Chim Pum Callao

All day I've walked with the same feeling one acquires upon discovering something for the first time. In the morning, I made breakfast for my sister and for my mother. I woke up at 7:10a.m exactly. The color of strawberries, blueberries and the clementines gave the dinner table a rural appearance. I took a picture of the empty plates and colorful bowls to send to my brother. I don't know if he received the e-mail. I can't send international picture messages from my phone because the technology requires I call my cell phone company for special requests and I can't deal with companies without feeling robbed.

The benefit of making breakfast for others is being exempt from washing dishes. I like time for myself. I think I have a pretty good time alone. For instance, after entertaining(supervising) my niece, who I adore, I drove to Vromans in Pasadena to buy my friend a birthday gift. I could have phoned a different friend for company but the sad truth is that I like the company of strangers. Her birthday is tomorrow and the plan is to have the early portion of the day to ourselves. I bought her something I know she'll be happy to have, though I really want her to remember me and think of me when she's near it. In the cafe, the one adjacent to the bookstore, I ordered Iced Coffee. I'm not a regular coffee drinker. The guy even looked at me with an expression of doubt despite the vocal clarity of my order.

In front of the large window overlooking the city's main boulevard, I wrote my dad a letter. I described my surroundings: the transparent cup of iced coffee identical to coca cola, the japanese restaurant across the street I frequented with my mother(and a short praise to Japanese Culture for understanding the secret of real comfort, that of aesthetics, simplicity and tranquility) the independent movie theatre next door and the way these places belong to parts of my adolescence.

When I finished, I thought about making weekly visits to the local post-office.

My early 20s

This is the appropriate age to complain that life is the secret enslavement sponsored by repetition and powerful distractions. I speak for my generation when I say we're cynical, angry, resentful, bitter and indescribably anxious to disentangle the ropes and volcanic chains of youth despite our strong sympathies for nihilism and the comfort of self-pity. Words like Inertia, Depression, Love and Hate circulate our lexicon without the conscious idea of our own level of inexperience. We're stubborn, though everyone else believes we're ideologically flexible.

In love, we behave like drunk animals. Our romantic relationships(if you can call it that) are by-products of lecherous tendencies and neurotic passions. Confounded by the irreparability of romantic rupture, we hide behind protective walls, cursing humanity in the dark, becoming more resentful and hostile to the possibility of amorous triumph.

Youth is a winter storm in the deep ocean. It is the clashing of rogue waves and the carnage left after desperation conquers all aboard a ruined vessel. It is the last stop for passengers of an ill-fated aircraft. Or the distant weeping of young voices confined to rooms without windows. It is a tunnel, perhaps, with holographic visions of escape and disappearing orifices with every human step.

It is the first real sign of disenchantment and the choice between survival or constant lapidation.

Plural vagaries

For moments, I'm a demented believer in the importance of time and although the idea is in conflict with some of my own rejections and criticisms, time is a silent observer with surprising resistance to proper or improper occurrences. Therefore, as much as I like doing nothing, under no circumstance should I yield to complacent or inactive roles.

I can say with irreproachable honesty that the few sentient beings left in this life(since it is an empty life unless love or hate or any other powerful venom takes over the heart ) have the same condition true in all children: depth of feeling and absorption. Again, the sentient survivors own a wealth incomparable to economic obsessions that define the lives of the spiritually poor. Of course, I'm talking about myself and every citizen in this arrogant and selfish nation.

Children are experts in life management and yet the memories of childhood are vague. If adults had the talent or grandiose ability to undertake new identities to escape misunderstood horrors, there wouldn't be a film industry or the need for fiction in literature. Being now considered an adult with cognitive capacity, though at times hopelessly maladjusted and other times an angry centenarian, I'm discovering that everybody is fucking crazy, and not just my grandmother(or the females in my family)

One day, when my grandfather was alive and living like a Roman despite his elderly heart, he approached me with a question he had respectfully ignored for the 7 years we had lived in the same house. In a soft tone that had been altered to speak to a child( I knew it and he knew it and it was a touching detail nonetheless) he asked if my parents were fighting. Of course, the throwing of appliances in the first floor wasn't poltergeist and surely had reverberated in all interior areas of the 3 story museum or asylum or familial residence. So I replied in the affirmative. He said soon they would reconcile( which really meant stay silent until the next choleric argument) and that couples shouldn't argue.

