I wish everybody would move to Berlin so I’d have all Buenos Aires for myself, like in January, best month of the year in the Southern Hemisphere, when everybody leaves town and it’s warm and lovely, like today, Tuesday night in late July, riding my bike around the horse racetrack at 10PM, perfect time because most of the people go running between 6 and 9PM. There was a hot girl and a hot guy and some other people, but I barely saw them because I didn’t fancy them. I wonder if people realize how shitty their running technique really is… They didn’t learn that at school? They put their arms in a way that makes them look like a T-Rex instead of using them to run better and faster or they drag their feet making that annoying sound. The temperature was wonderful today. 27 degrees, nice warm breeze, wearing nothing but a tank top and shorts and pigtails, feeling all the warm air on my skin and through my hair, smelling the trees, looking at the moon. I like to close my eyes while walking or riding my bike on an empty street. Just for a few seconds, right before I’m about to hit something, I open my eyes. I wish I could do it for a longer time, I can if I practice. “Berlin is like Barcelona in 2003” my friend said via chat from there. “But is it nice to see all the Argies?” I asked. “I swear it is, you don’t see them in your daily life, but it’s fun to meet them at the club, even D is here djing!”. “Yeah, I guess it’s nice if you are 15.000 Kms away from home to see some familiar faces and hear some familiar words”. On the last part of my way back home on my bike, a girl started cycling faster so she could beat me to the bike path. I felt kind of annoyed because I wanted to enjoy those last 15 blocks as I’ve been doing the rest of the 5Kms, so I started cycing faster as well, standing on my bike, she did the same, she got there first. I did not enjoy going behind her at all, but didn’t want her behind me either, I wanted to take my time or go as fast as I could if I wanted to. So I turned around, went back a few blocks and then started getting back home again. She was nowhere to be seen and I enjoyed the view of the trees, the path before me, the moon and the sweet warm breeze on my skin and through my pigtails once more on my mechanic black unicorn.

6.27PM This is my favourite light of the day. Inside it’s almost dark, but outside it’s still daytime. Everything is dyed with this grayish blue tone. I resist the first temptation and/or reflex to turn on the light, I look around the room instead, trying to adjust my eyes to this new kind of light, trying to see the whole scene as detailed as I can. Trying to absorb with my eyes as much information as I can, as much of this incredible penumbra and colours before the street light subtly invades my room caressing its darkness as natural light dims down.

– Dude, I’ve just had a double dream with you in it. In the first one you liked my brother and bought drugs and in the second one I told you about the first dream and we got shot. – Haha I want more details about that dream! – I can’t, there are morbid details that I’m afraid can be misinterpreted. – Oh, come on, it´s just a dream. – We were in Niceto Club during New Year’s Eve and you bought some drugs and I was looking for someone and I wanted you and my little brother to hook up, you really liked him, and then, at some point, I don’t know why, we fucked for a little while. – Who’s your little brother? We fucked? You’re not that good trying to make people come together. – No, I know. Those things about dreams that nobody understands… My little brother, he’s top notch, F. Well, and then I woke up, I was awake for a little while and I fell asleep again. – Hahaha “little brother”, he’s old enough for you not to call him that anymore. – And in this new dream I was telling you about the previous one and some crazy guy started shooting at us and we ran. – Just like that? – And we wanted to take a cab but there were only 1920 cabs around and we didn’t fit in. – Hahaha great dream. And that was the end? With us not fitting into a cab? – I don’t know, we didn’t fit in, it’s just like that, DREAM’S LOGIC. – Well, nice dreams. – See? Beat that. Impossible.

