Onwards and Upwards

Part I — The Move

Clean Clothes

I had chosen to remain silent, but the echo reverberates so resoundingly off the walls that I think it must be my thought what speaks with the voice of their whiteness. What a madhouse would it be if walls listened to the sane.

Thus, I have told myself that I have nothing to lose if I shout at the top of my lungs, for it is known: everything that is true belongs to us, and these wooden partitions have already echoed all the truths.

Let me tell you —it is a secret— that, as well as my voice, I listen to your voices and, in the middle of this solitude which inhabits my mind, a neighborhood converses.

I have discovered that my next-door neighbour has his kitchen opposite to mine, from which I have gathered that as far as space is concerned —in spite of our aspirations, whims and desires—we are all the same: poor in spaciousness.

Last night the couple across the corridor was arguing —like we are bound to do in time— about whose turn it was to go down to collect the dry clothes from the laundry room. I forgot to say that in our world there is, of course, not enough room for a washing machine.

(In the midst of the cacophony I hear a quiet, repetitive song sung by a domesticated bird, and I can picture him cheeping from behind the bars at the cage where his owner lives, on the seventh floor. The owner diligently attends to the trill of his caged animal).

Now the upstairs neighbor slams the door. Every Monday at 9 pm, she goes down to do her weekly laundry, and every time curses her lack of time (the reminder is a tomato sauce stain in her shirt, arguably the result of both forgetfulness and a cheap detergent).

We too are pilgrims, and on Tuesdays after work, we make our way down to the laundry room. In this way we fill up the time —burdened with clothes and fatigue — washing again what we soil, walking through the streets of memory. The drum of our waiting is also cyclical—quick wash setting with plenty of conditioner.

Change of Flats

Everyone, when they move, is born and comes back to life.

How many memories get thrown away, not without first transporting us to other moments; yet, a mysterious imposition manages—either through stoicism or apathy — to erase the traces of steps that we once thought were perpetual. Nothing remains.

And it doesn’t matter. That you envisioned a living room where there were only plaster shelves. That he was greedy. That she has travelled around the world and now wished to live in a 290-square-foot apartment. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. Moving holds many paradoxes, because a seemingly simple act, like sliding a piece of furniture across the floor, contains synesthesias, melodies, textures that return the body to other places.

You will not die, I promise, when you move, even if a scar reminds you of how you dragged your old baggage and combined it with new belongings; how you baptised a smell that belonged to nobody, so that there would be a word, so that there would be a world, that would be our world and would become flesh.

Then friends will come around, you won’t be on your own. Don’t forget to get a ‘Welcome!’ doormat —it is very important — and have them take their shoes off before coming in.

STIG stool

I was terrified —why deny it?— of not having the right Allen key (hex 12mm). I was scared —I confess, I hide not— to see all my time scattered across the chaos emerging from my empty living room. And it was truly distressing to open those pages, to see the assembly instructions, each of the steps described one by one — there is only one right way to rotate all those bolts — in order to secure to the seat the back which would have to withstand this scoliosis of mine.

My reflection is a faceless caricature, that is what I am: the outline of a nobody or an anybody, holding a screw in a pathetic attempt to assemble his world, even as he appears to only be assembling a stool.

And what is it good for? Isn’t it of little or no use, considering that we never get to sit down for a moment to take pleasure in the fruit of our labor, considering that we go from life to sleep, and from sleep to life, without rest?

I was afraid —as I am now— to leave the stool piled there, to ignore its essence and stumble over its potentiality. I ordered you to occupy more than this space, I offered up my time piece by piece in order to rest for a while, my feet up in the middle of this anarchy!

I am terrified, why deny it? Why not disassemble it and start from scratch? Or, even if it is more expensive, why not have it assembled? We could also order that extending dining table while we are at it…

Pest

I know that you are old, that you stopped believing in ghosts a long time ago, but watch out for the shadow of insects lurking on your sofa or double mattress, because even the smallest one could take you back to a childhood where paranoia used to hide in the wardrobe.

“Check the folds of mattresses and sheets for bed bugs”, warns every home disinfecting service website. But I sense that the fear they instill spreads beyond that, that not only between the sheets will it make its nest, but also in every corner, nook, zipper and brain ridge. And this is how, you, tiny insect, no matter how tiny you are, your size gets distorted. How can the skin be so sensitive? Even in your absence, you give me hives… You also cause rashes in relationships. You skin lovers apart when, in the middle of their deepest sleep, you irrupt with your lies (I have seen couples running in terror at night simply by imagining your presence).

So, this is my advice to you all: wash your quilt from time to time, all your bed linen at high temperatures. And if one day your arm or leg suddenly itches, keep calm; there could always be worse things in your wardrobe.

The Journey

I am always very shaken by a poem. It is called ‘The City’. My father read it to me many times as a child. I now understand that he was stealthily providing me with a healthy dose of the distress required to navigate life. I had not even left my home town, did not even know about vices or love prisons or other gloomy corners, but I was already worried by that poem which gave off the scent of a tempestuous fate. Consequently, I would peer into the back of the book, looking for a kinder thought: Ulysses would always arrive to safety—on page 131 in my copy of the anthology. My eyes, like stranded passengers, kept Ithaca on my mind, despite not knowing odysseys nor sirens.

