One breath away

Today I cried because I saw a boy who couldn’t breathe. He must have been fourteen, and was with a woman -his mother, I guess- standing on the pavement, waiting for a taxi that would no doubt take them to the nearest hospital. She was trying to calm him down, stroking his head, and probably saying soothing words to him. She looked worried but, at the same time, relaxed, possibly had been through this so many times before. I couldn’t hear her, could only hear him panting, putting a lot of effort in every exhalation but apparently not getting any oxygen in return. He looked tired, freaked out, and I couldn’t help but cry briefly and silently while from a distance watching his pale face and hearing his suffocated respiration and his moans.
Once I was told that crying is the physiological manifestation of this fact: something that has settled inside you in the wrong place finally finds its own place. In principle, I don’t have a very good predisposition towards this sort of explanation, but at the same time I’m totally prepared to believe them. Anything but keep on feeling like a jigsaw that can’t be solved.
Apparently, we tend to swallow our pain, which inmediately tries to find a quick way out without going through the heart. But it finds tempting corners, small cosy spaces, and decides to get stuck in there. I think I could detect some of those in different parts of my anatomy, it could explain the stiffness of some of my muscles, or even my sporadic resistance to being touched, as if sometimes the harshness of the sorrows under my skin couldn’t stand any contact. But sometimes I’ve thought that carrying, as I do, a scream and an imaginary dog, there shouldn’t be any spare room in my body for misplaced feelings of any kind.
But there is room.
And sometimes I can hardly breathe, myself, although I keep on saying “I’m fine, I’m really fine, I’m really really fine,” to prevent myself from collapsing. It works most of the time. But suddenly an old perfume fills the air and it becomes saturated with vain expectations, or there isn’t any strawberry ice cream left in the supermarket, a baby hippo is born in the zoo, or the wind blows the leaves I’ve been carefully sweeping, or even a boy struggles for breath in front of me and the bloody taxi doesn’t come.

Then a chill runs through my heart and I know that a bit of my raw unabashed sadness has finally reached the place where it belongs. Afterwards it will disolve in my tears.And my body shall breathe again. And at that very moment that sensation will be the greatest truth I can state about who I am.

La casa inclinada

De todas las cosas que me empujan a dormir abrazada a D cada noche (el amor, el que no tengamos calefacción...), hay una que tiene más peso que las demás, porque haría que continuáramos durmiendo pegados, aunque dejaramos de amarnos o decidiéramos comprarnos un radiador. Cuando un día D me dijo que necesitaba un poco más de espacio para dormir, tuve que confesarle que el amor no era la única razón que me llevaba a invadir su parcela de sábanas cada noche. "La casa está inclinada", le dije, y él empezó a reírse de mi supuesto chiste y me apartó delicadamente hacia mi lado de la cama. A los dos segundos, yo había vuelto a rodar hasta el suyo. En la oscuridad de nuestra habitación helada le susurré a su espalda nocturna: "La casa está inclinada, lo digo en serio."
D es un hombre práctico, y en lugar de discutir conmigo todas las cosas de apariencia absurda que me pasan por la cabeza, actúa. Por eso aquella noche se levantó de la cama, fue a buscar una canica de la botella donde las guardamos, y la colocó en mi lado de la cama pensando que la ausencia de movimiento de la canica probaría la ausencia de inclinación de la casa. Y así hubiera ocurrido, de no ser porque la canica comenzó a descender a buena velocidad hasta el hueco que han formado nuestros cuerpos en su lado del colchón. En ese momento, D comprendió los errores de cálculo que cometo en mis trayectorias a través de la casa, y que me hacen chocar con todos los muebles. Y también por qué cada vez que intento llenar los platos de sopa, siempre derramo la mitad de camino al lado sur de la casa, donde comemos y donde D pasa la mayor parte del tiempo, ajeno al desequilibrio de su casa y al mío.
Lo peor es cuando salgo a la calle, donde el suelo sin duda es recto, pero donde yo me siento como si acabara de bajar de un barco y tuviera el mal de tierra. Claro que podría acostumbrame a la rectitud, y proponerle a D que nos mudáramos a otra casa que tuviera un suelo bien nivelado. Pero entonces, el hecho de que D y yo durmamos abrazados cada noche, empezaría a depender de factores mucho más incontrolables. Sin duda prefiero seguir así, aunque de vez en cuando se me caiga un tomate al suelo y tenga que correr detrás del muy cabrón para alcanzarlo antes de que se estrelle contra la puerta del baño.

