You're A Shooting Star

I had just finished packing my luggage. I was exhausted, and indescribably sad, ready to go to the O'Hare Airport and then to return to Mexico City. My labmates were slept, and I just watched them as I kinda thought of my life. It was a dismal environment, almost sickening. 

I started to listen One In A Million thru my headphones. The song put me nostalgic. It had been my first time in USA. The annual meeting for the Society for Neurosciences had been amazing. Never thought it would be as big an intense, as it actually was. Lab colleagues had warned me about it, but I just thought they had been dramatic. I even spoke to Eric Kandel, or, more precisely, he asked me if I knew where could he check in and pick up his bag and his badge. He came closer to me, as I was about to buy some tea in a Starbucks in the McCormick Place, when he did it. When I told him what to do, pronouncing my best english, and he said "Thanks" and walked away, people watched me, as if they were thinking "Why did Kandel talked to him?", or "Why he didn't asked him for a photograph?" I knew my advisor would kill for that opportunity.

For a while, I interpreted the presence of Kandel in my life, in that precise moment, as a reminder of my compromise with science. Sometimes during my postgraduate studies, I realized that maybe I wasn't too smart, or too commited with science, to become a real 24/7 scientist. I didn't like all the topics in neurosciences -even though I assumed I had to learn and comprehend the basics-, and many times I preferred to read a novel or to write a short story rather than read or write a scientific paper.

Under the dismal atmosphere on that Hilton room, as one of my labmates snored over and over again, I thought it had been an exciting trip, but anyway I felt alone and dumb. Close my eyes and tried to focus on the lyrics of that Guns N' Roses' song, and then I felt I was kinda an immigrant and a fagot at the same time, while waiting for a Greyhound to travel to LA and hoping that the travel induced a great change in my life. As that annual meeting progressed, I started to consider that my poster -the resume of my academic work until then- was insignificant, as compared to the standard posters of other postgraduate students, obviously supported for first world science. I wanted to cry. It was frustrating.   

Day after day, I woke up early, took a shower, had breakfast in a nice restaurant called The Bakery Shop, and then I took the official bus to the McCormick Place. I attended the meeting from 8 am to 17 or 18 pm and I returned to the Hilton hotel, everyday, while I was on Chicago. The day it was my poster session, I stayed there the whole period, almost 4 hours, or so. I met asian, european and african scientists and, obviously, US residents and scientists. Japanese seemed interested in my poster, but as I asked them if they wanted me to explain it to them, they just ran away. "We do not tell english well", said one of them. 

Women were beautiful. They were from all over the world. I was only married a year, or so. Maybe less than it. Definitely I will always like women, and I felt kind of guilty when I was looking at those gorgeous women from all over the world, considering what would I do if I had the opportunity to have an affair with one of them. 

As we walked to the subway and took almost an hour to get to the airport, I watched the suburbs of Chicago and thought of the crimes of Al Capone and the italian mobs.  

I was excited for the experience, but sad. I couldn't even meet the Aragon Ballroom nor the Metro. Chicago seemed a beautiful and great city to me, but I just ran that very last day, early in the morning, to meet the Soldier Field. 

I found out that my work was meaningless. I guess I never recovered from that impression. 

One In A Million

I'm All Out Of Faith

In the spring of 1999, 10 years ago, it began the student work stoppage at UNAM. Even though Psychology School -and UNAM, in general- was closed due to political reasons, I went to school almost twice per week and I saw many students really involved in several activities to inform people about the situation. There was a kitchen in the school and everyone was helping out students. Students were organized and they seemed to have a purpose. 

  
By the end of autumn, the student work stoppage looked endless. Ciudad Universitaria was a disaster. Tons of garbage surrounded the campus. Students and some other unidentified guys, lived in there. Laboratories and classrooms were small apartments. Entire basic research projects were dead. Experimental animals were starved and dirty, or dead. Sophisticated computers and Skinner boxes available for basic research experiments had disappeared, had been stolen, or simply didn't work. People taking drugs everywhere was common. 

I started to feel sick. I was bored, desperate, tired and sleepy all the time. The physician told me I needed to get involved in some academic or physical activity. I had been for months just reading and writing at home, and visiting Ciudad Universitaria once in a while.  

Didn't have real friends nor a girlfriend, so I was kind of lonely and depressed, too.
I went to a literary workshop, to get rid off my nerves, and there I met some guys interested in writing. After a while, we started to hang out. We drank alcohol and read our poems. It was nice, even though I didn't like their attitude. They behave like if they were a living poem. 

Suddenly, a tiny little girl arrived to the workshop. Her name was Natalia, and looked pretty shy. She knew some guys at the workshop and she greeted them with a kiss in the mouth. It was a very hippie thing, to me. Hated it. I thought she maybe had sex with them regularly, too. It was disgusting.   

Her poems were incredibly sordid and sad, but awesome. 

