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[...] I saw a very pretty, friendly-looking girl approaching from my right. She was carrying some enormous rolls of cardboard under one arm, and perhaps more in her hands. She saw me and smiled, and made a small movement towards me. I felt as if the heavens were opening; a smile like that was exactly what I needed on my solitary walk, and for one crazy, out-of-my-mind moment I was expecting a marvellous proposition (‘Could you hold my breasts while I sort out these rolls of cardboard?’ – to paraphrase Woody Allen), or at least a minimal opening to a friendly chat that would pave the way for a proposition of my own. But in fact, what she said was: ‘Would you like a poster?’ My heart sank; I said no, too quickly, and she bounded over to another guy who was coming up behind me and asked him: ‘Would you like a poster?’ I didn’t hear what he said, and I didn’t care; I was too busy giving myself a few mental kicks on the behind. First of all, I’d missed the opportunity for a brief conversation. ‘A poster of what?’ I could have enquired, which would also have circumvented the curiosity I later felt. I’m still wondering what image or what words that poster had on it. It was huge, made of cardboard that wasn’t very thick, or perhaps a special kind of paper, but whatever it was, it was definitely good quality. I also wonder if she was selling them or giving them away; it seemed more like a gift than a transaction somehow. Maybe the poster was a photo of her. My God, I’m such a joyless idiot. And then I complain about the sterility of my walks. All I was thinking at the time was how uncomfortable it would be to go all the way to the Feria del Libro, and back down 18 de Julio to my apartment, with that enormous roll of cardboard under my arm.
lmao
I’m off to bed, feeling immensely satisfied. And excited, too, I’d even say. It was an uphill battle, but for the second time in as long as I’ve owned a computer, I managed to modify a program. I know it’s very boring to read about these sorts of details – the sorts I’ve gone rather overboard with in this diary – so I’ll skip them for the benefit of the hypothetical reader. I’ll merely record that this program did something annoying every time I used it, and, what’s more, I use it a great deal. It’s an excellent program, but the manufacturers are very interfering and controlling, and even arrogant. After putting up with these humiliations for a few years, in different updated versions of the program I obtained to meet the changing system requirements, and after managing to eliminate, one way or another, some of the nuisances it caused me, today I confronted the last of those nuisances; and, after trying other kinds of solutions that ended up causing other nuisances, I decided to open the program in an editor and see what I could do. First I copied it, just in case I ruined everything. And it’s a good job I did, because before solving the problem, I did in fact ruin everything horribly a couple of times. Then I looked through the jumble of strange symbols for words that would orientate me, and I found some. And I started deleting things, here and there, this and that; I made those two failed attempts, but on the third attempt I succeeded. Adrenaline was coursing through me. It was a thrilling adventure. And, as always with these victories, I felt dazed for a long time afterwards, not quite believing what had happened. I tested it a few times, and it worked. I turned the computer off and then on again, because sometimes changes and their consequences only take effect when you restart Windows. It still worked. Finally, I made a copy of the program and saved it, with a note that it’s a corrected version, so that if for some reason the program changes or gets lost, I won’t have to go through the whole process again.
:)
But the fact is that after reading and correcting half of August, I stopped writing this diary or anything else, and I also stopped reading it and correcting it. I’d like to know why, although I’m not curious enough to put any mental effort into finding out. I’m still very lazy, very out of sorts from the summer weather and the carnival, and most of all from the absence of Chl (and sometimes from her presence; when she appears, from time to time, it’s clear I’ve built up such resentment and such feelings of abandonment that it’s difficult to be with her) (I’ve even noticed, the past few times I’ve seen her, that when she hugs me, I move away very quickly and actually push her back a little, with my hands resting on her shoulders) (this topic is a permanent thorn in my side). It should be clear that I have no objections to Chl’s behaviour; I try my hardest to make my feelings match my thoughts, but it’s no use: there’s a stubborn, petulant creature inside me, one of those dogs that won’t let go of a bone.
So, I turned into a cat and jumped. In fact, I jumped twice; first, to extricate myself from that living death after several years, and to land in the arms of the wonderful Chl. The second jump was something like the extension of that first jump in material space and time, and it happened when I left the house where I was living for good and spent those six months in my friends’ house, looking for an apartment in the painful way I’ve already described. I spent those months in the air, dizzy from leaping so high, and when I landed … Chl was hardly there to catch me, because along came that trip of hers, and in a way I’m still in mid-air, with vertigo, with the sensation of an endless fall in slow motion, and the feeling of inevitable disaster.
</3
‘You know you’re choosing solitude,’ my therapist said, more as a statement than a question, in a special session, a consultation I requested when she was no longer my therapist. I’d requested that session so she could assess my psychological state before I took the decisive step of moving out of what had once been my home. Her assessment was positive, as was that statement, more statement than question – though really it was a warning.
‘Yes,’ I answered, firmly and decisively. I knew the affair with Chl couldn’t last, because perhaps I myself couldn’t last. But I was prepared to take on my final solitude, which is what I’m going through now, though I never imagined it would be like this, filled with such ambiguity.
