Winded Is The Sailor... Drifting By The Storm...

I woke up this morning from a vertiginous sleep in which I was a teenager.  

I woke up really sad, missing who I was then.

I could be so indifferent to common issues. I didn't need to socialize, nor tell people who I was in the world to feel comfortable.

I thought guys from my age were silly and older guys thought I was silly, but that was OK.

I really did not care about people, nor I really had an interest on what people thought about me.

I studied Psychology 'cause it was a college career between science and literature (or I thought it was so) and I wanted to be condescendent with my mom and dad. 

Then, besides my dad, I was the second in the entire family -I have two aunts and three uncles, and half of them had sons and daughters older than me- to get to college.

I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to study Letters and to have a degree in Letters. 

Somehow, since I owned a scholarship in elementary school -mom and dad asked me to reject it in high school 'cause they thought someone else would needed it more than me- due to my academic ratings, my family thought it would be a waste of time if I studied Letters. 

They thought I would die by starvation.

I think I would be happier.  

Since I learned to write, I write. 

I learned it when I was four years old. 

Then, as any other kid, I played with toys, but I enjoyed more to write stories.

I remember myself on a sunny saturday morning waking up and writing immediately about a dream I'd just had. It was a sad dream about Mickey Mouse asking Minnie to divorce him.

Mom and dad were slept and the apartment was so quiet. Maybe I was on the first grade of elementary school. I was an advanced student and I was five years old.

I remember feeling in a cathartic way, thinking that I had never felt so focused and excited.

Writing seemed the deepest human activity of all I knew. 

When I played with toys, I loved to play alone. I made up stories with my toys -the kind of stories I saw on cartoons mixed up with the stories of the soap operas or movies my mom used to watch- and I hated when an intruder destroyed those stories. 

(Mom had a friend and her friend had a boy older than me, and the boy went to our apartment to play with me very frequently. He had a Grayskull Castle and he wanted to stole my toys all the time. He was so abussive. When her mother saw him with my toys, he used to say to her that I'd just gave him away my toys, that it was OK with me. His mom forced him to return the toys, but I was so silly -or maybe I just didn't care enough for toys- that I wasn't angst at all for that issue. I really felt uncomfortable playing with him.)  

After all, I was a happy kid. 

When I was a teenager, I devoted my life to literature and music.  
I really never committed to school, to the point that most of my contemporaries saw me as a retarded with a low IQ. 

Once I tried to get involved in a debate team and one student told me that it was so complicated 'cause "I needed to show some kind of  intelligence". 
I wonder in what kind of man does that guy became.
Certainly, to be a teenager, he was so prejudiced. 

Everything seemed boring and exhausting in high school. 

Then, besides writing songs and poems, I played guitar and I read alot of poetry and novels and I listened alot of garage punk and I fantasized alot about girls I liked. I wrote them poems I never gave to them, and I dreamed of them with me in a movie theater, or places like that. Of course I wanted to have a girlfriend, but it was so difficult to me to get closer to girls in a spontaneous way. Do not why, but I always liked older girls from other classrooms. 

I was so quiet that I seemed so retracted and, perhaps, scary.

But maybe when I was about to finish college, I started to care about what persons thought about me. It was so common to find out arrogant classmates presuming what they knew, what they do and so on. 

I started to look for social recognition, but at the same time -which is pretty childish- I grew up thinking that I was so selfish and egocentric. It was a dilemma, a dichotomy between what I hated it and what I needed it.

(That's why I obtained a PhD?) 

Mom didn't like that I was not affectionate with her, and maybe that's why she always told me that I was so selfish and egocentric. As a consequence, I learned to be as quiet as possible, to the point no one really knows who I am or what I do. Sometimes I even suspect that my wife doesn't even know at all why I feel suddenly so sad or angst.  

On the other hand, alot of guys seem to not understand that a conversation implies at least two persons. To listen up everyone around me and to not have the opportunity to be listened up is exhausting.

At this point I'm so frustrated. I think I'm useless.
I have no power to get out of bed. I would like to sleep forever. 
I finish this year being a coward. 

Sometimes I'd just love to yell who I am or what I do, but I must be patient.

Tremor Christ

You Can't Fire Me Because I Quit

Is it fiction or is it real? 
Can't believe it. 

