I used to read books

Somewhere down the road ...

2012-02-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Somewhere down the road he finds himself paying increasing attention to the rites of passage. Funny to think that not so long ago they did not deserve a second thought. Now they have suddenly become an uninviting conspicuous presence, like a long stretch of overcast skies.

For what is worth

2012-02-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

An old couple in the middle of a zebra crossing. A motorcyclist driving too fast and paying little attention. The accident was nearly fatal. He recovered in a few days but she went through intensive care for more than a year. Lying on a bed in the IC unit, she underwent constant monitoring. Her life was at stake, particularly during the few weeks the charts showed her encephalogram had an almost flat profile. It was as close to brain death or coma as it could get. Her husband didn't give up. Everyday, after his own therapy was over in another part of the hospital, he sat beside her and took her hand. He spent a few hours a day by her side, talking to her about anything in his low, soft voice. Months later she recovered, painstakingly slowly, and against a great many odds. It was then that he found out that most of the things he told her when her brain was seriously damaged, half sceptical about the benefit of his purpose, had been nonetheless registered undamaged.

I met a man last evening ...

2012-02-01T03:51:00.000-08:00

I met a man last evening, some ten years older than me. There was instant empathy from the start. We talked all through the basketball game. It was him who did most of the talking, actually. I listened to him with interest, trying not to miss the actions of my boy on the court. In barely two hours time he disclosed an ample summary of the history of his life. His words suggested his had been quite an eventful life, far from that of a commonplace nine-to-fiver. It was however the language of his discourse what really attracted my attention. I was surprised by the amount of sayings and proverbs he used to ornament his speech. He had the ability to sneak in one of those at the slightest possible chance, avoiding to sound pedantic at the same time. As far as I could tell he seemed to take for granted they were all familiar to me. Which they weren't.

Calls

2012-01-18T07:32:00.001-08:00

A woman phones him every second evening. Every time the phone rings he answers. He has never contemplated not to pick it up. This routine is something he does not look forward to. She always knows how to choose the words that can hurt him most. After the irrelevant bits are said she drops a discomforting sentence that shatters his mind for the next hour. She delivers her words in an offhand manner, purposely casual. Politely, he always waits for her to decide when the conversation is over. He then proceeds to assemble the pieces of his inner balance the call scattered. A painful process. He could stop this, easily, but somehow that does not seem the right thing to do. He lets the episode repeat itself shortly.

Epitaph #46

2012-01-15T10:48:00.001-08:00

Busy nonexisting.

A kerb

2012-01-12T03:05:00.000-08:00

That's how he's been told it went. He would sit on a kerb and would look at whatever there was to see - children playing, most likely within a thick wall of hysterical yells. He'd rather be in solitude than join the commotion, he enjoyed being alone. There was evidence of his actual happiness, later on, when at home he summarised the daily events. That was long ago, during nursery school.

He often wondered if that kerb only existed in his imagination or in the storyteller's. It was not rare, however, to notice the occasional hint that suggested otherwise. The kerb must have been real, as his sitting and watching and volunteer detachment. Despite the intervening forty years, the essence of his inner self remained unchanged, his intrinsic nature was of a passive kind, he was always after a kerb to sit alone.

Blow away

2012-01-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

The hanging witches my grandmother once built for me revolved silently on the ceiling, dragged around quite randomly by the air from the movements of clothes my mom shifted at regular intervals from the ironing board to a nearby chair. George Harrison sang and played guitar at the next room, in his cute, unmistakable style. Blow away, blow away, blow away. My dad smoked a cigarette whose smoke sometimes rose fast and straight, absolutely vertical, to break at some height into a messy pattern of beautiful eddies. Basic gas dynamics of laminar and turbulent flows before my eyes. He spilled some coffee from the cup he was about to take over the tablecloth. Too much angular momentum exerted with the spoon, as he absentmindedly waited for the lumps of sugar to dissolve.

A garden in Kyoto

2012-01-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

[ST (Jan 10, 2006)]

There is in Kyoto a famous Zen garden in a temple called Ryoan. Written in the leaflets they provide with the entrance ticket the visitor can read that this garden represents the quintessence of Zen art. The garden is surprising, to say the least - it is a dry garden, it contains no trees, no plants, no flowers. Rather, it contains gravel (carefully ploughed, furrows visible) and stones, fifteen in total. The garden is geometrically shaped in the form of a big rectangle of about ten meters wide and twenty meters long, which is isolated from the rest of the temple by a low wall of clay (containing oil in the inside, my personal leaflet warns me; time has gradually managed to draw finger-shaped stains of oil in the wall). The location of the fifteen stones, while seemingly arbitrary, is what gives the garden its beauty, its distinction, its sought (and found) harmony. (Only fourteen stones can be simultaneously identified, irrespective of the vantage point chosen.) Any other distribution, while equally valid in principle for the purpose, i.e. for the harmony, would not match, presumably, the appealing appearance of the current setup. My knowledge of Zen is not in the least sufficient to capture the meaning of the garden, let alone to understand what is it that makes it stand out among all other existing gardens, what gives it its individualism, its singularity as the major achievement of Zen art. Certainly the detachment of the venue from the outside and the monochromatic background provided by the whitish gravel into which the fifteen stones are scattered (let me remind once again, strategically, purposely, with a clearcut aim in mind) may facilitate concentration and promote inner thinking. To me, any arbitrary place to locate the stones would be just as good (or as bad). The modern tourist, Eastern or Western, Catholic or Buddhist or Shintoist, following a prototypical anesthetic ritual of present-day tourism, enters the temple in his bare feet already predisposed to be moved (the ultimate goal) and sits in the wooden terrace to contemplate the garden - gravely, solemnly. The bizarre parody is taken a bit further by some, notably Westerns as far as I can tell from my short inspection, who sit cross-legged in the lotus position, mantra in their whispers, and which supposedly take advantage of the handy setup to cut shortly in the hazardous path to meditation and trance. It looks as if they're after a bit of fast and easy spirituality (the religious equivalent to a short afternoon nap). Mere pitiable showing off, that's what these attitudes seem to me, and mere mercantilism what religions (any religion) do with their worship places, shamelessly engaged with the down-to-earth purpose of making money.

Jan 1st

2012-01-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

To be nice and then nicer.
To defeat my many fears.
To keep finding joy in trying to fill up another Moleskine again.

Folding bicycle

2011-12-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

I rode my new folding bicycle for the first time today. I spent two hours riding around in the city. I liked it. Soon I'll be using it to go to work. I need to practice the folding/unfolding mechanism. It just takes me too long to manipulate now.

From the bike the runners I passed looked a bit pitiful, gasping and panting and moving about quite gracelessly.

Modern times

2011-12-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Eddies, vortices, whirlpools, shear flows and boundary layers, human beings shed downstream in seamless harmony, challenging common sense.

Question

2011-12-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

[ST (Apr 29, 2006)]

A violin virtuoso fills the air with intricate melodies of bizarre beauty. The air is stalled but from the pressure waves of the sound of the music. The man plays in the middle of an underground tunnel which links the two pavements at both sides of a big avenue together, like opposite riverbanks joining underneath. The kid asks his father how come the man chose such a strange place to stage his skills. The father utters an unconvincing answer.

His face in the passport says it all.

2011-12-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

His face in the passport says it all. Anxious, worried, strained, manic stare. A bit of a slant in the head, not framed properly. The look of a man in a hurry. Feeling guilty and stupid. A complete fool.

On the day he has to fly across the Atlantic to the US, early in the morning, after dumping his heavy luggage on the boot of the car which is going to take him to the railway station where he will catch a train to the airport, a few hours before a long day of airplanes and airports starts, he checks his passport, only to find with a shock it has expired.

He knows it at once. He's screwed the whole thing up. Not much of a challenge a realization, though.

Cold sweat. Pressure. Confusion. Panic. A compromise he has acquired at risk. People waiting for him, and no ordinary people, people he has to please, to rely on, to depend upon. His hand grips the knob of a door these people had the faculty to open to let him come inside to try and tread with trembling steps the beginning of a long path of unknown length to secure a future still to unfold. As futures always do for that matter, when the time finally arrives. He keeps a firm hold of that elusive handle. White-knuckled he knows he has to keep gripping.

There is nothing else to do but to proceed as if everything was still alright. Somehow hoping for a mending, fate miraculously producing a brand new valid passport in no time. Fixing it all with a snap of its mighty fingers.

A cab gives him a ride from the station to his first airport of many where he makes some phone calls. Yes, my passport has expired … I didn't check earlier … I know I should've done it … tell them to wait for me … I'm trying to get there. Imagine to be woken up by a phone ring to hear such pathetic babble.

In the police office of the airport he is informed he can possibly get a valid passport at the corresponding police office of the airport he is next heading for, a hub for transoceanic flights. A bit of relief, infinitesimal, fearing Kafka's play may take the lead on the matter in the next move.

He already carries the photos with him, taken at the first booth he found, at the railway station back in his hometown. A portrait reflecting the anxiety of the moment, stupidity written in the eyes of the man, a slant visible in his empty head. Four identical stares, four identical slants, four identical portraits.

At the next airport he can indeed get a valid passport. The procedure itself is fast, taking about ten minutes. The waiting is long. Who would have thought there could be so many people going through the same embarrassing step. The waiting is only a bit much too long. He misses his flight.

At the check-in counter an American Airlines employee informs him he is in the waiting list for tomorrow's flight. There are some chances he may fly, provided a volunteer gives up a seat for some compensation. A bus takes him to a nearby hotel where he checks in for the night.

Early in the morning the next day he leans against the same desk. Passengers are queueing in and the procedures to board on the plane have just started. A good-looking woman his age is in the same situation, expecting to find her personal volunteer. She lost the connecting flight yesterday. It was not her fault. She comes from Taiwan and is heading to L.A. where she has been living for the last ten years. She works as a teacher for special education students. She loves her job.

A bond is made out of the blue. They're both stranded. They become a unique and peculiar team.