One recent Wednesday noon, I left school in a zombie-like walk, tired after just 3 hours sleep and longing for a seat in at least one of the two buses back home. First bus, got off on Saavedra Bridge, where I take another one that leaves me 6 blocks away from home. I felt dizzy, not really understanding my surroundings, but, as being the routinary commute,  I of course did not worry about my drousyness. I got a seat in the filled bus. Halleluyah. I could just be numb and watch out the window. I was relaxed and calm, enjoying the bus’ rocking movement yet trying not to fall asleep because you don’t want to wake up past your stop in the highway. Ten minutes later, a guy sit next to me. He didn’t sit, he landed on the seat, on me, on my personal space, which did not exist anymore. I wasn’t relaxed anymore, I was just trying to reduce myself so my leg didn’t touch his leg, I was super uncomfotable, unlike his balls, which seemed to live in a mansion due to all the space they were getting. I don’t have balls, I don’t even know how men ride bikes with those, because it is sometimes hurtful without having them, I admire you and thank you for carrying half-baked babies around during your whole life, because if they were inside your body, they’d be fully baked, roasted. Anyway, away from your sack and back to me, I was trying to continue my chill journey back home, watching out the window, feeling this guy’s pressure against my left side, really tired, asking myself howcome someone lands on the sit as if they were free falling from space and that’s the area they found to land coming at who knows what speed from the sky… “You gotta be grateful there’s no real collateral damage, girl, you feel invaded? Look what I had to do to fall this gracefully from outer space… Give me a break”. But no, he was standing on the bus and decided that he was no longer going to control his weight and sense of space, so he just gave that responsibility to me. I started observing the women on the bus, their legs were all really tight together. It’s funny that if a guy is seating and a woman goes sitting next to him, she most likely doesn’t take the entire sit, but 3/4 of it, because she won’t sit in a way she pushes the guy’s leg, she usually respects that the guy was comfortable sitting there and then she arrived. Some men do accommodate to the other passenger, but many don’t. By this point, I was in a mood… Remember I only slept three hours and that guy just took my pleasant trip back home away from me. So I decided I wanted to do some spreading myself, you know, sometimes my clit really needs some fresh air…? Or maybe I just wanted to have my personal space back, one centimeter of air between legs and we are good to go, maybe I want to feel like my body can relax and doesn’t have to suddenly shrink so your balls feel the sea breeze. Anyway, I spreaded my legs, pushing his, till his leg wasn’t invading my seat area, that sweet line where our seats get divided, that’s a line you shall not pass. He didn’t get the hint, he applied force, his leg pushing against mine. I was tired, I wasn’t up for that kind of shit, but I was super moody and mad as well, so I kept my leg on the border of my seat, where it was before he decided I didn’t need my whole seat. The last 10 to 15 minutes of the bus ride, longest 10 to 15 minutes, exhausting 10 to 15 minutes which I spent looking at him in disbelief, moving myself on the seat to regain my space back, spreading against him so I could sit on my whole seat and not just on 3/4 of it. I just wanted to get off that bus and walk home and take a nap. And so I did when I got to my stop, the moment I decided the battle was over but not lost.

After a paradisiac week in Punta del Este, meaning 32C degrees and surfing in just my bikini for two hours (after that my fingers start to go numb), in April, in autumn, a season that when I was in Punta del Este back in 2009 we had to light up the chimney, even though I would go to the beach and swim in the ocean anyway, reason why the guys working at the beach bar called me “Little Mermaid”. But let’s not difer, after such an incredible summer week at the beginning of autumn, my last day in Punta del Este was warm, but the windiest of them all. At 3PM I headed towards the beach anyway to which seemed like a sand storm. There was a guy napping there with a huge backpack and three kids running around and playing. In my sleep, trying not to eat sand, I heard them speaking German. Which made everything more clear, since no local would be on the beach on a day like that. Only a crazy German would. I left to another beach in search of a dune that would shelter me from the wind with no success, wind was coming from every possible direction. So I went back, walking through lots of accumulated iodine. The German and his kids were still there. The sea was wild, wilder than it usually is. Waves were going, following the wind, in every direction, breaking in every spot you could lock your eyes on. Lifeguards were all wearing jackets, having some mate inside their cabin. I was dying to get into the sea, but my family would tell me I was crazy as they did when I left to the beach. It was my last day, but with the sea like that, I was doubting myself and my swimming skills. At that moment, the German starts changing clothes, using a towel to cover himself he put his bathing suit on and walked towards the sea. He was my perfect excuse, the water was warm, the air, even full of sand, was warm as well. He swam  to the horizon not to be seen again, I went into the water. It was lovely, I didn’t want to get out, I didn’t see the German again till he came from another part of the beach and got into the water again. We both got out at practically the same time. We were near because there weren’t a lot of places where you could cover yourself from the mild sand storm, so he talked to me and asked where I was from. I told him I was from Argentina and he said “Ooh, that’s why, not Uruguayan woman would bath on a day like this”… I asked him where he was from, he said Germany. “That’s why you are at the beach as well…What do you do here?” He told me he works as a lawyer, his partner represents them both in Germany and he works from Punta del Este thanks to some little magic called the internet. He then continued talking about how Uruguay is different from the rest of Latin America and how in Germany summer was brief and unstable meanwhile in Uruguay he goes to the beach while the water is warm which is, as he said, from October to May, that is 8 months of beach against 6 weeks of summer: “We only have one life, so why not spend it here, at the beach? Everything is expensive here, but if Uruguayans can do it, so can we”, he told me, which made total sense and thought he was certainly winning at this game. In his 50s, proud of his hairy beer belly, enjoying the beach everyday as if it were the last, taking his kids, who were doing their own thing running all over the place, leaving him in peace to have a nice nap under the sun. They only came when they knew it was time to leave by the sight of his father taking his bathing suit off and changing his clothes. A total geezer. I was a bit cold since I was sick that morning, and his kids came to talk to him so we started to say goodbye. He asked me my name, his was Ralph. He corrected my “R” twice, first an English one then a French one till at last I got something that sounded a bit more Germanic. I started to walk back home, he and his kids went to grab their bikes. I was waiting to cross the avenue by the beach, which sometimes takes like forever due to a curve and as he started crossing right behind me a car came, I heard the break and Ralph saying not so nice things to the driver super out loud and waving his arms up in the air, then three boys went past me riding their bikes, followed by that crazy German waving to me and saying “Chau”, who was there at the beach to make me realize that I wasn’t crazy because I wanted to feel the ocean in spite of the weather one last time, that the crazy ones were all those who weren’t at the beach.