God is in the air

It's Tuesday at seven o’clock in the evening. I know this because I’ve just checked it on the oven clock. I had the feeling it was getting late, and I had some emergency shopping to do, so I checked the time, grabed my purse, my keys and my shopping bag and headed to the supermarket.
My shopping bag is useless. It’s far too small to carry more than a couple of bottles of milk and half a dozen eggs, but I like it. It was given to me as a present, though the bag itself wasn’t the present, but the mah-jong that was inside. So this little brown bag with some red Chinese characters on the front is probably just a commercial or corporate bag. The only thing I understand of the message printed on my shopping bag is the number 1808 circled, which means whatever they do or sell, they’ve been doing or selling since then.
Anyway, as I’m going downstairs, I hear the old lady that lives in the flat below; the woman whose ceiling is my floor, in other words. She spends most of the day on the landing, wearing a pale blue dressing-gown with the word Pause written on the left breast, along with the two vertical lines that are the icon for this function (or state of mind.) I interpret this sort of adornment as a statement: I think she’s trying to say we can’t ask much from her, since she’s old and tired and wants to be left alone. As I was saying, her main activity is carried out on the landing, where she walks from one wing to the other while shouting a trascendent question: "When are they coming?” Obviously, she never gets an answer, not one I can hear, so she goes to bed every night with this question unsolved. I must say I’ve started to feel worried about who are they and whether they’re coming or not, but I haven’t told anybody.
I don’t expect to spend a lot of time with her today, not that I ever do, but I tend to ask her how she’s doing, give her a kiss on the cheek, this sort of thing. But today I’m in a rush and I intend to limit my politeness to Hello-goodbye. As I bump into her, she stares at me with a particularly concerned look. Before I have time to fool myself into thinking everything’s all right, she opens her little toothless mouth to say:
- I’ve got a problem.

-All right –I say. And what’s that problem?

-I can’t tell you- she answers.

-Are you sure you don’t want to tell me? –I insist, without much insistence, while starting to walk slowly downstairs.

-I’ve got a problem – she says again.

And suddenly, with a shaky slow movement of her hands, she unbuttons her gown, opens it and says:

-I’ve pee’d myself.

And what I see is the sad image of two skinny, weak legs flanking a pair of big white knickers falling around her ankles. No shame in her attitude, only the genuine manner of a child who's got a problem that doesn't know how to solve.

-Are you in a hurry? –She asks.

-Yeah, absolutely rushing. Got lots of stuff to do.

I guess I could tell the truth. But the truth is I'm a bad person and I don’t think I can face anything related to the wet genitals of an old lady.
As I’m going downstairs, waving, with an unconvincing smile, she throws out yet another question to me.

-Do you think God will help us?

So she thinks we both need help from God , and then I realise she knows I'm a lier and understands what I'm going through right now.

-Well... I don’t know... He might decide to show up.

I look up instinctively and see a bright light shinning through the skylight of the building, throwing a shaft upon a pair of blue underpants hung on the handrail with a plastic peg. Without a doubt, it’s one of those discoveries you can usually find on the communal roof, exposed there so their owner would recognise them, recover them, rewash them and rehang them hopefully with more care, this time.

-I’m sorry to be the one who gives you the bad news, but I don’t think God will show up here today- I say eventually, staring at her with all the honesty I’m able to show.

She nods and lowers her gaze to look far down, beyond the handrail and her ankles, her pissed knickers and the stairwell. Her look goes so, so far that the only thing I want is for her to button her gown up, so she might accidentally press the pause icon again and return to her stand by mode. At least, in this state she doesn’t have self-awareness and the only essential problem is whether they’re coming or not. Whoever they are.