They can only wait for the boarding to finish and see what comes next. They chat all along about trivial matters to keep their minds away from the anxiety of the moment. He digs out the bits he knows about Taiwan - Formosa, and the Portuguese, shoe factories, and the China Sea, and Chiang Kai-shek, that no-good, low-down dirty rat who used to order his troops to fire on the women and children imagine that imagine that. He can tell she is impressed. Song lyrics coming handy to ease their wait. He keeps the source to himself.

After a while the long queue is history and they are the only two people left by the boarding desk. Just when getting on the plane seems unlikely a seat becomes vacant. Just one. Dammit. She doesn't let him a chance, he should take it. He does it, accepting her kind gesture with graceless shame. He walks a little walk along the finger, much too embarrassed to turn back for a final wave of good luck with his hands, steps down the stairs and gets on a bus. The doors close behind him and the bus sets out to meet the plane. He is the very last passenger to board on the flight.

Take off is way behind schedule. His is a window seat, at the rear of the plane. To his surprise the seat next to him is empty. Time ticks away heavily. He can't relax. About ten minutes later he sees her walking along the aisle towards him, a big grin across her face. She has made it too she says with a nervous laugh, and sits next to him. Two volunteers won't be flying home that day.

Over the ocean they tell each other the story of their lives, watch a movie and have lunch. She drinks tea. Coffee for him. No cream. No sugar. She falls asleep. Her head slips down the back of her seat to his left shoulder. A stewardess smiles at him. He breathes normally.

After going through customs they exchange addresses and laugh a bit looking back on their little experience. The anxiety at the departure gate seems so distant it strikes them as almost unreal. They check the gates of their domestic flights and bid each other a fond farewell. A handshake and a few smiles later their spontaneous bond seems unlikely to linger on.

It was there to behold ...

2011-12-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

It was there to behold, on the grass, as she walked past, a singular moment in time in the commonplace form of a blackbird, keeping an eye on her as she moved, a beautiful bird with a gleaming shiny coal-black plumage and a short pointed bill whose vivid yellow tones stood out sharply against the dark of its feathers and the green of the grass on which its little claws clawed. With a macroscopic twist of Heisenbergian irony she knew it would fly away the moment she stopped walking to better appreciate its beauty from a short distance. She spoiled the scene nonetheless.

Chronicle

2011-11-30T07:49:00.000-08:00

There was a round of applause at the end.

A whole bunch of applications remain indispensable, a whole bunch of thinkers think.

I.N.D.I.S.P.E.N.S.A.B.L.E.

The pie keeps being sliced in the most cynical ways.

Irrespective of.

We run into potential problems because of statistical fluctuations.

We ran then so what.

Again and again. Yes we do.

Who was it said the audience clapped at the end?

Sounds

2011-11-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

On saturday mornings I liked to laze on my bed. There was always the faint background noise of circular saws at work in a few nearby mills, on and off. It was so common I hardly paid any attention. It has become a sound forever attached to my childhood, as much as the whistle of distant trains in the dead of night, ever so lightly intruding on my sleep.

Rearrangement

2011-11-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

He notices all shirts and T-shirts he hangs out are rearranged in the clothes line. He hangs them out by placing the clothes pegs under the armpits so that the marks left by the clips are not visible when the clothes are worn. He's been following this model for a good many years, ever since she first advised him. The rearrangement has now the shirts and T-shirts hanging out upside down, the clothes pegs fastening the garments from their lowermost open edge. He is puzzled. He raises the issue one afternoon, as casually as possible. She just decided to change the model, she says. They both smile - each a different smile - and keep hanging out their thursday wash.

Fortuitous

2011-11-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

The meeting between the two men had been fortuitous. It soon became obvious that the ongoing conversation that followed was not going to add anything she was not already well aware of. The conversation ran fluent from the start. The two distinguished men had many common topics of interest to chat about, all of them revolving around academic life and its petty politics. Whatever it was one of them could say the other seconded. Their common ground was boundless. Their self-approval had no limits, like two bottomless wells. A number of people clustered around the two leading figures, mere spectators. She stood up in silence and walked away from the group, heading for the exit door of the terminal building. There were a few other smokers around and the inevitable ashtray crammed with cigarette butts. Feeling the familiar wave of shame she lit her cigarette nonetheless. Shame and pleasure began to quarrel somewhere. The words from the most high and mighty of the two men still echoed in the back of her mind. Nothing that she hadn't heard before, but still. His words reached her and slowly began to undermine the period of hard work she had gone through to build her shaky confidence. Recruiting students to conduct research was no easy matter. It required a good eye on the employer to separate the wheat from the chaff, an eye not everyone had. And it required being firm and resolute and being ready to dissuade the less able ones. Time and again she asked herself whether she was one of those less able ones. Her student years were a distant memory. She had somehow made progress in the interim and had actually reached levels she didn't think were at her reach back when she was at square one. However, there was always a dreary whispering voice ready to set her achievements quaking. The man had a point, she bloody well knew, when he said that the less competent would be better off if only they knew it. He was not being sarcastic nor cynical, he was just being brutally honest. Shame and pleasure patched up their quarrel meanwhile leaving the familiar unpleasant aftertaste in her soul. She wasn't looking forward to get inside and resume her listening. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to board on a plane.

Attitude

2011-10-28T07:08:00.001-07:00

The local representative now has the floor. All along his empty speech he will not stop himself from patting as many backs as possible. Representatives of the central administration's backs. And other backs too. To anyone else it'd seem there's simply too many backs to pat. To him there are not enough backs for all of his patting.

Epitaph #45

2011-10-27T01:33:00.001-07:00

Took me an entire lifetime.

Twist

2011-10-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

She twists her ankle. He notices and approaches to help her. It hurts but she hides her pain with a giggle. He takes her to a bench where she sits. Do you want me to call an ambulance? he asks. She waves her hand to suggest that it doesn't seem necessary. He sits beside her and types a message in his cell phone. He will be late at the meeting. She tells him to take her shoe and sock off. An invitation to massage her foot and injured ankle follows. Now it's his time to giggle. He proceeds, awkwardly. She thanks him and tells him it's doing her good, but he should not rub her skin so hard please. And so the story goes.

Looking through

2011-10-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

Every day at 10:30 am he leaves his office and walks up the flight of stairs that take him to the cafeteria where he orders a croissant and a glass of orange juice. He is always served by the same efficient bartender. This routine has been going on for so long that the bartender never asks him about his order anymore. A croissant plus a glass of orange juice is the immutable choice, day after day after day after day. Only today, for some reason, the bartender looks at him and points to his customer's beardless face with a frank sign of surprise, a face that remains hairless for half a year already. He sighs a silent sigh, somewhat longer than your ordinary sigh. Walking down the flight of stairs some minutes later he ponders about concepts he is acquainted with.

Absence

2011-10-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

Very few times he saw her laughing but when she laughed it was the loveliest moment he'd ever experienced, so alien a concept laughter was to her.

Vacillation

2011-10-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Their choices are scarce, just two. He suggests they should take the first choice. She starts to turn it down. Bluntly, he interrupts, all doubtful, and suggests to take the second choice. She stops and starts rejecting the second. He giggles nervously.

The train is about to leave ...

2011-09-29T04:12:00.000-07:00

The train is about to leave the station when he sees the wallet on the empty seat across the aisle. Picking it up he notices it looks crammed with fifty euro notes. He walks towards the exit door of his car and stands there with one arm extended to show the wallet. Nobody approaches. He refrains from getting out of the train as it is bound to depart shortly. The thought of shouting if someone's lost a wallet crosses his mind. The platform is empty and silent. Shouting does not seem the suitable thing to do. The door closes and the train starts moving. The wallet is in his hand. A man in the same car has been watching him and suggests to leave the wallet at the lost-and-found office at the final stop. "You're an honest man", the stranger tells him. "Sure", he replies perhaps too faintly. He gets back to his seat where his son has resumed playing a video game on his cell phone. The wallet is thick and a bit heavy, dwarfing his hand. The boy has witnessed his father doing the right thing, he tells to himself feeling a little sharp pang of pride.

There's no policeman in sight at the station and he decides to hand the wallet to the train driver. He has no reason to mistrust this affable man as he watches how he and a fellow rail worker disappear down the stairs at the end of the platform.

Confidence

2011-09-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

She is the most confident person he knows, and he knows quite a few. All honesty she once told him that there are only a handful of aptitudes she wished she could have. Keeping her balance on two legs in a moving bus is not one of them. The list she enumerated for him the day that she told him about her confidence is very short indeed. She's as confident as to predict her toast will never fall down to the floor on the side of the marmalade. Only she never drops a toast.

Limbs

2011-09-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

[ST, (Jan 12, 2006)]

Slim young girls checking their make-up, cleaning their faultless fingernails, getting rid of invisible pimples from the face and the limbs, fixing their looks down to the tiniest detail. The zeal for the appearance going on all day long, constantly. A number one concern staged out in the street at the sun among infinite debris, or down in the underground with the help of the occasional reassuring view at the reflected image in the crystal window. Beauty ruling their casual actions all through the day.

Appointment

2011-09-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

As he was approaching the place of their appointment he saw from the distance the face of his old friend silhouetted behind the glass pane of a café. He was not actually looking forward to the meeting and seeing his friend's face some ten meters away only helped to make his mood drop a few notches. The man was sitting in a café, sharing a table with two other colleagues. He could not hear what his friend was saying but he could easily guess what the conversation was about - his expression was just too familiar, his gestures just too recognizable from so many previous encounters, the entire weary scene just too well-known to have the ongoing discourse unmistakably inferred. He kept approaching despite he was in no mood for a couple of hours of their usual chitchat about work and projects and whatnot. Been there, done that, he thought. Somber, dark and resigned he guided his steps to the table and greeted the bunch of colleagues with a smile.

The vision is always there.