In theory, couples who love each other are forgiving and kind. But in this forsaken life, the average person is unforgiving and kind only to himself. Because I have some legitimate power to speak on the subject, I'll admit to having a repugnance against long love stories, partially because I've no story of my own, and partially because my friend's love stories mimic theatre and politics.

The year of the unsentimental good-bye

Five years ago, I met a fun and beautiful girl of the same nationality. We met in Lima, across the street from a park that prior to our first encounter, had ordinary qualities. Though, to be historically fair, the park had long ago achieved distinction for being a focal point of artistry and acclaimed by citizens and non-citizens for its lively and safe district, as well as being the only park in the capital to pay homage to an American president( I hope)

Because my place of residence isn't Lima, though not by individual choice, our friendship continued functioning under common technological procedures- online messages, the rare phone call(which I always initiated) and other tactful electronic acknowledgments. For five years, I maintained a sporadic connection with her because fun and beautiful turned out to be very limiting characteristics.

From June to August, the annual trip to see my family in Lima also gave me the opportunity to see friends, which unquestionably meant seeing her. The first two years of our friendship, our encounters were special(to me) and I think of them with affection because the girl I met 5 years ago is astronomically different than the human being of recent years.

After living the best days of my life in the Andes( a singular period of less than two weeks that I'll never relive with the same intensity or liver), I got in contact with her as we had previously agreed to meet again before my departure to the United States, and since I know my feelings of deep elation are exclusive to the southern hemisphere, I desired strongly to see her, and thus end my visit with equal happiness and grace.

Despite agreeing to meet her on my dad's birthday, I anticipated the final reunion with her, her boyfriend and her friends with excitement. Interestingly or perhaps not, a coincidence in timing occurs between the 22nd of august(my dad's birthday) and the next day. Every 23rd, because small but dispersed fragments of optimism in me believe my life has any vocational or existential purpose, I'm required(coerced) to return to North American territory on the very same morning for collegial reasons. Of course I had the right to drink and be very drunk the whole night and if I drank correctly, the next day as well.

In its early stages, this happily anticipated night had every satisfying element of youthful disorder- the public consumption of beer, the indifference toward money(god bless my dad's heart), the drunk driving, the ideal apartment, the belligerent voices speaking and singing in Spanish ( that I slowly gathered were my own lyrical cadence) Then, at some indefinite point, between the laughter and her friend's seemingly professional hospitality, I fucked everything up and consequently accepted that this fun and beautiful girl would voluntary and very rapidly disappear from me altogether.

By fucking everything up( and with the following sentence, I culminate what has become a sorrowful and quasi-apologetic remembrance of a beloved friend above all else) I must detail with painful exactitude the succeeding effects of the death of a friendship: the obstinate clinging to a handful of irrecoverable memories.

Final peace or respite

If for mysterious reasons my opinions are taken seriously, I'll say that happiness is an interesting fusion between creative imaginings and serious delusions. In childhood, the nature of my dreams( and the purpose of sleeping) amounted to kind hours of magnificent exile from prolonged interaction with others. The central figures of my dreams were figures of authority: mostly adults and large dogs(two valid synonyms)

However, the great majority of my dreams detailed expansions of the universe. I often dreamt of space. In addition to identifying characters and color, I felt connected to the obscurity that is typical of a starless sky. Many times, I valued the life of awareness over spacial fantasies, specially if dreams advanced into the category of gratuitous torment.

At the age of 21, the recurrence of sorrow and deception and the joy of laughter are part of the same mixture. I understand happiness as a tunnel, perhaps equivalent to the succession of tunnels in the geographic landscape of El Cañón del Pato. Like happiness, youth is another tunnel. And I'm living both with a discreet starvation.

Bashful teenagers

The time we ended our first conversation via telephone, I hid my face in the shallow depth of my pillow. Our one hour chat, interrupted by her friend's unannounced appearance, was a sample or introduction to nights of inexhaustible dialogue. We didn't have cell phones, reciprocal interest and apathy toward inconvenience were the principal agents of cohesion. When I think of my first girlfriend, I think of the subtle ways a person becomes a stranger.

The night we kissed, I learned to speak a new language. When I think of her, I relive 2006: 4th of july, family outings, Los Angeles; though past convocations are occasioned by my aversion to oblivion.

