We're The Litter On The Breeze

This week, strange associations made me thought of Suede.

They started on Tuesday. 

On a topic of Neuropharmacology and Addiction I will finish to teach in a couple of weeks, I asked my pupils to read a scientific paper and to elaborate some answers. 

One of the main findings of the paper was that a low dose of morphine increases the preference for this drug in food restricted rodents. Thus my pupils also had to write a few paragraphs of morphine pharmacodynamics. 

As expected, a student wrote that opiates stimulate mu, delta and kappa receptors and modify the permeability to specific ionic channels on the cell membrane, but she also wrote that they “induce indifference to pain”. 

As I found this statement pretty simple and pretty convincing, her description remained in my head as I continued reviewing some other works. 

Suddenly, I was listening “Trash” and thinking about the increasing rate of worldwide opiate addiction and concluding that the world is so painful that we need to take pills to deal with pain. 

This idea guided me to another idea. 

Almost four years ago, I heard Suede for the very first time.

 

A cousin of my wife gave us tickets for Corona Capital, in Mexico City. On that particular edition of the festival, Suede was one of the special guests.

The festival occurred in the cold Sunday night of November 20th. 

On May 4th, after a long period of hopelessness, medical ineffective treatments, unappetizing diets and zero alcohol and nicotine to deal with gastroesophageal reflux, I'd had a surgery.

I still had to take tons of pills and I had to eat tasteless food and I had to drink plain water all day long, to avoid suffocating with my own gastric acids and to mitigate nauseas, and so I still felt weak and miserable at the festival. 

We arrived to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez around five or six in the afternoon and we listened to Peter, Bjorn & John and to Eagles of Death Metal –I guess it was their first show after the tragic show at Bataclan– and then we moved to the stage in which Suede would play. 

 

As we walked, we passed by another stage on which a band produced by John Frusciante was playing. The music was so loud and the audience was so frenetic, but the lights and the sounds made me experienced an awful reminiscence of my illness. 

On those previous miserable weeks following surgery, one day I accidentally mixed Gabapentin to deal with the mononeurophaties provoked by the excessive amount of drugs I had taken for months and Tramadol to deal with the pain provoked by the surgery. It was a dangerous combination. I felt so dizzy and nauseating and paranoid that I believed I was about to stop breathing. I just turned off my body.

Finally, as we left behind these lights and sounds, my wife and myself stepped close to the Suede's stage and we found a nice place pretty close to it. As the wind fiercely blew and I felt that I was about to threw up, the band came onto the stage and I tried to enjoy their music. 

 

As the show progressed and the frontman and the audience connected as if they were longtime lovers who were able to see each other for the first time after centuries of censorship, prohibition and loneliness, and I felt weak and nauseating and I remembered that awful experience with Gabapentin and Tramadol, I felt l was a heroin addict dealing with cold turkey. 

As I was paying attention to the lyrics of “Trash”, I also remembered how meaningless I felt in my job. Then I was on my second year of posdoc. Apparently, in general, the students of my colleagues and the colleagues of other departments and their students saw me at me as undergrad. It was annoying. 

I wanted to make a difference, but I was so weak and worried about my condition. Sometimes I even felt that I was invisible and pathetic. Sometimes I felt so sick that I abruptly had to leave my job without telling anyone how sick I was.    

Before the surgery, I was so ill and weak that I wasn't even able to perform a stereotaxic surgery from the beginning to the end, or to read a single paper for five consecutive minutes. Nobody knew and cared about my condition.

I've been listening to Suede the entire week and thinking about how miserable I was. 

I guess all these thoughts their music reminds me of, made me not to listen to their music very often. 

Nevertheless, though I have a lot more responsibilities and I feel a lot more involved in my job, sometimes I still feel I am trash. 

Innocence Creates My Hell

 

It must have be a Saturday afternoon when I bought my first copy of Facelift. It must have be August, 2001. As I remember it and as I write these lines, I still can't believe Layne Staley would be dead eight months later. I still can't believe his parents would find his corpse half decomposed from an overdose, at his apartment, eight months later. Still can't believe his death would tragically coincide with the eight anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. 

Anyway, even if I knew these data, I wouldn't mind. I kinda disliked Alice In Chains 'cause they were the favorite band of Suzy's ex. She was my girlfriend but we had a murky relationship. She always spoke of him. She always kept him informed about our relationship and so he appeared each time we had a fight, like if he were a gentleman and a mature guy.

Though he was almost thirty years old and we were in our early twenties, he behaved like a silly teenager. He was a hypocrite, a coward and a blackmailer. Short after Suzy and myself started to hang out, he blackmailed her. He told her that he would commit suicide, if she didn't become his girlfriend again. He told her that he and his friends were going to kidnap me and to torture me to make me feel the pain he was suffering. He was such an idiot. Suzy broke with him several times before we started to hang out 'cause he was a moron. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't help him out to be a moron. He was an expert in being a moron. 