The Kebab Queens

It might sound a bit silly, or greedy, or both. But there are songs that make me feel not only powerful but also power-hungry. I’m talking about a song by Coldplay called Viva la vida; not that I am a big fan of this band, actually I’ve always sustained that if a boiled hake had a voice, it would be Chris Martins’.
Apparently, this song was used to motivate the players of the football team that has won three cups after a historical season. (“I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word”) Not that I’m a big fan of football either, but this fact captured my attention, for it takes to a higher level the motivation you can bring out from certain notes or chords or lyrics.
I can easily imagine all those alfa males listening to the song and removing everything from their heads until the only thing they are able to imagine is winning. (I used to roll the dice, feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes.”)
I use music all the time to motivate myself when I head to the office at seven in the morning, or when I have to go to the supermarket and face up to dozens of old ladies armed with shopping carts. I use it when it rains and I forgot my umbrella, and when I miss someone but want to feel as happy as if they were around.
There was a time when I didn’t need to feed my confidence in order to succeed, I didn’t even think about it in those terms. I had to do something; I did it, I was the best, end of story. But living involves failing, too. And I’ve learnt from my failures that intelligence is not a blank check that guarantees that everything is gonna work out well for you. (“One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me.”) Things get even more complicated if your success doesn’t only depend on you.
Some days ago I was a bit worried because I had to perform that belly dance show I have been rehearsing since Christmas. Four years ago, when I moved to this outlaying neighbourhood where I live, I decided to join a dance group to feel I belonged here, maybe put down some roots.
The other women’s reasons for being in this group are also far from having something to do with improving their dance skills. For most of them it is a way out of their routine, a time to laugh or talk about their lives, complaints and miseries. But when they dance and focus on moving their hips and breasts they are just women. Nothing else. No less. And the sensual movements of that dance awaken their inner feminine power. After a couple of hours they go back home with a renewed interest in having sex with their husband (if they have one), or a sudden desire to cook spicier meals in their tiny kitchens. Once, one of the women of the dance group asked our teacher if it was possible to choreograph a dance with shorter steps.
“I have to rehearse in the kitchen, which is only two metres wide. I can’t take long steps or movements without ending up in the sitting-room, where my husband and son would laugh at me if they saw me dancing.” (“It was the wicked and wild wind, blew down the doors to let me in.”)
Obviously, that didn’t put our teacher off choreographing a dance with all its corresponding long steps for a sort of end-of-course party. The idea of performing it on a stage in front of the rest of the neighbourhood was definitely a bad one. I mean all those people don’t have no reason to see in us anything more than a quirky non homogeneous troup of working class women dressed up as odalisques, embarrassing themselves, showing, in some cases, their lack of rhythm and flexibility. They don’t necessarily need to be able to see those magical feminine connections I mentioned some lines ago. That’s why I decided I would take the Coldplay song to our last rehearsal before the show (I bought a couple of six packs, too. The song is powerful but, failing that, I knew the beer would do the trick.)
When I put the CD on and the first notes sounded, all the women in our dance room, as if powered by a spring, started jumping, and laughing and screaming and dancing to that song, dressed in those incongruent outfits and with a can of beer in our hands. (“For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.”)
Then came another song and another beer, and another. And at some point I guess we walked to the stage and danced in front of all the neighbourhood, and that in some video recordings there will be inmortalized our tipsy look and our (still) sensual movements. I just remember that I had great fun, which necessarily means we were immense.
Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking about those elements I had to turn to in order to build some confidence in myself to do things I know I can do. Then I miss those times when succeeding was an accident, like being young and spontaneous, a time when I enjoyed an unstructured charm and the unintended soul of a leader. (“But that was when I ruled the world.”)

The North Pole

There's a man and his canvas briefcase. He will sit on the metro every morning and spend there around thirty of the earliest minutes of his day, either looking straight ahead, where I usually am, or reading a book. I should know nothing about him for we are strangers and, nevertheless, I know so many things.
I know, for instance, that he can read. He can read, and reads, thus he understands and maybe gets intrigued too. And he focuses on that intrigue or understanding, though sometimes he doesn’t, and then he chooses not to read.
But when he does, he takes his glasses out of his briefcase, steams them up with his breath and rubs them with a lens cloth. He puts them on and, suddenly, the letters and I come into focus in his eyes.
Sometimes he chooses to look at me, or he doesn’t choose to and he just can’t help it, though he is very concerned about me not noticing. But the thing is I always notice everything.

