I'm Disconnected By Your Smile

The aeroplane stops over the sea, I can hear the roar of the engine, it seems it's gonna crash, I feel so excited, I sense the end of my world, the end of all my frustrations and my rage, and I cannot stop thinking about a fatal accident, the sea is so close, I know I can die, I feel so excited.

Out of nowhere, I remember that Smashing Pumpkins' song, that song I used to listen to when I was such a moron, when I was in my first year of Psychology, when I really didn't want to study Psychology, when I just wanted to become a beatnik... 

I close my eyes. I see myself back then singing in my mind...

I'm disconnected by your smile

I'm disconnected by your smile

I'm disconnected by your smile

... and I remember myself feeling so heartbroken for this girl, Lily, the one I loved back then, she was older than me, she was everything I wanted, she seemed so mature, she was so enigmatic, so distant, so smart, so cold, she looked like Cecilia Suárez, she was my everything, and one day at school I spoke to her and we sort of started a relationship, I asked her for her telephone number, we started talking about The Beatles, she was a big fan of The Beatles, and I called her sometimes on the telephone, and then somehow she became interested on me, and then she started calling me on the phone, and we spoked many many times thru the night until the dawn, and then two months later or so she quit school and we became some sort of girlfriend and boyfriend, she was sort of dating a guy older than her and she told me that she was confused, he was a dancer, and then one day after school I went to her apartment, she lived so close to the school with a couple of roomies, and it was so fantastic, I felt so excited, we ate pizza and we drew as we spoked about Van Gogh and Monet, and then we sort of freezed for a moment –we were alone, her roomies were at school–, and I remembered one of our recent calls on the telephone. She had told me What would you think of me, if I told you that I have a boyfriend and that I want to kiss him and that I want to practice with you? and it was so clear that it was gonna happen, and then I looked at her, I hadn't ever felt so connected to anyone in my entire (brief) life, and I took her beautiful hands and I kissed her and it was so silly, I felt we were some sort of robots or sister and brother or something like that, but the entire situation was so great. I felt my dreams had come true, I couldn't believe it. Then she went to live to the beach. She was a dancer. We used to write, she sent me tons of letters. I sent her tons of letters. We saw each other again years later, she was pregnant, she loved someone else, I'd had a girlfriend, an amazing relationship that turned so toxic, we had broke up recently, I was about to start my PhD, we were the same but we were not the same. 

In my dream I look at the sea thru the window, the night is so dark, I think of that Beatles' song.

Bright are the stars that shine

Dark is the sky

I know this love of mine

Will never die

And I just know that I am in danger, that I can die, and I start to record everything on my cellphone. 

Then I wake up from this dream but I am still dreaming –I am still on the plane next to the window– and I have a blackout, like if I'm so drunk that I cannot remember anything. I looked at the window again. The plane is still flying over the sea, the night is so dark, the water is so clear that I can see some dolphins and algae, and then I realized I do not know where my cellphone is. I feel so attached to my cellphone, my cellphone (in my dream) is some sort of Lily, my cellphone is my everything, and then I started looking for my cellphone here and there, and I feel so desperate, but somehow we just landed and people start to getting off the plane and I see a cellphone on the floor and I know it is not mine, but I feel that I am not alone, that someone else has lost his cellphone, too, and this is a metaphor of my life. I'm not talking about cellphones and airplanes –my life is like being on a plane about to crash–, I'm talking about your cellphone, the one you were checking at when I saw you yesterday at the dining room, the one you left for a moment on the table when you got up from your seat.

I pound on the computer keyboard. I think of myself at the dining room, yesterday. 

Dawn is breaking, my wife and my cats are still dreaming, I am listening to this song and I cannot stop thinking about your smile.

I'm disconnected by your smile

I'm disconnected by your smile

I'm disconnected by your smile 

And I don't know what's going on. And I don't want to think about it. I know this isn't real. I sort of sense that you're not real. I don't want to think about your smile, but I must admit that this song has taken on a whole new meaning. What's wrong with me?, I am just this moron...? Are you acting or are you as lonely as me...?

