On the distance

Beyond the sunset on the west
November 16, 2018

The unseen truth

Monterrey, March 2010

Through life, people tend to focus on what’s near them. They move forward without noticing the crude reality that surrounds them, as if they were horses with blinders following whatever direction the carriage pulls them toward. I was no different. My life drifted without major worries or real problems, deaf to the noise that filled the news and social media. My concerns were trivial; chasing girls at the club, getting drunk at some frat party. I thought that was life; simple, harmless, endless. But reality creeps closer without sound; it waits until it’s too obvious to ignore. Deep down, though, you always know it’s there.

It was late, and the afterparty wasn’t good enough. My throat was dry, the booze was running out, and the pretty brunette I’d spent the whole night talking to wouldn’t give me more than a kiss. Disappointing, but fair. The yuppie friend hosting the afterparty bored me, and it was time to call it a night. My car was parked a few blocks away, and to my drunk self, the idea of walking didn’t seem so bad.

The sky was still dark as I left the apartment complex. The main street was silent, except for a few distant dog barks and the faint rustle of leaves touched by the dawn’s first breeze. I walked without thinking, without caring. My consciousness drifted, blurred by alcohol and fatigue, and for a brief moment, that numbness silenced the questions that usually haunted me who I was, what I was doing questions that never had clear answers anyway.

A block later, I saw it: a black Jeep with tinted windows parked in front of an old abandoned building. Two men stood by it, smoking. Something about them felt wrong. I looked away and kept walking; a fool pretending not to notice.

One of them turned.

“Hey, man, come here and help us with something!” he shouted.

He wore an oversized white shirt, baggy black pants, Jordans, and a Yankees cap straight out of a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason.

“Sorry, man, I’m in a hurry,” I replied, quickening my pace.

He started walking toward me, saying something else, but I didn’t wait to listen I ran.

Two blocks ahead, I saw a police checkpoint. Salvation, or so I thought. I ran harder, my mind sobering with the rush of adrenaline. For an instant, I believed it was over. Then the Jeep roared beside me, tires screeching, cutting me off. The same guy stepped out, shouting:

“I told you to come here, motherfucker!”

He didn’t show a gun or a knife, but I didn’t need to see one to know what came next. I turned and ran again.

All the violence I had heard about the kidnappings, the killings, the disappearances suddenly took shape. It was no longer a story told by someone else. It was here, breathing down my neck. I waved frantically at the road, begging for someone to stop. A taxi did. I jumped in and told the driver to head toward the university; campus security was nearby. For a moment, I thought I’d made it.

Then the Jeep pulled alongside us. Through the window, one of the men yelled at the driver:

“Stop if you don’t want trouble! We just want that bastard!”

Without hesitation, the driver stopped. He didn’t look at me and just unlocked the doors.

“Please, man,” I begged. “The police station’s close. Just drive.”

He met my eyes in the rearview mirror. There was sorrow there, but also fear.

“Sorry, mate. I can’t risk any trouble.”

The men stepped out of the Jeep, moving toward us. My heart pounded, and I knew if they got me, it wouldn’t end well. Fear sharpened my will. I threw the door open, slamming it against one of them, and ran. Ahead, I saw the guard post of an apartment building. A man stood outside, smoking.

“Let me in! Call the police! it’s an emergency!” I screamed.

He hesitated but opened the gate. I rushed inside, slamming it shut as the men yelled, trying to convince him I was a thief. But the guard wasn’t stupid. He looked at me once and knew enough.

He called the police. The men left after a while.

Later, I learned the Jeep was found days after—riddled with bullet holes, floating near the river. Apparently, a bigger fish had swallowed them whole.

For weeks, I couldn’t walk alone without watching my back. The world felt thinner, more fragile. That night stripped away the illusion that life was normal, that danger was something distant, belonging to headlines and strangers. I understood then that ignorance isn’t peace; it’s blindness.

Things could have been worse. They weren’t. I ran with luck… luck that many others in Monterrey didn’t have in those years the years of the war on drugs.