Is it money or god?

My mother is disallowing the presence of Madison ( my dying cat) in my bedroom when I am away. She's afraid her virus will mutate into the first case of cat to human infection. If I told her Madison sneezed in my face the other night, I think they would both die.

In class, a friend said she's stressing over the final exam. I reminded her that College isn't life defining, that what's important is her family, living with health and that everything else is artificially important.

Driving home, I made an inadequate turn on the freeway. Reasons for my poor maneuver: 1. I am a mediocre driver(and college student) 2. I saw the carcass of an animal that very quickly transformed musings into a solid philosophical metaphor. 3. Ja Rule's Thug Lovin' started playing and because the abject despotism of rap is intensely attractive, I lost all concentration.

Happy December. For Christmas, I want to die and resurrect as a squirrel. There is a squirrel in my neighborhood that I see some evenings crossing wires from one electrical pole to the other. I see this squirrel jump and climb trees with full mastery of movement and radiance that it's obvious he or she has the complex of martyr or brash exhibitionist. I want to be immortal after my first death.

Natural Observations

While my dispossessed contemporaries are confident in the properties of drugs and promiscuous sex to revive their decomposed selves, I binge on writing- an infallible alternative, although I imagine sex binges are drastically better. I'm sleep deprived. I sleep intermittently during the night, like someone with a criminal past. In the mornings, I sit in class anxious and tired, determined to stay awake because defeating boredom during lecture is a collegiate triumph. I go home when I can't remember reasons for staying. My cat's health is in decline. The gravity of her illness is producing a desperate urgency to eliminate time's aggressive(deplorable) speed. Inevitably, her quality of life will deteriorate and she will die. My love for this small animal is improper in that it is deeper than my love for humans. Clearly, I'm sad, but I don't tend my sadness with the necessary seriousness.

The good news is that the year is almost over. This statement is illogical.

"You waited long for 21"

I have a loyal, feral attraction for Colombians. They are charismatic and happy and unforgettably inviting and colorful in their language and style and ever so willing to defend their cultural icons, exports, songs, literary talent. When I say that they are visitors from a superior world, nobody believes me. I admit that my convictions may be mildly degrading to the anonymous majority, but I insist on associating their beauty with that of mythical gods. Why? Why all the subjective accolades? They have a special attitude, a giant's splendor, simply put: Colombia is rare and extraordinary.

Well, the previous paragraph is magnificently out of orbit with my next point. I've been reading past entries( since I lost all initiative to do anything productive with my uncertain life) and I have to say that I tragically surrendered to emotive writing this year. Of course, writing is exemplary of much of the wretched sentimentality inherit to all life experiences, but I'd like to resume writing emphatically boring entries about the (disputable) importance of socializing. In other words, recapture my social life.

I acknowledge being alive in a conventional sense, that I'm a masochist, a lawful citizen by social obligation, an ungrateful daughter. Ordinarily, I would curse the world and would want to escape from it. It's just that now, my repressed 21 year old self is demanding excitement and love and life and a conclusive end to my lifeless and loveless self-imprisonment. I also acknowledge, despite my own disciplined demonstrations of denial, that I self-sabotage. I don't have valid reasons for the habit of ruining myself. It's irritating. I am irritated.

23 de agosto. Luna nueva

Una playa de arenas sucias de plumas y de millares de huellas.

Llego donde una mujer que ha salido recientemente del mar. Usa un traje de baño de solido prusia, que se pega a su cuerpo cereo, ahora tan pesado.

Sus cabellos humedos y aderezados con arena, le cubren el rostro.

Estoy inmovil frente a ella, quien se recuesta y cierra los parpados sobre una toalla lustrosa.

El mar se encuentra sospechosamente calmado.

- Diego Lazarte

7

"Sure, I'll talk to him at least once before I leave the park, I don't dare remain in this state if I want an easy night, I'll talk to him after I circle the plaza for jewelry that is to my liking, but somewhat affordable."

As stated, she walked the periphery meticulously comparing items which vendors esteemed most authentic, exotic and durable. She was gullible, despite her age and experience. At parties, her friends criticized her for this weakness, though the criticisms could only be expressed when she displayed little signs of sobriety(she regarded all comments devoid of flattery as a personal attack on her individuality) It was nearing 6 o'clock in the evening and she had not found the right piece to satisfy her manner of neurotic heiress to a non-existent fortune. The gradual retreat of daylight affected her; she lived with the idea that if events failed to induce the feelings she wanted, the night would declare interminable hours of the worst conflicts.