The World Is A Vampire

8: 33. Sometimes life is a deep breath into the unknown, but, for many people, is just a glimpse, or a brief dive into a bathub. They are on the surface of everything, and, for example, ask you "What have you done to be recognized?”, but they only have kids and awful lives and seem to be convinced of their moral superiority. Or they buy cars, and fight to death for a spot in a parking lot. Or they travel around the world and they need to tell it to the entire world, as if the experience of taking many planes around the world, automatically could turn on the darkness of their minds, when they don't have a single personal opinion or thought about nothing... In the same way, some guys despise the government and make public statements against the government in their podcasts, which they record in their fancy Apple devices', in their nice apartments by the beach, at their small studios in which they collect signature guitars on the walls, just for hobbie. Other adults behave like geniuses with revolutionary ideas, when they only make a living of taking photographs of semi-naked women in underwear, which pretend to seduce the camera for pleasure, for money, for virality... or for all of them. It doesn't matter what's their worst experience: they seem to believe that their lives are tough and special —that they have real jobs and that they make an extraordinary effort to keep their jobs—, and so they make tough (and deep) declarations against the government, or anyone which they perceive to be an obstacle to them, from their very small perspective —totally brainwashed by their “smart” friends and gurus—, and they act like victims and survivors of their particular poverty (mental...?) That's the way we employ social networks. If you don't share it, it didn't happen.

Whisper Secrets For Me

We spoke on the phone, two days ago. 

Though I pretended to pointed out that it was exclusively an academic call, honestly I just wanted to hear your voice. 

I wanted to tell you that I care about you, but I didn't. 
I am not sure if you would find it awkward. I understand that you don't care about it. I understand that you don't want to know a single thing about the world. 

You told me that you were carrying out a procedure for your daughter to obtain your husband's pension, and that it was so damn difficult. I didn't know what to say. I just remembered when I first met your husband and when I first saw your daughter. It was scary and I stopped thinking about it. I just can't imagine how painful is it to be you. 

I couldn't survive if I were in your situation. I wouldn't be able to handle such a situation. It would kill me, if my wife was dead. 

I would have liked to tell you that I really care about you, but, as usual, I felt somehow rejected, and, as the conversation progressed, I became nervous and I started to think which words I wanted to say to you and I became the very same idiot guy I have always been when I try to speak with you. 

It's a sickening personality complex. I suppose my interest in us to be friends makes me act like that. It reminds me of a friend I used to have when I was eighteen years old. It was a weird relationship. She was older than me and she really behaved like an older person. Her personality attracted me so wildly. I met her in one of my first classes at the university. I started to idealize her and I spoke to her after school.

She was so nice and we talked about The Beatles and about literature. She obviously had read many more authors than me. She had an interesting and funny conversation. 
She was pretty smart and she was a professional dancer. She had health issues. She was anemic and depressive. Her dad died when she was a girl. Her life was such a mistery for me.

We started to talk on the telephone. We talked and talked by entire nights. We had fun. We had a weird relationship. Eventually, we became more than friends, or so we tried. It started on the phone. On the previous days –we used to spoke twice per week–, I told her that I liked her so much, that she was so perfect and that I wanted to see her. At the time, she had another friend. He was older than us and, apparently, he was a professional dancer, too. He was a mature man. I was just a teenager. 

She was thinking about us for an entire weekend and then she called me and she told me that she also wanted to have a sentimental relationship with me. I was so damn happy. I guess I hadn't been as happy as I was then, before. Lily was all I ever wanted and I just couldn't believe that she was “more than a friend”. 

The relationship was a disaster. Each time I saw her, it was a stressful situation for me. I was so nervous, I wanted so bad to not make mistakes that I just became a stupid guy. 
It was so repetitive that she generally got mad and angst and dissapointed and exhausted. Once she even told me that she preferred to talk on the telephone rather than to see me.

I was so naive and silly. 

Then she moved to another city and I started to write letters to her.
I wrote her endlessly –I wonder what kind of nonsense things did I write her, and I suppose I would be ashamed of them– and she wrote me back. 

The last time I saw her, she thought she was pregnant and I was brokenhearted. She was in love with an Argentine artist and I was dealing with the fact that my ex-girlfriend –the longer relationship I had back then– just had married. 