2011-08-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

The vision is always there. Some days weaker, some stronger, some it almost looks as it lies dormant. But it is there all along. And the vision brings both an eerie and pleasant sense of tedious familiarity, odd as this sounds. He'll open the gate of the house by the sea wide open, or he'll doze in the garden under the shadow of the pine trees, or he'll clear the table in the balcony, or he may just as well be getting ready for a stroll along the promenade, the same familiar image will just reveal itself again in a fleeting glimpse. Treu will race towards him, he'll jump in absolute joy, he'll do his tricks to earn his prize, he'll stare at him with his loyal, friendly stare, such was his stare, loving and true. The man will stop in his tracks, trying to cope with that image of his long dead dog that so suddenly will have appeared, powerful and touching, leaving him with a few seconds of confusion and no little struggle to regain self-control.

Generations

2011-08-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

During years the son heard the father complaining about the grandfather every time the latter slurped his soup. Many years went by and with them roles changed. Now is the father the one who slurps his soup and the son the one who does all the complaining, albeit silently. At his side of the table the grandson seems still unaware of the ongoing generational bonds.

As any other day ...

2011-08-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

As any other day her husband waits for her at the end of her afternoon shift. She holds onto his arm and they walk down the avenue with slow movements. There is the usual movie projected on the main façade of one of the governmental buildings in the distance. It is a silent movie with as easy a plot as the life they lead.

The doors of the lift slide open ...

2011-08-11T04:39:00.000-07:00

The doors of the lift slide open and out goes an old man. He walks with a limp and crutching down the corridor he sits between me and a friend of him. His friend is as old as him. We'll have to kill time, we all have an appointment with the physiotherapist. The two men start chatting about the assorted pains and aches their bodies harbour. They complain in what looks like a true but silly way of complaining, as if they found indulgence in their self-pity. Their conversation turns to a common friend. They fall silent after a while. The old man on my left returns their verdict - they are much better off than their common friend. Him, he is alone. The old man looks at the doors of the lift across the aisle with a vacant stare. Oddly he repeats aloud his conclusion to no one in particular - him, he's alone.

Eating crows

2011-08-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

ST (Feb 27, 2006)

How little interest my lasagna has aroused!

She said these words certainly disappointed. She had prepared that dish for the party, for her friends to taste it, very much hoping them to like it, to enjoy it, to show their sincere enthusiasm for its quality. But those expectations never materialized and most of the baked pasta she went through the trouble to cook was left untouched. By the end of the party the large bowl containing the lasagna was clearly visible at the middle of the big table around which a small group of people sat and chattered. She was well aware of that, the meal intact at the table, the very reason of her growing shame. She couldn't help muttering those words, aloud yet mostly grumbled to herself, as if by giving voice to her thoughts the embarrassment and disappointment she felt could be more justified. As if that could spur some reaction and move someone to comfort her. And then, now that the party was over, she would have to go through the humiliating scene of taking the lasagna home with her, back to her apartment, to eat it alone or in company of her family. Or even worse, she may have to throw it into the waste bin. It sadly dawned on her that this seemed the most likely outcome of the food she went through the trouble to cook, for her friends to happily devour it.

Everything OK?

2011-08-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

The life of the modern western citizen seems in many occasions a continuous struggle against boredom.

Intuition

2011-08-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

They go out for a stroll along the shoreline. The waves break with force and reach them at regular intervals. The momentum carried by the foam makes their legs go all shaky as the water sweeps a good portion of the beach. They don't mind. They walk in silence, as usual, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Sometimes, she turns her head to him and they both smile for a while. Sometimes it's him who turns his head first. That familiar gesture - the movement, the smiles - strikes a chord in unison, a subtle action that signals a coincidence in their streams of consciousness.

Three men

2011-07-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Three men hold each a one-meter long wooden stick. They use them to exercise their injured shoulders. They hold the sticks with both hands and place them up in a vertical position along their backs. Their healthy arms grip the upper ends of the sticks and pull them upwards. Their crippled arms hold the lower ends of the sticks in a most passive way, not exerting any force. The movements end when each injured arm has an angle that makes the corresponding shoulder cry a silent cry of pain. Every man has a different pain threshold, somewhat depending on their age. One is in his twenties, another one in his forties, and the third one in his seventies. They perform the exercises in silence in front of a mirror that runs along a wall of the gym. The place is small. The space left between their feet is about a meter. The movements are carried out in slow-motion. The expressions on their faces remain featureless all along. The men are perfect strangers which meet every second day to share common space in a gym where they choreograph for about fifteen minutes sluggish movements with sticks behind their backs in front of a mirror. Eye contact is rare and when it happens it is promptly concealed.

Revolution

2011-07-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

ST, Jan 4 (2005)

An ordinary day the tip of the iceberg confronted the laws of physics and decided to change its insignificant destiny. The tip dove into the cold waters and turned the iceberg upside down. The bulk of the iceberg remained afloat from then onwards.

[The decrease in the frequency of entries is partly due to this.]

Respect.

2011-07-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Respect, he told the mirror, solemn, grim, and humourless, so hard to earn so easy to lose.

Two songs

2011-07-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've noticed there's two songs on my iTunes library that are recently getting a high number of plays. I keep coming back to them quite often, on purpose. One is The Shadow Song, by Supertramp. It is from the band's first studio album, released in 1970, an album that apparently went vastly unnoticed. Somehow I had never paid much attention to this album. Somehow I had missed this gem. The other one's Personal Jesus, by Depeche Mode. However, I'm alluding to Johnny Cash's cover of the song which can be found in his 2002 album American IV. Absolutely unique, improving on the original in many ways.

Angela

2011-07-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Beads of sweat form in his forehead as he drinks water in the kitchen after his hour-long run. They roll down his temples and splash on his body and on the floor. It is then that a sudden thought strikes him. He tells his wife that had they had a daughter her name would've been Angela. He is absolutely convinced about this. His conviction is firm and resolved, to a point beyond fascination. His grandma's name was Angela, which no doubt must have been the catalyst of the thought. She has been long gone and he hardly thinks of her. And yet, at that precise moment in his kitchen, drinking water and slumped from fatigue, he becomes unexpectedly aware of her absence and of the beauty of her name.

Burden

2011-06-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Somehow there was no way not to pay attention to every detail.

Done

2011-06-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

Done. I have just signed up for this year's marathon in Valencia. The event is still a few months away, Nov 20, but I decided to register before the end of June to pay a smaller fee. I'm aiming at finishing the race. Aiming at something else - a mark below 4 hours - would be too pretentious on my part. As the date arrives I'll be doing what I'm doing, running day in day out, while I'll try to learn, accept and hopefully defeat the physical and mental challenge lying ahead.

L

2011-06-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

Backtracking on these few months he realized her unexpected decision to move to Ireland had been one of the best she ever made, if not the best one. Aged 25, entering adulthood, living on her own in a foreign country, a decent boyfriend by her side and a proper job to ensure a satisfactory income. Moving out placed her on the right track.

Pairs

2011-06-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hands waving
Fuss making

Priests praying
Famine spreading

Lovers departing
Hatred approaching

Behaviours changing
Truth escaping

Chaos governing
Control missing

Moon rising
Sun setting

Boys sobbing
Men laughing

Birds singing
Moments lasting

Music playing
Silence falling

Light dimming
Shadows receding

Stars shining
Night flowing

Rivers bending
Tides turning

Hopes remaining
Facts being

Opinions reshaping
Uncertainty enduring

Targets missing
Dawns breaking

Lives awakening
Spirits lifting

Fog thinning
Ice melting

Bodies decaying
Memories fading

Cloud nine

2011-06-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

ST (May 4, 2006)

They improvise a tripod with the rucksack and a litter bin, so that they can both be in the photograph. There's a picturesque sunset and a bright white light reflects on the water of a huge useless pool and the polished surface of the marble-spangled dome of the planetarium behind. The girl sets the camera ready and runs towards her boyfriend, who's already keeping a pose and a smile. She leans against him and they both freeze for the snapshot, in a cinematographic attitude. Right after the shot she runs to the camera, unstable over the rucksack, to check the outcome. Satisfied, she jumps a little jump, shouts a little shout, and laughs a little laugh. He approaches her and kisses her. They're foolishly in love to the rest of the world.

A smile drew across his face ...

2011-06-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

A smile drew across his face as the photograph opened with a click in his computer screen. It was the picture of a group of friends in their mid forties and early fifties. He liked what he saw. He still looked young in that picture, ten years short of his actual age, give or take a few. He could stand out as the best looking guy in the group, the fittest of them all. As the day went on he could hardly refrain himself from sneaking a few quick looks to the photograph. Physical exercise was paying off.

Preparing dinner he chitchatted about this with his wife in the kitchen. She had seen the photograph too, on her computer. She smiled when he told her the satisfaction he felt by being in such good shape as the picture showed. She not only smiled, she also admitted that he indeed looked good. She could've just stopped there but she went on with the chat. That burst of pleasure he had when he saw himself on the photograph is not rare, it actually happens to almost everyone who goes through such a test, she said. The self we see on a recent photograph is not our current self but a much younger one. Our mind seems to enjoy playing such harmless little trick out of its own will. The benefit that brings is fairly obvious.

He hadn't got any reason not to believe her yet she sensed he needed proof. She told him how vividly she remembered the day grandpa told her he could no longer recognize the man in the mirror. He was well past his ninetieth birthday then and his mind's craving for playing tricks to build self-esteem had certainly started a steep decline.

Miss

2011-06-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

She smiled to him on her way up. He didn't smile back on his way down, alas. He worked on the assumption that they wouldn't exchange a glance. They never do.

The woman was confused.

2011-06-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

The woman was confused. She wasn't certain what time she had set the alarm clock. Was it the time she was familiar with or was it something anomalous? She had to wake up at the appointed instant and ride to the airport, could not waste a minute. Feverish, her perception of time had become a fuzzy concept. Time had split the way spectral lines sometimes do. She could picture her real self setting the clock before she hit the sack. She could also picture herself setting the alarm clock in the secondary time branch she was in. Her sleep was in a shambles, a nightmarish night of uncertainty and sweat. Before dawn the wave function collapsed, removing all unpredictability. As she heard two bells ringing, distinctly clear, she realized she hadn't got the guts to open her eyes.