Since I was three years old till I was ten, I went to piano and double-decker keyboard lessons. It all started when my mum entered her room while I was watching telly. I was watching ballet. I just thought the ballerinas were beautiful and elegant and magical altogether. The music was piano. She told me in that tone people use when they are deeply inhaling whatever they are experiencing and feeling with awe and joy: “Listen to that piano.. Do you like it?” I was three, I said yes to please her, not that I didn’t like it, but I was paying attention to the dancing, not the music. “I’ve read kids who learn how to play an instrument when they are little learn to read and write quicker and turn out smarter than other kids… Do you want to learn how to play the piano?”. I, a bit confused about how that conversation turned out, said that I wanted to be a ballerina. My mum said: “Yeah, but do you want to learn how to play the piano? Listen how lovely it is.” Being an only child as I was back then, my parents, and mostly my mum were the world to me, I wanted to please her. I said yes in a “yeah, why not? Let’s try this piano thing I don’t really get because I’ve only been on this planet for three years and haven’t seen much of it” kinda way.

So it started, my mum would come to the lessons with me, because it was mandatory since we were all really little. She was thrilled, to me it was like a game. Learning new things and mastering in what could look like a cocky way to others is my own personal game, although I was super lazy and went to school all day long so my mum had to remind me that I had to practice for me to play at home. I remember one morning when I was 5, there was this piano music playing on TV so I turned my keyboard on and started playing it. My mum heard me and she was so happy I’ve developed such a good ear.

The lessons were divided in parts. One was playing whatever we were playing at the moment, another was exercising on the piano, another one was singing musical notes while the teacher would play the piano, another one was turning our backs to the piano and sing the note she was playing, we had to guess. It was fun. Then, at the end of the class, we would do an ensemble with several simple percussion instruments. Since I was three, I always chose the triangle, I chose it because it was metallic, simple, shiny, whimsical and magical to me. Its sound seemed from another world full of fairies and ballerinas. Whether the rest of the instruments were bongos, some others made of wood and a xylophone, which I played once when they gave the triangle to the most obnoxious girl in the class, even though we were all friends, she was daddy’s little perfect girl, ahead of the class, with pompous dresses and super tidy hairdos with her straight, strong black hair and her sacred pale skin, also, her name was Miracles in Spanish… Anyway, this isn’t about her, everything was fine with her although she was really annoying in that way.