(And, right now, as I remember those days and as I write this post, I feel I'm some sort of Marcel Proust copycat, writing a letter for you.) 

I still remember when we first met. 

I saw you in a small dinning room. I still remember the way you smiled. 
You seemed so shy and clever. I wanted to know you, but I was so shy to tell you. 

Each time I think about it, I wonder why didn't we meet long before. 
It would have been awesome. I am sure that, right now, everything would be different for both of us.   

Though we worked together for four years, only on the last days we shared an office –almost two years ago–, we started to have normal conversations. I really enjoyed. You seemed a human, after all. Maybe you thought I seemed a human after all, too. I sensed that you also enjoyed our brief conversations. We started to talk about nonsense issues. We started to act as normal people. Then I moved to another city. (Ironic, isn't it?) 

I wonder if someday we could just talk on the telephone as normal people.

Whisper Secrets For Me

Despite All My Rage I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

I'm ill. I've got the flu.
I've been sort of sick since Monday.
I hadn't slept well.
Yesterday, I came home earlier than usual.
I slept too many hours.

I'm about to get ready to travel to the city.
None of these issues is relevant. 

Last Thursday, a couple of colleagues invited me to give a talk in a Sleep Research Course.

Today, I'm going to talk about how the microbiome impacts on sleep and the development of some neurodegenerative diseasses and neuropsiquiatric disorders.

I had less than one week to prepare this talk.

Originally, I wasn't invited to this course.

The sad events of the last week, changed many things.

I'm sort of nervous.
The talk I prepared it's sort of incomplete... or I think so. 

I'm still ill.

I dreamed about my PhD advisor and his Associate Researcher.

I was in his lab, performing a stereotaxic surgery with one friend of High school.

The surgery was a disaster. I didn't have all the instrumental I needed.
The rat was suffering and my friend constantly told me that he had saved the rat from death, several times. I felt so guilty.

I hold the animal in my hands and I tried to give it comfort. It was really suffering. 

There were another guys in the lab, attending to a seminar.

As I was looking desperately for a heavy drug to give peace to the rat, the Associate Researcher walked close to us. She gave us a speech that, somehow, I had heard before, a few times. She was selling the idea that going to a Neuroscience Meeting was the best idea everyone could ever have. Deep inside, it seemed that this meeting was going to be the most boring thing in the world. She told us her speech so enthusiastically and smiling.

Also she said, in a pretty low voice, as if she didn't want us to hear it, that my advisor was going to be the star on this Neuroscience Meeting. So, in the end, it seemed that the point was that the lucky volunteers would be his slaves. 

She wore a dress with stamped flowers on a black background.
She seemed more honest than she seems in reality.
She didn't use heeled shoes –as she always does in reality– and she seemed shorter than she seems in reality. 

I was so desperately looking for ketamine.
I wanted to give a peaceful death to the rat, but I was so silly and proud of myself that I didn't want to ask her for ketamine.

Then my advisor walked beside me.
He seemed really angst. He had his stereotypical face of "Get out of my way, you useless dumb!" His gesture evoked on me some unpleasant feelings... but, somehow, they were not as intense as they used to be almost ten years ago. At the end of my postgraduate studies I really hated my life and I even developed some level of alcoholism, addiction to smoking and a couple of psychosomatic illnesses. 

These feelings left a pretty clear example on my dream. 
A rat was in agony and my advisor just didn't even know... or didn't care. 

Also, I had the impression that he was so tiny and that I could just beat him up and throw him a few miles away from me, with a pretty small effort.

My dream was an astonishing metaphor. 

Despite All My Rage, I'm Still Just A Rat In A Cage

I've Been Waiting Like A Knife To Cut Open Your Heart

I met her when I was 17 years old, and I thought she was the most beautiful woman. 
It was my first week at the University and I saw her standing next to a classroom. 
She had short black hair and wore tight jeans. 
She was smiling and seemed completely happy. 
Wonder how would it be to be by her side.
Wonder what was her name.

A couple of years later, I met her in a class.
We started talking about science fiction.
She loved science fiction movies.
She knew alot of cult authors and movies. 