Aim

2011-06-05T04:54:00.000-07:00

She wrote her writings so readers could read them.

Seeking knowledge

2011-06-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

An ordinary day his courageous self disappeared and nobody took notice. He had become a mortal pawn, one of the many everyday cowards tiptoeing through the days in a most natural passive way. From that ordinary day on he pretended to be seeking knowledge, coming to terms with the shameful realization that it was natural selection the X factor that had primed cowardice and conservatism to grant his survival. He was the chosen weakling watching the tragedy unfold. Admirably, the brave died off elsewhere.

He hears someone ...

2011-05-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

He hears someone calling out his name. He is shooting three-pointers, it just happens to be his turn at this activity at the end of the basketball season party. It's M who calls him, cheerful and smiling as usual. When his turn is over - yielding a score too poor to disclose - he approaches to where she sits and starts some small talk. They got acquainted last year, when they both started to attend the weekly basketball training session for adults at their children's school. She does not take part in this year's end-of-season activities. She hasn't been attending the basketball training on thursdays either, as he knows. The reason is the pain she's been suffering on her back for many months now. She says her back pain is so severe she can't practice any sport these days. The only physical activity she indulges in is sex, but even at that she has to pay attention not to be too brisk with the motions of her body. They both laugh at the blunt remark with made up complicity.

When the last talk of the day was over ...

2011-05-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

When the last talk of the day was over she got on a train with her fellow Italian colleague. They got off at Berlin Zoologischer Garten and headed towards the U-Bahn station below their feet. There, they boarded on the first train that showed up, their only purpose being to reach Friedrichstrasse. They had an appointment with a bunch of younger fellow colleagues. It had been decided they would go to the East Side Galley in former East Berlin for a bit of sightseeing walking along the still standing, one-kilometer long remains of the infamous wall. Stepping outside from the main exit door in Ostbanhof they noticed it had started to rain. Intermittent gusts of wind blew stronger. Some were carrying umbrellas and they split in couples to share them. He offered her his. She had noticed him before, at the meeting, his funny laugh and abundant talking. He laughed and talked, plentiful, as they walked, while she held the umbrella inclined for a better protection against the wind and the rain. It got colder and the sky grew darker. The weather conditions conspired to make them walk close to each other, their bodies touching in fleeting brushes. The whole length of the wall was covered in about twenty minutes during which both shared some thoughts in the intimate setting the umbrella provided. They didn't mind the rain. Their clothes were soaked after the stroll, particularly at the back of his trousers and her skirt, when they all entered a nearby bar to get some hot drink and warm up their bodies from the cold. He asked for a hair drier to one of the waitresses, which she kindly provided. The outdoors intimacy lingered a little longer indoors while he dried slowly the back of her sweater and her skirt and she next did the same with his trousers and his pullover. Later, an underground station set them apart - she had to stay in the train and he had to slip out and go somewhere with the rest. They kissed each other goodbye. To this day she remains almost certain he was for a moment reluctant to leave.

Multiplex

2011-05-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

She was smoking in the corridor, eyes fixed in some sheets she read. As he passed by a sheet fell from her hands onto the floor. He kept walking. She picked it up. He felt embarrassed thinking that perhaps he should have picked it up for her. She went on with the reading and the smoking, thinking that she should have let him a chance to pick it up for her.

I just love ...

2011-05-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

I just love the length of these spring days, and the balminess thereof. Even on a Sunday evening on election day.

Ordeal

2011-05-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

[Slightly modified ST 2002 original]

The kid was not happy anymore. He had just discovered his earlier beliefs were no longer trustful. Quite on the contrary, they were a compassionless farce from the adult world. He didn't quite know how to react, whether to cry, to shout or to keep his mouth shut, dead shut, for many a good days from now.

The bedroom window was halfway open and he noticed the noise from the street had started to rise above usual levels. There just had been a car crash at the junction. That must be it, he thought. Now he could identify the bang he heard a moment ago, thus far escaping explanation. Slowly he got on his feet from the bed and approached the window. The scene didn't please him. One of the cars had suffered major damage, well visible on the side opposite the driver's. Apparently an old man had been badly injured and was now lying flat on the pavement, unconscious. A flock of people had soon materialized and was surrounding the place. The second car had its front largely smashed, oddly dented throughout, and a column of black smoke was lifting up from the deep dark regions of its engine. The kid realised there was still someone at the steering wheel. A paralyzed young person, dressed in some strange clothes. An angry fellow, most likely the other car's driver, was yelling at him, who was sinking. The ongoing episode was brutal, obscene.

The December day was growing sad and cold now that the sun was setting. The kid at the window in his room yawned a prolonged yawn. He didn't feel tired, only lied upon. The truth is never plain to see, we are just what we believe we are, and that can be easily influenced, he said to himself able to frame his thoughts.

The killer driver was wearing his pyjamas, oddly enough. He wasn't supposed to be killing anyone, neither today nor tomorrow, never. Overwhelmed by his action and by the grim persistence of the yelling man he burst into a spasmodic cry. From his vantage point the kid wondered why the young driver was dressed in his pyjamas. The threatening angry man had stopped shouting and was now proceeding to smash the top of the shattered car with his right clenched fist. He was furious beyond control. Meanwhile an ambulance had arrived. Two strong orderlies took the old dying man from the ground and placed him on a stretcher which they pushed carelessly into the ambulance. The back door was closed with similar little care and off they went amidst a wall of sound and spinning beams of orange light. A policeman the kid hadn't noticed so far helped the young driver to get off the car. The guy was shivering and some people had started to offer him some support. After a little while the police car disappeared as well, the killer driver inside, his upper body bent over his knees at the back seat. His wrecked car stayed behind, with the doors unlocked and the lights on. He was freezing in his pyjamas. No, this was not supposed to be happening. He pictured himself in his living-room's armchair, a cup of hot chocolate in his hands, easy-going, having fun, killing nothing but time. If only he had not decided to take his car out of his parking garage a little earlier, once the van blocking the exit left. But he had to, he needed the car badly on the following day. Tears kept rolling down his cheeks.

The kid at the window could no longer see him crying, but the memory lingered on. The kid wasn't pleased. It was the first time he had seen a dying person and the vision was far from worth looking. And it had to be just on the evening of Christmas Day. He wished it hadn't happened, he wished that as strongly as he could wish something. Just awakened to one of the many disappointments of life, baffled, teased by the adult people, he knew miracles did not belong to his realm anymore. He had just learned it the hard, only possible way. All the same he couldn't help wishing the old man were still alive, he wished the fatal crash hadn't happened.

The kid went to sleep with an agitated mind but when he woke up the next morning he felt the accident never took place. He rushed to the room at the end of the corridor only to find his older brother peacefully sleeping in his silk, grey-striped pyjamas.

Liberties

2011-05-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

An old woman says good afternoon to him as they pass each other in the street. She's a complete unknown and as such her exclamation, soft and muted yet unmistakably clear, makes no sense. Not only he dislikes to be greeted like that by an alien old woman down in the street, the odd presumptuousness of it all pisses him off. He's proud to be the invisible man.

Wish

2011-05-18T01:54:00.000-07:00

He toyed with the idea sometimes. It was not entirely serious not entirely a joke either. It was more like a wish that he did not push hard enough. It seemed safer to keep it like that, as a wish lying dormant, lest it materialised to an outcome that did not please him. Still, he kept thinking, wishfully thinking and on and off, that there was a book in him. It'd be a collection of sentences with no plot or common purpose, a succession of thoughts, recollections, opinions, of little interest to acquire significance. It'd be hopefully written in a somewhat attractive prose in an uncooperative language which kept remaining alien to him. He would write about his phobias and passions, which were plenty, and about his distaste of the world around him. It would describe his deepest feelings to varying degrees of exposure. If he was tired he wouldn't mind to write it down. As today, when he was so, tired, extremely tired. After a full day of weary routine at his crappy new appointment he set out for the hotel he stayed in. He should start searching for a flat. When he got off the train, he saw a little boy crying amidst the frenzy of a hurried crowd which flooded the platforms and the entire station. That's something he can't stand, little boys crying. It always made him feel real sad, spontaneously sad. He did nothing. He couldn't react. He just stood where he was, staring at the boy's face, filled with tears, while his mother dragged him bluntly by his arm towards the exit door. And it was already dark outside, and darkness still makes him feel a little uneasy, especially when he's alone. He figured that something, sometimes, doesn't quite work properly. Yet he didn't want to think further about it, did he? It was just the darkness, and that boy crying, and being alone and feeling miserable. Altogether. All. Together.

Flotsam and jetsam (2)

2011-05-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

ST, May 17 (2004)

Munich. A gnome-looking, aging, homeless man boards the tram at Wettersteinplatz. Long greasy hair and beard, thinning and partly graying, thick clothes on in the heat or the cold, bundled in a filthy raincoat where stains and smells accumulate. His look is tender and affectionate, revealing a good-hearted soul behind. His belongings, which are scarce, are part of his shadow. The tram seems his home, the tram network his neighbourhood, the only places where our eyes have met, where our bodies have occupied symmetric spaces of the same bench.

There is a second homeless man, younger than the first, whose belongings are more abundant - a few tattered suitcases stuffed with almost overflowing contents, their weight pulling him firmly towards the ground. His appearance is less worn out than that of the previous one, as if he were still a sophomore in the homeless wasteland: short hair, shaved face, fine clothes (fine suit) where scattered pools of stains and clouds of dirt can barely be discerned from a yet unaffected background. His distress, however, is more pronounced, the look in his eyes less truthful, snakier, less resigned, his ill-fate more disturbing, his fear authentic (fear which lacks in the poise of the older one), his concerns for his lost life almost visible in his actions, in his clumsy movements, in his suspicious, defensive attitude.

They both belong to the same stigmatised class, they sure have both a past, an explanation, a story to tell, a roadmap to disgrace, yet they are different entities, divided by a hazy quality difficult to describe but which resides in the former and has neglected the latter - dignity.

