There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song.

-- Pablo Neruda

The nervousness would pass with another jump in the sea probably. Any kind of sea, better a ocean. With a sleep in a new bed, a stranger bed. With a walk, finally, in the woods. With a argument with friends at a windy window of a bar. If I had friends. Reading a story from a book feeling that the story is really about myself (haven't had that sensation in years). The obscenity of this diary in public is that there is no solution to what happens, no perspective. It is a shame and a betrayal to the right reasons one should write for (put some distance between you and the events. Despite the mexican loves, I am no Jack Kerouac and I'm glad I ain't. Creativity is not a filtery flux but an alternative)
Martina had wrote "por que te amo tanto y podria amarte mas. eres tan diferente, eres la persona indicada para mi. recuerdas que en la playa me preguntaste; ¿cómo seria la persona a la que yo podría amar? y seria muy parecida a ti." I read and I thought, how is it that I am? How can I be loved? I guess it's a normal reaction. And it was for just a instant. Then I sucked it up, thirsty and excited and lonesome -- and let love grow insanely, foolishly (now look what you have done!) It was even sweeter and stronger when the words were said face to face, mouth to ear. I don't wish to take anything back, or to push it on. I just wish it made anything else smaller (it didn't). I wish that the distance I feel with my parents, or better the unfriendliness, so ungrateful, would fade. Healed like a small cut. I wish for a late afternoon, idling on a wooden bench, touching the guitar and feeling placated because I did my bit, my duty, what I had to do. But what is it that I have to do? What is my bit? I think that not even once in the last ten years I felt that I did my bit. This is comic. Comic... after the argument, the night we slept in different beds, in Mexico city. I wrote her: "es la una de noche, yo he regresado recién en el hostal dormiente y silencioso. he ido caminando para el centro, un poco llovía con much ruido y un poco no, las calles estaban casi vacíe-- y volviendo soy pasado abajo de tu departamento-- y pasando pensaba todas las cosas del mundo, pensaba que en la cama tu pensabas a mi, esperándome-- y pensaba que en aquel preciso momento tu estaba haciendo l'amor con alguien -- y que yo sariá estado aliviado de descubrirlo-- con una escena un poquito cómica (...)" but then I stopped thinking at all the things. Now I try not to think. I close my hands and the hands are empty, only a little dark green dirtiness beneath my fingernails remains, and I cannot think because I am not holding something in my hands. If only I could start thinking again, and walking across open doors, the last open doors before the doors to be opened. Whatever that means. To a reader I own this explanation (this custom declaration): that still in the world for me there are things of beauty, things to revere; that in between the swearing, the nervousness and the whining stays on the unceasing need to contemplate, and describe (describing being the way to give) and move into the world and be a friend of the world; that if I fail, and stumble, it is not for a moment that I seriously cease to believe that "we are worthed as much as anyone who came before us, and each one of us is destined to conquer the world. That we are close to the origins more than ever." Amen.

-- In picture, above: Volcano Poas, Costarica. Not visible in figure the smell of sulfur that the old man from Colombia described as "the thing Chavez smelled"

another day begins. the sky already in full blue, and the sun making its entrance from the left, where I can't see it but for the warm neat light reflected by the buildings in front of the window. Then so rapidly the shadows slide down and the colors get colder, flatter and more intense. The change goes with slamming of doors, dragging of doors and windows, the ringing of alarm clocks and the early noise of a muffled drill that seems a call of a cicada. This noises make the waking up of the condo and beyond that, of the big city. Libi is asleep in the other room. Or maybe waking up too. I have prepared her coffee, and I sit here listening to my heart and the world-- I think of how it is maybe not so incredible that we are being so close now, like never before -- and so I know we are different in our special way, because we can move towards each other as we part-- because it's to see each other more clearly, more naked if it's possible to say this, that makes us closer-- nobody knowing if it is temporary or not. Never we talked so much, so openly, so directly. I am surprised of how many things surprise me. Never we declared our love for each other so seriously like during these days-- something I always have problems to do-- both feeling that we are going in the wrong direction, and that there is not much else to do. Every day is learning, I said that-- and I know this is "to experience": like when you knew something existed and it was possible (for example odd ways to be with someone or to part from someone) but until it happens to you, your own odd special thing, it remains just a empty notion of something that exists like the bottom of the pond you cannot see.
We make love a lot, I think we both need it, and I guess it's one of those moments of a "story" when it really becomes clear that making love works, for all the things that cannot be told or done, things that cannot be declared and affirmed in any other way. Sounds rhetorical, but it's true that we both look now at this story with tears and tenderness and regret -- hoping to see it revive under more ideal conditions, preparing our hearts to the possibility that it might fade away and not come back anymore. I know we can't see beyond the smallest hill now.
The days are made of misery and moments of despair, generic, edgeless fear, but also of a strange excitement, at hearing ourselves saying things we only thought of saying for so long, declaration of independence and dependence, statements of possibility, claims of individuality or freedom or desire. There are no words more intense of the words of the goodbyes, because goodbyes are crossroads of different worlds that are untangling-- the world at our back opening, the world in front of us closing--
That's what the days are about, too. I wonder if it's the words we used, the courage we had to say things, to talk, that made it possible: I asked Libi if it was because we were grown-ups now. I can't express my frustration or my anger in any other way, she said, but no, I said, I mean, one could express it by closing herself up and not wanting to understand anymore, even without expressing anger, not wanting to to see or to listen. But we're not doing so. No, she said, we're not doing so. And we were amazed.

