My grandfather was a typographer. He lived locked in his workshop while I, absorbed in my fantasies, used his house like a fortress of adventures. One day, between playing Cowboys and Indians, I shot with my impromptu crossbow made of sticks and pita chords a cannonball. I was in an ambush and I finally had the enemy. The cannonball was rapidly entering into the studio knocking everything down until, as a final goal, the ball hit the chibalete. That giant wooden table started to move clumsily until the bronze fonts scattered all over the floor. The As fell far away from the Os and the Es were countless and spread out next to the consonants.

My grandfather, angry, spent the whole afternoon picking up every font, and placing them carefully right back inside the box; each of them into their corresponding places which he knew by heart. I, on the other hand, was standing in the corner annoyed for not having been able to take down the Indian, who was hiding behind the enormous chibalete. Today, I still do not understand why there were so many Es on the floor and why I was not able to get that Indian.
(A.Rojas)

There are some encounters that remind me of my childhood, but there are some others that arouse something new inside me. It is like watching those old pictures in a flea market and wondering the story behind them, or where that fable from another decade or century comes from, and which it is perhaps lost in time. I tend to have these encounters in those markets full of stories of everybody and nobody. Finding a camera, a photo, a letter, a vase, or a musical box set, some encounters are just fortuitous and perhaps that was what happened to Sonnia with the chibalete. Something called her attention and invited her into that encounter. Thus, we realized that sometimes curiosity is what makes us take the first step.

        Chibalete.
          Chi-ba-le-te
             1 I, 1 A, 2 Es, 4 consonants.

The rectangular box reckons with certain separations in which every letter or sign has its specific location. The typesetter, operator or typographer, knew by heart the correct place of every single font. He took them out, one by one, to build words, phrases, and articles quickly. When the assembled articles on pages had been printed, the distribution labor took place. Thus, taking and gripping the little fonts between the index finger and thumb they are later put onto their respective places without making mistakes. While I am writing this, I realized I am able to delete the words thousands of times without even thinking. However, I have not seen a chibalete start over again with a slight mistake since those words once printed, they will stay like that forever. Language itself used to be set up even so promptness was always preferred, and now I consider that words just pop up rapidly. We do not organize them nor plan them; we are just at that moment where the ball hit the bronze letters from the chibalete, and they were picked up in a disorganized way. Sometimes, we just want to find a way to memorize those words again and give them an order.

Angélica Rojas.