I am really pissed off!
I would like to scream it! 
I would like to yell it to Academia!
I would like to tear my skin!

What I've just noticed, I find it pretty unfair. 

It sucks. 

I published many papers as first author when I was his pupil.
No one of his several PhD students, published as many papers as I did. 

Not even the most brilliant. 
(As he pointed out several times, in front of undergrads: "I just followed his instructions and I had no ideas".)

Not even those workaholics.
(Those who worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. on a daily basis.)

Not even those who later would become postdocs on fancy labs. 
(Those who went to Europe, to the labs of the Neurosciences' rockstars of the time.)

Not even those who already have published papers on Nature, Science or PNAS.  

No matter what, even when I was about to obtain my academic degree, he humiliated me. 
Never understood why he changed so dramatically with me.
At the beginning, when I was about to study a PhD, he was so polite with me. 
He even asked me for my personal life and goals.

Later, as he pointed out a couple of times, at his office, it was not mandatory to become friends. It was mean to be an academic transaction. Simple and plain. 
Not less, not more. 

It was not my fault that most of the undergrads in the lab at that time were lazy, irresponsible and disrespectful.

I had many issues to deal with.
I wasn't able to run the experiments of these students, if it was what he found it so deceiving. 

I had to deal with my savings. 

Due to my intention to publish more papers than I needed to obtain my academic degree, the scholarship finished and I had to survive an entire year with my savings and with a symbolic scholarship that he gave me for six months.
It didn't even cover the rent of the apartment where my wife, my cat and myself lived.
It's so true that we had to move to a cheaper place in an awful neighborhood. 

I wasn't able to stay at his lab for a longer period to fix equipment and to run many more experiments, if it was what he found it so disappointing. 

I also had to deal with my own classes. 
I was professor at the University and I had to prepare six hours of classes weekly and I had to review examinations a couple of times each six months.

I even taught almost the full course of a Master's Degree on which he was responsible.
I am not complaining. I see it as an opportunity he allowed me to have.  

No matter what, I never stopped running experiments. 
That's so obvious. There it is my track record of published papers. 
It's not inside my head!

At the last period of my PhD, he even refused to treat me like a colleague. 
He humiliated me when I was about to submit to review my last first author paper at his lab.
It was so absurd. He freaked out for a detail that I omitted systematically on my previous first author papers. 
(Of course, I had already done by myself the entire process of submitting my papers to the corresponding journals previously, and this was not the exception.)

It seemed that he waited to the last moment to have an excuse to made me mad. 
I repeat it: it was so absurd, 'cause it was mean to annoy me. 

One of his last PhD students that I met –never obtained the academic degree and was accused of plagiarism–, put my name on the acknowledgements of one paper!
He just copy pasted my own acknowledgements!  

(If he was so tough, why he didn't force the student to change the acknowledgments appropriately?)

I know this is an unfair world of appearances.

It's better to dress like a professional, than to be professional. 
It's better to look like a passionate scientist than to be a compromised scientist.
It's better to speak like a scientist than to write like a scientist.

I no longer understand it. 
I am really pissed off!

He just published a review.
Obviously, he's free to do that. 
He's expected to do so.

What pisses me off is that this review includes data of all the papers I published at his lab!
And this is the first time I know about it.
I am not overreacting. 

Why he didn't send me a freaking e-mail to ask me to collaborate?
(When I was at his lab, he e-mailed me all the time... even for humiliated me!) 

It wasn't so obvious that, in this academic transaction we had, I've would like to have another published paper? 
(I stayed at his lab more than I needed just because I wanted to have more published papers!)

I am not overreacting. 
He changed all my original graphs on this review!
At least, I could do that.
(Who would it be the most appropiate guy to do so?) 

Obviously, I would have written on the review if he asked me to collaborate.

(Do I have to mention that in all of my first author published papers at his lab, he forced me to include authors that, if you ask them "right now", which are the titles and the hypotheses of the papers, they won't answer 'cause they don't even know...?
Simple and plain.
Not less, not more.)  

He didn't say a word to me about this review!

I see it as a complete loss. 
Like a crashed car. 

I don't desire him the worst.
Life has its own ways to kill you at your most private moments. 

