To enter the forest you have to accept three conditions. Trees are methodical, they resist standing, being unaligned, in the best sun of the day. They gently move the rumours like the corridors after a resignation.<\/p>
There is an unadorned bush, some signs of abandonment, a path without alternatives and an iron gate that civilizes the whole. It is a slow and heavy summer afternoon. Everything sleeps except the crickets. They sing from within, unaware of the siren calls, but maintaining their hypnotic power. They try to rhythmically relocate a world in turmoil. He stops in front of the metallic door, wears shorts and old boots. He arrives rounding the enclosure of the farm and crossing a path of old mimosas. He stops, but there is no padlock or lock on the gate. He stops out of purely disciplinary politeness, a symbolic question. The gate is taller than he is. It was unskilfully built ten years ago and the rust has already patiently attacked the hinges that rest against an exaggerated use of the stones. The boy stands at the door to intuit something. He observes while he plays on the marks left a long time ago by a big tractor. Some indiscriminate prohibitions pressure him, as the natural shyness of the quiet ones and the push of escaping. The awareness of everyone being asleep pressures him, but he has chosen the rebelliousness of wakefulness. In the short walks along the threshold, the pressure of the warnings, of the punishments that have arrived and are yet to come, the voice of the chainsaw in the distance in the sentenced oak grove and the pressure of the constant threat of being prepared for the day when the future -what a word- will be present. But the crickets sing.<\/p>
To enter the forest you have to accept three conditions. Indifference is one of the virtues of trees. They don\u2019t regret the bad reputation attributed to them by infantile fear, nor the transforming ambition of the cultural industry. They are indifferent and perhaps that is why they fall. They are indifferent and that is why they resist.<\/p>
Behind the gate there seems to be another world. The harmony it promises is not enough for the boy to match the monody of the crickets with a song he\u2019d heard. The melody is stuck in his head but overflows the rhythm. He whistles, looks inside and distracts the time of his indecision by counting the irons on the door. Eight on each leaf. Eight sheep killed by the teeth of wolves or wild dogs he remembers from a winter morning when his father explained the dangers of dark nights. He looks inside. The oak trees rest on the land curves.<\/p>
To enter the forest you have to accept three conditions. Trees don’t know they make a forest. That’s why they don’t complain about the responsibility of carrying legends, nor the public imagination, nor the personal memory. All that burden slips from top to bottom like any other natural thing. However, culture says that when a forest transforms into people and advances, the dictators fall wrapped in their own fire.<\/p>
When he pushes the iron gate a noise scares the birds from their nap. No use. The flapping of wings calms, crickets fall silent and the restlessness of so much dust subsides. The door disappears like someone who lifts the borders, but the boy remains outside. He ignores the magic of the promise while checking how every part of the forest is in its place. He resists leaving no man’s land, stopped where no one would stop. He resists like the yew trees because the first condition for entering the forest is to surrender.<\/p>
This text was published in Vieiros.com \nin the summer of 1998.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To enter the forest you have to accept three conditions. Trees are methodical, they resist standing, being unaligned, in the best sun of the day. They gently move the rumours like the corridors after a resignation. There is an unadorned bush, some signs of abandonment, a path without alternatives and an iron gate that civilizes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover","category-narrativa-en"],"acf":[],"post_template":"default","post_subscription":"no","pretitle":"","content_extract":"To enter the forest you have to accept three conditions. Trees are methodical, they resist standing, being unaligned, in the best sun of the day. They gently move the rumours like the corridors after a resignation. There is an unadorned bush, some signs of abandonment, a path without alternatives and an iron gate that civilizes...","reading_data":{"word_count":"631","reading_seconds":"151","reading_time":{"minutes":2,"hours":0,"seconds":31},"reading_string":"2'31''","reading_human":"3 minutos"},"announcement":{"finishdate":"","finishdate_text":""},"opinion":{"subject":"","subject_info":[]},"event_info":{"startdate":"","starttime":"","enddate":"","endtime":"","entertainer":null},"interview":{"interviewed":""},"phototext":{"text_author":"","text_photo":""},"video":{"video_source":""},"promotion":null,"categories_list":[{"name":"Narrative","id":92,"slug":"narrativa-en","parent":0,"template":"default"}],"visible_author":"Camilo Franco","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65958,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65922\/revisions\/65958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/63011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}