"A day in my life is always a beautiful thing, because I am very happy to be alive. I have no intention of dying, I have the impression that I am immortal. I know I'm not, but the idea of death does not bother me, nor does it scare me. I deny its existence, so that helps me to live in a way ... how do I put it? Under the sun, sunny.
I am very glad to be alive, and there is a thing that few people think of: It is a wonderful miracle that we all are human beings, that we are in the top of the zoological scale, by purely genetic chance. Because you did not choose who you are. We come from a very long genetic chain and when I see a chicken or a fly also born of the same genetic chain, I marvel at being a man and not a chicken. I am a man, with all the good and bad that means. And I'm glad I have had a conscience, seeing with it as much as a conscience can see of the planet. And I won't say more to you."
He uttered those word after more than half an hour with us, telling us anecdotes and smiling, sometimes like a child. Yes, he is a human being like you and me, to speak he needs to move the mouth in the same way as you and I do. But he is Julio Cortazar .
© Viviana Marcela Iriart
Caracas, September 1979.
Published in November 1979
Semana magazine, Caracas
Translation:©Julio Emilio Moliné
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