Mis pies son como de cartón
que voy arrastrando por cada rincón.
Mi cama se hace fría y gigante y en ella me pierdo yo.
Mi casa se vuelve a caer,
mis flores se mueren de pena,
mis lágrimas son charquitos que caen a mis pies.
Te mando besos de agua que hagan un hueco en tu calma.

Bebe, Razones

At five the half moon moved above the roofs in the watery air, visibly spherical. I laid on the floor listening to an american voice talking on the PC radio into the earpiece, conscious of my back in the neat silence among the familiar walls. Talks of war and politics and people went on and I partially followed, gliding above details, motivations, tones, only minding the flowing of the voice in the stream. This inadvertence is what makes entertainment, I thought, that's why everything can be entertaining.

Later in the morning sun, helping Gisa moving a table into a elevator, I was gifted a couple of gratis not liberating laughs during the efforts. Also just before the cat had chased a fly against the window panes and effortlessly won it, as the moka blurbed its smell of coffee in the whiter space.
The story went that Gisa had lent the table to us two years earlier, and now we were returning it, and we were without a table. As me and Gisa took the table away the cat mourned the loss by looking up from where the comfortable shades between the legs of the table had just been, in the room in Libi's house. As we went across the terrace I wanted Gisa to admire the plants, to ask me which was what, she did it but only a little bit (where one quietly should squat next to the planters).

Down in the street, to the rackless roof of Gisa's long car we strapped the table with hooked elastics running through the back seat windows, the radio singing desaparecido out loud causing reproving glances of the sidewalkers, while passengers waiting at the tram stop looked upon us benevolently, mistaking us for a informative diversion.

I disengaged although previously meant to chaperon Gisa to her new house outside the city, we said goodbye, always inadequately, and she went alone and I walked away down the street, table orphan, under the tall trees fluttering up above in bright green and dark green against unequal patches of clear brown and white where the sun reached the bark. The black roofs, upper edges of the canyon, seemed to wave as well behind the waving trees. I longed for unconscious sex, for open smiles, for solidarity, for friends, for undefined merit.

I thought of Libi who was not there at the moment, at myself and my collections of guilt, I saw how she must have gotten sick of me in the end and how I-- I got frustrated with the world she wanted me to join, chosen for me, unfit for me, and I though at how we kept loving or wanting each other nonetheless, secretly, unreasonably, not able to give anymore that little much. Egoism is what makes love beside other things.
I hated all the rights and all the wrongs now, my rights and her wrongs more than everything. I walked by the windows and the beggars, entered the Panificio for a supply of focaccia, got out and felt so tired, I wanted it to be night, the peaceful night, with us separated one from the other, living off each other different rhythms of sleep, the moments I most likely loved her the most. More freely. Most sincerely. But it was too sad and I couldn't think about it anymore. The street appeared all crowded now, hurrying me against the stone walls of the condos.

-- In picture above: Lince, quarter to one.

the mind is a city like London,
smoky and populous: it is a capital
like Rome, ruined and eternal.
-- Delmore Schwartz