Anyway, as I believed I was so ugly and so stupid to call the attention of another woman and as Suzy was so afraid of loneliness, we had this murky sickening relationship. We believed we were adults, but we behaved like teenagers. We hated each other but we we're so co-dependent that we could barely be apart. We were working on the experiments of our bachelor's degree thesis', so we had to see each other from Monday to Friday.   

Earlier on that day, we went to a mall and I bought Facelift and Broken at the record store. for a reason I don't remember, she slept that night at my parent's house. All I wanted to do was to listen to this album, but she had another plans. 

As soon as we got to my parent's house, we must climbed up the stairs and we must went to my bedroom. We must smoked a cigarette on the balcony and then we must lied on the bed and then we must spoke about silly things. 

She must have told me that she had to make a confession. 

I Try And Feel The Sunshine, You Bring The Rain

I remember myself playing with soccer action figures ripped away from several birthday cakes, on a blanket on which I had drawn a soccer field with an indelible marker, while this song sounded in the boombox that my younger brother had bought with his savings a few weeks earlier. Perhaps the sound was so loud that it provoked the windows cracked. 

I was on my knees beside my bed, feeling ashamed of behaving like a kid. The door was locked and the boombox was playing Use Your Illusion II.

I didn't want to be disturbed nor to be discovered. I felt so guilty. I felt divided in two personalities: a playful kid, attracted to silly toys, and a rebel teenager, attracted to the tough world of rock n' roll music. 

While Izzi's voice sang something about what seemed to be his teenager life, I was focused in recreating a soccer match with these soccer action figures I had started to collect in junior high school. 

Since my brothers were born in the same month of different years, sometimes my parents celebrated their birthdays in the same day. A few years before I discovered Guns N' Roses on TV, they did so. 

By that time, it happened that I'd just begun to play in the soccer team of elementary school and I'd just begun to watch soccer matches on TV, so I had a soccer fever. 

That birthday my parents gave in to my whims –my brothers didn't complain at all– and they bought a soccer birthday cake. From then I'd asked my dad almost once per month to take me to the cake shop and to buy me some other soccer action figures. Once in a while my dad had accepted. He must have bought me around forty action figures without a cake. Now, it makes me feel we were some sort of partners in crime. He always did the what he thought it would be the best he could do for me. 

I'd discovered this dangerous band one day I was so bored from having nothing to do on summer holidays that I decided to turn on the TV. Boredom coincided with a music video called “Estranged”.

It was an incredibly crazy video. It included clips of a rock n' roll band concert in the old Munich Olympic Stadium and tattooed tough guys walking thru the streets, smoking with fantastic women in bars, descending from an enormous airplane, playing a terrific guitar solo in the middle of a storm in the ocean, jumping from a big fishing ship and swimming with a dolphin*. 

This eccentric video lasted almost ten minutes and it was supposed to tell a chaotic story of a troubled man named Axl Rose, who, apparently, tried to hide from police in the closet of a mansion and also tried to overcome the rejection of a woman he loved desperately. 

While “14 Years” sounded, I made a pause from my silly entertainment and begun to pay attention to the lyrics and to the music. It was raining outside. It must be one of the last days of summer. It must be Sunday. I'm pretty sure that the next day it would be my first day in senior high school. I was so excited. 

I was about to celebrate my fourteenth birthday on December. I wanted to quit my childhood, but it was so comfortable. A few hours earlier, my dad had drove us my brother and myself to the record store of the neighborhood. 

At the record store, I had looked desperately for the section of the Guns N' Roses albums' and, particularly, for the album on which “Estranged” appeared. I was obsessed with the song. It had transmitted me feelings I had never experienced with music. 

Finally, I had found the album and I had bought it on cassette. It was 1994 and I guess compact discs were rare. I'm not even sure if they were available by then. Vinyls, as nowadays, were so expensive. 

While it was raining outside and I was locked in the bedroom I shared with my brother, I was listening to it for the first time. It was a rad experience. Though my interest was to listen “Estranged” with high quality –I was so obsessed with the song, that I had recorded it several times from the music video directly from TV, and the sound totally sucked 'cause the boombox had also recorded the environmental hissings and the sounds of the living room–, this song caught my attention.  

I thought it told a story of a guy like me, trying to leave behind his childhood and trying to fake he was a man. I was so innocent. 

This morning, as I wrote this post, I just read on the internet what fans around the world think this song is about. They seem to be convinced that Izzi Stradlin tells the story of Guns N' Roses. Apparently, it took them fourteen years to become the biggest band they became right after Appetite For Destruction was released on July 21st, 1987. Other fans are convinced that Izzi tells the story of his fourteen-year friendship with Axl. 

