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I managed to update my schedule for the week, print it out and turn the computer off again; eight minutes in total. While I was at it, I checked the graph of my screen time; it’s still a bit high for my liking, but it’s dropped considerably, from five hours a day to three hours and fifty-six minutes, so four. Come to think of it, I wonder if this program, which I made myself, has an error in the process it uses to calculate the average. We’re eight days into October, and if my average is four hours a day, the total number of hours should be thirty-two. However, quickly adding up the number of hours each day gave me a total of twenty-four, which should mean an average of three hours a day rather than four. And now here I am, writing about the world of the computer as a way of overcoming my withdrawal symptoms. The world of the computer is even appearing in my dreams; before waking up this afternoon, I dreamed repeatedly about a particular operation in Visual Basic. It involved one line of a program that was meant to delete a file when I ran it. But the line contained a contradiction, because right there within it was a command to recreate the same file. I ran that line, or that program which consisted of a single line, over and over again, and I was always amazed when nothing changed. I couldn’t find where in that line the second command was, the one which invalidated the first. I realise now that, in the dream, I wasn’t trying to change the line because deep down I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to delete the file, and I’d probably added the second command just in case I regretted what the first command had done. This is surely a sign from the highest part of my unconscious, showing me that my ambivalence about something is making me ineffective or, worse, making me waste my energy repeating, over and over, some contradictory actions that don’t change anything, don’t lead anywhere and are therefore completely pointless. I’ll sit down and have a go at analysing this message soon. [...]
lol
[...] I was even more surprised when this presumed male pigeon suddenly broke out into a frenzied courtship dance around the corpse. I’d just got dressed and hadn’t had any breakfast; I was keen to have some and get on with my day, since my monumental all-nighter meant I’d woken up very late and had a lot to do before it was time to turn the computer off (6.15 p.m.) and start my yoga class (7 p.m.). But I couldn’t stop watching the strange spectacle of what I believed was a male pigeon, courting what I believed was another male pigeon, who was, let’s not forget, dead and decomposing. The suitor’s little dance was brief and violent, as if prompted by uncontrollable sexual passion; but then, faced with the immobility of the object of desire, the lack of any response, he broke off abruptly and seemed plunged into a terrible confusion. An occasional light breeze fluttered a feather here and there, on the corpse and on the paving stones where a few were scattered, small and white. That movement seemed to be the main cause of the suitor’s confusion, since although it wasn’t the ideal response it was at least a sign of activity, and therefore, he must have thought, of life. And so, faced with this dilemma, all the suitor could do was walk up and down, like someone pacing nervously to and fro with his hands clasped behind his back, his mind working keenly to solve some urgent problem or reach a decision. Up and down he walked, and then suddenly he jumped onto the dead pigeon like someone climbing onto a small promontory, the better to survey the landscape. He walked around on top of the body, turning in circles, pirouetting, stamping his feet. Then he hopped back down onto the paving stones and walked a bit more, shaking his head slightly the whole time as if to express serious doubt, a total inability to believe what was happening. A gust of wind, a slight ripple of feathers and the suitor was up once again, stamping his feet, turning in circles, until suddenly, with his back to me, still on top of the corpse, he made a few frantic movements of copulation. He must have reached orgasm almost immediately, because he quickly detached himself from what had once been the object of his desire and flew away. I thought: ‘Now this poor dead pigeon has seen it all.’ I also thought: ‘Please don’t let that happen to me when I die.’
:(
I took a long time making breakfast and had just got everything ready when I realised I’d forgotten something, I don’t remember what, and went back to the bedroom. I couldn’t help glancing out of the window at the sunny evening and, my God, what do I see but the necrophiliac male pigeon back for more. This time he was less frantic, though still confused and hesitant. He walked around the corpse, walked over the top of it, stamped on it; all more sedately than before, but the ritual was the same. Then he climbed down from the dead pigeon and stood to one side of it. He pecked among the feathers on his chest, and then pecked at the feathers of the corpse, probably on its wing, which is still lying outstretched. A small white feather appeared in the live pigeon’s beak. The operation was repeated various times. For a second I thought maybe he’d started eating the corpse, but then I realised that wasn’t what was going on, or at least it didn’t seem to be. Another little white feather appeared in his beak. Then, I don’t know in what order, he walked around the body, stood on top of it, strode around a bit more up there and then got back down and stood next to it again. In the meantime, another, considerably bigger and more aggressive male pigeon arrived, whiter and with iridescent blue-green feathers around its neck (a kind of pigeon that for some reason I dislike more than all the others), and began its own courtship dance. The previous suitor beat a hasty retreat. The new male was left in charge of the situation, but he wasn’t interested in the corpse; the object of his desire was clearly the other male pigeon, if he really was a male pigeon, because by this point in proceedings I’d stopped understanding or trying to understand or believing I understood what was happening. The supposed male took a few turns around the roof and left. I went to have my breakfast, feeling a little queasy.