The hope for solving her divisions would rest in the hands of a psychic who strangled a man, plead insanity and named his daughter Neuron when he impregnated his girlfriend- a journalist of suspicious mental health.

"I'll pay you all the money you desire if you tell me where I'll be in the future, with who, and if I'll feel happier than now or recent years; I'd rather be in debt than live with the costs of this uncertainty."

He was notably impressed by her stupidity. A explanation ensued:

"I don't receive illusory things like money without feigning gratitude. I'd like to know my future or your future, which are actually interrelated if you believe in the poly aspects of life, but you probably don't. By the tone of your voice, and the insistent- almost authoritative manner you employ in your demands, I can perceive a despair so great in you that I suddenly feel a responsibility to separate the dishonesty of my selected profession."

Gravely disconcerted but committed to her tendency to emotionally repress herself during times of necessary protest, she said nothing in response. He continued:

"The problem is reason. All your problems are attributed to your patterns of thinking. I've lived the life of an insane man for convenience. I'm not crazy but I am a criminal. I have an aversion for language and social roles too, though I couldn't tell you which I'm inclined to gut first. Now, you're asking me about Happiness and you expect a good answer. I've no answers for Happiness. I can speak to you with approximations to the feeling. For example, if you work for the government and you believe that simplicity deserves primacy over bureaucracy, you'll be unhappy for the years left you have in that position. You have to feel good about where you are. As for the person you'll be with, she will have identical features to you-- everyone knows a person's unconscious motivation is to find who they really are through the exploration of another"

6

The only advantageous hour of the day is the time I resist sleep. I formed this sinister defiance of the night some years ago when I believed (with enviable conviction) in the infinite production of human tears. The first nights were tactical disasters, as I had just acquainted myself with the beginnings of a permanent practice. I remember the first nights with solemn respect- the counting of real losses and historic misfortunes, most which I acquired through the fatal choice of social integration.

Definitely, I admit to assuming the ungovernable(baseless) tradition of youth that infects all of my vulnerable contemporaries- the idiotic fascination with others.

I am guilty of that,

And more

----

This is about a woman with cinematic beauty. I met her in a time of unknowable transition and I, debilitated by the decline of first-love splendor, could not recognize the wealth of her intensity. With wall-paper around my heart, I described her with trite, unjust adjectives to close friends, obstinately ignoring her unutterable depiction.

Despite the many unkind moments summoned by her absence, I make her exist through the masochistic act of association. The number of quotidian connections become inexplicably impairing in the mornings. I think of her carefully.

The concept of Never and the concept of Always are temporal fallacies.

After-all.

Postales

Una mujer extraña habita mi boca

Una mujer que alguna vez te ha besado
que ha gritado / ha callado
y te ha dejado ir
a veces cuando ella descansa
el resto de mi cuerpo quisiera llamarte
pero es ella quien esconde tu nombre

el silencio me recorre incansablemente

-Pierre Castro

The video

5

Apparently, she is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To eliminate the risk of her (imminent) collapse, she stays emotionally inept.

"How unfair it is to live with nostalgia for the past."

"Are there seasons in hell?"

At the time, she was dating a famous photographer who was only with her because she overlooked his affairs. They fucked the first night they met. She was the perfect rendition of a dream.

Eventually, problems emerged when they began to feel less freedom, and although they loved each other the same way idiotic couples profess to love each other, she left him for a writer.

She was instantly enthralled. The writer dominated his craft. He captured her with words; unlike her previous deception, who she considered superficial and extraordinarily banal.

The problem with this one wasn't the absence of freedom. One morning, she awoke to find his body hanging from their ceiling fan. She thought his recurring works on alienation were largely fictive.

4

This is the story of an old man I saw at a tavern five years ago. I was sitting with my mother when I made visual contact with him- his face, disfigured with grief. I had not known a grief so uncontainable.

In vain, my mother spoke with higher intonation, with more gestures to substitute such sight. She turned to my father, who immediately ordered another bottle of red wine. Next he ordered plates of cheese and various meats.

The old man sat in the corner to escape observance.

