Yo-Yo Boing!

Pero no era yo la que gritaba. Era la voz de mi abuela. Y yo creía, ilusa, que estaba derrotada por las fieras de mis primas. Pero la madre de las fieras, mi abuela, las hizo salir corriendo despavoridas sin decirme adiós, dejando, intocables, relucir, sobre la mesa mis piedras preciosas. Ahora, escúchalo. Súbete aquí.

— Dónde. A tu lomo.

— Coño. Respiro aire fresco y me siento bien. Te lo juro. I’m not ready for another tragedy, really, who’s ever ready for a tragedy. I grasp, for heaven’s sake, to be caressed by your benevolent you, to be loved so, so much. Oh, I breathe suspicion — my grandmother taught me to suspect—always suspect, even of the sun—she used to tell me—if you’re satisfied, something must be wrong. I’m so comfortable in bed I don’t even want to get dressed to go outside. I click on the TV, content to watch nothing. I read so much. I’m bored to death by Ibsen. Do I act upon the reading. Act upon the character. What fills my brain. Cotton balls and snow balls. Plus the flu — antibiotics — soup — and no exercise. And yet my appetite is here — do I dare to snack. Do I deserve to nap. Everybody dies. Even the ones who accomplish nothing. Do I deserve. Here comes my guilt. For niente a fare. Not for acting an injustice. It’s not an ethical dilemma. It’s a vital existential problem. Indulging my being in waves of distractions. The hot and lazy weather. As if it mattered whether it was day or night. If I don’t wake up — the consciousness of my being alive — time goes by, merry go lucky, quick, a coffee, quick, I have to work, but it’s too hot, and you come and go in the lazy swelter like a train bringing me shoes, seductions, smiles, gossip, temptations, beauty, your sweet face glowing, my Circe, indulging me, to forget my mission. What mission? I had it. Now, the day pains me, and drives me crazy, this railroad inside my house. Thinking about ten years ago, it will be ten years since my last work. What have I done in ten years. When I write checks I do not know ten years have passed. I write 1983, 1984 because I’m stuck in — what do you mean here, too many nouns, I would take out ghosts because it has nothing to do with clowns or buffoons. One life, one work. Work on my present. Do the experiences I live each day, are they — am I — experiencing something that I can feel ten years have passed. Apart from changing the names of my friends. The problems are the same — nasty, grimy streets, repeating themselves, the same buildings crumbling, the same Broadway shows, movies ad infinitum, parties ad nauseum. You working ad infinitum, me in the house — enrejada — doing nothing — niente a fare, reading, rocking — what is this word, what is this world — even my nasty moods, the river, the city — and Woody Allen repeating himself — doesn’t he get tired of doing year after year the same old scene.

— Marcello put it aptly. Crisis of inspiration. And what if what you already did is forgotten by you. Even by you.

— It worries me. I don’t feel anything. Touch it. Aprieta mis sienes. Condensa su densidad, like Jabi used to.

— Harder?

— Don’t crush my skull. Focus my energies like this.

— Look. Look. That’s the expression of intensity we’re looking for. A hideous pout.

— Don’t you see, when I was at my best, maybe I didn’t look nice, but my head was in top shape. Toca mi cerebro, right here. Knock it.

— Like knuckles on a door.

— Worse than that because, wait, somebody might answer the door, but here, jeremiqueo, who answers. Who.

— Trust me, this is the best you’ve ever written.

— You also thought that slop I wrote three years ago was the best I’ve ever written. I wonder, where is your head? I may feel better, look better, of course, you think profound people look nice, no, intensity deforms, it evolves you. I should never look nice, never, and if I look nice it’s because I don’t have a thorough thought in my heavy head.

— Hang in there.

— Where are you going?

— To the vending machine. Coke? Pineapple juice?

— I could go for spare ribs, but I don’t want you in the streets at this hour. Get coke and nachos from the lobby. No, no te vayas. I’m not ready to sleep. With what face puedo enfrentarme a las tinieblas. What have I done tonight. What right do I have to even nibble those nachos.

— Buridan’s ass starved to death because he could not choose between two equally good smelling bundles of hay.

— Go get nachos.

— You wanted a thought.

— That’s not your thought, it was Mona’s and before it was Mona’s it was Hannah Arendt’s. It was nice of you to think of it although I would have preferred it with a nacho in my mouth.

— You’ll starve to death if you don’t decide.

— Par delicatesse, j’ai perdu ma vie.

— You’re Buridan’s ass, not Rimbaud