La Voz de Galicia – January 22, 2021 →
This month, it has been almost impossible not to look towards the center. In the media, on the radio, nothing else was talked of; programming was interrupted to connect with news of the center. And even though the event was historic, I have never understood the habit we have of not wanting to look towards the center while at the same time being unable to stop looking at it. It is like an obsession.
Sometimes the center is a town, or a great city around us; at other times, it is the country’s capital. In the case of the United States, it seems that the center is the whole country. During this month of January, we learned many things: we learned that it snowed in Madrid, and as if that were not enough, we also learned that it now rains in Madrid. We learned what the Capitol was and how it is stormed. And if you begin to read this newspaper at the back, perhaps you don’t yet know that the United States has a new president. His name is Biden, and he is 78 years old…
Today, with derision, irony, or wit, I try to reflect on the implications of seeing how things that happen at the center always seem to be more relevant, even though what happens to us, in our own particular peripheries, are just as important, if not more. It is fascinating to see how these mark us, without anyone asking us, what we want to pay attention to or not. And it is even more intriguing trying to understand the reasons that we take on as ours these places and themes (and not others)…
Of the news about the center this week, I will remember that there is a young poet, Amanda Gorman, who thrilled the world reading her poem during a president’s inauguration. I will remember her, but also Olga Novo and Alba Cid…I will remember poetry as the global tool of reflection.
