my life is a flight, and i lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion

--Borges and I--

(One of a few short stories written by Argentinian author, Jose Louise Borges..)

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk throughthe streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to lookat the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges fromthe mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. Ilike hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and theprose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way, that turns theminto the attributes of an actor.

It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, letmyself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literaturejustifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some validpages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to noone, not even to him, but rather to the language and to the tradition. Besides, I amdestined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive inhim.

Little by litte...i am giving over everything to him, though i am quite aware of hisperverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all thingslong to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and thetiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not myself (if it is true that i amsomeone), but i recognise myself less in his books than in many others or in thelaborious strumming of a guitar.

Years ago, i tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of thesuburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges nowand I shall have to imagine other things.

Thus my life is a flight, and i lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion,or to him.I do not know which of us has written this page.

--translated by James E Irby.