You Can't Fire Me Because I Quit

She Leads A Lonely Life

I hadn't friends at all, but I was invited to a birthday party of one of my classmates in highschool. Her name was Greta and she had a twin. They had pretty different personalities. Greta was so square minded and her twin was totally the opposite. 

Once, after an awful painting workshop, I spoke to Greta. She had an older brother which also studied on that high school. His name was Lenin. He was handsome and girls in the classroom were crazy about him. I was curious about his name.

I just wanted to know if Greta's parents were interested on Russian literature and then I told her "You're brother has an unusual name...", and she went nuts. 

Greta yelled at me. She warned me that Lenin would know what I'd just said about his name and that he would beat me up. 

Obviously, I thought she was being dramatic -not to mention that she seemed to me so flighty and temperamental-, but I was also scared. 

I hated Greta. I couldn't believe it. I really wanted to know if her parents were interested in Russian literature. It was pretty disappointing. 

Nevertheless, I was there, as a guest, in the twins' birthday party. 

They lived in a small house in a housing unit.
We were supposedly having fun in a yard that was also a parking lot.

Everybody was listening up Ace Of Base. Some girls were dancing with another girls, while some boys stared at them like zombies. Another guys were playing football. 

I was there 'cause I never had been in a teenage party and I felt curious about it. 

It was more an elementary school party with Frankenstein-like guests (enormous kids with infantile voices and terrible odors, and tiny girls with women bodies), and I was getting bored. 

No one drank or smoked. I guess just no one had tried drugs.   

Suddenly, when I was about to get back home, a weird girl appeared out of nowhere. 
She used a strange device to correct the posture of her feet and because of it she walked slowly. We made eye contact and she smiled. 

She seemed so shy. 
All night long I was thinking about her.

What was that strange device? Did the girl have polio?   

A few days later, I knew that girl's name. 
Karen was Greta's cousin. 
What a surprise. 

When I was in the last year of highschool, Karen just came in. 
I don't remember how exactly she became my first girlfriend. 
I don't even remember trying to seduce her. 
I don't even remember if I approached to her and then if I told her my name. 

Someday we were just hanging out in the middle of spring, in the schoolyard.
Her eyes were so big and sweet. They looked like the eyes of Margaret Keane's paintings. 
She walked in a very weird way. It looked like if she had crooked legs. 
She played football. Greta told me that Karen even had a football player boyfriend. 
She wrote me letters. She was a baby girl and she didn't care about ortography. 
She was very flirty and got me into a lot of trouble, but she was my first girlfriend.

All That She Wants

Must Be The Smoke From My Lungs

Yesterday, we ate together and I sat beside her.

Before the food was served, she started to speak about an experiment related to analgesia and thalidomide. 

As she spoke, I couldn't stop looking at her. 
From my point of view -I was so close to her and looking at her left side-, she was so gorgeous. 

She looked like a smart and beautiful woman. 

As she spoke, her lips moved along in a very seductive way. Wondered how would it be to kiss them, when I remembered the first time I saw her. 

I had been a postgraduate student for a few months, and that day I went to eat with some of my labmates to a small restaurant. All of them were about to finish their postgraduate studies. 

That restaurant was their favorite place to eat. The waitresses were pretty and nice and they had amazing memories. They never wrote what we ordered and they never got wrong. Food and price were nice, too. 

And there she was... 

Immediately, I felt attracted and somehow weak. 
My legs started to shake and my heart beat started to accelerate.  
I was like an adolescent falling in love with a TV actress. 

She smiled and then I realized she had brackets. They drove me wild. 

Also, as she smiled, she looked sort of innocent and childish, but beautiful. 

She spoke a few times. She was kind of shy. 

As my labmates, she was about to finish her postgraduate studies. 
She was in that small restaurant with another woman who was friend with my labmates. 

Apparently, they used to eat together once in a while. 

I was about to get married and I felt so ridiculous for having those thoughts, but kept thinking of her the entire day.

I just knew her name. 

Before we ate, we had not seen each other for several years. 

Now, she's married, too. She even has a son. 
I had even forgotten that I was attracted to her.

  
While the food was about to get served, I had to stop looking at her.
Her beauty was really hypnotic. I was afraid to start drooling. 

Then, I looked at her hands. They were so white and tiny. Each one of her fingernails had varnish residues -a mixture of carmine and magenta-, and they made me think that she wasn't really worried at all about her appearance. It gave me the chills. 
Wondered how would it be to touch those hands. 

