Eduardo Baena : Passionate thinker

1

A flower arises in the middle of a barren field. Bees swarm around me, creating a great confusion.

2

The writer, after penning his works, would reread them countless times until his eyes were erased. He sought all interpretations. Ultimately, he psychoanalyzed himself, and in the end, added the discovery as part of the narrative.

3

A man wakes up in the skin of another man. Suddenly, upon realizing the situation, he feels a terrible fear of being discovered. If this were to happen, he wouldn’t know how to react: after all, one cannot easily leave a body, especially when he doesn’t know how he got there in the first place.

Thus, he tries, at all costs, to pretend he is the man of the body. He fears disappointments (imagine! help me). However, you may have noticed (and forgive the clumsiness) that to pretend to be someone, one must first figure out who that someone is. It’s not enough to know basic answers like his name, nationality, age, profession, and other such trivialities. There is a much more difficult truth to uncover, which will present a dizzying challenge for our hero (you’ll admit he starts to become one just by accepting, albeit resignedly, the task we are setting before him).

If he has awakened in an office, he still doesn’t know if he will have to sleep accompanied tonight, which would be unacceptable or unbearable for the first day, depending on how you look at it.

He will need to find an excuse to isolate himself and begin investigating what he has been doing until now—that is, before he accidentally woke up in "his" body.

Regardless, should he achieve this hypothetical freedom and independence, a much deeper and, for some interpreters, distressing question would arise. Who is he really? Why has he ended up in another body? What is he doing in another man's life?

It’s logical (I confess I couldn’t avoid it myself) that our character, if lucky enough to find the right words at the right moments before those who know "him" best, would become increasingly involved in this foreign life that truly doesn’t concern him at all.

4

With these three ideas (in the form of tiny chapters), perhaps the writer begins his story, though at the moment he doesn’t quite know how to harmonize them: Should "the writer-psychoanalyst" write the novel "Another Skin"? What does the bees' thing mean? Who thinks these ideas? The writer? The "writer-psychoanalyst"? Or the character in "Another Skin"? Also, add the difficulty of not confusing it with one of the novels with the same title written in hundreds of languages, many of them unknown to us, others lost forever.

5

Returning home, I found a kitten next to a wheel, barely a few days old. Its appearance was truly pitiful. It had a sort of eye infection, and its striped fur was dirty, chaotic, abandoned.

Imagine being in that situation shortly after diving into the world's labyrinth—thought Empathy—when barely aware of where (one) is.

Some cases of pure innocence, still not fully understanding what it all means, would let themselves be petted, seeking affection, as they themselves are a representation of it.

It didn’t take long to realize that this kitten was not an example of the previous paragraph. As I approached (some passersby would later recall not very gently), it immediately moved away to find shelter.

Its movements were surprisingly calculated, precise for such a young age. It fled from my presence like an experienced street colleague: Sullen Manners.

This event left me dismayed. The following moments I had to spend, desperately, constructing an explanation on fragile foundations that seemed to calm my absurd conscience.

Faced with the same objective fact, two almost opposite reactions. The universe depends on perception.

A spiral crosses the sidewalk where I step. Against my will, I slide smoothly. To avoid falling noisily, I throw some ballast in the form of an object.

I inevitably plunge into an unknown book.