I thought I was a monkey when I was a kid. I remember going downstairs, greeting the visitors in the living room, and going to the back of the house. Before getting to the studio, I would turn right to reach a ramshackle door that watched over, with a crooked and thunderous door latch, the children’s primitive nature: the backyard.

Four walls, one floor, and a rod roof contained the commotion of such movements, which was the release of the accumulated energy in the phrase behave well. I always complained about not being able to go through the grid roof. It was the difference between the orthogonal monotony of the walls and the endless sea (or mountains) of neighboring clay tiles being in all directions. At least, that was what I thought every time I was hanging by my hands or feet from the rods; smearing my skin with oxide and being sure they would resist three times my weight. Unlike the tiles, which, by the way, Mom talked about changing every now and then because a trifle would break them. And I was inconsolable, because the rods would not allow me to go any further, but even if they allowed me to do such thing, the clay tiles would not allow me to take more than two steps without the entire roof shattering. And so, this was the end of a biped dream to stop swinging from rod to rod, hard enough to let me hang from them, and begin walking on very fragile clay tiles to hold me.


Miguel Ángel Guevara Naranjo