"Mi sono fatto distrarre da ogni cosa possibile, nel tentativo di non focalizzare su il nodo che dovevo sciogliere: minchiate malfunzionanti nel computer, puttanate da scaricare illegalmente, sfondi per il desktop, la caccia dei bruchi attaccati alla pagine inferiore delle foglie delle piante sul terrazzo (è più facile trovarli alla sera tardi), le litigate dei vicini, le notizie merdosissime dei merdossissimi siti di notizie (tanto ormai non credo più a un cazzo di quello che dicono, e se mi dicono di avere paura, ecco che, come magicamente, la paura si solleva dal mio petto e vola via in una risata), ricontrollare la posta, ancora una volta... There are no messages on the server. E sì che mi è costata tanta fatica scriverle. Poi ho capito che il mio problema era così banale, provenire da una vita prevedibile e volere tuffarsi in un mondo oscuro dove almeno qualcosa di inaspettato potesse succedere, ogni giorno, almeno ogni giorno. La prevedibilità non essendo imputabile alla vita tuttavia, come se la vita mi suonasse la musica sbagliata. La prevedibilità l'ho vista galleggiare a mezza via fra la familiarità e la noia, in una area appena al di fuori e appena al di dentro della mia mente bacata." (da uno dei post che cercavano di spiegare, smarritosi poi a spiegare perché non sapevo spiegare.)