god lol
[...] I thought it might be because I’d personalised my Windows colour scheme; perhaps they’d put the results in white text on a white background and that was why nothing showed up. But there’s no way to change the colours in the program; you can’t even highlight the text with the mouse so it appears in negative, and nor can you copy it. Then I thought no more about it and hit uninstall. That didn’t work very well either, because it left remains of the program on my computer, which I then had to delete manually. The famous Uruguayan software industry … what absolute crap. Modestly, I should add that my own programs, though simpler and less ambitious, are much better designed and made, whichever way you look at them. I configured the Windows screen so it returned to how it used to be, and luckily it worked. Everything was back to normal.
lol
I’m in my pyjamas, but just as I was getting into bed, I suddenly remembered the source of all the current changes in my life, the ones I’m trying to bring about and stick to. This diary has helped me to reflect and remember; until now I’ve never had a clear sense of the events leading up to the current situation with Chl, let alone the ways I was responsible for what happened. It only became clear when I wrote the whole story down (so slowly, and so painfully). And I realised that my computer addiction and other unhelpful behaviour patterns were a way of expressing my sense of abandonment. On the one hand, yes, I was trying to run away from my pain; but on the other, crucially, I was pushing things to extremes because I wanted someone to set me limits. I realised I was behaving the way badly adjusted children do, children whose parents don’t know how to set them limits, or don’t want to, or have no interest in doing so. They push things further and further, and every step is a cry for attention. Then I said to myself: as long as my transgressions only affect me, nobody’s going to set me any limits. Not only was my behaviour inappropriate, but it was useless at what it was trying to achieve; my actions were doomed to failure in every sense. The hole I was digging was becoming deeper and deeper, and by then it was almost impossible to get out. In the end I decided that if a part of me was demanding limits, I’d try to set some myself; I’d listen to my demands insofar as they were reasonable and fair, but fight energetically to stop them escalating into that nebulous infinity. Limits. Strict, precise. But necessary.
The topic of the dead pigeon as a symbol still needs to be addressed. I should explain to the reader, or remind them if they already know, that a few years ago I wrote a text called Diary of a Swine. I wrote it in Buenos Aires. My initial impulse had been to continue the ‘luminous novel’ (take note of that detail, because the luminous novel – or rather, its completion – is the project covered by this grant), and as soon as I sat down to write it, I began having problems with birds. First, a baby pigeon fell into the narrow back garden of my ground-floor apartment, and when it managed to fly away another one fell in, not a pigeon this time but a baby sparrow, and the presence of those fallen birds became the main focus of what I was writing, which by then was almost a minute-by-minute account of the events unfolding in my back garden. I realised that this bird-based epiphany was symbolic; sometimes so-called objective reality takes on a strong symbolic charge. And I realised that somehow, by starting to write, I’d set those events in motion. I still haven’t changed my mind after all this time, though I’d like to add for the record that I don’t think you could call it a miracle. A little magical, perhaps, if we understand magic as a technique that can be explained. The Unconscious can do all kinds of things our poor conscious self would never dream were possible.
And now, as I begin the project of continuing the luminous novel, and even receive a grant that means I can devote all my time to the task, lo and behold: more strange bird-related occurrences. A dead bird appears, then the possible widow appears and behaves very oddly. Might this, I’ve been thinking recently, be a symbol as well? A symbol of my dead spirit, which no widow (my conscious self, let’s say) will be able to revive in spite of her best efforts. If this is the case, Mr Guggenheim can give up on the idea that his grant will produce the expected results.