past the ledges of the orchards and the vines the car slopes up through the quiet naked woods, downy oaks robinia and salix (especially robinia) (still the bright beige leaves of the oaks hang from the ascending branches obstinately) standing above the underwood of brambles and hazels with joyously unrolled yellow male flowers, at first the shattered gravel road whose bends seem to disappear out of the slant and into the trees, then fading into concrete, sudden civilization of garages and magnolia trees across montevecchia alta hills down, to the inevitable lowlands, the consistent street lights, the wide round abouts, the trucks one after the other, the honks, the cedars, bar tabacchi, farmacia, casalinghi, the incongruous architectures of Brianza, the blue and white and brown signs of towns and cities to reach, the giant malls offshore into the parking lots, and going rolling and hanging into the traffic, rapidly squeezed into highway east and very fast, passing many cars, going south, the low enraged sun blazing white hot on the concrete and into the eyes, hazardous moving from lane to lane to the exit few miles ahead and finally at the streetlight of viale forlanini, in front of me the low canyons of the city, sky fading to white, rumble of the restless souls, people rushing down the sidewalks, in and out of the many shops, gatherings of more waiting for the tram 12, haze of gases and dust all and above, mothers crossing the streets with probably folded up babies in strollers, VIP cars pushing into the reserved lane, white trunks of the plane trees going up and in the sun, I look for a parking spot, hot in the face, lowered windows, in my green gardener suit and the whole car dung-smelling dust crackling, today I stole from work batches of preserves and jams now scattered on the passenger seat, I am coming back from the absurd organic farm up in the hills where I work this week again. I find the parking spot. From the warm valley where the only sounds are chirping of birds and far away hammering in the orchards I am here bumping the car up above the curb and civilization is everywhere and immediately completely all around and rightfully irreversible and ¿just how absurdly it is to forget all about it for a underpaid brief day of hard-working dung-shoveling illusions?
Moh'. Who cares? For the failures? I drove a 1978 Lamborghini tractor with a trailer today up and down those ledges and thought I would overturn it any moment, and hated it. I can walk home with a fair walk and joyful.

--In picture, above: the aforementioned tractor. Music: "because of this", mark lanegan

...but the village wants to give me something other than products to buy, something that I can't use. So I just sit there, writing postcards that are not sincere and are not funny, trying to make something happen in the mind, something revealing, shivering at the thought of being back soon to the life I had before (isn't travelling life? yes-- and no), in the house that isn't mine and to a job that isn't going to be mine. What a folly, what a waste, to stretch the rope so, and still being attached to it. I kill a small fly with a quick slap. The insect's body is smeared across the palm of my hands, bits of it are trapped between my fingers. I don't feel nothing, no sense of success or relief. If only they stopped to play the music and we could go down to the lake and look at the stars and talk about life and other stronzate without the need of the booze, the radios, the yelling laughs of the lost moments [probably in San Pedro, Atitlan]

Outside goes on the happy and sad music of the band hired by the local association of vendors. In front of the stage, only the drunks dare to dance, while a large platoon of people by the beautiful, colorful clothes stands in silence, looking and listening. Everyone is shy, and also, the mexican music playing is obviously not their music. The town, voided of tourists (us two are the sole representatives of the category) appears finally as a shred of truth after all the set-up stages for gringos, but the truth is nothing special. Not that special places really exist. They should not be considered as such, probably, and the only decent question is always: what I am doing here? For many the answer seems always to be, I am here to drink cheap, to take pictures, to buy stuff. I don't think I am different from anyone else. I am a stranger, and I don't have a good reason to be here, no special keys in my pockets. Because the force of tourism is such that you cannot pretend not to be one.
The town around the music and the market, dirty and old and vexed by cars, ugly restaurants, ice cream place, hardware store, and two white churches on the opposite sides of the square, around the market stretch on the pavement of the square, around the forever dried fountain. Everything is obvious like in any other country of the world, like in Puglia, or in Somalia, what is that, being people? [in Chichicastenago]

When the night falls the faces become confused, the cars in the streets impel the passersby with imperious honking and the little kids disappear behind the corners of the streets. My wet clothes are wavering up on the roof of the hotel in the cold night wind, and I can see my blue pants slapping in the dark night, glowing orange from every side. What I learned from this trip? What questions! nothing, nothing of course [in Copan]

"That guy is a dick!" yells Roger in the car. "You was a great man Max cuz you didn't flip out or anything. Way to go man."
"I was ready to kick his ass, porcodio" says Max driving. I can see him smiling from the back of his head.
"I was laughing, laughing all the time, trying not to laugh at his face" says Sheila to me, barely audible in the exchanging loud cussing of Roger and Max. They are talking about the Restaurant manager, who had the nerve to get into the kitchen and grill some meat himself like if the chefs weren't able to cope.
"He's a fucking piece of shit", says Roger to me, "this place is fucking garbage, man. Fucking garbage!"
I don't say anything, I can't think of anything funny to say.
"I never liked him from day one" says Max with his thick italian accent.
"Me neither, man, me neither." Roger growls leaning back on the seat. His face is still sweating. There's a acid smell of food in the car emanating from the bodies.
As if to himself, the eyes sparkling, Roger starts telling the story of when he and a mexican got to each other's face in the kitchen. "I was spitting all over his face man" he says. "Get the fuck out of my kitchen! I told him!"