I am learning that Libi is a resourceful person, more than I thought. That her soul is larger and stronger than I thought. That her sexual life, her sexual fantasies matter more for her than I thought (well, Mars moved). How stupid of me to notice these things now. Learning that she can say the strongest things without faltering a bit, like she was talking about going out to buy some milk, only lowering her eyes ("I'd jump into the fire to keep our relationship alive, but it wouldn't do no good, would it") then raising them them up and looking straight at me. Because I told Libi about Martina, and Libi learned about her and my confused feelings, I myself learned of Libi's shades of pain, and how she never looses her bravery and her sense of humor. At first comes at you as a form of denial, but then it becomes a complex and unforeseen expression of sorrow and salvation. I hadn't noticed how strong she was before (I said that already, did I. These are the things you go on saying on and on like in a remix when you know you are causing a lot of pain to someone.)
I listened and answered and explained, this I did. I must be really growing up. I learned that my words aren't good until they are honest. Aren't good until they are straight, I mean. I knew about honesty, which doesn't mean I was willing to use it all the time (this is the kind of joke I learned to use in a conversation with Libi, because to no one like Libi a joke, even the meanest joke, in a dramatic moment does good). We talked about Nina, too, and for the first time Libi told me explicitly how she discovered about Nina and how much she suffered for it. So I learned that too (this was today).
"Why you didn't say anything back then", I asked. Only much later we had talked about it, only in bits. "I felt like an ass and humiliated. Just like now", she said. "That was worse than now, though" she added. "Why is so?" "Because I thought that Nina was disgusting -- as a person, you know. And I hated the idea of you two together. This one I don't know, instead, so my feeling is less precise". She really said so, 'disgusting', and only as she said that I learned how much she had suffered from it, while I didn't know, while I was sleeping or reading or thinking about myself in those stupid days of mine, probably: because she wanted to erase that person away with her stronger words.
I am learning how to bite my lips to keep from coming out words like "more than everything I wish you could wait for me", "don't stop loving me". I am learning (again) that falling in love, struggling in love, makes my heart beat harder everyday, my stomach to jump around and to give that warm weird feeling, everyday. Sounds rhetorical, the classical automatic rhetorical description of love, but it is actually true. My heart does beat harder most of the time these days. Every time I think I might be losing what I so badly wanted; that I might be a step closer to it; that I am causing tears and confusion; that I am distancing someone I love so much from me; that I might be find myself very high and fall down very hard; that I really don't know what I'm wanting --but it's oh so strong. The two dominating body parts of my love life: my heart, my stomach. They express it all, not exhaustively, but clearly. I am not surprised the heart is the metaphor of love, I am surprised I forgot I knew why.
I am learning that prejudices really prevent you from crucial experiences. Now I see people with prejudices as unlucky people, and feel sorry for them, even when I understand their prejudices so well (Nina is not 'disgusting' like Libi said. I know it. But I can't tell her why.) I learned that I want a different life, I want more things to happen around me. I learned that sometimes you are being called egoist and there's nothing you can do about it, but face it, face your egoism. I always hated the indulgence by which most of the people declare their own egoism as affordable, like if the world could cope with it, when in reality with their indulgence and self-spoiling they are making the world a worse place. I think egoism is an hazard and should not be used but in case of emergency... It is a tool that can be used and then disposed of, and because you will need it at a given moment, that moment is the time to use it and face it and accept it, which means accepting to be a smaller person. I know I am.
I am learning that knowing I will regret every single thing I am turning my back to doesn't prevent me to do it anyway. Like if I kept saying to myself, I need this mistake, this crucial mistake, like a inoculation. I am sure I need many other things that are out of reach (...). And I learned many other things, about the surprises of my sexual life, about the pleasure I feel at hearing the word "entonces", about my changing looks (no the nose still creaks but it's all right) and that maybe wanting to live it's all about fearing to die, and maybe that soon all my books will be back into a self-storage box, where they were only two years ago. Two years ago when this blog was born, happy birthday to it.

-- In picture, above, the absurd tangle of cables attached to every light pole in Tegucigalpa. No idea why I am posting this right now.

(...) y sé muy bien que no estarás,
ni aquí adentro, la cárcel donde aun te retengo,
ni allí fuera, este rió de calles y de puentes.
No estarás para nada, no serás ni recuerdo,
y cuando piense en ti pensaré un pensamiento
que oscuramente trata de acordarse de ti.

-- Julio Cortazar, Futuro

Linate is the old claiming baggage hall, the dark grey and yellow interiors, the faces of the policemen saying welcome back to Italy, the guy from Modena coming back from Brazil -- he says laughing, welcome to the place in the world where it is the hardest to make love -- I stand there feeling dizzy for the twentyfive hours three planes flight, my bag sliding to me over the conveyor belt, opened from the top, the plastic bag with coffee from chiapas and oaxaca chocolate spat out few bags past -- a pair of pants from guatemala is there too -- I don't care, what's lost is lost, I throw it all above the plastic seats and repack the bag mumbling a welcome to italy to myself-- outside, she's there in a violet dress, others unknown crowding the picture of the waiting --the warmth of Milano's air around us is less intense but somewhat ready to suffocate -- the sky low over the airport, in hues of gray and blue too bright to be looked at -- our embrace is honest? it is honest--

me and Libi have sex inside the car outside of the airport of Linate, her body is in my hands, obeys in the old familiar hard way we know --she gives out high pitched shrills, I feel like eating and swallowing and digesting her body-- it's different from the other sex across the ocean. I think I can't compare. I warn her to be careful, because I have a half broken nose I should take to the hospital tomorrow or so-- not that I feel like it. I don't make up the story of how it got broken, I just leave out the detail -- of the girl I was with --I don't even let the thought get into my mind. I say I know, it doesn't look broken, but I can feel it, like it is harder to breathe with the left nostril -- also it creaks when I touch it-- kept together by the skin -- gives me a weird feeling to the stomach. I learned to talk about love with my heart and now I suspect I love two persons, or I suspected it. I wish I had the room to say that as well.