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you grow flowers for a living, and suddenly you inherit a chain of supermarkets. You have no interest in supermarkets and know nothing about them. You’d be quite content to collect the considerable profits every so often and spend them as you see fit, whilst continuing to devote your days to growing flowers, which is your main interest in life. However, the moment comes when you’re seized by curiosity, or perhaps by fear. Since you know nothing about supermarkets, you could easily be exploited, robbed or deceived by the people running the businesses that legally belong to you. Or perhaps it just gives you a strange feeling, collecting all that money as if it’s growing on trees, and you think you ought to do something in return. Whatever it is, you gradually take more of an interest in the business, and suddenly you’re completely absorbed in a mass of information that your brain needs to process: organisational diagrams, recruitment of personnel, the legs of the cashiers in their nylon tights, the price of tea leaves and toothpaste, the names and surnames of your immediate colleagues, etc. Little by little, you realise you actually find it interesting, and that after all, it’s not without its creative side. Ideas occur to you, and you start experimenting with this, that and the other. You find that making certain intelligent changes allows you to increase your profits, and that other changes mean you make a loss. The whole thing is turning into a game you can’t stop thinking about, and one day you realise you’ve completely abandoned the flowers. You think about them rather wistfully, and even a little guiltily, because you feel like you’re betraying your true calling in life. However, you’re trapped in a system, and although no one’s stopping you leaving, you can’t do it. You’ve probably become addicted to the intense cerebral activity, so different to the leisurely activity of growing flowers. Your whole life has changed beyond recognition. You’re not the person you used to be, but neither are you anyone else. You feel possessed by a conflict, or inhabited by something slightly alien to you.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, I began. Although really I should say ‘I continued’, since I’ve decided to use the small amount I wrote in January too. It’s been happening for a while now that when I get into bed, I work on the text in my head, or rather I work on the images, or the mood, of what I want to write, and often I find myself mentally putting it into words. Early yesterday morning I was outlining yet again how I’d continue the story I began in January, when I saw quite clearly that I was going round in circles and getting nowhere; that I was forever thinking, ‘I’ll write it tomorrow,’ the way you might think about beginning a diet or a plan to quit smoking. But today I said: ‘Tomorrow doesn’t exist and it never will. The project won’t happen at this rate. I need to write down what I’m thinking this instant, because when I wake up tomorrow I’ll get tangled up in the thousand things I get tangled up in every day and the text will go on being postponed until it’s time to go to bed and … ’ And although I was already wearing the clothes I sleep in, I turned the computer on – configured to the user who’s a writer – and started to type. I don’t know how it turned out, but when I went to bed seventy minutes later I’d stopped feeling guilty.
[...] in situations like this, the first thing I do is develop a strange kind of nostalgia, a nostalgia for something completely unfamiliar to me. It’s not curiosity in the usual sense, by which I mean that I’m not interested in learning details about the people. But there’s a kind of global curiosity, so to speak; curiosity about the workings of a whole system of interpersonal relations, but also about details, though not just any details, and a curiosity about the history, or rather the present-day stories that mingle together in the place. For example, if I spend a few days at a hotel in a seaside town, at some point I’ll discover the activity of some ants and become profoundly, genuinely, passionately interested in where these ants have come from and where they’re going. In the same way, if anyone from that place discusses personal details with anyone else, or asks about their family, using specific names, in no time I’ll be eavesdropping on their conversation, trying not so much to keep hold of the details as to produce a sort of sketch, something like a series of threads or invisible lines that turn into a single line connecting the person who’s talking and the people and places they’re talking about; and I attempt to put together a kind of diagram of the speaker’s life based on those small snippets of information. I don’t manage, of course, and nor is it possible to manage just like that, so I get upset. It gives me that feeling of yearning for something lost, for a world where I’ll never set foot.
<3
More computer-related catastrophes, now in terms of software. I don’t remember if I’ve written here about the monitor exploding and being replaced with another monitor that’s no good, followed by another one that’s no good either. And now, while waiting to sort out the monitor, I’ve started having problems with the software – of which some of the more serious, I have to confess, were caused by me. To cut a long story short, a series of errors that had been building up for a long time culminated in all the programs I’ve made in Visual Basic being deleted. Fortunately, most of the project files were saved. I was able to reconstruct almost everything, but it took a lot of work, on a sweltering hot night, and now I’m shattered.
;p;