LA CIUDAD JUBILADA / The Retired city

A
“Certainly, it couldn’t be that we were the only ones interested in this other highway
that little by little allows us to penetrate her secrets, taking us carefully as we are taking
her. And like this, with little noise and without violence, we entered into possession
of its ways, paths and hidden places (...) Thus with the highway we know that in
many aspects it isn’t what we thought before. Cars, trucks, ambulances pass rapidly
and with amazing smoothness, but it is enough to look carefully and notice that, at
times, they don’t have wheels, and that they don’t pass on the highway as a foot over
the floor, leaving a footprint behind. No, this is at the same time highway, asphalt
and cars, a singular being that breathes and advances (...) But there is no danger for us,
those who have already understood that the true highway is not that one, but instead
the parallel one as we suspected years ago. And now we can finally live it, so well that
it seems already perfectly normal to us to be here, at the edge of the route.”
Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop. Autonauts of the Cosmohighway.