The kid steps into the living room.

2011-05-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

The kid steps into the living room. His gaze scans the wall to his right. A reflex action. He sees the familiar armchair and the chest of drawers where the old radio lays. After lunch his grandma always sits on that armchair to listen to the daily radio soap opera. Her head rests on the wall and in that position she falls asleep. Every time the kid enters the living room his eyes look at the spot on the wall where his grandma's head rests as she listens to the radio. The kid no longer remembers when he reached adulthood. His gaze keeps on scanning that spot on the wall whenever he steps into that old living room. That reflex action keeps a dim memory alive. His eyes find the ghost of his long gone grandma shaped in the form of a circular black stain her head imprinted on the wall as she listened daily to the radio dozing by the chest of drawers on her favourite armchair.

Butterfly effect

2011-05-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

[ST, Jan 12, 2006]

I almost stepped onto that snail. I didn't, and that changed our destinies, mine and the snail's. It kept on living, which is not a bad thing after all. I took a train the next morning and before Leipzig it missed a red light. The snail lives its slow life in the ditches of the roads up Dornburg Schloss, time and again jeopardized by the soles of the passers-by. My home address has changed.

Einstein in Prague

2011-05-04T04:10:00.000-07:00

[ST, Jan 12, 2006]

Einstein in Prague, an ordinary day in the late 1910s. The wise man looks through the window overhead a snow-covered pavement. A wall runs along the street bounding a spacious garden in which plants and trees are left to grow disorderly. From his vantage point he sometimes sees men in isolation deeply engaged in soundless meditation, walking absent-minded to the rest of the world. Sometimes, however, he sees men gathered together in groups vividly discussing matters he can't guess. Someone tells him that the garden he faces is the recreational area of a sanatorium. He thinks to himself that the men he sees from the window are the madmen not working in quantum mechanics.

By-product

2011-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

A handy by-product of running is that I've become used to walk to most places within the city - everything seems near. Indeed, comfort turned us lazy.

Two parakeets.

2011-04-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

Two parakeets materialize on the ledge of my window. I have not seen their approach and landing. They may have surfaced from the ledge itself, for all I know. I am at the other side of the wall, grading exams. One of the two parrots calls my attention by tapping on the glass with its beak. It is a pleasant sound. It takes me some time to grasp I'm being called by a parakeet. I draw the curtains and the parrot stops tapping the glass with a sigh of relief. Both of them look like ordinary parrots, with their customary long tails and their predominant green plumage. The one who was calling me with insistence is in command of this group of two. Presently, it is staring at me and nodding its little parakeet head, urging me to take some action. The other one, at the far end of the ledge, does not bother to look at our signal exchange. It seems vigilant, as if keeping a careful watch for unwelcome third parties. I try for a long while to decipher the message on that fixed look. The seed of a notion starts dawning on me. A tiny modulation of the light at the back of my eyes betrays me. The parakeet leader shrugs its birdie shoulders and commands the other to leave the ledge. Which they do.

It's been a long, slow, deep, and ultimately gratifying read.

2011-04-18T03:58:00.000-07:00

It's been a long, slow, deep, and ultimately gratifying read. Long and slow because the book - its first two volumes out of three - is long and my reading pace's always been slow. Add to that that I wanted it to be a slow process, I wanted to make the reading last on purpose. Deep because the book is deep, it has that distinctive depth some readers may perhaps fail to see. Don't be fooled by the apparent superficiality of the plot and the prose, by the overuse of the artistic license to resort to the unnatural and the surreal through off-the-wall turns and bizarre laws of physics, grant all that and you will find out that there is, as usual in Murakami's novels, much more to the picture than meets the eye. Grant that - and one should effortlessly grant such a trademark in his oeuvre - and your reading will move on with a grin across your face. And gratifying, ultimately, because I was uncertain upon starting. The hesitation was set by a significant change on the initial conditions this time around with respect to most of my previous readings of Murakami's back catalog - I didn't start with the English translation. I just couldn't, it's not ready yet. I had to make do with the Spanish one. I know I'm probably being unfair and that it's probably just me, but somehow I prefer to read Murakami in English. By and large. I knew it was going to take me a bit of adjustment at the beginning but once it was over, the reading ran fluent.

It was as gratifying as it could be - which is always a lot. Murakami's to me a safe bet, while I can still see why that doesn't have to be the case for everyone.

I'm in 1Q84 now, so to speak, two moons up in the night sky, involved in the story of Fukaeri and the Little People, of Aomame and Tengo, of a ten-year-old girl and an air chrysalis. I'll most likely remain in 1Q84 all through this 2011, unhurriedly delaying the ending of the plot.

He still remembered it quite clearly.

2011-04-07T04:17:00.000-07:00

He still remembered it quite clearly. The word, suicide, was not a word easy to deal with. The implications of its meaning turned its only presence unwanted. That was his view on the word and the concept back in his childhood. That was why, as a child, he felt uneasy when he learned in the classroom about the many suicides that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 in the US. He pictured brokers jumping off windows in desperation, he thought about the level of misery those men had reached to defeat fear and take that final step, it troubled him a good deal the large figures of brokers falling from skyscrapers his teacher's discourse revealed as the lecture unfolded. He resolved to try hard to avoid a future of financial shortage in his life as it might well imply he should get atop the largest building in his provincial hometown and jump to nothingness from its roof. Those thoughts, he was certain about it, struck his infant mind when he was a child.

That child was now long gone and the adult he had become was doing his best to stay afloat amidst the foam and eddies of the persistent wake left behind by the waves of the current economic crisis. The word was still there, concealed and menacing, and surprisingly rejected by everyone. That blunt refusal was at odds with his conception of how cause and effect worked in the world of stock dealers. His mind learned the hard way it needed an upgrade to make room for the new paradigm. The suicidal brokers of the past left no legacy to their 21st century successors. These must have figured that jumping off windows was for assholes. Nobody did, jumped that is. As ducks in a pond they only bobbed down a bit with the first waves, loads of fresh cash in their wallets out of all the damage done.

I'm off to Madrid ...

2011-03-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Madrid on Saturday to run the city's half-marathon on Sunday, the one hosting the largest crowd of runners of all half-marathon races in Spain. Around 16000 athletes are expected to take part this year despite the presence of a good many intimidating slopes all along the route. It's funny - I'll be alone among such multitude, no acquaintance, friend or relative will join me in the effort and the joy. I'll be travelling alone too, staying on my own in the city for the weekend, companionless. That must be the much celebrated loneliness of the long-distance runner, I'm afraid.

Update (Apr 5): 1h57m. Good: goal accomplished (finishing under 2h), no injuries. Bad: could not find my pace due to continuous slopes, all the while uncertain about race strategy (fearing it was all screwed up; turned out it was so so), unfocused due to too high runner number density, walked 20 meters in the unacceptable 400 meters final slope at km 19 (embarrassing, almost shameful).

It's not.

2011-03-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

It's not, Holden, it's not.

Treu

2011-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Treu passed away yesterday, after a short illness, an outcome that has shocked everybody home. He would have turned 10 this June. Now he's gone, much too soon, emptying our life of an irreplaceable source of unconditional love and joy.

[ST July 19, 2002]
Friday evening, 9pm or thereabouts. The moment's shape is still clearly defined in time. It was one of those rare instants, flawless, on a par with happiness in a subtle yet precise way, reflecting joy. I was lying on a folding beach chair, lazing. A and M were playing badminton in the garden, laughing, a few meters away from me. The kid could barely complete a few strikes in a row. He jumped and shouted foolishly, as if pretending he could play, getting excited every time his racket hit the shuttlecock, cheering himself up. M laughed as well. It was a lovely scene, their playing in the garden in the fading sunlight of a hot summer evening. It was then when Treu showed up from out of the blue and licked my toes with its tongue - boy did it tickle - topping off the charm of the moment, which was to dissolve itself a few seconds later. As fast as soap bubbles floating in the air do.

Today I ran for Japan

2011-03-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

Today I ran for Japan. And in my run I thought of Xun Li, of all the anonymous Xun Lis of Japan whose future was swept away a few days ago. I am sad, shocked, and angry. I ran and I thought of Masaru and Kenta and Yuichiro and Moto and Keisuke and Shin and Ryoji and Koji and Kei and Luca, I thought about fate, I thought of Haruki and his quake and about what sense he may be making out of this mess, I thought of Okuribito and the tears I shed from beginning to end, I thought about death, and about harmony, the single word that describes Japan best, the word M once found for me, I thought about shattered landscapes, attitudes, and lives, shattered harmony, I was transported to a warm, sweet place by the sounds of Alone in Kyoto and imagined Simon finding an abandoned harmonium in the streets of the former capital, I thought about our shabby little ryokan in Nara, the one M kept on pestering me about the minute she set eyes on the room, in a friendly way, of course, in that characteristic, teasing style she has.

I kept on running and I thought of the strong bond I have with this country and these people, a feeling I can't really quite explain.

"Xun Li had spent most of her adult life pushing a trolley full of food and drink up and down the aisles of nearly every bullet train in Japan, ever since the very first one reduced the distance from Tokyo to Kyoto to about three hours. Japanese Railways were nowadays proud to present their Shinkansen products as the perfect example of what an ambitious Japan should be like. Ambitious Japan, that was indeed the running slogan of the company. Xun Li, however, knew no ambitions."

As soon as we take the main avenue ...

2011-03-08T03:42:00.000-08:00

As soon as we take the main avenue he takes off his glasses and places them in its case. I like to hear the sound of the case when it closes. He'll produce them again a few minutes later, in the classroom, when he needed them. A little daily detail which shows a teenager's concern with his image.

This is a tiny part of today's routine. There have always been some - plenty - at any given time.

