Digression, digression, is a literary and artistic virtue that, in real life, has its dangers. In Pale Fire, one of Nabokov's best novels, a character becomes a murderer through carelessness.
Half of those who are reading me now have their minds elsewhere, according to a study in Science magazine. The philosopher Jesús García Cívico, author of The Clueless Condition, is one of those who has most thoroughly studied the vast fields that distraction covers and, thanks to him, I discovered that our brain consumes the same energy actively as it does when supposedly resting, concentrated. that catching flies, the activity is so intense that it seems not to be.
Living in the clouds, that condition shared by genius and idiot, is embarrassing when, at parties, people you don't remember greet you and you think about the wisdom of García Márquez, who spent his Alzheimer's years hugging people and telling them: “I've known you since we were kids!” If it was true, he was already there; and, if not, the designated person interpreted it as an enormous display of affection or, if they had just met, as a brilliant example of crazy humor.
In order not to lose the thread, I return to García Cívico, who manages to make the form of his book, a wandering and sinuous prose in the hands of a disoriented essayist - who, therefore, makes unprecedented connections -, fit like a glove to the object of his analysis, full of cultural references. “We like to be somewhere else because it seems like a safe area,” I emphasize in case I forget later, like the reason Harmon O. Nelson gave for separating from Bette Davis in his tumultuous divorce process: the actress read too much, her reading made her They were absent, she would escape with them even when her husband had guests.
And don't worry. Go through the hills of Úbeda – as a military leader of King Ferdinand III did in 1233 in the middle of battle against the Almohads, avoiding the risks of combat –, being in the vine, in Babia, in the cherry tree or in front of the open refrigerator without remembering Our objective relates us to authors such as Josep Pla, Enrique Vila-Matas or Robert Walser.
What were we talking about?
