For me parks are good when first of all, they're not impeccable, and when solitude has appropriated them in such a way that solitude itself becomes an emblem, a defining trait for walkers, sporadic at best, who in my opinion should be irrevocably lost or absorbed in thought, and a bit confused, too, as when one walks through a space that's at once alien and familiar.
Sergio ChejfecIdentity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle?
Sergio ChejfecFor a long time, we assume we know who we are, until the moment we fully realize who that is; in that moment, identity is no longer predictable, but rather takes the form of a truth that, like any other, can become a sentence with no more than a change of perspective.
Sergio ChejfecWhat I find is that many times when I work with chance, with indeterminacy, I am more open to experience, less prone to a fixed process, and I think it creates a very important challenge. It creates a way of writing that is, in a way, flatter or smooth, a surface conducive to release, to movement. And in this way, the form of writing gets delightfully melded with the process of the writing.
Sergio ChejfecAt one point I felt a tension between objects, their real, physical lives, and the idea of meaning: the physical, material reality of a book, and the totally intangible experience of reading it.
Sergio ChejfecThe walk is like a matrix, like a diffuse, vague happening. It's like - imagine a play, a work of theatre, that is totally vague, almost devoid of details that consists in one person going on a walk. And as a consequence, there is a necessary tension between the determinacy and indeterminacy, the definite and the indefinite, of possibility.
Sergio ChejfecWhen I use a name or place, I want to leave the reader open to the waterfall of determinacy that it may provoke. And I don't know, but I must mention the name Borges. I try to mention it in every one of my works. It's a mark, a stamp, a sort of homage to Argentinidad. But it's an homage that works through pat phrases, those stock images that populate his work: the night, labyrinths, libraries. That is, I don't want simply to pay homage to Borges, but rather the contrary: to recall his commonplaces.
Sergio Chejfec