Kilometer Zero

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.