us survivors and those who help us to survive to have a
    better perspective."


    Garcia Marquez's works are listed on the site Macondo.


    ===================

    Sheesh, and to think I forwarded the farewell to my friends. Of course I also forwarded them this. Hard task... to correct mistakes but we learn from them.

    ReplyDelete