For some reason I dunno remember, we kissed in a cemetery.
It was on a saturday midday. 
Later we met in a party.
We started to hang out, and for years it was awesome.

Saddly, she had an ex.
The guy was pathetic.
She was under pressure, 'cause the guy was so sad that had threatened her.
He said that he would kill himself if she was not his girlfriend.
He said that he would kidnap me and hurt me, just for the pleasure of see me suffering as he was suffering. 

He was desperate and pathetic. 
Even when he was older than us, he had the mind of a child.
One day, she and I argued 'cause her exboyfriend was calling up her all the time.
I was jealous and angst, and she called me by her boyfriend's name. 
Obviously, it was a habit.
She used to argue with him.

She was my first formal girlfriend and I loved her so much.
I felt indescribably sad and ill.
Hated her and didn't want to talk her anymore.

A month later, we fought and she behave like a stupid girl. 
I reacted like an animal. 
She suddenly was a princess, 'cause I had been rough.
I did not know in which way I had been rough and asked her, but she refused to tell me what was wrong.
I reacted like an animal and I hurted her. 

I was a jerk-off and she was a snob.
It ended up after god and bad days. 
It happen almost fifteen years ago. 
She's happily married and she has a couple of kids.
I'm happily married to, but yesterday I had a fight with my wife.
I am starting to think that I am a problematic man. 
I am the common factor in relationship fights. 

The Crying Tree Of Mercury

Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans

One cold night –perhaps on November of 1995–, I watched an amazing show on MTV. 

There was this band of four or five guys (I don't remember if there was a keyboardist) touring an album named Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. Supposedly the album had been released a month ago, or so. 

The show started with a long song.

Amongst hypnotic changes of lights and beautiful images of the oceans reflected behind the members of the band, the cymbals and the guitar sounded slowly... as if their purpose was to wake up the audience from a warm dream. 

The atmosphere was so blue and calm. 

The song didn't sound like anything I had heard before. 

The music was soft and enveloping.

After a few cycles, the cymbals stopped and the guitar and the drums sounded like a fierce roar. Then, again, while a bold guy with a Stratocaster sang the verse and the chorus of the song, the music returned to the softness of the beginning.

The lyrics seemed so poetic and elaborate. It seemed to me that the writer of the song was not a common guy, that he or she didn't read silly literature. 

I hadn't heard of Smashing Pumpkins before, though I watched MTV almost everyday.  

The bold singer, at the center of the stage, with a black and white Stratocaster on his shoulders, was difficult to ignore.

He dressed a black shirt with the legend "Zero" in silver capital letters on his chest and he also wore silver brilliant trousers. He sang with passion and his voice sounded violent and guttural sometimes and sweet and melodic other times. He also kinda sang out of tune. He looked like a mad astronaut. I thought he was the brain of the band. 

Billy Corgan was a rockstar and a poet. 

The drummer, behind the singer, played with intensity. He made the snares and cymbals sounded so coordinated, changing from jazz to heavy rock n' roll beats. I thought of him as the soul of the band. 

On the right side of the stage, there was a thin asiatic-like guy. He seemed so shy, and out of place. He seemed an introverted man trying to be extroverted, but he was completely focused in being the lead guitarist of the band. 

The bassist player, at the left of the stage, was a blonde woman. She had pale skin. Her face was covered of something that looked like powder coating, and she was scary and attractive at the same time. Somehow, she looked sad or indifferent to the fans. 

Nevertheless, she tried to smile each time she had to whisper parts of the chorus of certain songs, and never stopped accompanying the chords and beats of the songs with her Fender Precision Bass. 

Though I didn't know they had a romance, I thought of James Iha and D'Arcy Wretsky as the heart of the band. 

via GIPHY

I was a teenager of almost 15 years old.
Music was everything for me.
The band impressed me so much. 

After three songs or so –maybe the show was edited by MTV– the Smashing Pumpkins played an acoustic set. 

The sweet-furious formula of the previous songs, changed a lot. 
Even Chamberlin used a smaller drum set than the one he used in the first part of the show. 

The members of the band took their places in a small surface of the stage. I think they even sat on small chairs. I didn't know the name of any of the songs they played, but I liked them, too. 