One of the guys at the workshop, studied at TEC de Monterrey. He liked Xavier Villaurrutia and he wrote poems, too. When it was his birthday, he invited us to his house. We drank all night long. He studied physics and talked about Einstein. The other guys talked about Piedra De Sol and Muerte Sin Fin. I was more into suspense than poetry, so they kinda bored me. 

At some point, Natalia started to kiss me. We were completely drunk. Her brackets drove me wild. I started to feel her hair in my lips and mouth, and I complained about it. She smiled and said that her hair was a part of her, too. 

It was funny, but when we were sober, back at the workshop another day, Natalia started to behave as if she wanted to be my girlfriend. I was so prejudiced. Didn't like hippies, nor poets. Later, she started to write me letters and poems, and I always told her I didn't want to have a relationship with her. 

She got my telephone number and called me up once. She was drunk and crying. Asked me why I didn't want to be her boyfriend. I told her that she was a very sad person, even to me, and that I didn't want to get involved with a sad person. 

She told me that she didn't want to be a sad person, and tried to blackmail me. Natalia wanted me to know that she was able to kill herself, and finished rephrasing Dostoievski: 

"I believed in God, but he doesn't believe in me".            

Someone told me she's married to a junkie and that they lived in a small hippie village close to the sea. They make a living off of arts and crafts. I'm sure I'll never see Natalia again. 

I still have her letters, at my mom's house. I'm curious about what they exactly say. 

[Torn-Ednaswap]

Slip of the pen

Torn

This Is Not About Love

What was that? What was that you had that drove me wild? 

Though it happened too many years ago, I still think of you once in a while. We shared a few memories but they were so intense. At least, I think so. 

I still remember the madness of meeting you. 

Out of the blue, while I was bored and sad, when Silencios Incómodos were about to play, you approached to me and you asked me if I could light you up a cigarette. 

I was smoking and I gave you my Zippo and then you lighted your cigarette. Meaningless seconds elapsed and you returned it to me.

A few songs later I wanted to light another cigarette, but I couldn't find the Zippo. 
I thought you had kept it for mistake -I was a little bit drunk- and I looked for you.
When I found you, I asked you for the Zippo. 

Then I saw you in detail, under the dim lights of Foro Alicia. 
Dunno why -maybe I was drunker than I thought-, but I liked you a lot. 

As your closed eyelids reveal some kind of devotion, your lips tasted like youth.

They were soaked in alcohol and they were simultaneously tender and aggressive. 

A week later, we met in a park. 

Honestly, I didn't like you under the daylight. 

I felt abusive and stupid. 

You were several years younger than me!

We talked on the telephone for several months.

I got used to your voice. Guess I knew you and got interested on you, in this way. 

Sometimes you were the only person I heard all day long. 

I remember smoking pot one night and thinking about you. 

I was listening to Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine. 

I started to read a letter that you had written to me. 

It turned out to be one of the funniest experiences I ever had. 

Your words where so innocent and reflective at the same time. 

It seemed that you were just playing the fool. 

On that letter you said that one night before you were about to sleep. 

You were brushing your hair in front of the mirror and then you felt excited for an unknown reason. Then you took away your shirt and started to look your naked breast. 

You said that I could see your breast, though we were not closer friends. You wanted me to ask you to be my girlfriend. 

As the piano sounded on my bedroom and Fiona sang This Is Not About Love, I become obsessed with your breast. 

Had it been necessary that you had specified on the letter that you were wearing 36-B bras...?

Sometimes you were so direct and I was so stupid.

I used to feel terribly guilty.  

Another night we went to a bar to drink a beer.

We sit face to face. 

You wore a blouse with a neckline. 

The blouse was green and the neckline was amazing. 

I drank beer after beer. It was impossible to not sink into the abyss of your breast. 

Nonetheless, sometimes you were so cruel. 

I guess you got tired.

You were willing to do what I wanted, but I did not do anything. 

You said that I was too polite and too respectful and too different from the guys you used to hang out with, but you also incessantly said that I was a real bad kisser. 

I guess you just said so to provoke me. 

You wanted me to be a little bit disrespectful, but you got bored of my endlessly politeness and then you started to hate me and then you decided to ignore me. 

Our relationship finished. 

It was easy for you to broke with me, even though you were not exactly my girlfriend. 

They were another guys interested on you. 

Immediately, I felt so ill and I tried to write about you.

It was too recent and everything I wrote sucked. 

I started to care a lot about you. I wanted you to be my girlfriend.  

I wanted so bad to be with you, but you just rejected me. 

All the songs I heard were about losers and guys in love with wrong people. 

Each time I heard Extraordinary Machine, I felt so sick. 

I wanted to threw up. I wanted to stay in bed all day long. 

I thought you deserved more than words. 

Now I can write about it. 

[This Is Not About Love-Fiona Apple]