One In A Million

Twelve years ago, I was at my first SfN meeting in Chicago. It was really a big thing. It was quite impressive to see millions of researchers and students from all the world, sharing scientific knowledge. One day, I was waiting for a coffee in a Starbucks, inside the McCormick Place, and then Eric Kandel came close to me and asked me if I knew where could he pick up this badge and all the stuff. 

I told him where to go and he walked away. I couldn't believe it. Although it was for the wrong reasons, a Nobel Prize and I spoke in my first meeting of SfN! What was the probability...? 

I was so naive, foolish, and romantic that I thought that talking to Eric Kandel was a sign for me to stop pursuing my dream of becoming a non fiction writer and to focus 24/7 on science. Twelve years later I have twelve published papers in peer review journals, but a week ago the head of department told me that they will not renew my contract and I wonder what have I done with my life.

Whatever It Is, That Girl Put A Spell On Me

We had flown from Ciudad de México to Tijuana and then walked to the border and took a train. It was almost ten o'clock, but it was sunny. It was so confusing. After we checked in at a Double Tree, we ate fish and chips at Old Town. We took a taxi to the San Diego Convention Center, to know how far was our hotel from it. We were just three PhD students, at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neurosciences. The meeting would start the next day. 

As we returned to the Double Tree, another lab partner, an undergraduate student, appeared out of nowhere. He was about to have a party at the hotel were he and some friends of him stayed. I wasn't sure to follow him, but the other two PhD students showed interest. I had to follow them. I didn't want to walk alone and to expose myself to be harassed by hobos.  

It was already dark. The hotel had a small pool and all the rooms were around it. It reminded me of the hotel were Earl, of My Name Is Earl, lived. Vicente guided us to the room. It was bigger than my room at the Double Tree, and it was full of undergraduate students. I recognized some of them from a psychology course I taught. Some of them recognized me, too. In particular, a girl named Minerva. I kinda had a crush on her. I think she knew it. It was silly, she was almost ten years younger than me. I wasn't about to flirt on her nor anything else.

Most of the undergraduate students were drunk, and Vicente told me that he was about to smoke Spice with Minerva. 

He asked me if I wanted to try. I did it. 

While the drug had an effect, Minerva told me how she and her friends had arrived to San Diego. Apparently, they just had travelled with half the money I had. It was amazing, they just had walked for hours. As she spoke, the drug made me feel so vulnerable and stupid. It was a potent drug, and I was getting paranoid. In the lab, we studied cannabinoids. At home, I used to smoke pot almost on a daily basis. I kinda knew that Spice' effects were heavier than pot and, to some extent, dangerous. 

All I wanted to do was to get to my room and take a nap, but Minerva looked really beautiful. I couldn't stop watching her. She continued speaking and I focused on her fleshy lips. Suddenly, her boyfriend appeared and took her away. I just felt ill and paranoid. He was a moron, and I think he was jealous. I would never have finished kissing his girlfriend. 

I walked to the Double Tree, sad and high. Fortunately, I wasn't harassed by any hobo.

In the room, I layed down in the bed and started to listening up Purple Haze. I couldn't stop imagine Minerva and her fleshy lips. I thought Jimi wrote that song inspired by a girl like she. At some point, I fall sleep.

For the next 24 hours, I felt stoned. As I walked thru the alleys of the San Diego Convention Center, I felt high. I couldn't focus on anything. I was only attracted to women, in a very sexual way. I desired Minerva like crazy and I looked for her all day long, but never saw her again. 

via GIPHY

I can't remember anything else. 

Purple Haze

We Love In Vain, Narcissistic And So Shallow

I hate some egocentric people. Some of them behave as if they were closer to be a God than to be a human. The worst part is that they think you should please them all the time.  

I met once a guy of this kind, in a literature workshop. We were involved in an underground magazine, and we all wanted to publish our writings on it. We were talking about deadlines to send our work to the editor of the magazine, so he could manage the writings in order to publish, monthly, as much as possible of our work. We were almost 20 young writers. Some of us wrote tales, poems or literature essays. We were as enthusiastic as a young writer can be. Another part of the writers, were horribly narcissistic, like this teenager. None of us would receive any penny for the writings, it was all about fun, but he immediately asked for money, because he considered that his poems were at the level of Rimbauds'. 

He also complained about the deadlines, because he considered himself an authentic artist, and so he was not able to work under pressure. He said that his inspiration was so fragile and so fickle. I just found him boring, arrogant and stupid. He couldn't even distinguish Ezra Pound from Edgar Allan Poe.

I just hate this kind of guys. Sadly, many musicians I know behave like that, too. I have this terrible idea of playing in a garage punk band. I have looked for drummers and bass players, because I play guitar and I just like power trios, even though I want to have a band like Sonic Youth. 

At the beginning, when I find out some guys to play with, they tend to be enthusiastic. Nevertheless, gradually they simply expect me to forget them, or to pay them to play with me. They skip rehearsals and never answer my messages nor my calls. They make me feel like an amnesiac old dude or a retarded booze addict. Obviously, it's not their duty to like my songs, but  I'd really appreciate if they told me that they don't want to be part of my band.

via GIPHY

Normally, I try to avoid this kind of guys, but, sooner or later, I have to tolerate them. Like this egocentric PhD student I'm going to write about. It was my first time in the biggest annual meeting for Neurosciences, and I had to share a room with him. As soon as we arrived to Chicago, we looked for the Hilton that was assigned to us. We walked  late at night thru the cold alleys and streets around Michigan Avenue. Suddenly, several homeless stopped me and asked me for money. Even though he had been before in situations like that, and so he knew how to deal with homeless, he didn't warn me about them. I was so scared. Thought homeless were about to assault me, or to shot me, or to slash me, for nothing. 

When I looked for him, he just had disappeared. I had to walk faster, running away from the homeless, and finally, scared to hell and exhausted, I found him at the Hilton. He was in the lobby, in complete iddleness, playing with his smartphone. With some sort of a sarcastic tune, he said: "Homeless are so annoying!"

In the room, he choose the best for him. He occupied the bathroom for hours and put his bags and things all over the room. I just could put my stuff in the small bed that he generously gave me. I had nausea, and I was starving, so I didn't want to discuss about his behavior. The worst of all, was that even though he said that he had quit smoking, he started to ask me for cigarettes. When the cigarettes went out, he said to me: "We have to make an effort to not smoke a lot and to save some money to buy another pack of cigarettes". What a jerk off!

At the annual meeting, he just wanted to seduce women. Of course, he failed all the time. He was not interested in science at all, he just wanted to look like a neuroscientist. 

Now, he has a better job than he deserves, and a better health than me. I quit smoking 18 months ago, and he just keeps stealing cigarettes from anyone. Hope he is not playing in a garage punk band nor that he is finished a novel before I do.

You're A Shooting Star

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One In A Million