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October 9, 2018

As paths crossed

Rather unexpected and driven more by luck and casualty, she bumbed into me and gave me a warm smile. Her big eyes, infinte, starred at me reflecting the neon lights around us. The music and noise of the crowd went mute as we stood there silently looking at each other as we drew closely. An unplanned rencounter at the end of the summer,out of a cheezy movie script. And then we kissed, when I realized that my past & future didn’t matter and that for now on I could feel free and once again my heart took the wheel for the upcomming ride, a ride where my fingers slided through her blonde hair and my lips followed hers in an almost syncrhonized dance.

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September 14, 2018

The meeting room’s window

Stockholm, September 2018

I’m sitting in a meeting room, wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt without a tie. Actions plans are discussed, a budget plan is proposed and a connection with our international partners is made. My colleagues speak and even though I am listening, my view is lost in one of the big windows. We are sitting in one of the tallest buildings of the city (which if you compre it to any industrial city is not that tall) in one of the upper floors and due to the flatness of the skyline and the lack of ugly glass skyscrapers I am able to see how the city spreads with its black metal roofs through the islands that and beyond them the archipiélago  seems not to end in the distance.

A plan is made, a critical path is analysed, someone is worried about the deadlines, the schedule is changed, their voices fade as my sight is lost between the boats sailing, the blue trains going back and forth in between the islands, and the people that look like little dots. I’m sitting here, but I am not really here. I have pursued to be here, but a side of thought of be somewhere.

I comment, collaborate, propose and discuss, yet I am a preconceived version of myself. The water reflects the white clouds and the birds fly down and up the water hunting for distracted fishes, while a part of my consciusness flies with them, away from what I call my life, away from who I am supposed to be.

Hands are shaken, roles are proposed, and everybody leaves the meeting room. As I walk through the corridor I look once again into the distance behind the glass window. I’m here but I am also there, because that is how I have always been, nowhere.

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Quote | Featured

Behind the words

“Behind this sad spectacle of words, unspeakably trembles the hope that you read me, that I didn’t die completely from your memory” – Julio Cortázar

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July 15, 2018

Beyond the desert plateau

Real de Catorce, May 2016

I ride at dawn passing by the peaks which mark the limit of the town, leaving behind our group, leaving behind the familiar into the dusty planes that extend beyond the horizon. The air still fresh from the dying night hits my face as I ride knowing I am going nowhere and my horse gallops at a firm phase through the bushes.

I pass by the old railroad station, far into the plateau, far away from any road. The sun rising up in the clear sky, warming the soil and with it the sounds of the animals hidden in the nature, singing like a coordinated orchestra with a feral touch. There were no signs or men, just the face of nature and its creations dwelling in the bushes and through holes along the soil.

I ride along the high mesas and the ground resounds under my horse hooves and he gallops faster as I slightly press him with my boots. Our blood heated as the sun warmed our skin and our mouths dry up and our breath becomes heavy. I turn into the old hill road and he goes anxious as if he knows our time is coming to an end and I know that what I was seeking to discover in the desert was a think that I’d always knew; that our shadows would never be one again and that my future was beyond the distance under a different sky, in which we will not ride again.

I ride through the old mining compound, silent and abandoned through the times of the revolution and I take down the mounting of my horse and we both drink water from the small pound under the ruins of the old mill. I look at his big brown eyes that seem calm, yet he looks at me quietly as if he know my heart was full with sadness. We stand there without making much sound as the cold breeze of the nearby mountains cools down our bodies and I prepare the mount again to head up into the old road.

We encounter cowboys and their cattle, jeeps full of tourists ready to venture in search of peyote, and later on I hear the bell of the church marking the entrance back into civilization and I ride back to the old hacienda, where my friends and family are having breakfast. I leave the horse at the stable with the other horses and he looks back at me from the fence quiet and still as if he knew we will not ride again, as if he was saying goodbye.

——

Stockholm , July 2018

Goodbye old friend.