I’ve noticed, for instance, that when he doesn’t read, he looks like any sad-faced fifty-odd year old man going to work, more aware of the way life has wreaked havoc on his face than of the world around him. He just sits on his seat, and grabs his briefcase firmly with both hands, as if it were the hips of a woman. Then I feel sorry for him because he looks as if he hasn’t been kissed for a long time.

On some occasions he wears a t-shirt that says “North Pole” and the potential connections between us just melt tragically. And I would like to ask him:“Have you ever been to the North Pole? Are you intending to?” And if he answered “No” I would tell him he must be careful with what is written on his clothes because it’s meaningful, evocative and should signify something for him, since he’s spreading those two words around the world.
In addition to those letters, on that t-shirt there’s an imprecise drawing of an arctic landscape, with the blurred silhouette of an igloo, and also something like the grid reference of the area, if my memory serves me right. And perhaps yes, perhaps he dreams about going there or he doesn’t dwell on the possibility seriously but he considers it a sort of Promised Land.

This I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that he breathes and every two days shaves. I know that some days he must curse his luck and some other days he must feel joyful. I know that some things will make him smile, and some will make him cry a river. I know that once his hair was a colour other than grey, and his wrinkles didn’t stay in place when he changed his expression. And I know that North Pole t-shirt is, in fact, a resistance to what he is. Those exciting horizons claim freedom, courage, but his is just the kind of t-shirt that some people will buy, at some point, no matter what it says, without taking into account the contradictory message they’re sending to the rest of us. Their inner beauty sinks under the North Pole waters and only remains visible to those looking with an open heart.

If I could only sit next to him and suggest him:

“Let’s go to the North Pole. If you don’t go, that place will always be a metaphor for your lack of identity."

He would stare at me distrustfully, but then I would say:

“… I can kiss you too, if you want. You look as if you haven’t been kissed for a long time."

If I wouldn’t, he would stay subjugated to the sad slavery of the letters on his t-shirt, totally unaware of the fact that his clothes are really important lessons about how we live our lives.
I mean his and mine.

Grietas por todas partes

Anoche, viendo una película de Jim Jarmusch, me di cuenta de que siento cierta inclinación por los perdedores –digo perdedores en el sentido estético de la palabra–, más que por ningún otro tipo de personajes de ficción. La razón es clara y simple: tal y como les ocurre a ellos, mis armarios de cocina no cierran bien, mis muebles no pegan unos con otros, no me compro zapatos nuevos hasta que los que tengo están destrozados, y las paredes de mi casa tienen grietas. A través de esas grietas, se cuela el invierno. Seguro que por ellas también se escapan algunas cosas.

A veces observo las grietas, aunque otras veces me olvido de que existen y no las veo. Pero de vez en cuando me doy cuenta de que se han agrandado y sé que ello es el resultado de un proceso que tiene lugar cada noche. Porque de noche oigo la casa.
Cuando estoy en la cama con todas las luces apagadas es cuando oigo los crujidos de mi casa al estirarse desperezándose, enfrentándose a los cambios de temperatura, empezando el día ahora que el mío se ha terminado. Vengo a sentirme como si compartiera casa con mi propia casa, por así decirlo. No es tan distinto a tener un compañero de piso noctámbulo, excepto porque por la mañana no te encuentras sus platos sucios y sus ceniceros en la pila de la cocina.
En algunas ocasiones la casa ha ido demasiado lejos y sus ruidos han sido más intensos y profundos, como si el techo estuviera a punto de caerse. Evidentemente, no puedo decir que sepa lo que eso significa, pero lo interpreto como una queja porque ha llegado la primavera y no estoy pintando la casa, como haría la mayoría de la gente. Algunas noches he estado a punto de levantarme de la cama y gritarle a las paredes: “Eh, casa, yo también tengo grietas y no dramatizo tanto.” Pero la casa ya debe saber, como yo, que las grietas son sin duda un rasgo característico de los perdedores. Quizá no tanto las grietas, sino como la falta de resistencia al hecho de que existan.