As this one (ST, May 12, 2006):

Every now and then we walk but mostly we drive. I fancy walking outside in cold days. But not when it rains, and, sure enough, it's raining almost everyday. When we walk he takes my hand and he seldom talks to me. We say the numbers aloud, from one to twenty, both in Spanish and in German. At some point we cut our path short through a lovely park where dozens of ravens slowly move on the ground in little jumps, eating all sorts of insects. Despite we get quite close to them they don't seem to care. We spend a little time deciding which route to take, the upper one, closer to the sun and the clouds, or the lower one, when feeling less adventurous and when our most immediate concern is to kick the pine nuts lying on the ground. He chooses. We see the usual bunch of dogs with their corresponding owners, old people chatting and strolling at a slow pace. Dog-powered friendship. I remind him of the little dog, a she, which always moves the slowest, always following an undefined wake left behind by the rest of the group. She looks at us. We look at her. We cross the road and climb the steep-sloped path alongside the church overlooking Bayern Munich's training football lawns. Isolated blackbirds eventually hide, hurriedly, as we pass. We barely see them flying. They seem to spend the whole day on the ground, searching for food amidst the bushes which separate the walkways from the lawns, splitting the parks in multiple islands of green. Blackbirds move gracefully among the bushes, on the damp ground, over a sea of rotten leaves, brown and dark, in the company of the inevitable fragments of broken glass from bottles of beer smashed to pieces, used kleenex, empty cigarette boxes, plastic bags, cans, all sort of debris and junk. Plenty of hidden trash piling up in every hedge of every street, that is the disgusting environment where blackbirds let the days go by. We left the park turning first right and then left to enter the street at which end we see a dog's head apparently floating in the air. I say the head's cut. He says it's not. As we get closer we see the head's attached to a body. A fine dog's brass sculpture at the door of the Kindergarten. And then he rushes to the door and rings the bell that will let the door open, which I push with some effort. He gets in and, abruptly, I feel he's another boy. He's been replaced all of a sudden by his cautious self, his discreet self. We both take his winter clothes off. He changes his shoes. I greet his Tantes and I kiss him goodbye.

Or this one (ST, Mar 15, 2006):

The ruling characteristic of the car we board on to during our early morning ride is the presence of house maids coming into the city from the surrounding suburban towns. These women, most of them well below their fifties, are always chatty and good-humoured, gossip devotees, eager to talk in loud voices about the hottest current affairs in the much too scrutinized world of the so-called very important people. Such equivalence class has seen its domain vastly enlarged lately to include all sort of weirdos, from illiterate beauties whose popularity is driven by glimpses of remote corners of their anatomies, gratuitously provided in low-rank reality shows on TV, to particularly unpleasant, royal-like individuals whose proudly arrogant behaviour seems legitimate by their farcical majestic aura. Phew.

Or this one (ST, Apr 20, 2001):

Chances to coincide with some colleagues on the train are usually high. Every now and then I see this woman with a fuddy-duddy look on her face and clothes, as those coming from some Eastern European country may have. She always wears the same old-fashioned clothes. She's not a beautiful woman, far from it in fact, but, nevertheless, there's something remarkable on her appearance. I can tell she notices me. We both know we both go to the same place everyday on that train. However, we've never talked to each other. Once, she was caught red-handed by a ticket collector with an invalid ticket on her wallet and was forced to leave the train. Besides, she was fined. I was close to talk to her then, to cheer her up. I didn't, though, and she knew I was there. Gazing.

Or this one (ST, Mar 4, 2002):

All along our short trip on the metro we usually remain silent. When we emerge from the underground we talk a little bit while we walk to his German school.

'Why is the earth going around in circles around the sun?' he asked me.

I was glad to listen to his question. I explained to him that the earth, as every other planet in the solar system, goes around the sun because of the gravitational field of the central body, which after formation adjusted itself in such a particular way to have all the planets in stable equilibrium orbits around our star.

'Is the solar system round?' he went on.

This was, technically, more difficult to answer in simple terms if I was hoping he would understand it. I told him that the solar system is not exactly round, strictly speaking, but more like an elongated sphere, so to speak, like the oval ball people who play rugby use or like a melon. I was hoping that two such visual examples would help him to get the idea. But then he said,

'Is it then a white or a red melon?'

I looked at him smiling quite openly. He was being quite serious, though. I told him that it is more like a white melon, which is not exactly spherical as he knows, instead of a red one, a watermelon, which is usually quite round-shaped. He seemed satisfied with my answer but after a while he continued,

'Is the sun then at the center of the melon?'

I saw then it clearly that it would be difficult for me to escape from introducing some technical aspects if I were to be accurate in my answer. I told him that the sun is not at the center since the orbits of the planets around the sun are not circular but rather elliptic. I explained to him the concept of ellipse telling him that it is the geometrical shape one obtains when cutting a white melon in two halves. The melon itself has the shape of an ellipsoid. The sun, I followed, is not located at the center but in a position slightly away from it, a position which grown-up people decided to call the focus. And in an ellipse there are always two such points. If the orbits were circular instead, then the two focus would coincide with the center of the circle.

He seemed to like knowing about this and proceeded to ask me about comets.

'Do they also follow ellipses?'

I told him that is true. As any other celestial body bounded gravitationally to our sun the comets, most of which come from a region known as the Oort cloud at the far end of the solar system, describe ellipses rather than circles, at least those that live long enough and do not crash with the earth.

'And kill the dinosaurs', he remarked.

'Yes', I said.

'Halley's comet didn't kill the dinosaurs', he said after a little pause in our conversation, once we were about to enter the school.

'You're completely right!' I exclaimed. I continued saying that Halley's comet could have never killed the dinosaurs since it's never crashed on to the earth. Instead, it gets very close to us every seventy something years and then turns around towards the place it began its journey, with its energy renewed thanks to the gravitational pull exerted by the earth.

We reached his classroom and he took off his jacket. I put his backpack in a large wooden box especially designed for such purpose. I kissed him goodbye telling him that I love him and that I'll be back from Munich in just two short weeks.

'But I thought you said fourteen days!' he complained.

The winter days were going away fast.

2011-03-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

The winter days were going away fast. Little he could do about it, very little. If anything, just to certify with a weary sigh of disappointment the speed of time. He was frustrated not to be able to pay proper attention to so many different things that needed badly so. A good many things, all of them important to varying degrees, received nowadays equally meager attention. He longed for the days where he could focus on an activity for hours on end, where he could analyze every detail of an issue, where he could research and judge, and feel at the end of the day that the time spent had been worth the spending. Somehow that situation had vanished. He could not even tell if it happened suddenly or if it was a gradual decline. He could only admit that his constraints were now stronger and that the elapsed time gave those days of unconstrained contemplation an air of privilege that didn't quite seem right. Responses had now to be quick and on the spot. They were quick, only sometimes, but fairly off the spot, on most occasions. And that's how his winter days were ticking away, all along trying to sound sensible and trustable, hoping his superficial commitment to unexpected commitments showering over his head to be deep enough to minimize losses. Everywhere he looked at he could see his was a play that everyone else was also playing. Yet that didn't lift an inch the frustration he felt.

Collateral damage

2011-02-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Once she knew about her condition she decided to put an end to their relationship. A lifetime long marriage, with its ups and downs, was at stake. They were entering old age and she wanted to live whatever numbered days remained on her own, without the weight her husband had become. She was blunt and direct, breaking the ties overnight, devastating her helpless companion, unable to make sense of the situation.

Once she knew about her condition she decided to resume a relationship that had stopped years ago. A lifetime long marriage, with its ups and downs, was remembered and relived in their own world of make-believe. They were entering old age and she wanted to live whatever numbered days remained with him, hoping to come across again with the sweetness and love he felt for her in their early days together. His bad temper gone for good he cried on her shoulders until the day she passed away.

Obsessions

2011-02-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Will we ever measure up to our own obsessions?

The man is about to fall.

2011-02-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

The man is about to fall. He is hanging from the top of a tall structure which he holds with his white-knuckled hands. The pain in his arms and hands keeps getting stronger. His falling seems inevitable.

The man will remember every morning that he is always about to fall, every night. A new night will come and he will struggle to avoid the inevitable falling. Countless nights. Countless imminent falls from a tall structure which he holds unsteady with the tip of his fingers, clutching at a straw.

One night, mad at the endless fighting against his fate, the man surrenders, putting an end to his firm grasp. He's gained unconscious control of the situation. The fall seems suddenly an unlikely outcome. As a balloon deflating, the discomforting pressure in his groin slowly vanishes.

It must be true that ...

2011-02-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

It must be true that the curve of happiness has the shape of a U. It peaks both when you are a child and quite some years later when you've become an old man. I'm 44 and thus fairly unhappy, treading my way down at the valley below. There's hope ahead, at least.

I had my second renal colic ever last night. Two miserable hours of intense pain before dawn. As fast as it came it went. A square function, a pulse. If you have never experienced this kind of pain, and I hope not only that you haven't but also that you won't, you may fall quite short to even get an approximate idea of the wonderful state you suddenly find yourself in when the pain comes to an end. It ceases so abruptly that the wave of wellness it brings can almost make you cry of joy. (And you may have been crying of pain seconds before.)

I went to work today. I gave two lectures, one-hour each, keeping a watchful eye on the tiniest hint of the pain returning. I'm rather uncertain about what may happen next, given there was no actual detection of a kidney stone being expelled. So far so good, but I cancelled my run today.

This was my second time, yes, the first one about ten years ago. A trend? I dunno. If it is it has a long wavelength if nothing else, but never long enough.

1Q84

2011-02-02T06:37:00.000-08:00

End of the waiting, so to speak. 1Q84 (Books 1 & 2), Murakami's latest and most ambitious work so far (his words), is finally available in Spanish (Tusquets). The English edition of all three volumes, translated by Jay Rubin, will be available later this year, on October 25 to be precise. I think I'll buy it today at the airport, to start its slow reading as I head for a short business trip to Palma.

It was a strange situation

2011-01-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

It was a strange situation. A few days ago it was decided that we had to get rid of our old car. It was still functioning, but the number of times it was failing had increased above the point where it just did not make sense to repair it again. It was clear we'd be better off driving a final drive with the old car to the scrapyard and buying a new car.

