The Write Thing

- WordPress updated its platform
- Spammers left me alone, not forcing me to delete 250 messages before I could post this
- I waited more than a month to see my future wife turn a furniture-deprived house into a home for almost a week (which in our range of possibilities equals three months of life in common)
- The world stopped because I left…yes, I left 10 years of me in Buenos Aires
- Argentina’s gay marriage approval.

None of these things happened while I stopped writing. The earth continued to revolve around the sun and everything leads me to expect a 365-day calendar filled with achievements and further questions on December 31st. Nothing changed and everything did. I am no longer on Argentine soil, and a part of me begins to feel the severance, that even cut that I decided was the necessary step toward the new phase of my journey.

I now live in a garage apartment that in the next few months seems more inclined to harbor the scorching Houston summer in the day, so I can enjoy its stuffy walls at night despite the air conditioning… I have got a couch, which she helped me assemble after my first foray into the iconic IKEA chain. I have a rack to hang my clothes upon, but it fails to do the job so a walk-in closet is now in the making…with a challenge – shapes in a garage apartment would defy the most versatile designer. I still don’t have a desk, but the couch and a small laptop table do the job of letting me churn out basic work. I still sleep on an airbed, but even that becomes a regal bed when she is around.

Last Wednesday she was arriving. The morning found me working from home before I drove my car to pick her up at the airport. There was the regular attente at Terminal C, the minutes that became hours as the escalators gave me small misleading clues of a potential arm resting on the side, the rim of a patterned skirt that could be hiding her beautiful legs, the shoes that would reveal Gothic-painted toenails. It would be a while before she actually found me…but she eventually did. As I stabilized my senses before the myriad of sensations she triggered, I looked into her eyes as she came close, unsure of where the kiss would fall. It is always on the lips, but I like to mislead her and she likes to pretend she does not expect it. And after that moment in which my thirst finds its relief,  I am whole again, unique in my connection with her blue eyes. Her touch will guide me out the automated doors, and I’ll think I know where I’ve parked my car…but I won’t. Yes, I know, at some point I’ll find it…because that is part of the magic, and just like us, it is meant to be.

Once again, my dear non-reader, you find me revisiting the idea of fate, karma and life psychology in general. I wrote yesterday (yes, two days in a row by now seem almost like I could really keep a blog) about life in sunny and crime-ridden Houston, and the almost technical aspects involved in getting a door glass replaced and a decent internet connection activated in the fourth largest city in the US.

Of course I have not expanded on the Kafkaesque developments that today brought me almost to the brink of despair (exasperation by now is a given for me in this country), and I will not unless you have serious insomnia issues, in which case you can send me an email and I will gladly walk you through the process of not finding things here even when everybody tells you they have them – oh, well, there I go again trying to explain…I apologize.

The fact that I have not expanded on my tribulations does not mean they are not potentially clear to you, or at least imaginable, by now. So let me focus on the feelings instead, the depth of the impotence, the rage, the worn-out patience, the repetition and, eventually, oblivion…I know in the not-so-faraway future I will remember the gist of everything that is going on around me now, but I will forget the reason. Just because that is what life is all about, and sooner or later we all forget.

Prometheus

THERE ARE four legends concerning Prometheus:

According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

According to the second Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

According to the fourth everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

It is only a little after 9 pm in a rather cold spring Houston evening, and I find myself willing to return to the pages of this blog, even though my internet connection in the land of digital progress is probably among the worst anyone can have.

I landed my ship in not so foreign land almost a month ago, and I feel like I haven’t even started to move towards a life here. If you look at my house, you’ll see there is virtually no furniture, not even a much-needed closet. I sleep on an air mattress and my desk consists in a small table with four folding chairs. I have equipped my kitchen with the basics to cook myself pasta, mix a salad, bake a pizza and grill meat. The rest may probably come later, but I am content with things as they are. I was forced to buy a TV by the need to adhere to the “bundle” provision of internet and cable services in this world. I got the cheapest one, and I am not sure if I will be able to even see any images on it. But I don’t really care much about that.

I’ve had a good dose of the dark too in these past few weeks. I was burgled (although there was not much to take) and last Saturday someone smashed the side door of my car to take an old GPS that I have always relied on due to my deprivation of bearings in any form. I am still waiting to find a glass that will replace the busted one, and it seems my first lucky day in many, many weeks will be tomorrow, when the mobile glass installation service comes along.

The odds are, methinks, against me. I guess I could put all the negatives and uncertainties in my life in one big bag now and move it to the back yard…well, I might have to drag it the way it weighs now. Or I can choose to put things behind me, learn from the hidden messages of life that I can’t decypher and move on, because that is what people in this society do, and I should try to become one of them.

Maybe all these unfortunate events I am describing are a form of initiation, a form of animal test of endurance to make me or break me. I guess worse things have happened to me in life — and worse will still happen — to be wise enough to know these are just a milder form of discomfort. I am perhaps the new animal in the herd, the one that has to be gauged by the leaders to make sure it fits. And then it might all come down to where you actually pee, where your territory lies, and how good you are to claim your own little plot in there.

I may have to start following my dog’s attitude when we go for a walk to the nearest park in the neighborhood. There are only a few plants he spares, but there’s always a favorite spot, the one someone else already trod, where there is still room for him to test his courage.

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