Day 1. Inauguration
The ship’s compass pointed to the Teresa Carreño Theatre and the Museum Circuit in Caracas, spaces that would be taken by that island of books where the eternal voyager expects to find a court of pretenders embedded in uniforms, ties and all sort of finery, who will try to impede at all costs his face-to-face meeting with the visitors to this sort of Amalivaca of letters, that golden masterpiece of Cesar Rengifo, which is the International Book Fair of Venezuela. The Ulysse’s quill ran, then, after a sister, hoping to find that she had been also, perhaps without knowing, expecting that meeting, to satisfy his voyeur wishes and to allow being captured by the lens and the words. A hard task, it seemed, since this solemn day appeared to be reserved for the elite and its ceremonies, restrictions, heights. But this land, where the helm of life is directed by the unexpected, still kept a big surprise for that voyager who thought to be defeated in advance, since the lens that expected to capture the detail of a freckle toasted by the sun in the face of some daring girl, strolling about what Ulysses conceived as guarded dungeons, which only after dawn would recover light to host the fair, met a books thirsty crowd who had owned the fair already, even before it was officially inaugurated. All that anonymous mass which has never gripped the quill, for shyness or any other reasons, waits anxiously every year for the Filven, as one who searches for El Dorado; the history of thousands of lives, or even just his own life, narrated in some lost page hidden in piles of books. The quest will undoubtedly stain his fingers and clothes with dust, and his body will end the day weakened after so long walk, but it is a minor sacrifice before the great treasure found by the people of Caracas in the chance to visit every year their beloved and already traditional International Book Fair of Venezuela.
It is hence inaugurated by the people the 2015 Filven.
By: J. Leal