Regardless of what they speculate, as I listen “14 Years” for a countless time –a few weeks earlier, I started to play it on guitar and I was so surprised that the chords are not a pain in the neck–, I prefer to believe it is about what I thought it was about, when I was about to have my first day in senior high school and when I was about to celebrate my fourteenth birthday. 

Up To My Neck In Sorrow

_________

*Ironically, by the time “Estranged” was filmed, Izzi had quit the band.

Then My Veins Might Burn

As I hear for a countless occasion “Down In The Dark” on my old iPod Classic of 120 GB –it's not that I am freak of technology: I love physical albums and in fact I dislike Apple 'cause my iPod is on perfect conditions and it seems that it is suffering “scheduled obsolescence”, but there are not many options to hear (converted) physical albums while you take a rest from work– and as I cannot stop thinking about a man waiting for the rush as he tells to a girl that she will make it a little better for a while, I would like to write that I heard about Mark Lanegan long before The Winding Sheet was released by Sub Pop in May 1990.

Nonetheless, first I listened Screaming Trees (when I watched Singles, back in 1998... or something like that...?) and, in particular, I heard for the first time this song on which Kurt Cobain sang and played guitar, when I downloaded it from Napster... almost 20 years ago. 

I was a teenager, Internet was “on fire” and I was crazy about Nirvana –I still like their music– and, in Napster, the song was suspiciously labeled as “an unknown song of Kurt Cobain”. 

What I've written so far, might look like an ordinary thing, but I have a different story: almost three years ago, on a pretty awesome period of my life, I saw Mark Lanegan, face to face, and we shook hands after a show. 

His band came to Mexico City. They were touring Gargoyle –Lanegan's tenth solo studio album– and they played at El Plaza Condesa. It was a pretty emotive show. I was about to cry over and over again. In the most Freudian sense of the term, it was a cathartic show for me. 

For more than five years, in which I went from being a postgraduate mentally ill student to being a postdoctoral physically ill researcher, I had been listening to his music.  

In between, I had a few miserable years. 

When I started my postdoctoral research, I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux and I followed various unsuccessful medical treatments. Independently of the terrible suffocating experiences inherent to the disease and independently of the endless awful nauseas provoked by antibiotics, gastroenterologists told me that reflux was eroding my esophagus in such a way that it was very likely that it progressed to a cancerous tumor. 

On the previous months I got to the operating room, I listened Mark Lanegan's music more than ever. I associated his sad music with my ill mood, but, somehow, music turned my negative emotions into something positive.

From his solo career, Blues Funeral was the first album I heard –I bought it almost immediately it was released by 4AD on February 2012–, then I listened The Winding Sheet –couldn't resist to the bunch of papers I'd read over the years pointing it as a big influence on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York– and then Bubblegum and Gargoyle, and then his collaborations with Queens Of The Stone Age, Duke Garwood and Isobel Campbell's Belle & Sebastian.

As I write these words, I have heard all his albums. 

I could try to explain why “Bleed All Over”, “My Shadow Life”, “Emperor”, “St Louis Elegy”, “Deepest Shade”, “When Your Number Isn't Up”, “One Hundred Years”, “Bombed”, “Wild Flowers”, “Juarez”... gave me the chills, but I won't.

Words aren't enough. 

I respect him as an artist. He truly seems one of the very few artists with enough guts to quit “the Seattle Sound” of the nineties. (I know: Screaming Trees were from Ellensburg, but I guess you get my point.) 

At a more personal level, his lyrics were a powerful inspiration on my worst days. They made me think of my disease and they made me realize that my disease was not the worst disease in the world. It was funny, 'cause I really didn't feel OK. My life sucked.

Sometimes I was so tired of not even being able to eat regular food or drink something other than plain water. Sometimes I hated my life. I felt nauseated all day long. I was endlessly clearing my throat. I ate without hunger just a very few selected meals. Eating was so monotonous that I lost a few pounds. 

Day after day, I woke up sick, hopeless and nauseated. I couldn't even tolerate regular smells. They made me threw up. I had to take everywhere my own bag of emergency in case I threw up. I couldn't even read a single paper for 30 consecutive minutes. 

By September 2018, I was finally feeling like a normal guy. Three to four months after surgery, I'd re-started to eat regular food and I could even drink a beer or orange juice. 

Obviously, I was so happy. Besides I was feeling OK and I was so excited by the show at El Plaza Condesa, one day before the show, my then most recent research paper was accepted for publication. 

That paper was the result of my last three devious postdoctoral years and it meant a lot to me. Although I had written all my previous papers in which I was first author –of course they were supervised by my PhD advisor–, it was, officially, my first paper as a corresponding author.

