Borges & I & I

Borges wrote of the other Borges, the one things happen to, winner of prizes. The one known for his Fictions, for his playful philosophical devices, his austere prose and sometimes loveless characters. The conjunction of marble and flowers.

But I know a third Borges. I see him from where I am sitting at my desk looking over the garden on Wilberforce road, a known street. This is the Borges who wrote a book I was given when I was 12, that made no sense to me, its stories were not stories. 

This is the Borges whose handwriting I have seen in two places, a dedication in a book shown to me by a friend on the street of Defensa, and at an exhibition in Galerias Pacifico. The writing was flawless, well spaced, pointillist. And it is the Borges who reluctantly lends his name to a street in Palermo, barrio of Buenos Aires, a street whose cobbles I scuffed on the journey when I met my wife. 

I see something of his image in the darkened glass, in the words above. Perhaps you see it too. More likely yours is yet another, a reflection of a reflection. 

 

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