The story of where my copy of the collected works of Octavio Paz went.

 In Roberto Bolaño's novel Amulet, Auxilio, the mother of Mexican poets, prophesies that a statue of Octavio Paz would stand in a square in Mexico in the year 2020. 

In 2020, I concluded my 10 year Chicago residence in Pilsen. My girlfriend and I were leaving to live with her family in Texas for a short time. Uhaul is expensive and we didn't even have a couch, so we only took what we could fit in a rented mini-van. Most of our things were laid out on the sidewalk in front of our apartment. I was pleased with the attention it was getting, as a variety of people came by to pick over the pile throughout the week. 

One man, who looked to be around 55 years old, came by. He was interested in the books and took one of the two copies of Be Here Now by Ram Dass, and the collected works of Octavio Paz. He told me he was an artist and through our conversation I learned that he was one of Pilsen's famous/anonymous Mexican mural painters. In my raw emotional state of leaving, I felt especially touched that the books would be in the right hands. I felt I probably never should have had them in the first place. I felt I probably never should have been in that neighborhood in the first place. 

-MPB