I'm just attracted in a literary way to her. 

Clean Up Before She Comes
   

Cuando Pase El Temblor

On September 19th, I woke up earlier than usual. I had a nightmare and I couldn't fell asleep again. I felt somewhat nervous and anxious. I had a bad feeling and I started to read the news on my cellphone, to get rid off that bad feeling. 

Against my need to alleviate myself from the nightmare, almost all of the news were related to the 32nd anniversary of the devastating earthquake that destroyed a lot of buildings and lives in Mexico City in 1985. 

Back then I was just a child, but the news gave me the chills and I started to remember how I experienced that earthquake. 

It was such a surprise to realize that I avoid to think about it. 

  

I guess it was so awful that I never think of it. It's not a conscious act. 
I guess I repress all those memories related to that event. 
Then, in a few months, I was about to celebrate my fifth birthday, but I had a few weeks on the first grade of elementary school. 

Then, as I prepared myself to take a shower, I remembered. 

My dad was not present at that time. He had left home earlier and he was at Insurgentes Sur Avenue, waiting for a Van of the company he worked for. On the previous months, he had been sick. He almost had a nervous breakdown and the physician suggested him to not drive his car. He had a silver Volkswagen.  

We lived in the 5th floor, in a small apartment. 

When the earthquake started, I was having breakfast, just about to go to school. 
Suddenly everything started to move and I thought that I was ill because of the breakfast.
My mom hugged me and told me not to worry. 
It was a nightmare. Some things hanging on the walls of the apartment fall apart and broke.
It looked like the earthquake was never going to finish. 
The building moved like a small boat drifting on the gigantic sea.
The movement was fierce and unpredictable. 
It lasted just about two minutes, but nearly 20, 000 people died. 

A lot of people lost everything, in just about two minutes. 
Mom took me to the school and dad called her later.
None of the buildings around our apartment, looked damaged. 

We were fine -dad and mom and my brother and myself-, but scared.  

I had to stop reading the news, 'cause I was already worried and sad.

Late that day, at the University -and in the entire city- we had a simulation of an earthquake evacuation. Everything happened as it was supposed to happened. 

I was alone -my colleagues were occupied at another buildings of the University- and it made feel strange and abandoned.  

When the simulation finished, I still felt somewhat anxious and nervous -as early in the morning-, but I went back to work. 

My office is located on the 3rd floor of the heaviest building of the University. 

I was about to send documents for a CONACyT announcement. We needed money for research.   

At some point, I took a break. 

I was reading a paper of Neurobiology of Learning & Memory. 
It was an interesting study. Authors wanted to evaluate how sleep restriction affected both short- and long- term memories in Aplysia. Besides, they showed how a sleep opportunity of just a few hours, reverted the negative effect of sleep restriction. 

Simultaneously, my colleagues were talking about René Drucker -he just died a night before- and I was curious about what they think of him as a scientist. I have a published paper with him, and he also was advisor of my advisor.

People, usually not related to neurosciences, saw Drucker as an important scientist.
They don't even know that his most recognized papers are those related to his studies on sleep mechanisms in the cat, rather than his studies on Parkinson.

My colleagues said that he was once invited to a Parkinson conference and that he was not really welcome by the specialists. They even kinda hated him and thought he was so arrogant. 

I saw him once at a conference in an annual meeting of the Sociedad Mexicana para la Investigación y Medicina del Sueño, and he was really rude. 

He spoke of an old study -never published- about the relationship between depression and nicotine. It was supposed to be an awesome experiment with depressed women, but I thought it was weird that Drucker -or his student- decided to left it unpublished. 

Another possibility was that the paper, in fact, would have been rejected from an indexed journal. 

He treated my advisor so badly, like if my advisor were his slave. 

Nonetheless, when I had to do something with Drucker, he wasn't rude at all -he was present in my candidacy examination and I had to look for him several times-, but I refuse to accept that people are not dumb and that they don't read but have an opinion for everything.  

People are convinced by appearances.  

Suddenly, it started.

It seemed a light earthquake at the beginning, but it became violent soon. 
It felt like if an enormous worm crawled rapidly, moving everything at its. 

