My friend introduced me to the author Isabel Allende and here I read:
In The Book of Embraces, Eduardo Galeano has a short story that I love. To me, it is a splendid metaphor of writing:
There was an old and solitary man who spent most of his time in bed. There were rumors that he had a treasure hidden in his house. One day some thieves broke in, they searched everywhere and found a chest in the cellar. They went off with it and when they opened it they found that it was filled with letters. They were the love letters the old man had received all over the course of his long life. The thieves were going to burn the letters, but they talked it over and finally decided to return them. One by one. One a week. Since then, every Monday at noon, the old man would be waiting for the postman to appear. As soon as he saw him, he would start running and the postman, who knew all about it, held the letter ready in his hand. And even St. Peter could hear the beating of that heart, crazed with joy at receiving a message from a woman.
Isn´t that fantastic???? My life has changed just a little because of this encounter....She is an incredible, Chilean writer.....Sometimes, someone says something that just resounds in your soul and you just want more so...
Here´s more...
I fell in lust. I had been living in chastity for a very long time—two or three weeks as I recall—so I took the initiative. I asked him to tell me about his life. This trick always works, ladies! Ask any man to talk about himself and pretend to listen while you relax and enjoy your meal, and he will end up convinced that you are a smart and sexy gal. In this case, however, I did not have to pretend. Soon I realized I had stumbled upon one of those rare gems that storytellers are always looking for. That man's life was a novel! So I did what any normal Latin American female writer would have done: marry the man to get the story. Well, I didn't marry him right away. It took some fine manipulation.
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