Cease, cows, life is short!

It is difficult for me to put in to words what Marquez has meant to me. More than a writer i admire, though, is the least I can say in honor of the man who, without even really trying, taught me how to give voice to the melancholy that has always both defined and destroyed me. 

Every word I have ever written has been written in an attempt to emulate the effect his words have had on me. I have never quite managed, of course, that genius was his alone to claim, but I have come close. And in doing so have justified to myself that the yearning within is not a curse. Its not a waste, its not delusion but a strength. Perhaps my only one but even so, enough. 

I wished to have met him, and although it may seem impossible now, he has taught me that to believe in the fantastic is to realize it and so I shall believe that we will meet some day so I can display my reverence to him. 

As a writer, I know that what really drives us to write is immortality. Through our words, through the elaborate half truths we tell under the guise of stories, what we strive for is to live on beyond what our bodies are capable of. I think there can be no doubt that Marquez has achieved this goal rather spectacularly and therefore, even though his mortal coil has snapped, he will never cease to be. We will know him, introduce him to the generations to follow and we will never ever forget. 

And so, a man with more quotable quotes than all other men combined, for me must be remembered for the following paragraph that I have read a hundred times and have wept at, been terrified/seduced/exhilarated/made to tremble by, every single time:

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

What a way to end a book!