He blamed himself, especially his cowardice, for causing the pale color of his skin the night he considered suicide and then a real sickness overcame him the following morning and ever since, the concept of recovery existed only in abstractions.

"I love you," His wife would say, uncertain. " I love you because you're mine"

" If I wasn't yours, you would love another who proclaimed loyalty"

" I'd love you more if you weren't loyal, I'm sure of it" And she was.

His job, his wife, his children- required no reparations. His life, at 43, symbolized a flowing river in the middle of the desert. Ten years ago, he had been a happy man.

The night of the attempted suicide, he drove to the local market for vegetables and turkey. Once home, he grabbed the kitchen knife and began preparing what he believed would be his last meal. He liked cooking. The act pacified his feelings; his favorite recipes involved long hours.

"I will kill myself tonight because I haven't felt this brave before"

He had walked into the tavern with a secret determination: to defeat the imagined belief that his life could improve, that he hadn't missed a major turning point, that life was essentially and undeniably a process of survival.

Happiness is only real when shared, or so it is believed

3

"That's how some windows were wiped to perfection, through the use of newspapers." She said this with distinct naturalness, the type to create instant personal inadequacy. I am from a laughable generation, I know. We don't read and we're habitually late to appointments, school, dates, job interviews. I listened carefully to what she continued to say, "Ask your grandmother."

My grandmother is from another planetary universe if I think my mom's generation is frugal, obstinate and irritably outdated. Her mother was born in 1899(an epoch when witches could be casually spotted flying about nocturnal skies) I never met my great-grandmother although my mom, since the time I admitted to recognizing the importance of family unity, has taken the laborious responsibility to speak about her legacy with notable affection.

This is an extraordinarily effective way to transcend mortality: Hand-wash wool garments to feed five father-less children.

"Can you imagine what is like to wash monk's clothing with your hands? Have you ever felt the texture of these garments? And to survive with the money, the misery of payment they called 'money'?" Need-less-to-say, my mom's self-appointed responsibility to immortalize my great-grandmother are also demonstrations of the strength of women in the first half of the 20th century.

Would a husband's cruel abandonment lead a modern wife to kill herself? The answer, I'm afraid, isn't no. They would dive voluntarily into a mild depression(which they cure regularly via one-night stands, liquor, pills, shop therapy and binge eating) and emerge pathetically triumphant for brief moments every morning until a break from stubborn denial made them return to reality, crawling.

Several times a day, my mom knows everything

She suggested for me to stop thinking about immortality, only I hadn't mentioned eternal life in any part of our conversation.

Mom: You're not doing yourself a favor with sophisticated thoughts.

Maria: All I said was that age, aging- is complicated to some people.

Maria: A false sense of self importance is constructed with the end of each dissatisfied year.

Maria: Will I be that way too?

Mom: Don't generalize.

Maria: I know people who fit the description.

Maria: They live fictional lives. They don't know how to self-ridicule.

Mom: Stop thinking about the immortality of the soul.

Mom: Who came first? Humans, Salamanders, Stars, God.

Maria: I'm serious. I don't want to believe in shit that stupid people believe in.

Mom: People are a combination of smart and stupid.

Maria: I'm talking about my friends.

"I'm at a Brazilian cafe. I'm watching music videos with beautiful women doing the salsa and it's making me miss South America"

Part 2

From the bar, we took a cab back to our hostel, half-aware of tomorrow's decisive commitments. This is the night I learned to accept my vulnerability for the French. I don't remember the reason for leaving our room; perhaps we acquired the urgency sometime during dinner. We were in bed when the decision was reached: to introduce ourselves to others, to socialize. I put on jeans, a shirt and jacket.

The walk to the bar challenged all attempts for nocturnal reliability. I had not known the appearance of empty streets in Cusco. We continued walking and talking, sometimes simultaneously.

Twenty minutes passed with no sight of the main plaza or sight of the local grandeur, which at that point had become strict folklore( the lost, hungry dog inspecting garbage ushered convincing images of a new reality) I remember feeling vexed by my own sympathy for stray animals.

For the first time in life( though I can't be certain) these nights revealed to me a hidden freedom. I don't think either of us wanted to admit our unfortunate sense of direction. Was the enjoyment of each other's company sufficient to mitigate feelings of anxiety? I loved breathing the cold air of the night, which, thanks to the resilience of dim street lights, assumed a distinct nuclear color like that of recent evenings in Southern California.