Generally, I prefer to offer a poem or essay of my own in acknowledgment to a great soul who has made exceptional contributions to humanity. However, word has just reached me that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, is gravely ill but managed to pen a farewell letter for himself. This famed author of A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, and AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, has enriched world culture immeasurably with bold literary meditations on Latin American history, politics, religion, the nature of love, and the varied magical meanings of this journey called life. It is with much gratitude and humility that I post this letter from his soul:

FROM GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

If for an instant God were to forget that I am a rag doll and gifted me with a piece of life, possibly I wouldn't say all that I think, but rather I would think of all that I say. I would value things, not for their worth but for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others sleep.

I  would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream! If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply,
throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.

Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream a Benedetti poem, and a Serrat song would be the serenade I'd offer to the moon. With my tears I would water roses, to feel the pain of their thorns, and the red kiss of their petals... My god, if I had a piece of life... I wouldn't let a single day pass

Without telling the people I love that I love them. I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love. I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!

To a child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his own.  I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting. So much have I learned from you, oh men...

I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled. I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the first time with his tiny fist his father's finger, he has him trapped forever. I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only
when he has to help the other get to his feet.

From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
A QUICK BIO ON THE MASTER:

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez began his career as a Journalist for a series of liberal South American newspapers in the late 1940's.

Although he toyed with fiction as a young man, his first true efforts were  incited by the negative reviews of contemporary Latin-American writers. The result  was the short story The Third Resignation. The reviews of the story were  positive and the impact strong; the press heralded The Boom, a second generation of Latin-American writers. Garcia Marquez followed with a compilation of short stories (Big Mama's Funeral) and three novellas (Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, and In Evil Hour). These dark, eerie, and sad works were influenced heavily by Franz Kafka yet  the reveal the voice of an intelligent young writer preparing himself for larger things.

Larger things came to Garcia Marquez in 1967. While suffering from writer's block several years earlier, the author suddenly had a vision of his next novel -- as he has said, the first chapter was as clear as if it had  already been written. The idea was to tell the story of
several generations of a Colombian family as his grandmother might have told it: supernatural occurrences and unbelievable events described with
unblinking sincerity.

After eighteen months of seclusion, Garcia Marquez produced his Masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has been called one of the greatest novels in history. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.