At home we talk and make love again few times, I am tired and what I see is confused at moments --though real. Later we are half naked on the pavement, I am pouring out the many presents in front of her, it's fun, but then the feast is over pretty soon. I missed Libi, and yet her picture in front of me is not entirely on focus. Now I just feel in need to talk it out with someone. What I can't say bothers me more than the need to sleep-- although pretty soon I fall asleep, and wake up at the beginning of the night -- and awake in front of the window I still try to keep down the thought that, all right, now I wish I could leave -- tomorrow -- again. The bulky memories, labyrinths of words and desires -- the thought of Martina and the bad bad way we said goodbye to each other is down somewhere too, and it's like when the story you want to tell or write about is so big -- too big -- you'll never find a way to begin the job to tell it all out.

(...) her dark skin shines in the shade of the room as I enter, the morning light pours in from the side of the open roof, I see parts of her legs and shoulders, her beautiful face half turned against the pillow, the eyes closed in a peaceful sleep; this happen two or three times, especially when I get up early because of montezuma's revenge, and silently getting back to the room, every time I stand bewildered for a second at the vision of the sleeping beauty, my heart beating faster and harder, almost immediately a hard-on forces me to undress, I long to undress and lay next to Martina again, make love to her again; this mexican girl looks a india and a japanese and a thailandese at the same time; she's from the city, and very emancipated, lively, superstitious-- keeps saying she went to work when she was fourteen to be independent-- when she smiles she looks like a kid, in a way that strangely reminds me of my stepbrother when he was a kid, ages ago-- so enthusiast of the company-- we don't have a language in common, so it's all about me trying to speak spanish and missing the words, failing the grammar. Martina smiles at my mistakes, strokes my leg, I long for her mouth, for another slow dance-- outside the sea of mazunte keeps roaring against the long uneven beach-- all the rest is quiet-- unfulfilled warnings of a hurricane approaching-- when Martina and myself separate in the bed, I am sweating, and panting, the bed is full of sand, our fingers meet, we try to tell another story; in the silence of the last moments before the usual sneaking out, desayuno on the solitaire terrace deserted by the low season-- I wonder if I am in love now, and if so, what proportions this disaster will take, if any. ¿Can I bear the idea of spreading pain and tears once again? ¿is it a hastened dream? Soon we separate, with a warm smile, the same way we will separate on the last day, she going to el d.f., I going to oaxaca. It is possible necessary that we meet again in the city in a few day; so she runs to the back of the camioneta-- I go back to the beach for a last goodbye to the unsteady waters of mazunte-- the restaurants are playing the languid musics to the sea, the stray dogs populate and play on the foreground of the scene; the response, that it is necessary to meet again, to reach her body and smile again-- might be lost to the waves or to some other equally distracting, hypnotic phenomenon, and the residual forces are needed to pick up my sandals -- shake the sand away for the last time, and leave.

...there are still two weeks left, but, you know.

Libi I'm trying to write you this letter though I'm no good at it. I always worry that what I'm going to write in the letters will haunt me later on for some reason. Not that I have anything special to write you about. Anything you can't imagine by yourself probably.
So I am leaving, as you know (do'h). Of course I'll miss you Libi. I'll miss your eyes so intense and sweet when we hold each other, your arms when we fall asleep together, your cheering voice as you enter the door, noises of you in the kitchen, in the bathroom, out on the yellow terrace talking to the neighbor's cat. I'll miss our clothes scattered all over the apartment, your round breast, the way you give me, I'll miss you at night, when I'm awake and I hear your soft snoring coming from the other room, that always made me warm, our moments of bravery with the sex, our plans for dinner every night, the contorted and lengthy summaries of the movies you saw. I'll miss not seeing our plants flourishing this spring or getting sick. Even that corny french music all in minor key you always want to listen to. I'll miss hearing of your mother's cat, whom you nicknamed with the same nickname you gave me. I'll miss the countless ways you found to make me feel not guilty, of being alive, of being what I was, of not always doing the right thing. I always tried to protect you but if I succeeded at lengths it only was because you needed so little. Manifested so little. See, I know that.
I'll leave and miss the warm love that my leaving triggered from somewhere inside ourselves, even if it was forced out somehow.
You know that I'll be away for three months, although I am not so sure it will be three months, maybe it will be more, or less. I want you to be strong and go on with everything because I'll be back anyway. I wish I was leaving you with someone else like a child or a pet. But our lives are still important to take care of if we part. And if I am not coming back, because I die or something, please know that the days were all true, all true. True like fear, like illness, like lust, like hunger, like all that I postponed waiting to find the courage to give more to you. True when I ran away from you, true when I came back, true when I said I was sorry. Sometimes I wondered whether it was true or not, but what is true? Is it a lie to think that it's true all that we can't rationalize? And if I really die or something keep my relatives away from my stuff if you can, except maybe the pictures, and destroy the blog please. The password is written under the drawer of the green table (...)