We left the office and just stopped in a security area, with other researchers and students. 
As the movement increased in intensity, a wall fall to the ground and then a window broke.
Women screamed and they put me nervous. I thought the building was about to collapse. 

I thought of my wife and cats.
They were also inside a building, but in the 5th floor. 

When it finished, I left the University.
My cellphone didn't work, so I couldn't communicate to my wife. 
The street was chaotic. People walked across the avenues. 
Traffic was at its highest. No public transport, no taxis were available. 

I had to walk for miles. 
As I walked I felt worst. I didn't know how my family was. 
All I knew came from the radio. News said that several buildings had collapsed. 

Nearly three hours after the earthquake, I got home. 
The building was OK, so my wife and cats. 

Today, I went back to the University.   
One of my colleagues, asked me to accompany him.
I've been so scared -I developed a nervous cough- and I haven't slept well. 

The building of the University in which I have worked for the last three years, it's so damaged that authorities have declared it is uninhabitable. 
Today a couple of colleagues and myself, fed the animals. 
I was so scared. I couldn't stop thinking what if another earthquake started precisely when we were inside the building. It was so extreme. 
The building is so damaged, that most of the researchers who worked in there just decided to sacrifice their animals. 
I was so nervous and scared, but I remained inside the building for almost two hours. 
Everything changed for us in a couple of minutes. 
I don't know when I'm going back to normal. 

Cuando Pase El Temblor

Ella Se Quedó Sin Boda Ni Arroz

Short before I received my PhD, my wife and I had to move from the apartment where we used to live. It was a small place, but it was located in a nice neighborhood. People was nice and respectful. They never had noisy parties late at night. They didn't listen up awful music at a very high volume. They didn't mistreat pets. 

We had to move to a cheaper place 'cause our homemade was about to increase the rental and we wouldn't have enough money to pay it. My scholarship was about to finish, and we didn't want to acquire debts. Even when my advisor believed that I was not a truly productive guy -not to mention that he was convinced that I didn't have my own ideas-, all I wanted to do was to publish more papers than I needed it to get my degree, and so I ran out of time. I could focus on the writing of my doctoral thesis to obtain my degree as soon as possible, but I wanted to have more papers as first author. 

(So far, I'm the only one of his graduates with the record of more papers published as first author -as a student, obviously-, in his lab).

Fortunately, my wife also had a job -then she worked in a maritime import and export company- and we survived for almost a year with our savings and her money. 

From that time, when we moved here, I had to put up with my advisor and his crazy mood changes for almost half a year more. 

He wanted me to stay in the lab endlessly, with a ridiculous salary. 

It wasn't even the third part of the rental I had to pay month after month. 

We moved in here, on August, 2013. 

This apartment is located in a cheap neighborhood, just a miles away from the airport and one of the biggest avenues of the city. You can hear the planes crossing the sky all the time. 
You are immerse in the horrendous city traffic all the time.

We live in the 5th floor. Since there are many factories near the building, heavy trucks circulate along the avenue all the time. When this happens, the building moves and it feels like if you were in the middle of a slight earthquake. 

Sadly, you get used to all these issues. 

Also, people is noisy and disrespectful in this neighborhood. They have noisy parties and they force you to listen to their loud music all the time. The rule seems to be that "adults" have at least a couple of kids, at least one car and at least one pet. The rule seems to be that they throw the trash in the street and that they mistreat all human beings. They behave like if the most important thing in the world was to reproduce and to have a car. 

My wife got the apartment for us. She knew someone who used to live in this building. 
One of my wife's friends is the owner. 

Due to the terrible stress I had to deal with in the lab for almost my entire postgraduate studies -my advisor seemed to be a very gentle and a nice guy, but when I published my first paper he became aggressive and tried to humiliate me as much as he could-, I started to use drugs. 

For almost three years, I used to smoke pot and tobacco and to drink alcohol, desperately.
I needed a maintenance dose of everything.

I used drugs in such an awful way, that I ended up with health problems. 

Apart from that health issues, several times I developed psychosomatic dermatitis and I was about to have a nervous breakdown. 

When my wife and I moved to this apartment, I was almost an alcoholic. 
I drank and smoked on a daily basis, to the point I couldn't stop nor do anything else if I hadn't drank or smoked. I was tired and depressed all the time. I had some sort of purple haze within my brain, like that Jimmy Hendrix' song. 

