It was our first Sant Jordi—as citizens and as authors, we responded—so we were happy, stumbling through the streets packed with joy, books, roses. On the train I had begun reading Magical Times, the wonderful latest collection of poems by Mario Obrero: like an omen and at the same time a spell, it seemed to warn me that “a poet is a being who carries hemp seeds under her sock, a poet is one who “should be devoted to flight or bread.” I couldn’t help but wonder what I was doing on this first date.
During the signings, the meetings and the conversations, I couldn’t get the image of a loaf breaking in two out of my head, opening its crust and crumb to the other. What’s better than bringing some food when it’s time to celebrate? Walking from one firm to another the crumbs returned, but this time there was a path. He led me to the luminous speech that Federico García Lorca gave among the streets where he was born, with which he opened the first library in his town. It is the “Address to the people of Fuente Vaqueros”, a defense of making the word accessible to everyone. Lorca never stopped looking to tomorrow, and he knew that books are lights that guide us, seeds that can blossom into revolutions, knowledge, parties and ideas.
Among towers of authors and books, he remembered how the Granada poet said that if he “was hungry and helpless on the street, he would not ask for a loaf, but rather he would ask for half a loaf and a book.” And how curious, it was just what I was missing then: a slice of bread. Oh, Federico, you, generous, who wanted us to not stop asking for books and books, because it is the same as saying love and love, and that we did it in the same way as asking for bread or “longing for rain for the fields.” …What would you say about this creature who sometimes writes thinking about a little piece of food in a day full of books? Yes, I know that “man does not live by bread alone”, that’s why I don’t want to contradict you with that half a loaf, Federico.
They gave me books, roses, bookmarks, notebooks, pens, even a glass of champagne… But I needed something to put in my mouth and talk about that joy, that knowledge and desire that remains behind each food we eat. What would happen if we also gave each other recipes and seeds? What would it be like if our libraries had a kitchen open to everyone, where they could be together, between stoves and spoons? And a reading club to launch the collective recipe book of each neighborhood? And being able to take care of a garden after choosing some books for home? What would happen if we had public spaces to cook together? Could it be that the person writing here cannot understand cooking if not in this way: as another way—and how necessary and formidable—of inhabiting a library.