A few minutes before the show, at the stand of Mark Lanegan's official merchandise, I would have loved to buy Phantom Radio or I Am The Wolf, but I was so broke. Instead I bought a lithography. It's strange how sometimes you don't have money when you really need it. 

At the end of the show, Mark Lanegan came out of stage to sign some things. 

I was the first in the line. I was the first in the audience to shake hands with him. He was so polite and he signed the lithography I'd bought and my copy of Uncle Anesthesia (one of the most popular albums of Screaming Trees, which was produced by Chris Cornell).

I would have liked to tell him a few things about the way his music had changed my perspective on life, when I was so sick, but I didn't want to bother him. Neither I wanted to act like a moron. I just told him: “It was a great show”. And I really meant it. 

Under the dim lights of the forum, I saw Mark's smiling. 

For a moment, I looked at his red hair and then into his eyes –he wore thick glasses– and I tried to guess how many times did he had heard the very same words from another silly fans around the world and I felt so stupid. 

Then I gave him my hand and he politely gave me his. We shook hands. 

I walked away feeling numb.

My copy of Sing Backwards And Weep –Mark Lanegan's memoir– arrived a couple of days ago. As I started to read it, I checked my twitter time line and the first thing I found was a tweet on which Mark Lanegan quoted a passage I had just read on his book. 

He said that the Sex Pistols changed his life. 

Then I stopped reading and started to write this post. Hope someday he'll read a few lines of how his music saved my (miserable) life. 

Down In The Dark

I'm So Excited, I Can't Wait To Meet You There

As the quietly room is occupied by cats and sunlight and street sounds and wildlife, I start to forget you. Before the soft and blue substance of these thoughts vanished, I will make my best to maintain you on this secret spot I have been building for the last decade. 

I just can't ignore this calm that invades me. I just can't ignore this atmosphere. It smells like freshly washed sheets and it evokes several cozy ideas on me. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager. It makes me close my eyelids and to travel miles away from my real life.

I almost see myself from my inside.

We are in 1999. 

I'm walking to the swimming pool. 
My parents decided to bring us to these cabins in Cuernavaca.
It's the first time we spend a weekend in this place. 
I can't tell how they find it out, but it's a nice place. 

There are soccer fields and basketball and tennis courts. 
There are twenty or thirty cabins, next to a forest.
There is also a restaurant.  

A few hours ago, we played a soccer game with some tourists. 
We were giving them up a ridiculous beating. 
They were so stupid to play soccer. Most of them were fat and clumsy. 
A moron didn't tolerate the humiliation. He hit the soccer ball so hard that it made my dad bled. I hated him. I'm thinking on revenge.   

I've been also playing tennis with one of my brothers. 
I didn't remember how much I enjoy to play tennis. I even used to watch tennis matches on TV when I was a kid, instead of watching cartoons. I guess female tennis players attracted me. I loved the way the air made their skirts flew thru the court as they ran to hit the ball with the racket. I also loved the shapes of their firm legs. It also surprised me that women seemed fragile and quiet, but they could be so strong and they could scream violently. 

I'm thinking that I barely have the opportunity to play tennis. I think it sucks. 

I'm kind of pissed off. I would have preferred to stay home. 
I have realized that I just find it awkward to be surrounded by my family. 
It's not like our last holidays. We even brought our small nephew with us. He's four years old and seems to be the only really happy one. 

I love my family, but I just don't feel OK. 
I'm just a teenager, pretending to act like an adult. 

The university is on a strike since April. It is a disaster. The last time I went to see how it was goin' –some of my classmates and a few hundred other students, are “taking care” of the facilities–, the School of Psychology was a hotel and the Central Library was a dinning room. The entire Ciudad Universitaria was a dump surrounded by cyclonic mesh. 

It was so creepy. 

Nobody knows it, but it's a pretty stressful situation for me. I'm lost. I'm worried. I'm depressed. The only thing I do, is to be a student. I'm such a coward. 

Why haven't I just looked for a job, to keep my mind busy...? 

I've been obsessively thinking on the uncertainty of my academic future. 
I've been supposedly reinforcing my History of Psychology lessons, but, to be honest, I just cannot tell you about a single topic. I have had difficulties to learn. 

I also have been reading Dante Alighieri's most famous book and I just have had difficulties to enjoy it. I've been daydreaming with my own Beatrice and I've been suffering my own private hell. 

What would happen if I dared to give a 180° turn to my life...?

I could work on Mix up, I could work as a waiter on a coffee shop, if I really wanted to. 
I'm so apathetic. I'm so pathetic. I just can't quit my comfort zone. 

Besides daydreaming with the sudden appearance of my own Beatrice, I read 19th century writers, I write 19th century like-poems and weep and complain.  

The sun rays irradiate my childish body as I walk to the swimming pool.  

“I'm so excited, 

I can't wait to meet you there...”

sings Kurt Cobain inside my head, as my heart beats so hard. 

