My mind is badly put together, thought J., gathering it up and remaking it always when the eyes, J.’s eyes, open. Waking up has never been something comfortable, not because the world is so ordinary that J. wouldn’t want to wake after a good night’s sleep, hugs, kisses, lots of sex and good sex. The mind that no longer much answers the calls of words, those words we invent so we don’t have to plunge into the real, are disquiets, yes, but getting out of bed is as essential as laws that make one’s days stranger and more set in plaster.
That’s why I think, here I am rambling in this momentary sadness… Today is a sad day, but J., in the daily transcendence of perceptions beyond, I believe it’s a tactic to escape so much everyday hurt. Not existing in the present place is deeply disorienting. Always, or it seems always, we are somewhere other than where we are. Every minute trying to find a new garden, less dry and more pleasant, there is nothing left over from the devastation, from what the world keeps proposing, provoking, not the world, THE WORLD IN VAIN, THE WORLD NO, THE WORLD HAS LOST ITS VOICE, WHO SPEAKS FOR IT? Let’s be clear about what the oppressive rulebook and its rules are willing to do for the SURROUNDING-man-return MOUSTACHES of the second war, it seems the recent past of bombs and ovens is about to return with this SURROUNDING-man-return MOUSTACHES OF THE SECOND WAR, and, this time, there won’t be half a prayer of forgiveness, your PROFITABLE business, today, which seems to belong to the God WHO GAVE IT TO YOU, will fall like the ash of some spark that, fleeing the fire, got lost and COLLAPSED, floating on some promise that your sins must be paid every month and in money, CASH, God needs this payment of peace, monetary and strange. Very strange. DIVINE CASH OF YOUR FAITH.
So J. lives these confused days, lots of wind and a heat plummeting from the skies, from the seas, from the avenues, from the eyes of some who can no longer bear to witness this abandonment of reality in search of anything at all, even of the end, and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing and swims in the middle of a sea that is already changing colour, believe me, it will be a positive, negative red, with letters determining which blood was spilled there, I think J. would like a gentle soap, one that smells of rose, those scents that soothe.
J. woke up away from home. To the sky, to the air, sitting on a bench in a square in the old town. Saw, right alongside, a female body, a being about to become a mother, a big belly, she seemed to be sitting, lying on the pavement, a shocking scene, desperate, so abnormal that it looked like a scene from some film by those directors who are less perfumed and more fan-out-of-control, she was there complaining about a man with a rucksack on his back, he seemed to be her partner, or whatever he was, maybe one more man who prefers to run away and leave the female body carrying half and half of the voice that will come to be born in a few days.
J. walked past her, past him, and carried on for a few seconds, back turned, but couldn’t bear it and turned towards her, who got up off the ground at midday and went to ask for help at a women’s association, time seemed to live there so full of abandonment, of exclusion, of strong signs of what we are becoming.
J. didn’t quite know why J. was there, was there, walked past, looked once more, counting fingers, eyes full of depths, so many questions, J. needs company, someone to talk to without rules, without judgement, without psychology, without advice, without settled opinions, J. only needs another body that can share the less dry time.
J. stopped, stood in the middle of the street, people and cars and bicycles and lives and indispositions and endings went past J. and, out of nowhere, J. shouts:
— A sparkling water, and a simple moment that can exist without distance. Enough, enough, who’s going to open the rest of this tap, who can bear this, and everything turns to nothing, nobody can hear, I’m not leaving here any more.
The sound coming from some paradise among the corners of El Raval was Fita Amarela, by Martinho da Vila. Some well-tuned-in Brazilian was listening.
And J. stamped a foot, began to spin, as if in a process of infinite meditation until disappearing, and spun without stopping, arms open, at such a speed that J. no longer made out what J. was seeing, it was a continuous movement where all that could be made out was a blur of buildings, a cloudy view, a place where there was no stopping any more, and everything kept turning around J., everything turned, and turned and turned.
