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