Danilo LopezThesis: “An Echo of Swelling Voices” (a novella)

Chapter 4A

Socrates and Phaedrus

May 1997, Houston, Texas

Horatio P. looks tired. He is no Atlas supporting the world on his back. He holds on

to his briefcase. He paces the corridors of Huston-Tillotson College readying, pushing

himself to yet another day in limbo.

His next class is Latin American Literature, as soon as Horatio P. gets to his office, he

turns on the computer. Mechanical act most people working in an office do. Right after

turning on the computer, one might have plenty of time to get a cup of coffee while the

machines boot themselves and load the program. The dose of caffeine had to wait this time.

Horatio P. is more concerned with finding out who this Asdreni is. The door to his rather

small office, a 12 feet by 12 feet space with a window overlooking the green gardens of the

campus to the north where students and professors walk in all directions to and from

buildings and parking lots, the sunny day scrambling to happen between heavy clouds and

rain threats. A desk cluttered with books and papers to read and grade –he must switch to

on-line only submissions and readings-, the two bookcases brimming with texts and

monographs, the bulletin board plastered with posters of past poetry festivals in Houston,

Granada, Miami, Stuttgart and elsewhere he has participated in, a calendar that still shows

the last month with a large figure of Jorge Luis Borges in suit, both hands on his cane,

looking up to the yellow shadows in front of him.

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Danilo LopezThesis: “An Echo of Swelling Voices” (a novella)

-“Good morning Doctor P.!” sounds falsely cheerful and pompous Dr. Arthemius

Sinclair, Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, standing at Horatio P’s door in his gray flannel

suit, jacket and red bowtie.

“How are you this morning?” insist Dr. Sinclair a letter size, brown envelope in his

left hand, the right one hanging off from the thumb in his vest pocket, coat open to the side.

Horatio P. barely fakes a smile switching his dark eyes between the door and the computer

screen. The computer finishes loading and Horatio P. opens the browser and types poets

and suicide in the Google tab. Yes, he got distracted, he was supposed to type Asdreni, but he

usually does this. He starts one task that reminds him of a different task which he pursues

then; or searches a topic that takes him to a related topic and he switches searches.

“You are busy so I’ll be brief, Dr. P.” Dr. Sinclair is trying hard to be polite and not

take personal offense for his mute interlocutor lack of interest and eye contact.

Horatio P. knows Dr. Sinclair is after something, what could it be? What did he forget

to do or write or research? But it is Dr. Sinclair who has something pending this time.

Horatio P. clicks on a link that mentions Socrates and starts reading. “Sure, what can I help

you with, Dr. Sinclair?”. There is another link to Phaedrus, one of Socrates Dialogues.

Horatio P. clicks on it. Click after click we can connect to everything in the Internet, this is

the modern Aleph that Borges made up in his fiction. All is interconnected one way of

another. If we look close enough, we will see the connecting points, the relationships

among all that exists. And everything is right there, in the Internet, this is the real Matrix.

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Danilo LopezThesis: “An Echo of Swelling Voices” (a novella)

“I read your new book proposal about the…” Dr. Sinclair pulls out a paper from the

envelope and reads, adjusting his glasses “… Approximation to the poetics of Ruben Dario

and Walt Whitman”, clears his throat and continues. “A bit farfetched, don’t you think so Dr.

P.?”

In the Phaedrus Dialogue Socrates touches on several themes, one of them is

madness as a gift from the gods in the forms of prophecy, religious bliss, poetry, or love.

[“Farfetched?” he thinks that is what he heard Dr. Sinclair say]. So poets are mad along with

prophets, people who have a religious experience and people in love? Horatio P. silently

mulls.

“Yes, the connection you are trying to make between a poet from Latin-America,

from Nicaragua to be exact, and our Walt Whitman, a poet of epic proportions, are not

there. The frameworks you suggest are weak at best, and… well, as the head of the Editorial

Board of this university press, I must communicate to you that your book proposal has

been regretfully declined, and since employment in this university is driven, among other

factors, by the number and relevance of publications our professors maintain throughout

the year, I must also remind you that should you not be able to come up with a relevant

publication soon, your employment here is not guaranteed.”

This last part Horatio P. heard well but before he could turn his staring eyes onto Dr.

Sinclair’s and a coherent rebuttal, the Dean was gone. But another idea is already boiling in

Horatio P.’s head, another potential book. It is something he found, by serendipity in the

matrix-internet, a book that will change his reality for ever.

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