One day, when I was 8, my teacher got sick of me always choosing the triangle and a boy whose name I can’t remember choosing a wooden rectangular hollow instrument which name I’ve never ever learnt. So she made us switch. We all started playing and I couldn’t keep the beat exactly right with this new and strange to me instrument I was experimenting with. Also, to my surprise, since I’ve always thought the triangle was the most beautiful but still the easiest instrument on the ensemble followed by toc-tocs, the boy couldn’t keep the beat with the triangle either! I was not a complete failure who could only play the stupid triangle and it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, after all. My teacher stopped us to fix the beat. The next time I was getting it right but the triangle kid kept missing the beat. The next time the triangle kid got it right but I didn’t. Then another time we both got it right but after all the previous mistakes, we confused some of the other kids who were now making mistakes. Finally, the teacher got tired and frustrated and she gave me my triangle and the kid his wooden instrument back. I was pissed because I wanted to master it, yet happy and glad to have my beloved metal, shiny, whimsical, magical triangle back.

• Sup
• Just listening to “hopeless romantic” songs. You?
• Eating some pizza
• Good.
• What was going on with you yesterday?
• I was sad because of a guy who didn’t love me and, I don’t know, I missed him and I was mad at me for missing someone who didn’t love me. You know, girls stuff.
• And boys.
• Yeah, as well.
• What does the guy do?
• What does he do with what?
• With his life.
• He moved far away. Luckily, I guess. One gets worked up anyway but at least you don’t see him around, that helps, I guess.
• I think we’ve talked about this guy before.
• Yes. I don’t change guys.
• Uf
• We can not talk about that if you want.
• Hahaha. Whatever you want.
• I don’t know. Whether I speak or not, it doesn’t stop being sad. I take a lot o time to get over someone. I suppose that’s why I don’t like people often. And that’s it. Good luck with your pizza.
• Yeah. It took me a decade to get overa n ex. I really regret having lost that thinking time.
• Yeah, I know. I choose not to think, but every once in a while It comes back.
• Hahaha. If it comes back throw it away.
• I don’t know, it’s hard when you still consider the other person as a good person and smart and a thousand things that make you not want to throw him away.
• The other person doesn’t know how to love you.
• I think he chose not to. At times he knew how to.
• Right. He didn’t want to. Worse, right?
• I don’t know, maybe at times he knew how to and at times he didn’t? Or sometimes you don’t want to because you come from a situation where you loved and it didn’t feel good. I’m at that moment right now.
• It’s respectable.
• Yeah, I also wander if it was me, if it was the moment, probably both. I would like to sleep for a week and wake up not feeling anything at all.
• Yeah. Better to wake up and feel again.
• No.
• Being in love is a sensation in life, not a name.
• It happened just once to me and I don’t want it to happen again.
• OK.
• Eventually if it has to happen it will. I just hope to be the one who gets tired of it before. You still feel bad, but it doesn’t torture you afterwards. You? Work? Girls?
• I’m doing OK. Trying to have a year with a bit of luck.
• With lots of luck.
• I don’t ask for that much.
• You have to ask for everything and then if you don’t get it, oh well.
• Or ask for little and then they give you a lot.
• To the universe you must ask for everything, because it has everything to give us. That’s what I’m talking about, the universe’s infinite abundance. You don’t have to ask for anything to people, they’ll give you everything if they want to, obviously I’m not talking about material things. Regarding the universe, I am talking about material things as well.
• I’m not talking about the universe.
• Right, I am.
• I am talking about here.
• Haha. And where do you think we are?
• The people, the supermarket, the cyber cafe, the university.
• That’s universe.
• The universe is outer space.
• If one day you are exhibiting your work at the MoMA, it’s because you and the universe worked together for that to happen.
• It’s super far.
• No, you’re on the Earth, which is a planet that’s in outer space. You are part of said outer space.
• Hmmmm. I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve never touched a star.
• You became super anti-stars and your world shrank.
• It got closer.
• No, if that was the case you woud get that you’re part of the universe.
• It doesn’t change a thing.
• Yeah, if you think you deserve just a little luck, that’s all you’ll get. If you think you deserve lots of luck, you’ll get that.
• If you want we can talk about astronomy. Or physics.
• That’s a different thing.
• But don’t mix love in this.
• There’s lots of love in astronomy and physics.
• Not at all. There’s lots of numbers.
• So?
• So what?
• They are not necessarily separated. To me, an astronomer puts lots of love in what he studies.
• Yes.
• Same as a physician.
• Yes. Become an astronomer.
• I’m not really good with numbers but I’ve thought about it.
• Ha. Same as me.
• I’m not good with love either for that matter.
• Nobody is good with love.
• No, that’s true. Luckily there are tons of people that are good with numbers.
• Yeah.