In the end we even skipped the last drive. A tow truck showed up at the appointed time and carried the car to the scrapyard. It was a very efficient service, businesslike and clean. It was free too. I stood there as the car was being towed to the truck. I asked the guys if they minded me standing there. They couldn't care less. I must have looked like a complete fool to them. To be honest, after a while I even started to find my behaviour a bit odd and I just left.

So yes, it was a strange situation. We bought that car in 1996, a few months after A was born. Shortly after that we drove our first drive to Germany, the first of the many more that followed. We lived a good fraction of our lives with that old car being part of our belongings and of our daily routine. We grew old and more experienced during all the years that passed. It was handed to L when she reached adulthood, and that was already a little goodbye. But nothing comparable to the final farewell we went through last Wednesday. It was as if part of our memories were leaving us, it had some weird significance, and it was all the most unromantic.

At dinner I told M about those feelings I had as the scrapyard guys were doing their work. I emphasized my surprise to have felt somewhat miserable at the sight of that old banger disappearing. Giggling, she replied she had been thinking about the car the whole day long.

You hear the familiar beep ...

2011-01-21T05:51:00.000-08:00

You hear the familiar beep of the alarm of the cell phone and stretch your arm to turn it off. Funny how day after day you anticipate the exact moment by a few seconds. Routine helps the body acquire those mechanisms. You turn the light on. Your toes feel the unwelcome cold of the marble-covered floor. You wake up, but not quite fully. You waddle towards the bathroom, half asleep. You are in that time when thoughts don't even deserve to be called thoughts. Your brain is a slow-responding engine of abundant inertia. You can't analyse all too clearly the first wave of unexpected impulses your brain receives and which require analysing. It will be duly provided, whether you like it or not, in a clumsy, meaningless manner. You foresee the impending runaway of thoughts. You remember the sudden flow of events arranged in your daily schedule. You even experience how those start entering your mind, a one-way traffic which grows faster by the minute. You should know there is no way to stop consciousness from being conscious. You become aware of awareness gradually setting in. You greet your foe and friend, that drowsy laziness you have to deal with daily to set a new ball rolling. Everything planned seems undoable for a tiny lapse of time. You might just as well come consciously back to the unconscious you left a few minutes before. You never do. You give up and surrender. You get on with your task of being a thinking mortal soul.

A ginkgo in Weimar

2011-01-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

[ST, Oct 7 (2005)]

The man shoots at every possible spot he finds picturable. Spot, or scene, or situation, or place, or thing, animal, or human being, all alone or in groups or all of the above in simultaneity. Digital cameras allow for such spasmodic incontinence. Now he pauses to listen to the Russian guide, who in a strong Slavic accent turns the attention of the flock of tourists to the nearby ginkgo. It was there already when they arrived. It has been steadily growing there since the day the local authorities kindly invited Goethe to plant it. The man's interest in the maidenhair tree suddenly stirs. It is no longer an ordinary ginkgo as the dozens of unremarkable trees in Weimar. It's the one the great Goethe planted. He sneaks out of the crowd without anybody noticing, convinced that that quality alone makes the tree worth a picture.

Just three

2011-01-07T04:54:00.000-08:00

In my list of New Year's resolutions there are three I am not embarrassed to share with the world:

1. Learn to listen. Because it's never too late to start, is it?

2. Pay no attention to absolute truths. Because they're worthless.

3. Run a marathon. For no obvious reason.

28k

2010-12-17T06:14:00.001-08:00

I ran 28 km this morning. Each and every one of those kilometers was run under a constant drizzle, not too big a nuisance, to be honest. The best thing of all was that there were no injuries, which in the end is what really matters. My lower body is now a bit stiff, but that's OK.

Since earlier this week I had in mind to do a long run today. The goal is still to run a marathon next year, something which starts to seem doable. My time today was 2h37m, which gives a pace of about 5m35s per kilometer. A simple extrapolation at that average pace cuts me a bit of slack to run the marathon under 4 hours, but not for much. Of course, this is merely wishful thinking, as anything can happen in the unknown territory of those last 14 km I am yet to explore. So far so good, though. I finished in good shape today, feeling simultaneously very tired and utterly convinced that I could just go on and cover the damn distance. That may seem contradictory, I know, but running is actually full of oddities. One of the really odd things about long-distance running is that after a certain point in your run you feel so tired that you may start thinking how much better it would feel to be walking instead. However, that is far from being true. Your body adapts itself to the rhythm of running to the point that when you finish you may discover that walking is actually much worse than running. So much so that you will happily set out again at some gentle jog to relieve the soreness of your legs and joints.

Fair enough

2010-12-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

There where our several years' expenditures on piano lessons did not quite reach, nature has silently prevailed, presently, by simply following an, obviously natural, path. Childhood a distant past, adolescence an exciting present, A has discovered the various usual distractions that come with it, music, punk music, occupying a dignified spot among them. And he has discovered too my acoustic guitar, dormant in my bedroom, no doubt expecting for someone to pick it up again someday. That day recently arrived. And now he has learned a few basic chords and a few basic tricks I duly, and happily too, provided. The web is doing the rest as an endless source of input to learn from. Day in, day out, waves of guitar sounds reach us in our living room, coming from his bedroom, transmitted through a wooden door which lately remains unsurprisingly closed. There where once we had to insist for him to sit down and rehearse his latest homework assignment on the piano, a pointless and frustrating effort altogether, the immediate pleasure derived from stroking the guitar to his favourite Green Day songs has turned music into something amusing. No need for further insistence on our (mostly mine) side. It won't be the piano but it will be the guitar. It won't be classical tunes but it will be punk and rock. Fair enough. He will keep on playing music, and that is the point which matters.

It's nice to have Treu back at home

2010-12-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

It's nice to have Treu back at home. It'd be nicer if the circumstances of his return would have been different.

He witnessed both falls, and in both cases he stood silent beside the falling bodies, as if falling on the ground was what his masters were supposed to do.

On the first one the old man was walking the dog as any other day, early in the morning, a cold, foggy January morning of two years ago. Just when they were crossing a rural road to enter an empty plot where the dog could run free, the man collapsed. This happened in a spot where the road is long and perfectly straight. There was no traffic, a fact only attributable to the early hour. The man tried to rise to his feet only to fall again. He had to crawl to reach the side of the road. Meanwhile the dog remained at his side, not a hint of anything uncommon happening visible in his acting.

On the second one, a few weeks ago, the old woman was watering the lawn at her house. The dog followed her around. The faucet was dripping. She was turning it on when she slipped in a pool of water. When she tried to rise she realized of the sharp pain in her ankle. The sprinkler sprayed water on her at intervals. She had to roll over her back to avoid this. The dog kept on with his doings, the episode lacking in significance. He might as well just have approached the old woman and licked her face.

After his fall the old man spent a long period of hospitals and therapy but in the end he recovered. There were ups and downs in his changing mood, none of which the dog ever had knowledge of. As for the old woman, she had to undergo urgent surgery on her injured ankle a few hours after her fall. It was soon discovered that patience is not her cup of tea. Her temporary condition as a disabled person is currently affecting her mood in a surprisingly negative way.

Meanwhile Treu dozes on his bed, oblivious to the chronological sequence of events and to the subtle challenges adults face when their routine is shattered, only watchful to have his bare necessities satisfied.

Improvement

2010-11-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

This year's half-marathon mark: 1h51m14s. Almost a two minute improvement with respect to last year's (1h53m03s). I liked the way I ran this morning, running faster the second half of the race. Too bad the weather conditions weren't good - it was cold and very windy at times, really annoying. I felt great when I finished: my breath was normal, as was my heart beat, only my legs ached a bit at the end, much less than last year though.

Poles apart

2010-11-19T00:32:00.000-08:00

Their radical difference in character could be tracked down to a very precise event that happened in their early adulthood. They both loved The Beatles and used to play some of their songs on their guitars. In an attempt to improve their repertoire they went to a local music store once to buy some Beatles' scores. They found two songbooks left only. Both were from the same publisher, one covering the early years of the band, roughly up to Rubber Soul, the other one covering the second half, from Revolver on. That didn't create any sort of conflict, both friends knew then and there which one to choose, each one of them indifferent to each other's choice.

The other people

2010-11-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

These are the other people. An old man and a servant read magazines at a dentist waiting room. They seem wearily focused on the reading. The place is within reach of the drone of odd-looking tools that clean and polish and drill somebody's teeth. The old man's wife in the corner does not read. She is anxious and utters sporadic cries that deserve no attention from the man and their domestic attendant. Her acting is bizarre, her appearance weak, drained of all energy she once had. The man turns a deaf ear to her cries, a lifetime long situation all too familiar to both of them. The servant and the old man reach the end of their magazines in unison. Without a word, they exchange them, resuming their weary reading. Indeed, these must be the other people.

Mc Chicken

2010-11-06T04:51:00.000-07:00

[ST, Apr 9 (2006)]

A growing number of people gather together in the area around Karls Tor, in downtown Munich, a traditional meeting point. They're certainly planning to take part in a noisy demonstration, hoping that the world leaders, gathered together as well for a few hours in another part of town, pay some sort of attention. He glances from a window on the top floor of the nearby McDonald's in the corner, enjoying the rapid way the urban scenery changes. The multitude of youngsters below already seem excited enough, even though there is still quite some time until the real action begins. They are not alone. Another multitude, der Polizei, keep their company. It dawns on him that he happens to be sitting in, perhaps, the archetypal target of anti-globalization demonstrators, getting, however, no little pleasure from his fries and his chicken. With relief, he soon realises there is no reason for any concern, as the flow of youngsters in and out the fast-food restaurant, with their Che Guevara T-shirts, Converse All Star trainers, and dreadlocked hair, is only aimed at getting food. He keeps on munching his meal and glancing, assuming the restaurant won't be trashed in the next half hour, as long as the guys against present-day's prevailing system get on interpreting their stance in such a loose manner as they seem to do.

As he was walking ...

