Red Door 29

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MARIO Z. PUGLISI MAPS TO FIGHT ANXIETY 034 Rafael Villegas has embarked on a journey, an adventure, an expedition to marvelous coasts, a literary challenge that, in the end, has succeed perfectly, with excellent weather and just in time. From the inherited tradition of countless prominent authors of dealing with the circularity of time, and facing what’s arcane and unknown with the only help of their imagination and some written words that hide a tiny box of unreal gadgets, Villegas, thanks to the creation of the thirteen stories included in his book Apócrifa, has done what some considered unthinkable: he gave new life to a subject that has been overexposed since the birth of literature. He has, also, achieved this with a mastership that seems desired by a generation of writers who, it seems, have forgotten the certainty of the uncertain for the sake of a technological postmodernism, at times overwhelming. Regarding the difficulty that the this book’s subject merits, namely: the strange and the unknown; the mysteries that bind us (without we realizing it many a time) to each event, no matter how small or large, that has occurred throughout history; what’s resulted is justly compared to a discovery of an exotic and unexplored land, a new continent made of letters. In Apócrifa a handful of aspects that are not mutually exclusive coexist and serve each other, forming a new cluster with the sole purpose of defying the uncertain. Thus, we find the cosmic in it, the mystical, the historical, the magical, the mythological, the wonderful, the extinct, the imaginary and the scientific constantly working together to form some small concentric circles that, once linked sequentially, produce larger circles with their diameters rotating between them till the point of shaping a distinguishable circularity on the entire book. A fractal model present in each story, paragraph and written sentence. To find the sum of all these elements so beautifully placed and welded as a filigree that garnishes and, also, leads to reflection, is not an everyday event. About the, presumably, balanced mixture of imagination and historical rigor, Mexican writer Alberto Chimal says that “it contrasts what is true with what is possible, our hopes and fears with the direct impression of life.” Thus, the uncertain isn’t only common of the realm of death and of whatever lies beyond our existence, nor is exclusively a frequent part of darkness and decadence; the uncertain also inhabits within all living and breathing things, within the light and the wake of each wandering comet. Actually, the unknown rests a few inches beyond the limits of what we take for granted. And no matter how much we expand our knowledge, there will always be something unknown to us, something mystery that make us feel a Paleolithic fear, one that, as Chimal points out, it contrasts with all the impressions, direct or indirect, of life itself. In the absence of certainty of what the other really is, we invoke the infinite possibilities that literature has always suggested in our minds. The truth that it doesn’t really matter what we are, but all of the potentialities that we can be. Because literature ends that primal fear by marveling us and making us feel wonder. It multiplies what we imagine and makes us expect the unexpected and long for the uncertain. Apócrifa explores this myriad of possibilities. It plays with the uncertain as a child plays with a cup and ball toy that has worn out from fulfilling its mission once, and once again. And when we think that the trip has come to an end, Rafael Villegas surprises us once more, over and over and over. His success lays in the fact that he doesn’t reveals what the unknown really is, but rather forces us to embrace it and make
peace with it, and then reminds us that it’s also a part of our very nature. His, is mandala literature. It’s constant evolution with respect to a center and then implosion in the limits of what’s finite that induces everything to return and rebirth in the same constant evolution with respect to a center; recurrently, endlessly. Villegas uses the language meticulously to relate each story and, at the same time, he grants the same language its primary function of a symbol system in which each of these symbols possesses countless meanings. The sign representing each concept attributed to it and, simultaneously, opening to new interpretations that will depend only on who receives it. So, this being the case, for what matters that the definitions are not always what they are supposed to? And what’s the matter if, as Professor Q indicates in the book, being sick isn’t the same as not feeling well? The journey through Apócrifa is very vast and diverse, it almost seems to contain everything. The pilgrimage becomes an obligatory visit to a window display that shows, with the same rigor, hallucinations of black bears devouring men, Yakutia’s phenomena, islands where the world ends or earth cracks where it resuscitates, past lives, the last pages from a notebook found at a labor camp, long sentences served just for having told past stories in disobedience of the established metric laws, transmutations from solid to sublime states, imaginary friends, distant icy lands, false nuclear tests, filaments from the tree of all stories, etc., etc., etc. Rafael Villegas has made us part of his challenge. With this collection of stories he takes us into a Borges-like dream in where we dream a story about someone who thinks a story about the past. And then he claims that “no man is the owner of his dreams, only of the memories of those dreams.” Nothing to fear. In the universe of Apócrifa, a universe governed by the extreme circularity of infinite possibilities, only the memory of a dream is enough for us: it can be the memory of something that happened, or that never has, or that is about to, or that should’ve been but wasn’t. It’s enough for us to dream and then remember that dream; the rest is pure ambition and nothing else. To go far away isn’t even necessary to move from the place where we are, because maybe, with a bit of luck, we’ll end up dreaming about a journey, an adventure, an expedition to marvelous coasts, or a literary challenge that, in the end, has succeed perfectly, with excellent weather and just in time. As it has always been written. Mario Z Puglisi Mexico, 2021 Apócrifa Rafael Villegas Paraíso Perdido Ed., 1st Edition (March, 2018) Mexico ISBN: 978-607-8512-41-6 035
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Red Door 29

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