I´m scared you are part of a terrorist unit.

adopt your own virtual pet!

Sometimes it´s harder if it is your friend

After nearly ten years of silence i´ve discovered something.
I don´t like living with you.
And you don´t like living with me.
The problem here is that I suspect you´ve known this for quite a long time, but never said anything. Why?
It´s hard for me right now because I don´t want to lose your friendship and that is precisely the reason I´m asking you to go. If we are to still be friends in the future only going separate ways seems to be the answer.
I don´t want to push you away, I still care for you, you are still my best friend... and I have to let you go.
But what bothers me is your silence. Why you´ve kept quiet all this time?
laziness? I wish you´d tell me, but your lips are as sealed as they´ve always been.
The illness is back, the next months will be tough and I really don´t want to lay any burden in you.
I wish to be alone.
I just need space and I think you do too.
You need a house of your own, to care for, to decorate, to be a mother...
I need a house to create, to distruct, to be my own...
I´m sorry.
I hope you can understand me.
I hope you will not hate me.
I hope you still want to be my friend.
Because I am.

我爱你

Reichenbach

At least in my imagination it is.

I wish I had never met you.

you left her earrings in the bath.

it hurts so bad now that you are gone.

Mr. Colin White

Está sentado frente a mi. Es delgado, todo su pelo es cano y su rostro surcado de arrugas es como un mapa de rutas marinas. Tose frecuentemente por el humo del cigarro y el polvo de las minas acumulado en sus pulmones, y que seguramente terminará costándole la vida. Aún así es un hombre capaz de gobernar un barco él solo y de llevar el timón de un salón de clases.
Su padre y su madre pertenecían a la clase obrera de un pequeño pueblo al sur de Londres. Corría el año de 1932 y se empezaba a sentir en el aire la amenaza de la nube fascista que devastaría Europa. Se mudó con su familia en el ´39 a la capital, pero debió abandonarla pronto junto con su hermano, debido a los bombardeos. Su padre marcha al frente por lo que se convierte en el jefe de familia, dividiendo su infancia entre Gales, Escocia e Inglaterra.
Asiste a la secundaria en una escuela de gobierno, de la que conserva muy buenos recuerdos y al terminarla es aceptado en la Universidad de Cambridge.
Antes de partir a la Universidad debe hacer el servicio militar, que lo llevaría a entrenar soldados destinados a luchar en Corea. En un momento decisivo en su vida resuelve dejar atrás Cambridge; por lealtad permanece con su regimiento y parte él también hacia Corea. Sin embargo, es herido, debe regresar a casa y como algo predestinado, termina por ingresar a la Universidad.
Estudia Letras Inglesas con las figuras más influyentes en el ámbito cultural de la época. En las vacaciones trabaja como minero en túneles en Escocia, también como leñador y ocasionalmente en granjas, segando campos. Al terminar la Universidad continúa como minero, unas de las pocas decisiones de las que se arrepiente en su vida, me dice mientras deja vagar la mirada, sin encontrar todavía una respuesta.
En 1956, su postura política en torno a los problemas del Canal de Suez, lo hacen partir molesto de Inglaterra. Toma rumbo a Canadá, donde lleva la vida dura que nosotros leemos en las novelas de aventuras de Jack London. Trabaja como minero sacando plata, hasta que los precios bajan y se ve obligado a regresar a la profesión de leñador, lo que le agrada mucho, pues realmente le gusta el bosque.
Debido a una nevada imprevista se ve sin trabajo paseando un día por Vancouver cuando ve un póster invocador: México, decía de manera enigmática. Sin pensarlo mucho, se dirige a la terminal de camiones y pide un boleto para Veracruz, única referencia que tiene gracias a una película con Gary Cooper y Burt Lancaster. Ahí conoce a la mujer que lo ha acompañado a partir de entonces en todo su peregrinaje. Regresa a Canadá donde gana algo de dinero jugando cartas y se establece más tarde de manera definitiva en México. Por motivos de trabajo se viene a la capital, donde colabora con Juan Ibáñez y Carlos Fuentes como traductor en una serie de guiones, reminiscencias de cuando era crítico de cine en la Facultad.
Da clases en la Facultad de Ingeniería en la UNAM y después se pasa a Filosofía y Letras, a la carrera de letras Inglesas. Molesto, otra vez, por la situación en el movimiento estudiantil del ´68, deja la escuela por un par de años para construir su primer barco, el cual le es quitado por el gobierno, en un incidente del cual no habla mucho, lo que no le desanima y al poco tiempo inicia la construcción de otro.
Regresa a la UNAM en el ´74 y ahí permanece desde entonces, inspirando a generación tras generación, convirtiéndose en el mentor de muchos, incluyendo a quien escribe estas líneas. Hay muchas cosas que desconozco de él, pero sé que le gusta Keats, que aunque finja lo contrario adora a sus alumnos, que toma su café con mucho azúcar y piensa qué nosotros los jóvenes leemos muy poco. También sé que usa la misma corbata desde hace muchos años, misma que le regaló un alumno que murió joven y que como todos los que vieron sus vidas terminadas muy pronto, permanece en su memoria.
Dice que ahora nos preocupamos mucho por ser, que él no desearía haber sido nada más, que está contento con hacer. Ha hecho lo que quiere, pero cuando le pregunto que cosas le hubiera gustado hacer me contesta firme: todo. Es feliz en México, se sabe afortunado, pero ahora sentado frente a mí, veo el brillo en sus ojos cuando habla de su tierra, pero no deja traslucir nada con su característica flema británica.
Ahora finalizó la construcción de su tercer barco y lo tiene anclado en Isla Mujeres, listo para zarpar, en lo que promete ser un viaje a la isla caribeña de Cuba. Solo, pues navega en soledad.


