Week-End

“It is noon and I begin to read Heidegger with breakfast, but end up watching Britney Spears videos on Youtube as I munch on my dry piece of toast. I will never understand the problem of Being anyways and I couldn’t care less about Heidegger today. I turn the volume down so that you don’t lose the little respect you have left for me but you couldn’t care less if I liked Britney Spears way more than Heidegger by now.

Outside there are kids playing soccer in the field and every thirty seconds a whistle blows and people clap. Outside the day is windy and the sun creeps slowly above the rooftops. I am still wearing my spider man pajamas and you are in the shower. I already am missing you, I am wondering what will become of me on all the days I will spend away from you, but I keep clicking on more Britney Spears videos and even singing along to them. On the second floor our Mexican neighbor talks on his cell phone from the balcony, the heavy beats of his Cumbia music make our ceiling thump. I wonder if he lives alone and if he hears me yelling at night and banging doors.

The water isn’t running anymore and I can hear you stepping out of the shower. There is a knock on the door, five times like if they are coming for someone, but when I peek through the key hole it is only my Mexican neighbor. He wears a gray shirt with an eagle printed on it and gray sweatpants. His beer belly is sticking out and he is one head shorter than me: “Can I charge my cell phone in your car please?” he asks, I don’t answer. By then you are wearing that brown polo shirt that I like so much and your hair is still wet, you stand near me and tell him that you are about to leave, but that I can help him.

And I do, I leave his phone charging in my car and tell him that I will knock on his door in one hour to give it back. “Gracias” he says, and thirty minutes later I can hear the loud thumps of the Cumbia music coming from the second floor.

Our Mexican neighbor has Christmas lights decorating his balcony and he's had them since last winter. They glimmer and fade in the night, sometimes only the red lights will work and not the green or the white ones. I never told you this but when I come back home from work I look up towards his balcony, and always wish for the white lights to be on. I never told you this but I am sad that he will only be your Mexican neighbor now, and not our Mexican neighbor. I never told you this but now that I write it down, it just makes sense. “

This was written with ink on some notebook I just found.



"Last winter I had gotten out of class late and my friend Cherie drove me home. We hung out in my room, lying in bed and looking at the ceiling as she sung Velvet Underground songs out loud and I followed the tune. But what I remember is when she sat in my computer and showed me one of her poems. I read it two times and was clueless about its meaning. Clueless, but I thought it was beautiful and asked her to explain it to me. She did; for one hour she closely walked through every stanza, carefully explaining the metaphysical content of every line. I stared and listened, Cherie’s hair was long and red under the lamp, and I think she still had her sweater on but looked exhausted and happy to be talking about her work. Wallace Stevens wrote, “After one has abandoned the belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as redemption.” She looked redeemed.

There is nothing I like better than being around people who commit, who are emotionally tied to what they do. Elizabeth sits down in the living room floor to paint pictures, and her acrylics are sprawled all over the wooden tiles as the TV stays on. My mother puts down ideas in a journal with childhood handwriting; she works during the day and finishes her stories at night. My boyfriend reads excerpts of “Four Dada Suicides” out loud as we sit in the kitchen table, I interrupt him to ask about an image and his eyebrow rises up. Hope stands in front of me in Ballet, I love her feet but most of all I cannot stop looking at the way she dances: her eyes always stare at the audience and then up high. She only lowers her chin to put on her point shoes; never else does she lower her chin."

Texto de Sombra

“Un claro en el jardín oscuro o un pequeño espacio de luz entre hojas negras.
Allí estoy yo, dueña de mis cuatro años, señora de los pájaros celestes y los pájaros rojos. Al más hermoso le digo:

_ Te voy a regalar a nose quien.
_Como sabes que le gustare? _dice.
_Voy a regalarte_digo.
_Nunca tendrás a quien regalar un pájaro_ dice el pájaro.”




(Alejandra Pizarnik, 1970)