I enter the building and the first thing I find is a metal product detector arch and a backpack scanner.
—Place your backpack on the tray. If you carry things in your pockets: cell phones, keys or any other object, you must also deposit them.
Meekly, I obey the security operator, and empty my pockets and put everything on that tray that slides into the machine. I go through the arch and collect my things on the other side. As I restore the pockets, I listen to the other security operator, who spends his life looking at the objects found inside people’s backpacks:
“You must leave your backpack in a storage room,” he points to a locker space. He carries things that cannot enter the room.
“I carry things that cannot enter the room,” I repeat to myself mentally, and as I walk to the storage room I count the things I carry in my backpack: a bottle of water, chewing gum, a pack of tissues, a notebook, a book, some pens and pencils. Water in case I get thirsty, mint gum to cool my mouth, handkerchiefs to wipe sweat or my nose, a notebook in case I feel like writing something, a book to read on the road and during downtime, pens for the notebook and pencils in case I want to underline or annotate in the book. There are several because I never remember if I have one, and I always end up adding some. Things that cannot enter the exhibition. I wonder what anyone would think, including myself, if they saw someone from security telling someone else that they were carrying things that couldn’t enter the exhibition. What on earth can a person carry in their backpack so that they are not allowed entry to a room where works of art are exhibited? Imagination could take flight, but reality, as usual, is so absurd that it explains itself: one or more people define what can and cannot enter the room. It is understandable because it is assumed that it could be something of a risk for the works exhibited there. The risk of entering an exhibition hall with a bottle of water, or with pens and pencils, or chewing gum, or it may be the risk of carrying a notebook, or a book. God knows how many problems and headaches books have caused throughout history. Maybe not all of them are prohibited, maybe the security person has asked me to keep my backpack in storage because I am carrying one of those books that represent a danger… In reality, it doesn’t matter what caused it, in the end they are things that cannot enter the room.
Of course, the important issue is the exhibition, being able to enjoy it, immerse myself in the sensations transmitted by the works exhibited there, and incidentally, abandon for a while all aspects of daily life, above all, the absurdity of this civilized world.