Though it is the calm part of the song, I'm sure that my heart sounds louder than Dave Grohl's drums and that Kurt Cobain's Jaguar on the noisy part of the song. 

My most precious treasures are an old Aiwa walkman, my headphones and my small collection of cassettes. This time, obviously, I'm listening Lithium. 

Music is so important to me. Nirvana has accompanied me since I started senior high school. It has been sort of a cursed. I am stuck in the past. I know I should listen to different genres and to listen different bands (alive ones?), but even though I have tried, it just hasn't work. 

I've been trying to listening No Code, too. I can't tell exactly why there is something about Eddie Vedder I dislike. This album seems so 1995. 
  
I have a crush. I'm almost sure that I will find you in the swimming pool, like I did the first time I saw you. I'm really excited. 

Suddenly, my legs start to shake.  

Though I don't even remember your face, I feel so enthusiastic about seeing you again.

A few days later, I watched a soccer game on TV. 
Our national team won its most relevant tournament so far. 
The Mexican players beat up Brazil in an exciting game. A young player named Ronaldinho was on the field. TV commentators said he was the next star of Brazilian soccer. He's nineteen years old, or so. 

At the time of the game, it was raining. It had been a hot day. 
At a moment, before the soccer game, I was so bored that I went to swim.

And then I saw you.  

You had a black swimwear. Your natural way of behaving left me breathless. 
You looked so gorgeous. Your brown long hair floated on the water like a living miracle defying the laws of gravity. I would like to write an elaborated thought about each component of your beauty, but I would be a liar. I have to admit it. I couldn't ignore your breasts. They made me feel weak and strong at the same time. 

Immediately, I dove into the water to hide my excitement.
I sort of swim to get close to you. You were swimming, too. 

At a moment, as we stopped swimming, we made eye contact. 
It could be for a second, but it felt like eternity. 

I believed you smiled and waited for me to speak to you.
I sensed it, in the very same way I sensed it in those girls in junior high school I kissed. 

Despite all our efforts to make it clear that we own a neocortex, we're still mammals. 
Our brain has evolved, but we still need water and food, to survive. Our brain has evolved, but we still need sex to perpetuate our specie. Our brain has evolved, but we still have to cut it off when we're starved, no matter if we have to interrupt our most sophisticated cognitive abilities. Hormones, olfaction and sight remind us that we are still animals. It's hard to be exempt from our nature.  

Of course, I didn't speak to you. 
 
                              

Though I barely saw you then, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I have felt like a confused young, like I think of Marcel Proust when he wrote how he idealized mysterious women on his vacations on Balbec. 

(In fact, as I am pounding the keyboard and trying to capture you on this secret spot, I see myself as the main character of In the shadow of young girls in flower.)

Since that hot day, your presence has been haunting me. 

I closed my eyelids this morning, while I was in the shower. 
I had impure thoughts about you. I also thought about your eyes and your beautiful hair floating in the swimming pool. Yesterday, as I fell asleep, I started to have hypnagogic hallucinations on which you allowed me to watch your naked breasts behind that black swimwear. It was so exciting. The images left me breathless. For a second, as I woke up, I had no reasons to consider that dreams aren't better than life. 

I finally arrive to the swimming pool. 
I sit in a chair, a few steps from the water.
I sense on my face the reflection of the summer sun diving into the water.  
My lungs are penetrated by the singular smell of chlorine. 
I'm so happy. 

I turn on the volume of the walkman. I focus on Kurt Cobain's voice. I focus on Dave Grohl's cymbals and snare drum. I focus on Krist Novoselic's bass. 

I take a deep breath. 
I look for you. 

There you are. 

Lithium

I Admit I Feel A Bit Deceived

I've been reading Marcel Proust, I've been thinking that he's probably one of the most quoted writers and one of the less read, I've been locked in my house for almost three weeks, I've been paranoid and I've been watching fake news on social networks, I've been reading Science comments' on COVID-19, I've been thinking about how will my wife and I buy food for us and for the cats if we don't have a damn car and if the supermarket is pretty far from home, I've been seriously worried about get in touch with real unknown people in the streets, I've been paranoid about the idea of get infected, I've been thinking people are so dirty and unaware of the real situation. 

Here, in Lerma, people have been celebrating parties.
The churches are full of people and noisy as usual.  

I've been taking French lessons, I've been thinking about Philippe, I've been thinking about Paulette, I've been thinking about my old French professors, I've been thinking why did I behave like a moron when I should have focused on my French classes, I've been thinking that I met them more than fifteen years ago, I've been thinking about Maurice, I've been thinking in the times he was my French professor, I've been thinking he liked Boris Vian,  I've been thinking I was so futile, I've been thinking why I fell so blindly in love.  

