Rodney is a residue of what he once was: sempiternally trapped in the shock of his last agony...
Rodney lives in our imagination, where we vaguely reconstruct his existence according to the predominant narrative in our minds:
Rodney the warrior fighting other hermit crabs over shells or territory;
Rodney in a crabby mood walking sideways in search of nourishment;
Rodney the solitaire retreating to his entitled zodiacal domesticity, peacefully resting in a home he has adorned with pink anemones.
There is only one Rodney, but many of us see in him a reflection of each of our own lives.
|
|
The souvenir does not automatically recall the remembrance, conjuring the lived moment and from there unleashing mythical time. Like the cultural fossil, the souvenir is unable to bring back anything beyond the immediate perception that triggers the process of remembrance. The souvenir's capacity to move within the temporal dimension is limited by that second death - commodification - which attempts to restrict its significance to a specific dream image, hindering the imaginary return to mythical time that remembrances effortlessly achieve. For the latter to happen, the souvenir must wait,
perhaps forever, to become part of a personal universe.
Commodification is like the greedy King Midas, who wanted everything he touched to turn into gold, until he realized that everything really did mean all. He almost died of starvation, unable to caress or pick up anything lest it turn into the cold metal. The souvenir is a remembrance kissed by poisoned lips, savoring the lethal touch even as it races to meet a tragic end.
Celeste Olalquiaga,
The Artificial Kingdom,
pp. 68, 78 and 79
|
|