Now, many years later, having experienced just as many places, deep oceans, love prisons and passions, I have realised that Cavafy’s main theme is that tedium is a tale as old as time: there is nothing new under the sun, what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.

And so ‘The City’ always accompanies me; I have now lost hope of finding better ones, having lived in four different countries and looked at myself in the mirror like a métèque. That is why I often return to Ithaca, where I die and come back to life every day—history does nothing but repeat itself— where although shipwrecked I never drown—from my half-lit room, my soul is almost lightweight.

I know, it is unusual in these times, but travelling does not excite me. In fact, I am allergic to tourists who travel for cheap to foreign countries in an attempt to find themselves. Perhaps that poem is the reason why I prefer a holiday in my head than cramping my legs. If there is anything that distresses me more than ‘The City’, it is airplanes.

Part II — Geography of Abandonment

Eviction

Abandonment is imminent. He knows that, at the Visas and Immigration office, they will explain to him the rules of a game he has already lost. This good man will not become a citizen. He once believed that all those pieces of furniture, the memories he had been storing in their drawers, the dinnerware set he bought at a charity shop, would be the antidote against this vacuum, or at least provide the matter, the clay, to give shape to such absurdity.

But a plate is not nourishment, nor is a pot a budding flower, nor is home his home: now he knows that home is only a fantasy. Now that the house is empty, that his body is an empty shell with no cure or remedy, now that the law endorses his abandonment, there is nothing left of this man who, although alive, does not exist in the eyes of society. He is nothing but a terrible echo.

Metempsychosis

I have just acquired a piece of conscience.

Now more than ever I am a believer, thanks to the world I am disillusioned. One look is all it takes for me to see the golden string that —invisible to the naked eye— ties us together; here comes that spirit they skinned alive, there goes that other one who died in the streets, beaten unconscious, they took away his home, his life, his dreams; that other one over there, with Prozac wings, he flew down his window, left behind his wife and daughter, but fear not, he is not dead, he lives in debt.

I have just got a piece of conscience.

No longer does death save us from business.

Puddles

Running away from oneself is an open secret, everyone can tell: your fatigue, your breathing as you gasp for air, that one scream which gets absorbed by silence and which either out of fear or rush —or is it indifference?— you abandon like a dog in the streets, his lips sewn shut.

It is an open secret, that not even that one scream is loud because, like a sleepwalker, it wakes up at the wrong time and drags itself through the night like an injured leg, like the injured leg in Picasso’s Guernica, leaving behind a trail of colourless spirit and quiet racket and a fire that scorches our amazement and burns —with terror, with memory— the flesh of this canvas around you: your skin is inevitably the palimpsest of all the noise that develops and emerges from the cruel tip of paint brushes.

I have seen many faces that find their own sketches reflected on the filthy puddles on narrow pavements and discover the invisible scars, the traces that time draws sneakily. And so they age stealthily, looking at themselves in a sea at ground level where wrecks are only ants and cigarette butts, and the sun—like an electric eye— blinks coldly and distantly on the horizon.

Running away from oneself as one who swallows the puddles of memory without knowing yet that their infinite voice contains the voices of all secrets.

Recycling

They made us believe that they recycled waste, taught us to worship containers full of dead gods.

We saw them that day collecting our waste in the street —a grimy sun shining through their laughter.

No one cared when I carefully separated death from my wound, or removed love from a milk carton.

That is how I think life must be, and yet I will throw this poem into the blue bin when I’m done.

Passerby

Her smell transported me to school, to handwriting workbooks, to the sun that yawned over our desks.

She crossed the street and so did her body, but she left a film reel behind her.

Memory is the eyeliner that embellishes time in an instant.

Liquid love

It was fragile, the gleaming glass ribbon. He had written on the back, “do not touch, easily damaged”, but they did not touch each other very much either, and they spoke to each other just enough, lest a whisper shatter their infallible bond. They were like snowmen, cold and stiff. They smiled, looked at other’s children—natural projections—: “aren’t they gorgeous? what if we made one?” And they thought that the glass that held them together would become wicker.

But a bang—perhaps by chance or perhaps by justice — was heard during the first kiss in love: the ribbon had given up.

Parody brought them back to life: they melted the glass, plugged in their phones, got rid of any old-fashioned bonds.

In a few days they were back on track, eager about routine and a love that was covered by fully comprehensive insurance.

Ship’s log

Constantly losing the way. Freezing temperatures. We wear gloves that fantasize about touching other bodies, diving suits that make it hard to directly inhale air or kiss.

Short-staffed. I am reminded of the crowds that would walk beside us, how they would sometimes call me by my name, and the echo that hid behind their throats.

That voice is no longer my voice. In the latitude of this blank page, I stare back at myself through a foggy lens. I let go of myself in each of these drops as they fall like the debris of love and language.

Lost in these transparent moments, at this point in my journey, geography is but another name for solitude.

Note

Text inspired by Paula Fox’s novel Desperate Characters, which explores the frayed quality of late 1960s American society through the lens of a childless upper-middle class couple living in a gentrifying part of Brooklyn.

Please note that the story portrays a (fictitious) male character, as written by a female writer.

Spanish writer