It's damn hot, and it's also my saint, today. My chinese girlfriend still has problems understanding what it means that today "is my saint"... do you? Let's say it's a day when you celebrate my name, and the name of all the people who's named like me. My saint is supposed to hold the keys to heaven, though up to now, I only hold the keys to my (rented) place.
I'm not much of a celebrator of birthdays and saints, specially since I realised society considers me old already. Every advertisement I see portraits younger people: that means I'm old.
Anyway. Today I watched Manhattan for the ... time. But I think it was the first time I watched it on cinemascope, on this huge screen they have at the filmotheque. Again, it was great. And it was great to see how a big cinema screen changes a movie so much. I mean I was able to grasp details, to feel emotions I had not perceived the previous times I watched the movie on my tv.
They say you can just watch Manhattan without sound, because it's so extremely beautiful. And you can just listen to Manhattan's dialogues and music without images, because they are so brilliant. It's a perfect definition, though today I thought the visual part of Manhattan is maybe the best bite of the movie.
Anyway, what are you waiting for?

Because

... because life is not only about intellectual or sexual stimulation, yesterday i spent the day painting my brand old appartment with sweet ann. The color chosen was white, the hours from 1pm to 6pm, though the fruitman was seen at 8pm cleaning the floors and at 10pm smoking a cigarrete after having successfully assembled the ikea furniture he had bought a couple of days ago.

Sweet ann provided an invaluable help: in fact, not only did she paint most of the walls, but if it wasn't for her assistance, the fruitman can't tell how the walls would have ended. It turns out that the mechanism of painting is simple... if you know how to dip the cilinder-with-a-stick (el rodillo, vaya, from now on, "painting roller") into the white paint. I didn't. I was one of this innocent mates that think: you buy the can of paint, you get home, you dip the "painting roller" into the can, you smash it onto the wall, you move it up and down.

But the sweet ann came and said: "well, there's this squared can with a flat filter attached to it. you dip the painting roller into the paint, then you make it roll on the flat filter, so the paint is distributed uniformly through the roller, and does not drop, and then, only then, you can proceed to paint the wall".

I wish I could draw it, once you see it, it's so logical. And it works so well. I have to confess that I felt so happy after seeing the whole room all brand new whited. It's an amazing sense of achievement, much greater than assembling ikea furniture. As I was painting, I wanted to be a fucking house painter. I was so fucking good at it: you paint an appartment per weekend, with the music and the beer and stuff, and from monday to friday... party!

After lunch, torjman joined us and provided essential moral support. And well, physical too, of course :)

But it was 9pm, and ann and torjman had left, and I was left alone with a can full of paint and a pair of painting rollers full of paint. What the hell can I do now? I mean, can you just leave the painting rollers full of paint? Will the paint on the can dry? Will the rollers dry, and become unusable? Fuck! I mean those are tricky questions. And I had nobody to ask, and no proper place to wash or throw everything left.

So I though: "fuck, i'm gonna paint the fucking balcony in white, until no paint is left behind!" And so I did. And I felt like the fucking king of great ideas.

Noche de San Juan

Amanece. La luz del cielo me recuerda al color de tus ojos hace unas semanas. Me quedo sentado, mirándolo mientras os levantáis, y pienso que lo peor del amor es darte cuenta de lo absurdo que puede ser. Como el tuyo, torjman, que hace diez días temblabas al leer su nombre, o como yo, que me divertía hablándote en el trabajo hace unas semanas.

Ahora tus ojos son de un color distinto. Ya no son el turquesa manchado por el humo de las hogeras, sudor invisible del cielo. Son de un color que sólo transmite color. De un color de conversas banales para matar el tiempo, de sonrisas de borracho bajo la luna fluorescente. Del color de una condena que nadie se molesta en cumplir.

Azules, tan sólo azules.

Groucho

Thanks to kel, I read an email from -p, and I couldn't help thinking of Groucho Marx. Here is the quote that made me laugh:
"The student was telling me to shut up. My reputation is not very good and I basically have no authority; they all know now that I am a lesbian ( I told them the first time in a taxi in Hanoi, and it caused a lot of consternation), and now they say I have a dykish hair style; last night, when I offered one of the students to marry me, so that I could get the green card, he said that it would happen "only over his dead body", to which I responded 'cool, I am a necrophiliac', so I am a necrophiliac lesbian now. Today I also told them I was a feminist."

Rambling

It was a rambling weekend. I fought with my girlfriend a few times, and a few times we reconsidered our positions and achieved peace of mind. It's mainly a problem of cultural differences, but it seems that our similarities are above culture, and so we keep on together. Mmm... I look forward to landing in hong kong... I need sashimi and tai chi and feng shui and asian cinema. And a bit of sex too, maybe :) ... sashimi and sex is a good combination to overcome cultural differences... raw stuff, you know.
On the other side of the weekend, I spent most of my time reading and watching movies and thinking.
Reading:
1) A hundred years of solitude, by García Márquez. Started as a great novel, continued as a bit too boring read, but cannot put it off. I'm just so in love with Úrsula. There are no women like Úrsula no more.
2) A book by an american guy who rented the appartment where I lived until I was one year old, James Nolan. We still sort of keep contact with him, and the other day he presented his book in Barcelona and we bought it and I'm reading it. In the book, he rambles around with interesting thoughts in the form of easy going essays. Thoughts like: before we got paid for recycling. True: I remember carrying the empty glass bottles down to the grocery and getting paid for each of them. Now all the profit is for the manufacturers.
Watching movies:
1) the man who shot liberty valance: once more, I realised cinema ain't what it used to be.
2) mystic river: once more, I realised there's still some cinema like john ford used to do it.
Thinking:
1) does joaquin have "tokyo blues" by murakami, or however the japanese name is written?
2) ...