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June 23, 2018

Train ride to nowhere

I’m sitting in the restaurant car of a train. The window reflects a landscape I can’t name. It could be the mountains of the Sierra Madre, but the signs inside the carriage are written in Cyrillic, and the air is too cold for summer. I’m wearing a slim black suit, sipping a gin and tonic that tastes better than it should. My head feels ready to burst, my heart beating too fast, as if I’d just snorted two clean lines of Peruvian snow. The train is empty. Time isn’t moving; only the train is. I don’t know where it’s going, but it feels like I’ve been here before.

You’re sitting across from me in a blue dress, your hair falling over your shoulders. You stare without expression. I can almost see your sadness floating behind your eyes. I reach for your hand, but you slip away and laugh instead, lifting a glass of red wine that wasn’t there a moment ago. The train begins to move faster. The cold turns into heat, unbearable and slow, and yet you seem untouched. The world outside shifts into an endless desert, pale and trembling under the sun.

From somewhere, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by Iggy Pop starts playing through the speakers. You laugh again and take my hand, this time with a grip that burns. I want to kiss you, but I can’t move. My body feels like glass. You’re still laughing when confetti begins to fall from nowhere, spinning in the air like dying snowflakes. The train races forward, and the desert outside catches fire.

“It’s the last time,” you say, almost whispering. “But not like the other last times. This is truly the last.”

“I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to happen,” I tell you. “Or if I can promise it ever was.” Tears gather in my eyes, but I can’t cry. I just smile, as if smiling could make it easier.

You tilt your head and sigh. “There isn’t much to say. Things become what they were always meant to be. You should go wherever this ride takes you…with or without me.”

You rise and come closer, kiss me like you did the first time: quick, sudden, full of light. Then the confetti burns into ash. The air smells like iron and smoke.

“There are no goodbyes,” you say as you walk toward the next car, already swallowed by fire. “Only jumps into different futures that sometimes meet again.”

You step into the flames. They don’t consume you. They just absorb your shape until you disappear completely.

Now I’m alone. The train rushes into a tunnel. Fire covers everything, but it’s cold, like snow that burns without smoke. My heart hurts, but I can’t move. Darkness fills the windows. I know I can’t follow you.

I start crying because I remember—I’ve been here before. I always reach the station alone. The train breaks through the tunnel and stops. The flames vanish. I find myself in an unnamed Eastern European city, the kind that doesn’t exist on any map. I wait for the next train to arrive, though I already know it never really does.

Then I wake up. The ceiling above me is white. The bed beside me is warm, but it isn’t you. I wonder if you wake beside someone else, and if, in the quiet moment before morning, you ever think of me…or if I’ve faded, like the confetti, into the air.

I make coffee and move through the day. The world feels distant, as if it’s still shaking from the rails. By evening, the memory begins to dissolve, until it returns again, uninvited, on another nameless night when I’ll find myself back on that same train.

Maybe you’ll be there.

Maybe not

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March 23, 2018

¿Cuál camino?

Nos encontramos perdidos, con suspiros largos al escuchar el despertador y pedir que las próximas 10 horas se pasen volando y así poder volver a soñar con lugares lejanos, situaciones que creamos en nuestra cabeza o simplemente en un vacío carente del ruido que nos tormenta cuando estamos atrapados en nuestros autos y cubículos.

Vivimos en un limbo en el que nuestra juventud cada momento se siente más lejos y ese fenómeno tan espeluznante llamado madurar se acerca más de prisa. ¿ Así tendremos que vivir hasta el final? Poco a poco nos damos cuenta como gira el mundo y aceptamos ,como los otros millones en él, nuestro destino de seres creados para producir en un sistema diseñado para consumir, igual nunca falta uno que otro loco que quiere ser diferente y terminado tirado en una esquina o en una comunidad de esas hippies que viven en el bosque.

