“Waterline: we cure the fright, joy bath are given”. Magela Baudoin, body and space in “La composición de la sal”

Abstract

In Bolivian literature, water is a figure that retains and suspends its meaning, creating a void, waiting for sense to arrive and settle. It mysteriously traverses works and authors, becoming a fundamental element in their pages, often evoked in absentia. In the primary sea of life, in the indefinite apeiron that is the beginning and end of everything, Magela Baudoin's writing sinks, and numerous are the submerged references to works and authors that surface discreetly, from unheard of depths, in the story “La composición de la sal” (2016). It is difficult to decipher the complexity of a seemingly simple text, but one that leaves the reader inebriated with a mysterious substance, dense with ancient dreams, buried myths, and obscure shamanic practices. In “La composición de la sal”, small, seemingly insignificant objects trigger a kind of inner vortex in the protagonist, almost a storm. In this process, everything tends towards an aquatic dimension of tears, rain, and sea. It is about a vulnerability and a capacity for wonder that, in line with what Jane Bennett theorized in her Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), can lead to the perception of a universe much more alive than we suspect and to the recognition of a deep union between organic and inorganic bodies.