   
A few months after we arrived to this apartment, the owner of the apartment moved with us. 
She lived with us for almost half a year. She's younger than my wife -she's the youngest of her friends- and she had a very close relationship to her parents. 

She needed a place to live in 'cause her parents had moved away from the city and she just had been accepted to study in the School of Medicine. It was her second career. 

All my life I have been a lonely guy and drug abuse had strengthened my need to be alone. 
So, when that woman moved to live with us, it was a truly complicated situation to me.

(It was so complicated, that I couldn't even write in the entire period she lived with us. Not a single story, nor anything else. I even left my blogs). 

Almost on a daily basis, her parents visit her in the apartment. 

Sometimes, they even came to the apartment with her sister and her small son. Everyday was like a cozy Sunday breakfast. 

The worst of all was that they -the entire family- never warned us -not to my wife, not to me- that they would go to the apartment. They simply did as they pleased. 

I couldn't stop thinking that they just didn't care about me. I felt that I was invisible and that my opinion was useless, but -as it happened with all the annoying issues related to the neighborhood- I had to get used to it. 
I had to adapt to their lifestyle. 

(Wasn't it too abusive?) 

After an ordinary day in the lab -then I had a pos doc position at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-, I got home, wanting to drink and to smoke, or wanting to write and to listen garage punk , or wanting to read a book in silence, or wanting to play the guitar, or wanting to watch porno -in resume, wanting to do all the things that I was used to do for almost 6 years, the time my wife and I were married and living together- but the apartment was, as I mentioned, some sort of a cozy Sunday breakfast. 

My personal space was occupied. 
My wife's friend settled in my studio, so I couldn't use it.
When she wasn't slept, she was talking in there with her sister and her mother. 
They came precisely when my wife wasn't home. 

Her father was watching TV in the living room. Even if I tried to focus on writing -and to avoid alcohol and tobacco, 'cause the small nephew of my wife's friend was running everywhere and I didn't feel free to use drugs-, her father insisted to talk to me.

(Apparently, he thought I was wasting my time on Facebook, or something like that.) 

It was a truly complicated period to me. 

Not just for these issues, but 'cause them never had seen me as an adult.

They don't even know, nor care about what I do -I suppose they think that I'm like a teacher in high school-, but they were always speaking of the father of the kid and all the amazing things he did in his job. 

I still don't have kids nor a car, and apparently they think that both things make you an adult.  

When I finally had a moment alone, I drank as crazy and I tried to write, or play music, in my studio. But my wife's friend was kind of distracted and dirty, and she used to left her underwear lying on the floor or on her bed. 

If I was really high at that time, I couldn't stop having impure thoughts.
I had to quit writing and to left the studio immediately.
Her underwear put me really mad and furious. 
Couldn't focus on anything else but her underwear. 

My wife's friend left the apartment almost three years ago. 
Obviously her family stopped making a Sunday breakfast on a daily basis in the apartment. 
Drug abuse provoked me a gastric problem, to the point I had to have surgery.
I feel free, again. 
I returned to my lonely habits -except that I don't drink nor smoke- and I stopped arguing with my wife.

(We had a lot of problems, when her friend's family used to come on a daily basis to the apartment). 

Last night, out of nowhere, I had a weird dream.
I was at the University and suddenly my wife's friend appeared. 
She dressed her classical lab coat of a student of the School of Medicine.
She smiled and then invited me to the movie theatre. 

I asked here if I could invite my wife, too. 
She said "No" 'cause she didn't want to worry her. 
Even though I thought she was flirting, I accepted.

When we were about to watch the movie, she stared at me.
We were sitting next to each other, almost in front of the screen.
The flashes on the screen illuminated my wife's friend's face.
Her lips were so fleshy and her eyes were possessed by desire. 
I thought she was about to kiss me, but she just put one of her legs around one of mine.
The touch drove me wild. It was like an electric trim. 
Her leg was warm and it made me feel so excited and guilty.
I woke up. 

Dunno why, but I remember my wife's friend each time I hear one song of Clics Modernos.
I'm almost able to see her dancing while the music elapses.
Mainly with the first chords of the song.

This is the song:

Nos Siguen Pegando Abajo