he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.

Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.

Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia.

Today, when I saw you, I realized that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion.

It was a lone voice in the middle of the ocean, but it was heard at great depth and great distance.

Invulnerable to time, dedicated to the messianic happiness of thinking for us, knowing that we knew that he would not take any decision for us that did not have our measure, for he had not survived everything because of his inconceivable courage or his infinite prudence but because he was the only one among us who knew the real size of our destiny.

Cease, cows, life is short.