No vine porque estuviera buscando desesperadamente otra de vida. Cuando la gente me pregunta porque decidí mudarme a Estocolmo, siempre pienso en una respuesta convincente que no me haga sonar como un tercer mundista desesperado ni como un malinchista de esos que te encuentras en facebook. Cada vez que esta conversación se repite sigue una especie de diálogo previamente bien planeado: Hago que cada argumento tenga una congruencia para que haga parecer que las razones por las que dejé la mitad de mi vida atrás parezcan razonables. Que por el nivel de vida, que por las oportunidades de trabajo, que porque me gustan las rubias o porque la ciudad es ni muy grande ni muy chica. Dependiendo de las personas, cada respuesta es escrita en nuestro diálogo previamente a inciarlo. La verdad es que a veces yo no tengo idea de porque me fui tan lejos, porque al principio parecía una idea romántica en la que podría perderme y encontrar el amor de mi vida en una calle de un trayecto aletoriamente elegido en el centro de alguna ciudad Europea como le pasó a Horacio Oliveira (que desgraciadamente no fue aleatorio y fue de momentito) o a lo mejor tan sólo quería volverme tan cosmopolita como al lugar que me moviera y poder cambiar las botas de vaquero y las camisas Wrangler por unos botínes Gant y una gabardina color de camello.

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February 27, 2018

Días de fuego

Sonríes, nos sonreímos, sin dejarnos de mirar y entonces nuestras penas se desvanecen, nuestra razón desaparece, nuestros corazones se calientan, nos acercamos y no dejamos de sonreír, nos sonreímos mutuamente como unos locos, nos miramos y todo a nuestro alrededor se vuelve más tenue, el ruido cambia a un silencio temporal en el que sólo escucho tu corazón y sólo veo tu cara, te paso los dedos por los labios y después entre tu pelo, cruzo caminos a través de él, caminos que ya habían sido trazados, como si mis dedos tuvieran su propia memoria. Nuestros ojos se miran y se acercan, nuestras miradas se encajan una a la otra como si estuvieran conectadas por una cuerda que se vuelve más chica. Las bocas se encuentra e inician a luchar entre ellas, con pequeños roces entre sus labios, como si siguieran una coreografía planeada y se juntan, se muerden suavemente dejando pequeños instantes entre los cuales  pequeños suspiros van y vienen intercambiando el calor que llevamos dentro. Mis manos se deslizan en tu cuerpo al igual que las tuyas en el mío en armonía  y tu pelo cae sobre mi cara como una suave ventisca de primavera en la que siento su olor dulce. Nuestro calor se vuelve uno, se enciende y siento como tu piel arde cuando roza la mía.

Dejamos los imperfectos y las penas arder entre las flamas que nacen cuando nos besamos, como si estuvieran llenas de fuegos artificiales que no dejan de volar en todas direcciones. El “tú”y  el “yo” se vuelve un nosotros y aquello que somos queda en pausa para dejar paso a aquella llamarada en la que nuestros almas se convierten.

 

Te veo, me ves y las llamas siguen, pero nosotros no las seguimos, las dejamos estar en el fondo de nuestros ojos sin dejarlas explotar, ya que nuestro fuego al prenderse quema todo y no deja espacio a quienes somos, tan sólo a aquello en lo que nos convertimos y una vez extintas nos dejan con las cenizas de lo que momentáneamente podemos ser, mas no aquello que permanentemente somos.

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February 24, 2018

De tu Diablo Guardián

” La intensidad de una pasión se mide por la soledad que la procede” – Xavier Velasco

Nunca había sido capaz de experimentar aquel estándar que Velasco estableció. Después de una cantidad considerable de relaciones largas y otras un poco más pasajeras, parece ser que me topé con mi propia Violeta. Hermosa, independiente, impredecible e inolvidable y , al igual que a Pig, se encajó en mi corazón como los tornillos expansivos que se usan en el hormigón.

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April 5, 2017

Just words.

It bothers us that we don’t look in our pictures as we see ourselves in the mirror.

Just like the impression others have from us isn’t like the one we want others to have.

We hide our weaknesses through our strengths, we show little of ourselves.

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