Police, fire brigade, chocolates, stock exchange, car repair shops, people who hate their equals, people who don’t want to be more than their equals, tomatoes, microwaves, flowers, knickers, underpants, avocado cut in half, everything was spinning around, it looked like a hurricane, but it wasn’t, it was J. spinning, and the more J. spun the more things leapt out of the windows, an elderly couple was thrown out of the window performing stupendous oral sex, the neighbourhood’s metaphetaminic-lollipop dealer was left dangling over his mistress’s window, the lubricants all popped their caps, children screamed with joy watching the fun of J.’s spin, ladies with Bibles had their hair blown wild and saw their respective husbands naked at the neighbours’ windows, in the buff, not a stitch on, trying not to draw attention with their bare bodies and their cocks flagging, it was a whole lot of chaos because of one spin.
And, out of nowhere — it’s never out of nowhere, people cross your path, write that down on the butter lid —, a lady with white hair, really, really white, stopped beside J., looked at the friend who was with her, who seemed a good sort and was holding half a dozen bottles of wine that didn’t float, wine never floats. The lady with the very white hair said to J., intimately:
— And as for deaths there are many, J., the price of staying here on Earth is crueller than property speculation. When everything becomes past, there’s no present left, J., look, there I was almost on my way somewhere and I suddenly remembered the paths your steps have crossed. Here I am.
A gentleman tapped J. on the back, asked the name of a street, J. didn’t know what to say, the man’s eyes seemed to grind themselves into dreams, yours, J., were far away, and, in an outburst of freedom:
— Keep spinning, J.
And so a dance began, almost a ritual of praise to some goddess who releases tenderness on hot days.
— Listen, this is my friend M., she knows loads of streets round here, she knows important people, knows about biology, artistic practice, knows juries, PDF, and on top of that does Kind Line, the clever thing, for her it’s a piece of cake, knows how to guide freshers like no one else, knows a lot about everything, and she said the gentleman sat down, the gentleman she knows and you know too, neither you, nor she, nor he believe in that cloud any more, but she’s got something to say. Speak, M., open your heart!
And M., seeing like that how everything was spinning and flinging everyone out of windows, rubbish bags, pricey market, fruit stall, said, almost in a state of absolute serenity, and stood there watching everything being lost and being won:
— J., either you stop spinning or you stop spinning, nobody can take this any more, the city is whirling out of control, look at your feet, they’re flooded with beers and olives, and social media posts, the internet is leaking out of the phones, sparkling water, nibbles and tears, there’s a lot of outrage on social media, in beds and in posts, listen, stop spinning, don’t be stupid, the actor is doing the hit series, people want to watch the second series, the film director wants to win the statuette that’s going to change the political system of the world and you keep on spinning, the theatre companies are holding a vigil at the door of the town hall begging for the love of God that the mayor doesn’t do away with what already can’t stave off anyone’s hunger, such a stinking liquid is oozing from the tarmac that nobody wants to know any more, the bars are packed, the prisons are packed, the post office, the immigration queue, the supermarket till, it’s all madness, stop spinning, J., stop spinning, look at me, stop it, let’s go for a vermouth, let’s go and talk to some yoga teacher, let’s drink water with sea salt in the morning, let’s go to nature, get out of this nobodian merry-go-round, let’s go to love, J.
The white-haired woman took M.’s hand, made a sign that it was all fine, for her to calm down, and, out of nowhere, shouted:
— Stop spinning, J. Stop now!
The city was already in shards, no light, no secret, no horn, no sense at all, the rats were passing in procession with the cockroaches, who were loving all that chaos, a lesbian passing by, already out of patience, bought a mango and devoured it right there, three girls in love started spinning in imitation of J., and everything just kept getting worse, and, out of nowhere, the shout of K., J.’s friend, is heard:
— Get out of here, leave J. alone, I’ve got a couple wanting peace and quiet on their honeymoon!
And K. went up to J. The spin was universal, and she hugged J., asked whether J. wanted a chip, to do a doctorate, to spit on the tarmac or to create new wild plants that were being sold in the city. And she asked J. to stop, she still had to go and visit a friend, look for a new flat to live in and, late in the afternoon, she’d have a date with her new boy.