Once Maurice imparted a class under the influence –maybe he took a Valium 'cause he thought his life sucked– and he made us watch a Stanley Kubrick film in French. I wonder what happened to my French professors, where they are now, what they have done and how they are going. 

I've been thinking about you and your friends in Europe, I've been thinking that you might hate me 'cause I haven't been supportive in the experiments you've been performing in Mexico City, I've been thinking there is something about you that makes me sick, I've been thinking why I feel pity about you, I've been thinking that it is just a sad projection of myself, I've been thinking about your cats, I've been thinking about your lonely life, I've been thinking in the times that you've complained about your life on the cellphone, I've been thinking if we could befriended. 

What if we just could be honest for one single time? What if you just admit that you like women? What if you just admit that you believe that I am a moron?

I've been thinking about yesterday, I've been thinking about my last meeting via ZOOM with my colleagues, I've been thinking about the impression my colleagues might have about me right now, I've been feeling ill and miserable, I've been considering to act like a smug guy to make it clear that I've written every single damn paper in which I appear as first author, I've been thinking that I am unable to write my own stuff, I've been realizing that I can't write as much as I want, I've been thinking why do I need to be alone to write, I've been thinking why in the hell I can't finish this damn paper in which I've been working for months.    

I've been thinking in those times when I could hear Bandoliers and get drunk and get high and just fall asleep, when I had the worst nightmares of my life, when I was a stupid postgraduate student and tried so hard in my dreams to be less stupid than I was in real life.   

I've been thinking why I can't give a fuck about silly people.

Bandoliers

Like The Coldest Winter Chill

I'm pretty worried. I have a thousand things to do and I can't tell anyone. 
I feel so guilty, like if I were a lazy and irresponsible guy. 

The last couple of weeks, I've been working in home. 

The last days I went to the university, I shared space and time with four women.
Two of them are pregnant. Other is younger than me and probably she travels on a daily basis from Lerma to Mexico City and viceversa, and she's exposed to unknown viruses from unknown people. 

The other woman maybe has my age. She has told me that we knew each other when we were postgraduate students, almost ten years ago. She says someday I went to the lab where she worked and a friend of her introduced us. Honestly, I dunno remember that day.

Her husband works at a hospital and they have two kids. He was exposed to COVID-19 suspicious' patients the entire week. She was snoozing and coughing all day long and she told me that she was allergic and that she had forgotten her anti histamines. I believed her. 

Even though we avoided physical contact, some students went to the office. Some of them tried to give you the hand and some of them coughed and sneezed. 

Also, on an everyday basis I was traveling from my house to the university and back from university on public transportation. In Lerma, there are some sort of shared cabs and I took four of them each day. Passengers were pretty close to me. Some of them coughed and sneezed, like if they were harmless behaviors. It was impossible to keep distance. 

The last day I came back from university, I was OK. 

The day after, I had to go to the supermarket. We we're running out of food!

We took an Über. We did what we needed to do, as fast as we could. 

The supermarket was sort of empty. There were just a few customers walking here and there. 
I saw an elderly couple making their shopping and I suddenly imagined that my wife and myself could be those elders at some point, and I felt excited. 

Even though I have a bad feeling on that, I just can't stop thinking of one period of my life on which I can do all the stuff I love to do –writing, playing my electric guitars, reading–, just as I do now, but excluding all these horrible bureaucratic issues I sometimes have to deal with... and just giving a fuck for the entire world.  

It called my attention one thing: the section of canned food was almost empty. 

As we were about to pay our shopping, I started to have the chills. 

Later, back in home, I felt sort of ill. I had abrupt changes of temperature and I felt weak and sleepy. I felt my bones hurting, like if I just had walked for miles under a heavy rain. I was exhausted and I thought I was about to have the flu. 

On these days it's impossible to be unaware of COVID-19 symptoms' and I got worried.

Maybe I was just paranoid, but what if I was about to get sick...?, what if I would have to isolate from my wife and from the world...?, what if someone in the job had just infected me?

To things get worst, my wife is hypertensive...

I talked to my sister in law –she's a physician– and I told her how I felt and she recommended me to take some Paracetamol pills. 

I had a couple of terrible nights. 

I dreamt my colleague –the one who was coughing and snoozing in the real world– and myself had some sort of ill relationship. We were hiding from all the people who know us and trying to have a serious conversation. I sensed that she was pregnant and I was so afraid and I felt so stupid. 

As the dream progressed, the environment became darker and colder. It seemed that the Earth was getting sick, too. 

I also had hypnopompic hallucinations of my colleague and I woke up several times repeating a magic word who supposedly would end up this pandemic. 
Obviously, I was febrile. 

I had nightmares and I barely slept three or five hours per night. 

The entire weekend, I felt so weird. 