White screen

The white screen. Again, the white screen. Simbols, experiences, lights of the day everywhere, but the screen is white. White like the end of the joint I'm smoking, the tip where my lips touch the burning paper. And I think that the white screen is like the white cigarette: as you write, as you smoke, the white starts to vanish into a mixture of black letters and grey ashes.
I put off the cigarette on the ash tray that Patrick gave me when he came back from Gottingen, where Hilbert developped the mathematical language of quantum mechanics. It was three years ago, back when I was still interested in Hilbert. I wish I had now the energy to study Hilbert again, but with what I know now.
We're always late, even when we realise we are late, it's already late. And we say "I wish I had not fallen in love for you, I wish I had known you earlier, I wish I had not sold those stocks, I wish I had studied more, I wish I had taken that job..."
Rubbish. All rubbish. I think it was Kuhn who said that "ones who are ahead of their generation are actually the only ones that understand their generation". Einstein was not ahead of his time: he produced the atomic bomb, they key element of the 20th century.
I'm high, but I must say: that I do not regret anything, but that I live to regret.

Pot, again

After some months, I am having a joint in my room, again, 100% pure, green herbs. Joaquin, from the other side of the world, is (discontinously) chatting with me. Anyway, I just got an email from a (girl) friend from school asking me to fill in a questionaire. They want to make a documentary about our generation, but first they ask some questions to prepare for it. So, I am answering the questions happily and very wity (I am known for being very good at witiness) and suddenly, this question comes: "how many times have you had sex?"
"Fuck!" I think. And then: "ok, fuck, but how many times?" So I answer "10,000".
The questionnaire ends asking for a suggestion about a topic that might define our generation. I write: "We are the generation that was going to get anything it wanted, and instead we are ending up like a bunch of mediocrity".
I feel I do not belong to this generation. But then, what?

I am spam

Kel's journal has identified me "as an open proxy (a common source of spam), so comment access is denied". So, since I cannot comment on your blog, dear kel, I will comment on here :)
1) Kel wrote about "the secretary problem":
"To our friend's spouse-seeking woes, Von Bing allegorically posed 'the Secretary problem':
Imagine you need a secretary and are interviewing candidates one by one.
You must accept or reject each candidate after the interview. That means you must decide after meeting each, whether or not you will hire them.
You cannot reverse the decision once made and you cannot go back to choosing a previous candidate.
This, Von Bing hinted, was how he found his wife.
I asked him tonight if there would be other ways of solving the problem (since he is a statistician).
He smiles and says there probably are strategies, but he wouldn't want to go back down that road.
Would you?"

2) Mr. Berkeley man commented:
"well, if you get to meet someone like anne, what's the purpose of going back down that road?
you have the yaps, you will meet piotr.
you have new flashy shabby chic clothes.
i envy you."

3) An I comment:
"well, in a market economy like ours, it's quite cheap to fire an employee... and quite easy to get a divorce. secretaries and wives are not asset-specific goods, which means that the transaction costs are low. so, problem solved. :)
(the fruitman speaking the language of economics like he knew any economics)"

Absence

It's been I while since I don't write in English. Ok, that's obvious. Anyway, forget it, and let's start:
Yesterday I went to this round-table where my father was participating. I didn't know what it was about, and to my surprise I discovered that it was a meeting of bloggers and "traditional" writers of diaries. My dad was the traditional type, of course. So I sat there, and listened to what people had to say.
I felt kind of outraged at the bloggers speaking there. In a way, they presented blogging as an "evolution" to traditional writing. They spoke about the superior "freedom" of blogging vs. traditional writing. And I am sick and tired of listening to the same old shit of how technology makes us better. I think we should all make an effort to think a bit further.
To me, blogging has nothing to do with the evolution of writing or with freedom. To me, it's a form of self-reflection about the world and myself, a self-reflection that is constructed through myself but also through communication with my readers. A vehicle to explore my thoughts and my life.
Anyway, what do you think about it?

La edad

Hoy estuve escuchando a Ana María Matute (la televisión, la buena televisión, tiene estas cosas: de repente estás cenando y aparece Ana María Matute en el comedor de tu casa). La vimos, y era una mujer mayor, la piel doblegada en pliegos que se fueron formando a lo largo de ochenta años.

Pero Ana Maria empezó a hablar, y enseguida empecé a escucharla como a una colega, como a alguien con quien me iría a tomar unos gin tonics y me la pasaría de puta madre. Ana Maria empezó a hablar, y otra vez me di cuenta de lo poco que importa la edad y lo mucho que importa tener algo interesante que contar, y saber contarlo.

La vida es cuestión de palabras. Volví a confiar en ella escuchando a Ana Maria. Y quise besar sus ochenta años a la luz del alba, como terminan todas las noches que merecen ser contadas.