I felt as if that kind old woman was somehow giving me her blessing, and that she was somehow satisfied with the session, which was the true end of our therapy. My libido had managed to emerge and take notice of ‘an external object’ (my words, because she rarely used psychoanalytical language).
I think that when love, true love, springs up between a man and a woman, it transforms them both, giving them certain magical qualities. Perhaps they don’t realise. Love comes to guide them, to lead them, and they both find themselves able to do things that would normally seem impossible. They live in a reality with more dimensions.
I’m going to end up sounding almost blasphemous, but again, once again, on reaching this point, I can only return to the same thing: in erotic love, in loving sex, in the tension of desire, in the projection of the energies of the man and the woman onto the creation of a new life, there, in that tension and those intimate circumstances, is where whatever they each have within them of God, which is usually hidden, makes its presence felt. Only God can give life, and this and nothing else is the purpose of sex.
It felt like I was dying, but I was telling the truth. I’d been recommending she go to therapy from very early on, and she waited two or three years before taking my advice. Now she was reaching the stage of detaching herself from me, and above all, I imagine, of the more important detachment from her father. My darling Chl is growing, or at least she’s doing what she can. She’ll lose a lot … and I’ll lose more; but I think what she’ll gain will be infinitely more valuable. Recovering her libido, for example. And being able to make that list of lovers she spoke of in my dream.
At this dramatic moment, as we both sat red-eyed and tearful, we were holding hands. I felt the warmth of her hand just like in the old days, and I saw that her face was recovering the glorious colours of her usual good health, and her beauty was beginning to shine once more. I realised that the causes of the anxiety which had been torturing her for days were connected to that process of growth.
When I woke up today, I carried on thinking. It occurred to me that I should do something; since there’s no sign of anything new, or any change or interesting surprise, I should take matters into my own hands and create a suitable topic for the ending. Then I decided that wasn’t really allowed. I can’t go out into the street dressed as a monkey to generate an interesting and unusual anecdote with which to finish the book; I can’t start structuring my life around the diary and the need to finish it. I also thought about how the ideal ending would be something like this:
‘I’m tired of this situation, I’m tired of this grey life, I’m tired of the pain caused by this strange relationship with Chl, the knowledge that I’ve lost her even though she’s right there, the sexual tension every time we meet, which doesn’t lead to anything except this absurd addiction to the computer; I’m tired of myself, of my inability to live, of my failure. I didn’t manage to finish the grant project; it was a bad idea, it can’t be done, I didn’t realise that time can’t go backwards, or that I’ve become someone else. The writerly role is stuck to my skin but I’m not a writer any more, and I never wanted to be one. I don’t want to write, I’ve said everything I wanted to say, and writing has stopped being fun and giving me an identity. It’s not true what my friend Verani says in some essays, particularly in his work on Empty Words: that my desperation arises from not being able to write. I can write; look, I’m writing now and I’m doing it well. I can write whatever I like; no one disturbs me, no one interrupts me, I have all the equipment and all the comfort I need; I just don’t want to, I don’t feel like it. And I’m tired of playing this role. I’m tired of everything. Life is no more than a stupid, unnecessary, painful burden. I don’t want to suffer any more, or carry on with this miserable life of routines and addictions. As soon as I close these quotation marks, then, I’m going to shoot myself in the head.’
:(
Above this is a heading that refers to time (the date, the hour), but time has lost almost all meaning for me. I can say ‘some time ago’, but I’m not at all sure how much time the ‘some’ might cover: weeks, yes, but perhaps even months. Well, whatever it means, some time ago these words appeared in my head: ‘The never-ending small hours’, and I thought they should be the title of this book. It’s a bit of a pretentious title, and far too poetic; but that’s how the words came out, and those words seem very accurate, very true, very fitting and exact. A never-ending series of small hours is what my life is, and what it has been these past years – best not to ask how many.
Saying ‘the small hours’ isn’t the same as saying ‘night’; they look similar in the dark, but something about the small hours makes them ill-suited to life – perhaps the inexorable quality of the solitude of whoever is alone at that time. Especially if they’re awake.
I should make a brief digression here – within the long digression, you might say, of this handwritten exercise I’ve so cautiously embarked upon – to say that I became a writer not because it was my calling, but for complicated socio-politico-econo-psychological reasons. At this moment, for example, rather than writing, I’d like to be devising a computer game, making a film, playing some Bach on an organ in a historic (European) cathedral, or simply depositing my seed in a series of women’s wombs, lined up one after the other as far as the eye can see. My relationship with literature is all I can allow myself; or, indeed, all I’ve been allowed – up to a point – by other people. To put it more plainly and more accurately, writing is cheaper and less dangerous, or more comfortable, for me. I’m lazy and cowardly, and poor to boot; I should therefore resign myself to writing, and even be thankful for it. End of brief digression.
lol