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I lit the end of a candle, left over from a previous power cut, and stuck it in a clean ashtray. I carried the lit candle to the bathroom, resigned to facing the second phase of my martyrdom – damn those antidepressants – while trying to shake from my mind the uncomfortable notion that I was falling prey to the shadowy machinations of even more shadowy powers.
I feel more like a Beckett character by the day.
lol
[...] The girl would have been, I don’t know, I can never tell how old people are, but I think she would have been between fourteen and sixteen years old. And yet she behaved as if she were younger, with that stiffness, that dependence on the old lady still rooting around in her handbag. The girl had her eyes fixed straight ahead and her gaze was guarded, or rather it was as if she were hiding a second gaze underneath. There was something stupid about her expression, but it was a proud kind of stupidity and suggested she was extremely ignorant as well as not very clever. But something beneath this gaze slightly refuted what I’ve just said; not about the pride, but about the stupidity and the distance she put between herself and the world; as if she were watching everything out of the corner of her eye, amazed; as if she were deliberately avoiding looking around so as not to be amazed, because she’d realised that what she saw would amaze her. My God, I don’t know how to explain it. She wasn’t ugly. But she wasn’t very beautiful either. I don’t have a clue what it was I found so attractive, but I was violently attracted to her nonetheless. I could even pick up the scent of her, not because she smelled bad but because I’m sensitive and have a powerful imagination; she smelled of the countryside, of sunshine and dried grass. When I passed nearby, I stared at her with all the enormous eyes at my disposal. When I reached the exit, I turned back for another look. My God! I wanted that girl so much! I spent the whole walk home thinking about her, imagining different scenarios, those erotic fantasies I’ve always looked down on and never let myself indulge in. I gradually realised that my desire for her was violent, and a desire for violence rather than sex, or violent sex, at any rate. I didn’t imagine myself seducing her so much as forcing myself on her. Taming her, like an animal. That was it: she was a dumb beast and wouldn’t understand any language other than brutality. But there was a lot more inside me than this. At one point I imagined I was a feudal lord, saying to the old lady: ‘I shall take your daughter away,’ and the old lady had no choice but to hand her over. The thought of being alone in a large room with the girl drove me crazy. I wanted to make the struggle last forever, because she wouldn’t give in just like that; I had to make her, I had to fight, and she’d fight back, biting and kicking. I’d have to hit her and dominate her, I’d have to rip off her clothes. Oh, my God, my God. And all in silence, without a word; with nothing, perhaps, but moans. I couldn’t picture her naked; my mind lingered on the struggle, or the point before the struggle: the moment she found herself shut inside the room with me alone, preparing for a defence that she knew would ultimately be futile. I’m sure she wouldn’t alter her gaze, her shyness that looked like pride or distance; that in the end, whatever I did, I would never reach her real gaze, and that this would be her triumph, and my defeat.
HA HA HA!
I have defeated summer! The air conditioning is installed. To celebrate, I had half a glass of wine. I’m drunk.
[...] Meanwhile, on the pavement, the nightmare had taken the form of a very old man clutching a guitar and singing (so to speak), first a little waltz, and then a tango. I caught a few snatches of lyrics that helped me recognise them. As for the notes he was attempting to extract from the guitar, not one bore the slightest relation to any kind of melody or harmony. He was using the guitar more like a percussion instrument, hitting all the strings at random with his rhythmic slapping. And the voice … all that was left of the old man’s voice was a pathetic squeak, and needless to say, it was completely tuneless and lacking intonation. I feel sorry for people like that, and I was ready to give him a few coins when he came over to our table. But he didn’t come over to anyone’s table at any point in the whole half hour we were sitting there; he went on singing and battering his guitar, and as soon as he finished one song he launched straight into the next. As if he was only trying to express himself.
lol
[...] All those years spent doing the work of bureaucracy had taken their toll – and it looked like there’d been plenty of years, too, filled with all the vices attached to her job: stress and disappointment, yes, but also a kind of malicious sharpness, of being constantly on the lookout for opportunities to exert the slightest bit of power. When I arrived, she was in conversation with a woman. Soon, though, I realised it wasn’t a conversation, and in fact the receptionist was applying a very sophisticated form of torture. The moment she saw me arrive and stand in front of the desk, she sent the woman away with some final instructions, and while the woman was leaving with her own quota of stress, the employee turned to face me, practically licking her lips, like a vampire who spots a demijohn of fresh blood on the way over. Unfortunately for her, my business was very simple, and there was nothing she could get her teeth into. She just applied a bit of pressure by asking me if I was the account-holder with the electricity board, hoping I’d say no, but I said yes, leaving her with no further options besides giving me a number and telling me to go up the stairs I could see to my left.
lol
I did go out in the end, by myself; I went to the Feria del Libro and came back with four detective novels. I hadn’t even heard of one of them, though it’s by a writer I collect. Another is that Ellery Queen book, Drury Lane’s Last Case. It was still there and I decided to go ahead and buy it, in spite of everything. After all, when I’m in one of these extended phases in which I want to read detective novels more than any other kind of book, my thinking is: better to have something not very good to read than to have nothing at all. Addictions are like that, and you can end up suffering terrible humiliations out of desperation for the drug. I’ll end up reading Agatha Christie one day, I know it.
lmao
[...] 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.
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