By Pablo García Mejía. Does
chance rule over all human beings and things that
exist on Planet Earth? Are we all individuals sons of chance? If we make a small and easy calculation we''ll find that no person would exist if chance wouldn''t have had something to do with our parents, grandparents, great grandparents'' encounter and then, the unavoidable question is: Does God exist? or Is God what we call chance?<
BR>To Jim Nashe, a man abandoned by his wife and with a mediocre firefighter job, there wasn''t anything else than to think of a lucky strike when a lawyer that have been searching for him for six months appeared, to give him the 200 thousand dollar inheritance his father left him.
His father had abandoned him and his sister when he was 2 years old and he never knew anything about his existance after that until that day in which the lawyer came with the news that would change his life radically. 200 thousand dollars were really a small fortune that would give greater profits if well invested. However, to Nashe it was the opportunity to do unimaginable things, it was the chance to live with absolute freedom. However, freedom always brings foolishness, or
maybe they''re exchangeable and together they bring happiness, even though that happiness might be short. Is it gold or it is not? If it is, it''s worth living it no
matter the price.
Jim took care of everything, gave away most of his stuff o sold them cheaply, doesn''t matter. He left his little daughter safe with a trust fund, bought a red Saab car and wandered for a year without goal on the roads of the American Union until Jack Pozzi showed up, tumbling on the side of the road in that beautiful summer morning and Nashe gave him a ride without giving it much thought. From then on everything would turn suddenly and chance with all its majesty would be present. Now chance turned into destiny would be the master of gambling and would play a strange Poker game with these two characters. The Music of Chance.
We live in a time in which we commit the greatest crime there is and that''s the crime against ourselves. How many
times have we killed our illusions? How many times we could have
lived our lives intensely and we didn''t? We live by our time''s convencionalisms and those of the culture we belong to and very few times we dare to be ourselves. Maybe there''s an actor inside us, or a poet. Maybe someone simply wanted to know the ocean and lived their lives in the city o the small town without even trying to reach to the realization of their dreams.
That is why Paul Auster is the author of our times, who have discovered that chance carries a tune. Yes, a strange tune that you only have to listen and have the courage to follow its rhythm.
This music will take us unusual places and experiences if we dare to take the guidelines that mark its harmony and in the end we will have lived in accordance with our destiny without fighting it, no matter if it leads to a happy ending or not. What matters is that we lived life to the limits, giving it all, without leaving anything at the bottom of the bottle of existence that was given for us to empty its full contents.
Paul Auster. The Music of Chance. Editorial Anagrama. English-Spanish translation by Maribel De Juan. Barcelona, Spain, 1990. 251 pp. Pablo García Mejía, Ciudad de México.
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