Something written by a young friend of mine, big eyed lady who still believes in fairies and knights.

Letters to a friend

to Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Ravenna, April 26, 1821



The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and favorable. It is gratifying to me that you and Mrs Shelley do not disapprove of the step which I have taken, which is merely temporary.
I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats - is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of "Endymion" in the Quarterly. It was severe, - but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.
I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress - but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena.

"Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee."

You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, - because it is of no school. I read Cenci - but, besides that I think the subject essentially undramatic, I am not an admirer of our old dramatists, as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and poetry. As to my drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being as free as I have been with yours.
I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to see. I have heard nothing of mine, and do not know if it is yet published. I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead - or that he was alive and so sensitive - I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.
You want me to undertake a great Poem - I have not the inclination nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference - not to life, for we love it by instinct - but to the stimuli of life, increases. Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many reasons, - some public, some personal. My respects to Mrs S.
Yours ever.
BYRON
P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not you take a run here alone?

Wife of an acrobat

She listens to him shouting in the other room, the tone of his voice raising with each phrase. She wasn´t fully asleep when the phone rang for the first time and after a couple of angry shouts he hanged up. She stayed awake, very still, waiting for the next ring, for she knew there was to be another one. When it came she heard him sigh and felt him getting up and going outside the room. She layed there for a couple of minutes and heard him. She was a little bit annoyed for being woke up and felt slightly curious for the woman on the other side of the line. She barely knew her, but from what she could tell, the other was a smart, pretty woman. She wondered what nasty turns of destiny had put that woman into that situation. She wondered if he would shout at her like that one day. Hardly. She wasn´t planning on staying long enough for that to happen. She was tired, she wanted to fall asleep again, but it was impossible with all these things going trough her mind. She got up and look at herself in the mirror. The image answered back, the dark circles under her eyes, her soft body, her messy hair. That look of too many dawns, the look of knowing. She cursed both him and the other woman for forcing her to get into these mental acrobatics. She started to get dressed, thinking of having breakfast down the park, strawberries and french toasts, or maybe go to the gym, when he entered back into the room. Without any word, as if he knew what she had been thinking, he jumped into the bed and embraced her and hid his face in her chest. She felt his heart still running fast from his fight with his exgirlfriend. She touched lightly his back, just the tip of her fingers, feeling his breath slowing down. She relaxed and let his full weight fall on her. It amused her a little bit to discover she wasn´t going to move, that she was going to stay there, holding him. She knew she was in love. With a yawn she wondered, but for how long? She was sure he didn´t love her, never will, so she could only hope to get away before it was too late. She wished for a moment to be able to stay, really stay, but then she remembered the living dead, the image in the mirror and shook her head with a shriver running down her spine. She looked at him and closed her eyes. Just a couple of minutes, and she would be gone for good, the sound of her heels and laughter still floating in the air long after she was gone.
Just one more moment...

Counting the minutes

I can´t sleep tonight, expectation too high running through my head to close my eyes.
Tomorrow I´ll get a phone call, a succesful tough woman is calling me, she´s going to interview me for a job. She doesn´t wan´t me for that job. A friend of mine has almost forced her to take me. It´s nothing personal, she just doesn´t like working with girls and would much rather have a friend of hers for this kind of work. But that is precisely the reason my friend has pushed so hard to get me, because he NEEDS a friend close to him for this particular job.
But I need to say the right things to this woman, or she might find something to not hire me.
I´m nervous.
Specially because I´m not really sure I´m fit for the job. I´m supossed to be. In theory. I always get cold feet when something is about to happen to me. This also has to do with all the second thoughts I´m having in my life right now about everything who I am.
But listen to me, I sound so pathetic. Little scared girl not being able to stand up for what she´s been fighting for.
I know that script almost as well as the director, I helped write it, I just need to feel and sound strong enough to not discourage this woman. I need to convince myself that I can do this and then I will be able to convince her.
And if things don´t work out, is not the end of the world. Really girl, you already have more job options.
You just want this really hard, it´s going to be a proof, a life proof.
Tomorrow might change my life.

I´ve seen it all

She lays in her bed, closed curtains and the smell of sickness around, empty glasses, pills, medicine jars, her room has become the escenario of her disease.
She reaches over and grabs a book, reads a couple of lines but can´t concentrate. She opens her diary and writes a couple of lines but closes it impatiently without being able to find words.
Words, words that used to come to her so easily and now elude her. A ray of light filters trough one or the curtains and she follows its trace, longs for the warmth of that little piece of sun.
Milla enters the room and goes straight to the warm spot of the room. She sits there, light playing over her rich coat of snow and dots, staring with her hazel big eyes to the woman in the bed, wondering when she´ll get up to play with her.

The first and the last