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    Byobu
    Byobu
    Byobu
    Ebook72 pages49 minutes

    Byobu

    By Ida Vitale and Sean Manning

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Byobu reveals a rich inner world, one driven by its meticulous attention to our rich outer one.

    "a story’s existence, even if not well defined or well assigned, even if only in its formative stage, just barely latent, emits vague but urgent emanations."

    Byobu's every interaction trembles with possibility and faint menace. A crack in the walls of his house, marring it forever, means he must burn it down. A stoplight asks what the value of obedience is, what hopefulness it contains, and what insensible anarchy it defies. In brief episodes, aphorisms, and moments of spiritual turbulence and gentle scrutiny, reside a wealth of habits, worries, curiosities, pleasures, peculiarities, and efforts to understand.

    Representative of the modesty and complexity of Ida Vitale’s poetic universe, Byobu flushes the world with meaning and playfully offers another way of inhabiting the every day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharco Press
    Release dateNov 30, 2021
    ISBN9781913867140
    Byobu
    Author

    Ida Vitale

    Ida Vitale (Uruguay, 1923) is a poet, translator, essayist, and literary critic. In 2018, she was just the fifth woman to receive the prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest recognition for literature in Spanish. In addition to the Cervantes Prize, she has also received the FIL Literature Prize (2018), Max Jacob Prize (2017), Federico García Lorca Poetry Prize (2016), Reina Sofía Poetry Prize (2015), Alfonso Reyes Prize (2014), and Octavio Paz Prize (2009), as well as many other honours, including being named by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women of 2019.

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      Book preview

      Byobu - Ida Vitale

      A Story

      There is a story. No one knows exactly when it began. Those who might be associated with it are, in fact, unaware that the story exists. It has no name to identify it, and it is unclear whether it has one protagonist or two. It could be A’s story that B does not acknowledge, or vice versa. It could also be that neither of them knows the story exists and that it involves them. It is very likely that one will die without ever realizing that he is the story’s true protagonist, and that the other has usurped his role. In any event, a story’s existence, even if not well defined or well assigned, even if only in its formative stage, just barely latent, emits vague but urgent emanations. Byobu, who suspects its dark existence, feels compelled to scrutinize, like a philatelist, the edges of its possible arrival. He would do well not to underestimate its flexible, disordered density: at any moment it can achieve directed speed and plunge its asphyxiating paralysis down upon him. There are many who dream of the adventure that each day should hatch for them. But when it emerges, they find some flaw, even horrifying signs of leprosy, with the appearance they had imagined attractive. And they ignore it, though they never forget its unanswered call. And the story remains free, unoccupied, like a lightning bolt no lightning rod has grounded. Byobu knows he is more exposed than most. So he’s vigilant, watching suspiciously the stories that roam free, with no A or B who will have them.

      Life Is Not a Straight Line

      Byobu gets up early. Not too early, but since there is no pressing work for him to get done, the start of his day always feels excessively matinal. What to have for breakfast? Juice, tea, yogurt, cereal? He simplifies his options, though not without some anxiety: cereal and coffee. Coffee? At the same time, he looks for a CD, but once the music starts, he realizes it’s not what he’s in the mood to listen to at the moment. He swaps it out twice before finishing his breakfast. He needs to buy some groceries. He chooses a particular supermarket, but it’s the least ideal of them all. There he’ll find sugar but not the tea and vinegar he prefers. He also has a letter that needs sending. To do that, he will have to go a different way. Which is more urgent then? He’ll settle this doubt while he showers. However, between whether or not to wash his hair and after some enticing idea crosses his mind, he forgets what it was he wanted to have settled by the end of his shower. Then, as he’s getting dressed, he hesitates between wearing a certain pair of trousers or committing them to the dirty laundry.

      By this time of the morning Byobu is exhausted, maybe an effect of the hot steam. He should read a bit to rest. This raises the problem of which book to choose, since his habitual indecisiveness means he always has several at different stages of completion. A book of short stories sits waiting near the armchair where he has plopped himself down. This does not spare him a decision. Which of the stories? The chosen author is either of the kind – fortunately now few and far between – who takes pleasure in making the reader’s life difficult, or an obliger who does not want to upset any of his potential admirers: the protagonist of the finally chosen story must side with the boy who is working with him or opt for the company that has hired them both, whose demands are in conflict with his political beliefs; but the ending is ambiguous. The author assumes that whoever follows him through the twists of his invention is sure of their own ideas and will turn to them to give their ending to the story.

      This is, of course,

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