I look outside. Fruitville boulevard, Sarasota, going by in the dark. The distant red of the stop lights doesn't slow down Max, our faces appearing and disappearing in the occasional glare of the car lights coming in the other direction.
A tan Chevy approaches our car on the left lane. There are two old ladies inside, and one of them, the passenger, is cleaning the inside of the windshield with a rotating methodical movement, the way she probably does with her windows at home.
Between the two ladies there's a dangling chain hanging from the rear view mirror, with a plastic stone at its end. In a trance I look at the piece of plastic dangling by, sparkling blue, while the lady goes on with the circular movement of her hand.
The two car cover some road next to each other, and the stone keeps dangling, the lady cleaning the windshield, I watching. There's something abstract and absurd about the scene and I suddenly feel uplifted by it, as if I didn't belong there anymore. Eventually Max slows down and the two ladies glide away along the lane. We're almost home. It's my last night here.

I am happy that I sent back to Milan a second box of clothes and stuff, that my luggage is even lighter now. That I choose a destination, entirely by chance only because a ticket was available for some two hundred dollars. That I am leaving soon. Sarasota has been a blank in this trip, as I waited there for a call from my brother in Venezuela that never came, waiting to find the courage to do things I couldn't do, listening to Sheila and Max fighting, envious of everyone's experiences only because they seemed to belong to a world where things kept happening, surrounded by people who were rarely moving or intense, and where many words got lost forever in the untidy box of the memories picked on the go.

It was a long time since when I had sex in a car. We had brought the pile-fabric blanket and it was nice to rest under its warm cloak now, laying down on the lowered seats. In silence, quietly entangled and getting drowsy we could look at the white sky rounded by bright gray clouds at the margins of the trapezoidal glasses on each side, as one vehicle after the other in the endless run of cars and trucks passed so close by our car enough to make it rock in the rumble of pushed air and roaring Skoda's engines.
It had been annoying and stinky and strangely pleasurable to be shaken by those noisy invisible forces, who cast their shadows on us for only a second, while making love in the hazy small world beneath the blanket.

The afternoon was white also in the prairies covered with snow, against the pointed black czech villages one far from the other in the middle of soft hills covered by dark brown tall trees. In the rearview mirror we could still see the nuclear plant reactors in between of which the road seemed about to pass few kilometers before (in absence of imagination, see picture above).

What if the nuclear plant explodes now, she said, but I was unwilling to break the silence. Reality wanted me to get back to drive and I did not agree.
White sky seems still but it moves very fast, it's funny, she said. I looked up, but it was all a plain solid unmoving lid for my astigmatic sight.
If the nuclear plant explodes will we get wiped out or just hit by radiations? She was asking to me.
I have no idea, I mumbled. I always thought it was more a matter of radiations. But since we are so very close, the radiations would probably make so much damage to kill us in a few days, I said. You know, I pictured, melt our body from the inside and stuff. One cannot resist when invited to draw scary scenarios to a woman, they know that.

I was no good before, was I, she said then. She had tricked me into talking about the damn nuclear plant. And now it was too late for silence.
Why you say that? You were very good, of course you were.
No I wasn't she said. I kept changing position and distracted you. I am a bad lover.
I should have known there was something. She had been too silent and too looking away.
You're not a bad lover, I said, I am a selfish lover then, what about that, I am the bad lover.
Even though it was a pointless conversation, suddenly it also was deadly important.
She said, egoist, that means nothing. I like the way you are, she said. She was touching the hair near my temple, looking at them as they were the most important thing. The conversation went on like this for a while. Inside the car it was getting really cold but under cover our bodies were still laid in the warm.

Finally pulling off I said, what the nuclear plant had to do with that anyway, and she smiled saying oh, it was just that, I was just thinking, you know. Like if something bad had to happen since I was no good.