Silence
What happened?
This week everything was wrong. On saturday, the 15th of march, I was celebrating a friends new home when I received a call communicating the death of my dear friend and mentor, Pablo Chiuminatto. I could not begin to address the level of influence Chiuminatto had in my life. I was a clueless literature student who couldn’t grasp the depth of the career I was getting into. If it hadn’t been for Chiuminatto I would’ve finished those four years even more clueless than I was.
It was through his lectures that I found love for world literature, for the classics and the moderns alike. He showed me the beauty of erudition, of always finding a profound or funny reference, the creativity and joy behind knowledge. In him, I found more than a mentor. I found a friend, a role model, the possibility of having a life where beauty, friendship, and culture are at the center. Loosing him is like losing a part of my own being, of my own ideas and life. He was the person I called when something good or bad happened, when I needed a reference around a specific and strange idea or image, when I needed a hand.
Saint Augustine once wrote that lives were like words. They only find meaning once they are gone and the next word comes to complete the sentence. I can’t think of a word that could give justice to the life of Chiuminatto. I had the luck to call him a friend. To work with him. I have the luck to hold hundreds of memories that will forever mark my passing through this life. I have the luck to be much better thanks to his generosity and kindness, as a teacher and a friend.
How could I elaborate the many gifts he left me? The many words, ideas, and simple everyday moments we shared. I have a few books he gave me through time, a silk scarf given to me by his partner Soledad a few days ago. And above all, I have the immense responsibility and gratitude of being one of his disciples.
I have many tasks ahead. Chiuminatto would’ve urged me to write, to publish, to make new friends and build projects for everyone around. He would’ve urged me to use my skills not only for myself, but to create a fertile context, a place where knowledge can flourish and everyone can take a piece of it. I’ll try as far as I can. I just hope to be up to the task.
In times like this there’s nothing more I can say, that’s why I always return to Rilke.
“It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,
to cease practicing newly acquired habits,
to deny roses and other beings with genuine promise
the proper meaning of the human future;
to no longer be that which once was in the hands of endless fear,
and even to end up abandoning
one’s own name
like a broken toy.
How strange to no longer desire desires. How strange
to see everything that once was related fluttering freely in the air.
Being dead is arduous
and full of restitutions, until little by little
one begins to feel eternity.
The living, however, all make
the mistake of making too many distinctions.
Angels, it is said, often do not know
whether they are among the living or the dead. In both realms,
the eternal current carries with it
all the ages and silences them in both.”