J. stopped, and everything stopped spinning.
The white-haired lady took the hand of M., who knew K., and, before they left, M. hugged K., kissed her shoulders and said to J.:
— You’re not at home, keep your eyes open.
K. asked her to go and took J. by the arms again, stood there still with J. in absolute suspension, J.’s body no longer seemed to spin, to dance.
K. said:
— J., no awkward time, no hour to end. It’s me, K., J.’s friend, remember? It’s me.
And L., K.’s friend, went past on a bicycle, she carries her husband on the bicycle, they were happy, and J. asked:
— Parties where people disappear are becoming trendy in the city, K.?
And K. said:
— I know, whoever disappears knows too, let’s get out of here, out of the street, out of the middle of the street.
And J. was ceasing to be on display to the world through the unchoreographed movements, the sun goes through everything, even the soul of whoever passed by, stopped and was absorbed by J.’s life in dance.
K. took J. by the hand and said:
— Don’t do that again, spinning this whole city, I don’t know, it could spin the world, and we need to think before we spin, understand?
The naked man on the balcony was embarrassed and the neighbour shouted:
— Shameless, if you want to be naked, show the point of it, someone wants to see what you’ve got…
And, out of nowhere, she was interrupted by a bottle of olive oil that exploded at her window.
Twenty-five gay men passing by in celebration after the city’s spin shouted:
— Where are the city’s actives? Actives, passives, equity, capital, shares, stakes, quotas, dividends, royalties, valuation, portfolio, liquidity, profitability, return, capital injection, investment, investors, shareholders, partners, acquisition, merger, incorporation, corporate holding, capitalization, monetization, cash flow, revenue, margin, profit, holding company, investment fund, funding round, venture capital, due diligence! I want to know where I can invest in this city! Aha, woohoo, does anyone want to know the price of my unscented deodorant or of the two-scoop ice cream?
Some thirty-eight white elephants came into the street swinging their trunks every which way and, on their backs, signs reading: peace, love and peppers. From the other end of the street came some eighty-six giant pandas holding coloured balloons reading I love you, and a rock band was born from the tarmac, with guitars, vocals, drums and a sound that shattered all the window panes in the street. A young woman of about twenty-two, in faded vintage clothes, opened her camera and started streaming everything on her social network.
J. and K. were contemplating all this change after the spin in silence.
A crowd started arriving from every direction, the corners filled up, the greengrocer sold everything, the crowd was eating everything, drinking everything, buying everything, giving everything, absolutely everything, and people began to hug each other, to lick each other, and the street slowly flooded with saliva. People couldn’t stop dancing to the band, to the animals, and a storm began to fall, raindrops that, when they hit the ground and the bodies, burst into sentences. One of the drops burst: “CURURU, TO ME, IS A LESBIAN BY THE LAGOON DOING CORÉ-CORÉ…”. The sentence appeared on the pandas’ backs and on the bodies of fifteen hundred naked women crossing the street carrying signs with the same sentence and sucking wild mango. People’s faces changed, their hair changed colour, the language changed, the bodies changed, and people kept licking each other, it was a movement in which everything was licked: lamp post, sun-dried tomato, nail, market crate, suede boot, chicken beak. And there wasn’t a single row, an argument, not a single phone stolen, people just wanted to lick each other, the rain just wanted to shine.
And J. and K. looked at each other, held hands. And everything stopped for a moment, nobody was licking, nobody was moving, the pandas stopped, the elephants stopped swinging their trunks every which way, the band stopped, silence.
And a choir of voices crossed the skies, the earth and the air. And they heard millions singing happy birthday, it was K.’s birthday, sixty years old.
Everything went deaf, the storm’s drops grew, with more explosions of phrases and colours, and people kept on singing and licking each other, and licking each other and changing bodies, faces, names.
And they left in silence, hand in hand, J. and K. turned the corner.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you more.