"21 grams" de eros y tanatos...

"La tierra giró para acercarnos giró
sobre sí misma
y en nosotros,
hasta juntarnos
por fin en este sueño..."

Este extracto de un poema de Eugenio Montejo que Guillermo Arriaga introdujo en el guión (Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, director de “21 gramos”, me lo confesó en Madrid), en boca de Sean Penn, dio la vuelta al mundo.

Pocos sabían entonces quién era el autor de esos maravillosos versos: Eugenio Montejo

Nacido en Caracas (Venezuela) en 1938, poeta, ensayista y diplomático falleció en Valencia (Venezuela) el 5 de junio, 2008.

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Ha muerto Eugenio Montejo. Será que su alma pesa “21 gramos”?

  
Ahora "21 grams" es la marca del "memory box"/"artilugio"ayuda sexual diseñado por el holandés Mark Sturkenboom que contiene un dildo y un compartimento para almacenar las "ashes of a deceased partner".

Called 21 Grams, the box is made from layers of wood, which are glued together and hand-sanded to create the final shape then coated with a pale grey matt finish. It opens using a gold-plated brass key that can be worn as a necklace, and incorporates an amplifier for playing music from an iPhone that slots into the base. 

It also contains a scent diffuser and a small gold-plated urn that holds up to 21 grams of ashes inside a blown-glass dildo. 

"21 Grams is a memory-box that allows a widow to go back to the intimate memories of a lost beloved one," explained Sturkenboom. "After a passing, the missing of intimacy with that person is only one aspect of the pain and grief. This forms the base for 21 Grams. The urn offers the possibility to conserve 21 grams of ashes of the deceased and displays an immortal desire." 

"By bringing different nostalgic moments together like the scent of his perfume, 'their' music, reviving the moment he gave her her first ring, it opens a window to go back to moments of love and intimacy," he said. 

When unlocked, the front of the box forms two panels that fold out. One of these holds a built-in perfume container with a rubber diffuser attached. 

A drawer in the base of the box can be used for keepsakes like a handkerchief or small scarf. The inside of the lid also features a round storage compartment for a ring, which is hidden behind two hinged flaps that form the shape of a shield when closed. 

The hollow glass dildo rests at the back of the main compartment, and the small golden urn is slotted in to the bottom of this and closed with a brass seal. 

Music from the user's iPhone is amplified by the box, with the sound transmitted through perforations arranged in the shape of two forget-me-not flowers on the inside of the box. (...)

The Utrecht-based designer graduated in 2012 from the Netherlands' Artez Academy for the Arts, and has since focused on producing limited-edition pieces that reinterpret familiar products to examine themes of love, time and value. 

The idea for 21 Grams, which is handmade to order and can be personalised to the requirements of the customer, grew from his relationship with an elderly widow. 

"I sometimes help an elderly lady with her groceries and she has an urn standing near the window with the remains of her husband," said the designer. "She always speaks with so much love about him but the jar he was in didn't reflect that at all." 

"In that same period I read an article about widows, taboos and sex and intimacy and then I thought to myself: 'can I combine these themes and make an object that is about love and missing and intimacy?'" 

The name of the project refers to a belief that a human soul weighs 21 grams. This is based on a series of early 20th-century experiments by an American doctor that recorded weight loss in people as they died, which have since been widely discredited. 

En 1902, en Haverhill (Massachusetts) el Dr. Duncan MacDougall hizo el ensayo con pacientes terminales pesándolos antes y después del deceso y esa diferencia en gramos fue la encontrada.

Repitió la prueba en perros sin encontrar variaciones.

Las conclusiones fueron publicadas en la edición de Abril 1907 de American Medicine y, previamente, en un artículo en el New York Times ( 11 marzo 1907) con el título: “Soul Has Weight Physician Thiks”