The question.
It has not been an easy week. It’s frivolous to say this in the present context, but let me the recourse. You know that feeling of peace, but ennui at the same time? That Sunday-nap laziness that prevents you from doing anything but dreaming of clouds and birds sleeping, just like you, among the branches of trees. That’s how I’ve sometimes felt.
This week, during the lunch break, I sat in the sun, Loles🐶, my partner in crime, lay down beside me and looked at me curiously from the grass. I stared at the bottom of my coffee cup. Always coffee. And I thought. I thought without looking at my smartphone, I thought without looking anywhere. I thought looking inside myself and looking into the depths of my dog’s eyes. I went back and forth from hers to mine. I was thinking about what to do. How to do. Whether to do or not to do. I was thinking about the future, with eyes of the past, sitting in the present. Loles closed her eyes and opened them to make sure I was still there, motionless, staring God knows where. I’m sure she was thinking how easy and simple life is from the grass. I was thinking about it. Minutes flew by in a blur. I was thinking about nothing. About everything. And at the same time about the conversations or questions that would be waiting for me in the Teams. My lunch break should be taking a long time for someone 3,000 kilometres away from the corner where Loles and I were. And I didn’t care, but I was in a hurry. Damn responsibility. I just wanted to finish my coffee, pet my grey-haired dog and figure out what the hell to do with that thing that’s been on my mind all week.
I picked myself up off the floor with a half-ton bag of rocks on my back. I moved slow. Heavy. The photosynthesis of coffee and sun had left me groggy. Damn Teams, I thought as I looked at Loles and telepathically begged her not to leave me alone in front of the computer. She heard me and got up as I did, crunching every bone and looking me in the eye. My dog is one of those animals that communicate through her eyes. She speaks 15 languages.
I sat down in front of the screen. My Teams was empty. No one had spoken to me or missed me. My Figma file was still half-finished, right where I left it. The mouse started to move slowly from screen to screen. My body was there, my head was still at the bottom of the coffee cup, sitting on the grass behind my house.
— Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? Oh, fuck it.
I put on some music to turn off the question. The first song that came on was this one by Dvicio and Lali. A song that had first appeared on my Spoty this week.
Really? I thought to myself. I thought. I’m becoming one of those people who start seeing signs everywhere. It happened to me with my first child, I kept seeing pregnant women everywhere I went. When I thought about buying a Citroën Berlingo, suddenly the motorway became a showcase of Berlingo's of every colour and style imaginable. Now the songs were telling me yes or no depending on the genre of music.
Teams rang to tell me something about a misspelt copy, of course, and an image that might not. Obvious. The mouse started to move. My head centred the shot. I drew, I wrote, I laughed for a while… but I was still singing silently:
Don’t say no, baby, no, baby no, no, no, no, no.
Although I didn’t finish my work, it was already 6 pm on a Friday and I closed the Mac. I put on my new Jalen Rose jersey from when he played at the University of Michigan (5fab🔥). I put on my basketball shoes, my shorts and went to play basketball with my lifelong friends. And then I forgot about the question for a while. It was only for a little while, but it helped when the phone rang. That pause had put my head in order.
The answer was clear to me.
But on the other side, they changed the question.
Everything exploded inside me. And though I felt foolish and jaded. Tired and overwhelmed, I laughed. I had no answer to this new question because it was suddenly the opposite of the decision I had made. I laughed as I cursed my luck and filled my mouth with swears. How absurd to complicate everything.
And here I am again, in the sun, with Loles this time in the shade, writing to sort out my answer.
Yes or no?
This is what’s playing right now on Spotify:
And I don’t know what it’s trying to tell me. 😒
Spanish version of this story
Post-credits…
PS. I said yes, and now, I know what the title of my next story is going to be: Begin Again.
