There’s this rumor I heard as a child while circling around the rotunda of the Arroyo fountain almost everyday, that there’s a vagrant woman, most likely deranged, who bathes in its waters. At the moment, the pumps are not working. Its obelisk becoming bare, you can see the four Greek muses, formerly naked, supporting its top tier, in front of the old capitol with Greek columns in its facade. The fountain was named after a good senator who did his best to get funding for a decent water system in the then budding city that has learned to knead its environs. Kilometer zero as a token of appreciation, blatant patronage to a fellow man so close to the river. Walking distance are other icons of modernity; a gallery, a high court, a prison converted into a museum. Also under renovation is a diorama of the Maragtas, a migration myth wherein indigenous tribes of the island peacefully welcomed settlers arriving by boat. Long debunked but the idea still fires up the imagination of the latter’s descendants. Along with tourist spots and profiles, a kitsch spectacle to foreground an idea to those caught in the regular morning gridlock. Home as a form of exchange between hands, insanity out in the open.
From: Vol.10 N.01 – The Transformative Now
Kilometer Zero
by
Eric Abalajon