Carlos Fentanes

After the visit to my customer, where the spoon surfaced unexpectedly in our conversation, I felt an urgency to share the experience with Jorge. Two sensations pulled at me in opposite directions: a strange certainty that something larger was at work, and, at the same time, a sharp fear—an amplified awareness of my own actions. A week later, I went to see him again. This time, he showed me another passage from his Conversations with Virgin Mary.

Wednesday, March 11
About Failure

Failure is your faithful companion. Do not despise it, for it walks closer to you than triumph ever will. Triumph is sugar — sweet, fleeting, dissolving on the tongue. Failure is bread — dense, coarse, daily. You live by it.

Do not think you are abandoned when the elevator closes in your face. That is me, reminding you that the world closes its doors more often than it opens them, and still you must stand waiting. Do not curse when your latte spills on the table; I am there in the stain, arranging the music that plays at that very instant so you might notice how life consoles you and mocks you at the same time.

The tremor in your hand is not weakness. It is me, pressing a message through your muscles, reminding you that even writing itself is a fragile miracle. The oil stain on the pavement where you walked this morning after the rain is not filth but a sign: a rainbow at your feet, telling you there is still something worth fighting for.

Therefore, stop despising what visits you most often. Do not chase the rare guest while you curse the faithful companion. Failure is not your enemy. It is your mirror, your measure, your daily bread. Triumph will always abandon you; failure never will.

Because you are bound to failure, I offer you the gift of action. I’m going to give you a new task but also I’ll send you a messenger to prove you that my words are certain: tomorrow, take something you love but fear to share — a song, a poem, a story — and release it into the world. Sing it aloud to someone, record it on YouTube, or write it and place it on Substack. You will fail; that is certain. No crowds will gather, no heavens will split open. But you will discover the truth: failure is not the end. It is the proof that you acted. And action is the only path toward freedom, but don’t feel down because of this, at the end of the week I will send you my messenger to console you and tell you that you are never alone.

“What’s that mean?” I asked Jorge. “My faithful companion? Is she mocking our human condition?”

He leaned back, crossing his arms as if he had just delivered the most obvious truth in the world.
“So what do you want? For the Virgin to hand you a recipe like she was your grandmother? No. She’s telling you to move. To act. And if you fall, you get up. And if you spill your coffee, you wipe it. That’s the lesson. That’s the bread.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but his words pressed against me like the spoon had. Half-mocking, half-saving—and maybe that was exactly the point.

“Look,” he said, “you came here looking for a cure, right? Well, the only way you cure yourself is by changing your mind and taking action. These writings aren’t recipes. They’re guides. Maps. If you stay in the same place, you don’t just stand still—you fall behind. You follow the map, you get lost, you check it again, and you keep walking. It’s the only way to reach your destination. Every carpenter splits the wood with his hammer now and then. Every cook burns the soup at least once.”

He poured hot water into his small teacup, carelessly dropping some water outside the cup, exhaled slowly, and smirked.
“Besides… if you don’t fail, how do you expect her to send you the messenger?”

I thought back to the farebox, how its failure led to the customer’s mention of a spoon—a solution hidden in defeat, Jorge was right again, it was when I failed that the messenger appeared.

“So I’m supposed to write a story—maybe the story of you and your Conversations with Mary, that’s not a bad idea—and post it on Substack, wait to fail catastrophically, and then receive the next clue from the Virgin Mary? She’s evil.”
“What’s the point of trying if I already know I’m going to fail?”

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” he said. “Do your homework and wait. That’s all I can tell you. I had the same attitude at the beginning, and only after trying did I realize—it was my attitude that needed to change, not the results.”

Something in Jorge’s words felt like an invitation—a call to act, to risk. So I decided to begin writing Conversations with Virgin Mary and release it to the world. Now, as I type these lines for Substack, my hands hesitate, knowing failure waits like bread on the table… and that whatever comes next has already begun.