I first met Rulla in Venice, on a day of exams. We were both waiting to give one of the many at the department of fine arts. She used to wear certain kinky tigerish glasses back then and always a black short skirt, obviously her long curly straw-yellow venetian hair were all about her. She was fun and carefree and lighthearted. I was already this grave boy but more sociable back then. I think we fell for each other, life was about to give us a great passion... we ended up moving together in a little apartment in St. Polo where we lived for almost three years, although the real passion was alive for the first six months at most, before we even moved in together.
Later the passion developed into something different, equally intense but totally self-destructing and perverse and crazy. There were fights, objects thrown, threats, cheating, promises, cries, fake suicide, slaps in the face, reconciliations, kinky stuff and more cries and resentments and self-destructing choices. We were always broke and always behind with the exams and always sad and unsatisfied and stupefied by all the unhappiness. It dates to those times the insane habit I grew to bury myself into the computer to overcome my sadness and the feeling of being out of place.

I finally got the job at the university of Milan and left Venice, because of Rulla-- and I knew the city wasn't going to be a place for me anymore.
As often happens with the wrong habits me and Rulla never really completely moved on... we sort of kept in touch in the following years. Mostly it was her calling me, and since I was --like her, but in a different way-- badly wounded by our story and weary and selfish, sometimes I ignored her calls, worried to get more of her cries and reprimands and desperation.
But we never really let go the thing. The sexual attraction never really faded, and instead placed itself into a particularly scary and sometimes attractive place inside our minds. For a while we also had moments of getting together to fuck every now and then-- as sometimes happens.

Then strangely all the mistakes and the things never told faded into the past and left nothing but the pipes and wires of some sort of edifice we once had had and that was now nowhere to be found, like a razed construction site, footprints of the old structure squashed and deformed in the dirt by the following plans, as we loved and re-loved other bodies, and our bodies were loved, declaring different things with similar words and tones, making new errors and choices above the old ones.

Recently me and Rulla started to hear from each other more frequently. Now one can call the other, normal day, and we just talk about our lives. I learned to listen to her without being scared or self righteous as I used to and I finally saw, how strong and brave and generous she had been during her difficult years. How in different ways we both managed to overcome the worst aspects of our characters, and all the craziness that we experienced when we were together and afterwards. I came to feel that it really had been one of those unique things in life to witness, this twisted path we had jointly followed and separately.

Today Rulla called and said she was pregnant of her boyfriend, with whom she has been living for a year or so. Because of some surgery she had to undergo in the past the news were two times shocking, and the minute she said "I'm pregnant" I wanted so badly to hug her and make her feel how happy I was for her, how great it was and it was going to be, so much that I felt my eyes on the verge of tears. I mean, I think it was sheer happiness for her --I still can feel it right now as I write, if I only think about it-- although I can't rule out other kinds of feelings I might have felt (maybe I stupidly wanted her to hug me too).
The more evident of these feelings could be that our paths are really separating now. Our two lives are going to be growing so differently and on not contagious levels now. This is "right", and inevitable and this rightfulness is what makes it sad on a certain level, I guess.
Also, many of the women I have been with and loved are becoming mothers, so much that I am becoming an expert on the matter. But I am a man, and I can't be a mother no matter what I do. This is no little thing. It is one of the many way life actually has to tell you that your gender not always works for you. At most I could become I lousy father, and the only time I got close to that, with Libi, it was hell at first and then unbearable pain and later on only a memory hard to swallow.

Libi... she came home that I was still talking with Rulla on the phone. She found me in the bathroom sitting on the edge of the tub rambling about names and silly fears. Later me and Libi got to the mall and I told her about Rulla and after a while Libi said she had nausea all day. I thought it was ridiculous. I hoped life wasn't going to be that ridiculous. Or maybe I didn't hoped, I just wondered if.