Thoughts on "Journey back to the source"

When I began to read Alejo Carpentier's "Journey back to the source", I was very intrigued by the fact that I could not really understand what in the world was going on. Then I was informed that Carpentier had written this story in reverse, which is something I had not had experience in reading and therefore could not identify it. Even though now I knew the answer, I could not understand exactly how the scenes were being sperated and organized. Continuing on what we were discussing in class today, I found really interesting that the comphrehension of this text has to do with our culture and how we write. I remember that one day somebody was holding a book written in a diffrent language, and I remember moving my finger from left to right attempting to read what was printed on the page. Immediatly, this person said to me that in this language you had to read vertically. To say the least, I gave up after like five seconds. I have been raised to always read and write from left to write, and in a way for me and teachers, time progresses the same way. For instance, in history class, the past is represented all the way to the right on a timeline, and as time progresses the events fall further and further to the left. This story to me is something extremelly clever. I love how in this short story, the language is progressing, however, the events are moving back in time. I believe it is incredible that Carpentier was able to create this piece of work. He really did experiement with language, and in a way, is trying to make people aware that there is another way of viewing certain things other than the way we normally view it as. Going back to Carpentier's biography, I read that he fled to Europe beacuse he was about to be imprisoned by singing a song that contained opinions he should not have given. In other words, this experiment with this piece of writting makes sense with the fact that Carpentier has not always been one that follows what is "normally" done, instead, he takes his chances and experiments.