Goodbye, Blue Monday!

Dwayne was silent for a while. And then he told her haltingly about a trip he had made to the headquarters of the Pontiac Division of General Motors at Pontiac, Michigan, only three months after his wife ate Drano.

“We were given a tour of all the research facilities”, he said. The thing that impressed him most, he said, was a series of laboratories and out-of-doors test areas where various parts of automobiles and even entire automobiles were destroyed. Pontiac scientists set upholstery on fire, threw gravel at windshields, snapped crankshafts and driveshafts, staged head-on collisions, tore gearshift levers out by the roots, ran engines at high speeds with almost no lubrication, opened and closed glove compartment doors a hundred times a minute for days, cooled dashboard clocks to within a few degrees of absolute zero, and so on.

“Everything you’re not supposed to do to a car, they did to a car,” Dwayne said to Francine. “And I’ll never forget the sign on the front door of the building where all that torture went on.” Here was the sign Dwayne described to Francine:

"I saw that sign," said Dwayne, "and I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for - to find out how much a man could take without breaking."

-Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Novelista norteamericano. En Breakfast of Champions (1973).

Is tomorrow worth tonight?

I went back to the old neighbourhood.
To the old walks:
The stretched avenues,
the solitaire blocks, the hidden grocery stores,
the small houses showered with leaves.
This was the place where I first lived when I arrived to the city.
This was my first home.
This was the station that saw trains arrive and leave forever.
Somewhere inside there was an apartment building that contained a door,
which hung '303' in rusted steel numbers.
And in its walls, beautiful and hurtful memories lay within.
I don't know why I went there in the first place.
I really don't need another book piled up in my tower.
A tower, that's what I am.
A giant tower of torn out books, covered in dust, trembling, about to fall.
Everything hurts right now, even the slightest things.
And being aware, being too conscious is the worst.
I just feel so lonely.
The afternoon suddenly turned dark,
it started raining fiercely.
But I didn't even take cover. One raindrop fell into my eye.
It blended with my tears.
And I sat down on the sidewalk, unspeakably exhausted.
And asked myself: Is tomorrow worth tonight?

Anthems for two seventeen year-old girls

It's days like these I remember a lot about Juliet.
I remember how we met so randomly, out on a concert by Sigur Rós.
I remember how she was the one that started the conversation.

Those times come to me right when I bring back my first steps in this city.
Strangely, she is always there. Unintentionally. Somehow attached to the memory.

There were so many bars throughout the nights we spend out but our lips had to meet for the first time in the bathroom of this tiny, cheap pizza place which was also a karaoke club.

She was 17, I was 19. She was so cheerful and pretty and reckless, and always so young.
She was always so very young.

But then came Sophie and everything became blurry for a while. 'Cause, you know, things change totally when you find someone like her. She was the first girl I ever loved. And in a way she was this city, which was the first city I loved as well. She was my partner in crime and became all these pieces of situations and moments I would never dare to forget, even though she's long gone.

I miss her terribly, I really do. Sometimes I get the hurtful urge to pick up the phone and dial her number, hoping to hear her voice once again and talk about nothing or everything, I don't know. That's probably all I'd wish. Only to talk to her, just once more.

Sofía, you know, she was also very young. She was 17 too. We both were so fucking young... and stupid.

But Juliet, you know, she never respected that fact. She came on to me constantly even though I refused again and again. Sofía vanished but Juliet stayed in that slippery zone we call friendship. And a lot later, when we found each other in solitude we tried to build back whatever we had before.

We never could. Juliet was never sure, never willing to give everything else up. We then lost track of each other. When we found our ways back, she had changed. She had someone else. And she loved him.

That was pretty much the moment where it hit me. When I realized how inevitable we were and how we all are bound to repeat the process of approaching, touching and dissolving.


Right now I'm going through one of the worst stages I've ever been, a horrible rut. It's not depression (I hope so), it's just loneliness mixed with desperation for new things, not necessarily better things, just different.


People say two opposite things about this:
One of the typical advices is "Chill. Good news will come when you less expect them."
The other one is exactly the other way around: "Nothing's ever going to happen if you don't do anything about it." I've tried to mix them to get the better out of each one.


I calm down, I  take a deep breath, I try to be less demanding with myself and enjoy the ride.
I go out and try harder and harder. Walk away to another plan, move on, run, kill the moonlight, chase the dawn. But nothing seems to work so far. Bad news just keep coming like glaciers.

I haven't seen Juliet in quite a while now. I kinda get this nostalgia for the old Juliet, you know. When I went to California last summer in an attempt to escape the disappointments I saw Broken Social Scene live and finally understood one of their most beautiful songs, which goes something like this:

Used to be the one of the rotten ones

And I liked you for that

Now you're all gone, got your make-up on

And you're not coming back

I know Juliet's not coming back. I know she was one of the rotten ones, just like me. And I know I liked her just for that, for being the most beautiful misfit I've ever seen. Sometimes I think I could have even loved her. And it hurts 'cause I never thought she could. And that's where the other part of the song comes into play:

Park that car, drop that phone,

Sleep on the floor, dream about me

Park that car, drop that phone,

Sleep on the floor, dream about me

It goes over and over. And I can't stop wondering if she would ever or would have ever, done any of those four little things for me. Especially, the last one...