2010-11-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

As he was walking to his weekly basketball practice, a song reminded him of that lovely sequence in the Phish documentary "Bittersweet Motel" where a beautiful young girl, a truly hard-core phishhead just as the many that can be found among the scores of devoted followers the band has while on tour, dances around and sings at the spirit-lifting song "Love Will Keep Us Together", the Captain and Tennille song from the 1970s that randomly had started playing on his iPod. In that sequence, a beauty goes round and round and waves her arms and sings, broad grin across her face, wearing only a long-sleeved denim sweater down to her thigh, looking a little too cheerful in the first minutes of daylight of a brand new dawn, somewhere in Limestone, Maine, at the band's 1997 multi-day festival "The Great Went". There is something quite charming in that scene, a combination of the soft blueish light in the air, the positive vibes set by the background song, the demonstration of genuine joy by a perfect girl and by other phishheads which show up and become part of the performance, all of them displaying that distinctive radiant look only young people has, all of them also looking happily worn out after a full night of a determined quest for pleasure.

He kept walking, grinning and singing the song to himself, unable to conceal the passing thought that youth was gone too fast too soon.

Irreplaceable

2010-10-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

A few weeks after she knew she had to undergo surgery to have a nodule in her thyroid gland removed he noticed himself a small lump in his neck. The coincidence didn't surprise him much. He wasn't concerned for that little irregularity. Her nodule and the operation worried them both.

The induced anesthesia she had to go through had been troubling her for some time. Her fears were justified from previous allergic reactions she had had to many different types of drugs. She had once worked in a hospital's surgey ward and knew mistakes were sometimes made. She put all those fears into him, something he could only but understand.

The days went on, anxiety gradually piling up, until a phone call set the time and day.

On the morning of the operation, circumstances conspired to make him arrive late at the hospital to kiss a final kiss and wish a final wish. The bed in her room was gone. Down by the 'no entrance' sign of the surgery ward a nurse was kind enough to tell him he had been late by just five minutes. The first operation in the room assigned to her had been cancelled. She was second on the list and found herself lying on the operating table in no time. He shouldn't worry, the nurse said, she will inform him of the outcome of his wife's surgery as soon as she had some news.

A swarm of butterflies fluttered hastily in his stomach. Then and there he was fully aware that she was irreplaceable.

He spent the next few hours idle in the waiting room and dawdling back and forth the aisle opposite the surgery ward sliding doors. The place was crowded with relatives and friends of the many patients under surgery in the various rooms of the hospital unit. At intervals, a voice on the intercom instructed relatives of whomever patient to move towards the doors to be informed. His heart skipped a beat with every announcement.

He was at the back of the room when the same nurse who had told him not to worry four hours earlier approached. It had all gone very well. The nodule was not malignant. It hadn't been necessary to remove the entire gland. Her wound was being stitched as she spoke. And then that anonymous bearer of good news disappeared behind the sliding doors.

A smile of happiness and relief appeared in his face. He kept on dawdling along the aisle and sent a couple of messages to their children. Casually, he raised his hand to his neck only to find his own lump gone.

Snails on the track

2010-10-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

There were plenty of snails along my running route today, a consequence of the scattered showers of the afternoon. I had to be cautious not to step on any of them as I ran. After about a month today's been the first day that there was at times some bouncy rhythm in my pace. It felt great. Truth is I have been feeling weak lately, and remarkably slower than usual.

The quiet man said a few words ...

2010-10-08T05:47:00.000-07:00

The quiet man said a few words for a change. Those carried the message that nowadays everyone knows what's going on. That was far from being the case, say, hardly fifty years ago. This would make possible a change of affairs on a large scale, if only there was some joint, conspiratorial effort, a faultless agreement towards an imposible-to-miss target. Fine-tuning a few parameters here and there would lead to major changes, to a complete new paradigm, only this could be done in a fully deterministic manner. Meanwhile, at the far end of the table she went on thinking that irrefutable ideas are still malleable, just as plastic, that perception rivals stupor as much as hesitation flirts with determination, that as a rule folly rules.

Fingers crossed

2010-10-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have the feeling that Murakami will get the prize tomorrow. In a few hours the laureate will be disclosed.

Edit (On Thursday, October 7th, 5 minutes after the announcement): What is a feeling after all but "a belief, especially a vague or irrational one" ...

Indifference

2010-10-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

[ST (Oct 31st, 2002)]

The immigrant girl left a note on every table the restaurant had set up along the street, in a row. A few tables on the hot and polluted air of downtown. The note was brief, concise: she didn't have anything to subsist, money, a home, a job, the bare necessities. The only thing the note said she had was three hungry children. A second later the girl came back. She picked up the notes and, with a broken voice, she prayed for a bit of help which, as far as I could see, nobody provided, including me. Most of us were distantly kind to her, somewhat embarrassed by both, the ongoing scene and her dramatic situation. The elderly couple at the very last table didn't even bother to look at the girl. The woman just kept reading a women's magazine. The man waved his right hand, telling her to go to blazes without a sound, his eyes focused on the right-wing paper he was holding.

He was being honest ...

2010-10-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

He was being honest when he said that, given a chance to choose, he would like to be a more intelligent person. That didn't count, she said, as it applied to everyone, including the cleverest people.

On thursdays ...

2010-09-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

On thursdays there's a peak in the number of bicycles stolen, the background figures being already anything but minor. Hours later, from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. the following friday, many will be sold at low price on a weekly popular black market. Chances are high you can buy your own bike a second time there.

This place, oh well, it really sucks sometimes.

Happy with the outcome

2010-09-11T04:08:00.000-07:00

Happy with the outcome. Short trip south, long enough to have all action items done. Very efficiently indeed - the introduction, the talk, and the first-time acting as assembly chair. Piece of cake in the end.

He's currently stranded at an airport's lounge, as was quite a norm not long ago. He's having a snack for lunch (sandwich and small beer) while he thinks about the last 36 hours, with time to kill before checking in. The Italian couple at the table beside him go and grab their meals in turns. The man waits keeping an eye on the luggage as the woman comes back carrying some food on a tray. Off goes the man next. He hears - loud and clear - the phone conversation of a man in his fifties sitting at another table. He is telling someone what he's having for lunch (macaronies) and giving details on some relative's recent surgery - rather specific details, somewhat disturbing. A bunch of sexy ladies stand up and head towards the departure gates, stopping at security control to take off their belts and shoes. A few tables back a man plays cards with his son as his mother, oblivious to the ongoing amusement, reads a magazine reporting the empty news of worldwide glitterati and cheap celebrities. The man seems upset about the way the kid plays his cards and gives him continuous advice on how he should play to win and grab the money of their virtual bets. He's concerned the child is giving too much information in every hand and warns him about this fact, taking it even to a higher plane as he convincingly patronises him about the importance not to ever give too much information. At the far end of the cluster of tables there is a small room where what looks like a civil servant spends his boredom playing solitaires on a computer. "Do we play seriously now?" the gambler asks his son. The kid is anything but convinced and seems to be playing only for the sake of his father's satisfaction.

Tables around him, the reminiscer and writer, get filled and emptied with ordinary people just like him, going about their doings in their most natural ways. No effort is involved in those actions, no complications arise in those casual conversations. All this, he reflects, we know how to do it, to greater than lesser precision.

3 is just a number

2010-09-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

She enters the room and takes her place in the only vacant chair around the circular table where the committee of experts to which she belongs to, sophisticated and resolute, is about to start reading the documentation they've been given the task to review. One of his peers has been accused of markedly unfair behaviour upon the grading of the finals. Among the convincing proofs stands an entry in his own colleague's blog where sarcasm and irony are used to admit his inability to handle the matter. She goes through the reading, a hint of a smile in her lips. She overhears the conversation of experts 2 and 5 and their words of disapproval. Their astonishment is not so much on the behaviour but on the ineptitude of making private matters public, matters which before the web became the web were only discussed between close friends in front of a cup of coffee. The need to make one's feelings widely known so easily to an unlimited number of potential readers baffles her too, finding no valid reason behind the trendy purpose of such simpleminded sharing of information. The evidence against her peer allows no dispute. It will take them all some thinking to make up a convincing lie. She sighs, hiding her face on the palms of her hands as she pictures herself as she enters the room and takes her place in the only vacant chair around the circular table where the committee of experts to which she belongs to, sophisticated and resolute, is about to start reading the documentation they've been given the task to review. Dot. And dot. And another dot.

The bedroom window ...

2010-09-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

The bedroom window has usually been left opened most summer nights, so as to mitigate the heat as much as possible, which has not always been "much enough". Last night it rained all night, on and off, a light rain as intermittent as my own sleep. However, my insomnia didn't bother me much, so pleasant it was to hear the sound of the rain on the windowsill and its distant murmur from the deserted street below.

Green Gate One and ginger beer

2010-08-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

[ST (Sep 10, 2006)]

He would've easily gone swimming every day, early in the morning, at the hotel's indoor swimming pool on the basement, had he been a character in a Murakami's book, so familiar it is to find them going about their leisurely crawl or backstroke swimming in many a novel by the popular Japanese writer. You open his books and you know that chances are high to come across such a passage at any given time, a distinctive signature of his peculiar universe, a recurrent handy trick to guide his readers along, to make them feel they tread on known territory. A common writing practice, a trademark almost, reminding him of examples alike as when in his youth he read Robert Arthur's Three Investigators mistery books, waiting to run into the bit where the main characters sneaked through Green Gate One into Jones Salvage Yard, the junk yard where they had their hidden-from-view headquarters. Or suddenly finding the Famous Five (all but Tim, sure enough) sipping their inevitable ginger beer to quench their thirst, as good old Enid Blyton used to happily remind her readers time and again.

23k

2010-08-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

I ran 23k this morning. Had planned to run more than usual today since from tomorrow on my family and I will be in Portugal for 10 days and I don't think I'll find any time to run there. The heat was intense and I had to stop a few times to drink from fountains and refill my bottle. I'm curious to reach the 30k mark someday and thus get to know the infamous Mr. Wall.