I also found the lyrics sort of poetic. 
I vaguely remember that these acoustic songs talked about love and anguish. 

(A few months later –when my brother and myself started to buy Smashing Pumpkins' albums– I would know that they had played Disarm, 1979 and In The Arms of Sleep on this acoustic set.) 

After the third commercial pause of MTV, the band played another heavy new songs from Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness and some other older songs like Today, and I kinda recognized it. I had watched the video of the song. The members of the band were mirthfully painting an ice-cream wagon and they looked so silly and dumb in the video. 

I guess they appeared so dumb that I just did not pay attention to their music. 

While I watched the show on MTV, suddenly I felt I was a moron because I was so bigoted and I didn't know such an amazing band existed.

A couple of weeks later, as a Christmas gift, my father gave us money.
My brother and myself found Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness in a supermarket and we bought it in compact disc format. We really enjoyed it. We heard it everyday. We recorded it on a cassette and we listened it on a walkman on our way to school or while we traveled across the city on the backseat of the red Jetta, as our dad drove to a boring place and our mom and our little brother were so impressed by the lights and by the Christmas ornaments hanging on the tall buildings in the streets. 

I listened that album for almost one year, day after day.
I even memorized all the lyrics. I even filled a notebook with Corgan-like poems.
Now, I hardly remember the lyrics. I lost that notebook as I lost my memory. 

Mellon Collie was released on October 24, 1995. 

                                                      

Love Is Suicide

Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans

Starla Dear, I'm All Alone

They were already drunk. Their eyes looked like rat eyes: red, scary and dangerous. Their bodies looked like if they were vaporizing like nightmare fog. 

So I tried to convince my brother that I really was there for taking care of him, but I just wanted to see Starla, a beautiful friend of him. She was almost eight years younger than me, but she looked older. 

People talked about drugs and music. I found out Starla and walked to get close to her. Immediately, I started to hear my heart beating like a wild animal. I had met her at another party where we ended up kissing, and I guess I wanted to kiss her again.  

She was in the middle of a conversation and ignored me. I felt dumb and I tried to get involved in the conversation. Among those silly pretentious teenagers, she finally spoke to me and told me to take her out. I told her that I had just arrived to the party and she said "At least, take me to a more private place".

Then, we started to talk and continued drinking. 

I fall asleep and drunk somewhere in time and woke up feeling stupid in someone's bedroom. The bedroom seemed to belong to a woman 'cause it was painted in pink and the walls were full of photographs of Brad Pitt, Lorenzo Lamas and Jason Priestley. 

The bedroom also smelled like bubblegum, and I was starved and exhausted. Vaguely, I remembered someone was taking care of me as I wanted to threw up. I kinda wanted to think that my brother or my friend, had taken care of me. It would have been so embarrassing, if Starla had been the one who took care of me. 

Stopped thinking of it.

Starla walked in and sat in the bed. She looked at me, and she told me that we were about to have sex when I fall asleep. I remembered she was a little bit liar. She smiled and got closer to me and kissed my cheeks. Her scent reminded me of some things. While I was about to fell asleep, she started to touch my hair, my face and my hands. I fought to keep myself awake, as I thought of her eyes as made of honey dripping into my skin and as I thought of her hair dangling like a heavy medal trying to hypnotize me. 

Then she told me "It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me..."

I didn't understand why, but I realized everything when my brother told me later that he had a crush on Starla.

Starla

Your Innocence Is Treasure, Your Innocence Is Death

She was just a girl, she talked just like a girl, she thought just like a girl, but she looked like a woman.
I tried to focus in her brown little eyes, but couldn't avoid staring at her neckline. Her gaze was deleterious and impressive, owlish. For a time, I was crazy about her. And I felt like a pervert.


She wanted me to make her my girl, she talked me everyday, she asked me to see her anytime, but I didn't want to get in the middle of a relationship with someone younger than me. Then, her ex-boyfriend appeared and she got involved with him again, and I regretted all those single moments when she stared at me and asked me to not look at her. She was nervous when I looked at her.

Later, she just simply got bored and I suffered my incapacity to date someone 10 years younger than me.