Las paredes de la casa donde vivía cuando era una niña estaban todas empapeladas, pero yo reseguía el papel pintado por toda la sala de estar todo el pasillo y las habitaciones con mi manita y sentía las grietas bajo los dibujos de flores. Me hacían sentir incómoda, porque no se pretendía que se vieran, pero allí estaban, podían sentirse, amenazadoras como un secreto vergonzoso. Me prometí que algún día tendría una casa tan blanca y lisa como una tarta nupcial, pero siempre me las he arreglado para acabar viviendo en casas cuyas paredes parecían más bien un plato de arroz con leche. No sólo las paredes; con los años me he encontrado grietas en mi piel, en mis conocimientos y en mis convicciones. Grietas en mis labios, en mi felicidad y en mis defectos. Grietas por todas partes, que nos exponen a millones de influencias, como el amor y la luz, y la duda y el envejecimiento.
De todos modos, al final, esas fisuras que mis deditos reseguían por las paredes de la casa de mi infancia acabaron siéndome familiares, y tocarlas me tranquilizaba. En cierto modo, sentía que esas grietas eran más ciertas que las flores del papel pintado, en el que siempre era primavera, mientras que a través de las grietas teníamos acceso a todas las estaciones del año. Y las certezas son reconfortantes, no importa lo duras que sean.

Si la casa pudiera ver las cosas desde mi punto de vista, tal vez dejaría de quejarse. No soy perfecta y mi casa no es una tarta nupcial. Tapar nuestras grietas no cambiaría eso; sólo nos convertiría en verdaderos perdedores, en todos los sentidos de la palabra, excepto en el estético, por supuesto.

 

Every bread you make

It feels good. I mean creating something. Anything. A short story, a drawing, a baby, a brick wall, a turd. A loaf of bread. You pick a few things from around you and then produce something with a shape, a texture, a character. You can give them a name. Take photos of them. Buy them accessories. Take them out for a walk. Maybe these last proposals wouldn’t really work for the turd, or the brick wall, but even so. What I really mean is, I don’t think I can cope with a baby right now, not to mention I can’t draw. I can write stories but I don’t get my hands dirty by doing that. I started baking bread because I can’t draw. Yeah, that’s how it all happened.
I’ve made two decent drawings in my life, both on the same day: one of a guy and one of a seagull. I called them “Guy” and “Seagull”. Since them I haven’t been able to draw properly again, but I still need to do it sometimes. Some things you can’t describe, it doesn’t work, they lose all the spirit you’ve seen in them in that very moment, the art gets spoiled. Creating means projecting onto an object a sudden glimpse of comprehension of the world you live in. Sometimes writing can express this, but sometimes you need something else. Taking a picture, or shooting a film, composing a song, arranging a choreography, building a wall and ruining your hands doing it. Or drawing a picture. It’s clear that expressing oneself takes more than one skill. That’s why my notebooks are full of written babies, drawings and walls, detailed descriptions, useless as literary material, of things I will never be able to produce.
Then the bread machine appeared out of nowhere and I knew my frustrations had come to a provisional end. I took it off a shelf in the supermarket and, as I was holding the cardboard box, I already felt like a goddess. I understood it would be to me a top hat I could put feelings into and pull some bread out. They might not become a work of art, but the ideas and thoughts that are not meant to be written would have a shape, a body. And the smell of yeast invading all the corners of my flat would be their soul.
I just have to pick all the ingredients and leave the machine do all the kneading. Then I can talk to the dough for a couple of hours or so, or put some suitable music on. I can tell it jokes or cry a little. I can show it my boobs. I can do whatever it takes. Then my hands will give it the right shape and bake it. Three hours later I’ll be holding in my hands the warm result of that process, and give it a name. My first bread was a white ciabatta, with olives and herbs. I told it a secret and called it Renata. Then came Rita, which was quite a sad whole grain bread with raisins, that was raised listening to Portishead. Later I made a rye bread with beer and sunflower seeds and I called it Lou, and then a nut and chocolate bread and named it Thomas. I danced for both of them. And they have all existed just because I can’t draw, but they have done the trick as well as the drawing would have done. They stop all the noise of the world in my head for a while, and make me feel so good, just like washing machines in motion, or the embrace of a man in a flannel shirt. I eat them on their own, though most people insist on saying how bland it is to eat bread without oil or ham or cheese or butter. They could never imagine how good it tastes to eat all my affection.