Mystical Readings (and III): We, who still believe

After all these days of buying, wrapping, unwrapping, and rearranging or repurposing the objects we call "gifts," it seems more than logical to consider what these lifeless piles of things are and what their purpose is—the things we covet, adopt, and shelter, or discard without a second thought. Once upon a time, any object could hold magic, was susceptible to an alchemy like the one Damià Rotger explores in his poems: the polished shard of broken mirror, a fan, or a pick and shovel offer companionship not in an everyday way, but in a revelatory one. However, today, our society, compulsively accumulating and simultaneously obsessively seeking novelty, generally lives surrounded by artificial materials and mass-produced items; or, in a minority, is enveloped in precious minerals extracted ignobly and wrapped in luxury pieces that exude the misery of their artisans.

Patti Smith, as a young woman, already recognized "the difference between virtuous objects and mere treasures"; and, with Mateu Coll in The magnet and things (Leonard Muntaner, Ed., 2025), are able to distinguish between inert matter and artifacts that speak "of what they have seen, where they have been and who has been with them, because entity they bind and entity They lead to a distant reality." They are mediums with eyes that see, a hand that writes, a heart that welcomes: the scrap dealers of memories. These collectors of memory, unlike grave robbers, go about alive, not manipulating the soul of things. They are drawn to the power contained in the history that society has given for what society has died. And every time they dust them off, embrace them at dawn, or communicate with them, they manage to hear (perhaps for an instant, but it is already a lot) the ineffable connection between all the substance that has existed, exists, and will exist in the universe.

1970s: now that he is in his seventies, he doesn't remember when he wrote it or why. The more the brain thinks, the more the heart expands, the harder it is to get through a day and push the years forward... Mine is gnawed at by the question of how many liters of water have been wasted on the planet in recent months, just to ask the planet to offer its Lux Like a sacred host. This world of ours, dehumanized, plasticized, and commodified as it is, once again places its hopes in the existence of something greater than ourselves, something that must be able to show us how to repair the damage; that will save us from greed. It seems logical (legitimate, not so much). Be that as it may, too much light dazzles and blinds. Mysticism seeks understanding, not entertainment. Pasolini, through cinema, reconciled Smith with Jesus Christ; now, the Poet of the Ashes She explores the charms with Mateu, listening to what small things—inheritances—have to tell us, and being enchanted: "At night, as darkness falls, is when people leave what they don't want in the street." Experienced, Antònia Vicens joins this troop of good shadows and senses "traffic/ and haggling/ of organs under the moon's protection." Tsvetaeva, from afar, asks us to bring her everything that is danced and thrown away, because it is precisely what others discard, silence, despise, and leave aside that ignites her fire.

Beside my little lamp, Patti (crowned by Lynn Goldsmith) is about to proclaim that the night belongs to lovers; the anonymous portraits of the Mallorcan mystics, recovered by Rosa Planas; a small image by the artist Josefa Tolrà, which was within the Mystics, by Begoña Méndez (and the photo I took of one of her paintings at the Rodoreda exhibition at the CCCB); the neuron-eye-and-flower that Mireia Cabaní drew for Damià is traced on the wall; and half a doll by Mateu stares at me, portrayed by Jean Marie del Moral. I gather the literally inanimate inventory and rearrange my desk. I begin the year grateful for this polyphony of readings, literary; and, especially, for the gift (without quotation marks) in the mailbox and a first look at...The bread of angelswhich brought back memories of a childhood spent outside school, when I would buy five sheets of paper at the little shop, write magical verses, and swallow them. The mystery, the doubt of Smith (and my own) revive the desire (perhaps innocent, perhaps guilty) to transmute the bitterness of words and ink into the sweet taste of communion wafers—without artificial dyes, unconsecrated. And I pray, my fingers tapping the letters, for a new year of the subterranean sound of water—and not of servants.