I convalesced watching some old Headbanger's Ball shows' with Alice In Chains on YouTube. It was very strange. They were premiering some videos of their 1995' eponymous album. I have heard that album several times, I like it a lot. I even own a physical exemplar of the compact disc. I bought it at El Chopo a couple of weeks ago. It's sad to realize that compact discs are in extinction pathways. 

Nevertheless, I hadn't watched their videos. Neither I had seen an interview of the band around that time. 

As I saw Layne Staley, with an heroin-addict appearance, trying to focus on the silly questions of Riky Rachtman, I realized that I never think of him as a contemporary of Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan –even though I'm a big fan of Tom Hansen's awesome novel, on which he describes, in a pretty rad way, how “heroin world” was in the early 90's–, but as a musician from another time and genre. 

I supposed my opinion is influenced by the fact that someone who I really dislike introduced me to Alice In Chains and that he was crazy about Mad Season. 

It was pretty strange. 

And, for a couple of seconds, as I died on my bed, I felt I was fifteen years old and that I was watching for the very first time an Alice In Chains' music video. I ended up thinking about myself back then. In resume: in 1995, my life wasn't as boring as it seemed to me. I just was a damned stupid. I didn't even know how to play “Queen of the rodeo” on guitar. All I wanted to have was enough time to read poetry, to write poems and to befriend with a crazy punk rocker girl. 

Now, as the disease spreads across the country and the authorities seem to give a fuck about the physicians, the small businessmen and the rest of the citizens, I have to deal with the fact that my colleagues might see me as an irresponsible lazy guy. 

(Really guys, believe or not: my life would be on risk if I moved from Lerma to Mexico City, on a daily basis.) 

I live in Lerma 'cause I have to teach classes almost everyday, 'cause I have academic meetings almost everyday... 'cause I have to work on a million bureaucratic issues... I don't have a car to move by my own resources and by my own risk to Mexico City. I don't even drive. I have not even had a driver's license!

Besides, I can't eat as a normal person. Moving implies many complications to me. 

A couple of years ago, I had a surgery and I can't fast for more than three hours and I cannot eat the food normal people eat. Moving is not a simple option to me, right now. 

My colleagues perform some experiments in Mexico City. They are allowed to do it before 14: 00. I spend three hours from my house to the lab. Public transport currently has some limited schedules. It's pretty complicated. 

Hate to say so. 

On this quarantine, I wake up early in the morning and I turn on the laptop and I start to work from 8:00 to almost 18:00 0r 19:00. 

Usually I have a couple of meetings via Skype, at last once per week. 

For two weeks I've been writing the discussion of a paper. Normally, I don't even have time to do it. I just, in general, dislike the data, but I must publish this paper, some way or another.

Right now, I have to write a protocol from a totally different research project... I have to make an awful tax process... I have to start writing at last one review from a totally different topic... I have to start to prepare virtual classes for the two courses... and I wish I could enjoy everything I do, but I feel so guilty. 

I really hate it. 

Heaven Beside You

Territorial Pissings

Still remember when my life was such a simple thing. I had a lot of time. I miss the way I could simply waste my time. I miss how silly I was, pretending I knew things I didn't know. 

I miss the way I could write stupid thoughts on stupid notebooks for entire nights and then go to bed at 3 or 4 am after a smoke and then immediately fall asleep and then wake up at 8 or 9 am feeling strong and lucid. I miss all of that. Sometimes I would like to smoke again. 

Nowadays, no matter if I don't drink nor smoke and no matter if I go to bed at 10 or 11 pm, I'm tired and sleepy all day long. It's so difficult to fall asleep and to not wake up at 3 or 4 am. 

On this week, some ugly things have happened. 

At this moment, my wife sleeps. She had a big impression on Wednesday and her arterial pressure is high since then. It really worries me. Her family has a history of hypertension, cancer and diabetes. Some of her aunts died due to these conditions.
Her grandparents had a million kids. I guess it explains, in part, why these diseases spread like air. 

She has told me that her grandfather used to gave her sugar piles when she was a baby. I've seen her having pressure issues. I've seen her having troubles with her sugar intake. She's addicted to candys and bread. I've told her that her grandfather is responsible for her curse. I feel pity of him. 

I didn't know him so much, but he apparently had a sad and terrible life. In fact, I'm not sure if he ever experienced happiness at all. His entire life he was a survivor. His only activities seem to be to breed, to have miserable jobs and to watch TV. 

I remember when her wife died, almost ten years ago. He started to behave like a zombie. He seemed to be unable to behave like a grown up. He said sad things all the time. No one was able to ignore him and he seemed too weak to care about it. 

It seemed that he didn't even own his own life. 

(Is there something more pathetic than that? I'm scared to be more pathetic than I know I am.)

I don't want to be such a desperate man, suffering in front of strangers and making them feel uncomfortable. I'd rather die than behave like a fragile man. I'd rather die than have such an awful life. I'm so scared to be weaker than I know I am.  

A few months after her wife died, he had a stroke. It was so horrible and sad. He started to fight against everyone. He was mad and ill and no one knew it. He died soon after. 

Before these ugly events, I had felt melancholic. Sometimes, on my way to work, I had thought on the irrelevance of my life. Sometimes I just feel so pointless and tired of my existence. No matter how much I try, my efforts seem to be powerless. The world seems to promote stupidity. It seems to be the way evolution will end with human beings. 

Who cares about research and brain function, or who cares about teaching about these issues to pupils –the things I do–, when you can sell silly products to silly people and get tons of money for them?

On this week, I've been sort of ill. I've had more negative thoughts than usual. 
There is an arrogant posdoc who represents the ugliest characteristics you could ever think about a researcher. He's a jerk off and a hypocrite and a conflictuated-frustrated man. He seems to be used to give orders and to believe he's so smart and proactive. He hasn't worked with us not even for three months, but he's asking for holidays. (Can yo believe it?)
He's abussive and lazy and he seems to be guided by one single ambition: to be recognized like a smart guy. He really pisses me off. I knew he was this way since the first time I met him. I have to deal with him almost two or three days per week. It's so annoying. He behaves like if he knew everything and he's so desperate to make it clear and also to look like the one who never makes mistakes. He always looks for the small opportunities to point out when someone else makes a mistake. He's a low quality person. Obviously, the way he performs experiments sucks. 

Also, I've had some silly fights with toxic strangers on Facebook. The situation makes me ill, too. It drives me wild. I just can't get rid of situations as easy as I would like to. All day long I'm thinking obsessively on stupid fights. It really pisses me off. I can't control myself. It's a curse. It is associated to my writing habits. I am used to think about my life, retrospectively. 

Last Friday, a friend of mine shared some news about decriminilization of recreative marijuana use. Since I obtained my PhD performing research on the physiology of the cannabinergic system on murine models –and so I am familiar to specialized information about marijuanas' biological effects and its potential to trigger neuropsychiatric disorders, for example–, it seemed too natural to me to made a comment about the risk of this decriminalization upon human health... specially on my country. We're a bunch of morons. We kill people for money. We take the eyes out of the face of a stranger just to take a place in the parking lot. We fight against people who think differently. We criminalize people by the color of their skin. We admire people by the quantity of banknotes on their wallets or the size of their automobile. 

A moron –I still haven't decided how to call him– appeared out of nowhere and he started to call me “ignorant”. I didn't want to have an argue, I didn't even think of him when I made that comment. I even didn't insinuate someone was an idiot. 

But he seemed to be so bored and frustrated and avid to look like the smartest guy on the entire solar system. Obviously, I reacted. Why should I allow him to call me an ignorant just for free? Is it normal to be violent as a primate who detects its life on danger, while employing a smart device that requires our thumbs to be controlled by our neocortex and our striatum and our spinal cord? 

The situation really pissed me off. This guy ended up insulting me in a pretty primitive way. I also insulted him, though I am not sure if he understood my offensive comments. He was just an ignorant brainwashed character, but I spent a lot of energy on the issue. 

Later, I had a meeting with my colleagues and I felt very stupid. As we spoke about some research projects and their viability to be approved by the Council of Department of Biological Health Sciences, I assumed that none of them spent time with stupid people as I just had done in the morning. 

(The guy on Facebook was so smart that he didn't see my message: health, not just money, it's important. He probably also thinks that I even haven't smoked pot.) 

A few weeks earlier, I had a fight with one of my relatives also on Facebook. It really pissed me off. I didn't want to fight, neither. He wrote a note about technology and he called it science. I read it and I just made a comment. I just said that “science” and “technology” are not synonyms. I've been working for almost fifteen years on academy. I'm a scientist. I have written scientific papers. I have spoken about scientific topics for pupils on diverse schools and on the radio, on congresses... so I guess I know why aren't they synonyms. He's a journalist and he's my relative, but he behaved like if we were a couple of strangers and the worst enemies in the history of humanity. The situation really pissed me off. It really deceived me, too. 

People love to look like an authority on all issues... even on the issues they don't know or they haven't imagined. People are so pathetic and they assume they're the smartest guys on Earth and that everyone else just learned how to write and how to read by miracle. 

A writer once said in a conference that we employ social networks like our ancestors employed knifes: not to cut meat, but to kill our enemies. Isn't it?

Sure I know I'm not a good guy, but I also know that I am not looking for fights for free. 
I'm not attracted to fight to strangers that probably just desire to leave a territorial pissing on Facebook. I guess I'll leave it. It seems that a stupid person will always come from nowhere to look for a fight. The most elemental ability of our specie seems to be to humiliate strangers on social networks.