Dragging the leftovers of what remained of the world, J. stopped precisely at the moment of paying for the items J. had bought.
Minutes earlier, amid the weakness brought on by the previous night’s dehydration, J. imagined, or perhaps really saw, a woman getting ready for the sensitive dance on the Rambla del Raval.
J. didn’t know where J. was. A lapse of non-normative perception had taken hold of J.’s head. J. used to invent joy at sad parties.
Meanwhile…
Somewhere else in the universe, the Rambla del Raval.
She crossed it with slow steps, between that dryness and the disorder of tears. A greater hunger. A greater lap. An immense shame. She opens that plastic-coated door and senses the air bleeding. So much pity.
So many answers never given.
Looking down from high in the sky, she perceives a being searching for what no longer exists. Carrying shadow, solitude, the bag empty of food.
Someone must exist somewhere else.
Somewhere else.
A scream echoed.
Another.
And another.
Memory is a hungry animal, she thought.
Deconstruction of the first memory.
Pain.
J. left home on a Saturday afternoon. A bit hungover. The night before, J. had walked the streets. J. wondered what was happening to those calluses. Remembered the earth. Remembered even childhood. J. ended up at the home of a trans friend whom J. adores.
And then J. helped clean the house. With the removal of the dead rat. With the sorting of knickers, false eyelashes and odd shoes.
Before that, J. stopped by the supermarket and bought four bottles of isotonic drink, Aquarius Zero No Added Sugar. The friend loves drinking that liquid with electrolytes and vitamin C during her nights out partying.
I understand.
Some parties never end.
J. has a friend who has been partying since the day he was born.
I also understand his eternal rave.
Afterwards, J. and she sat talking about spaces devoted to marginalized bodies, philosophy, the loves that wear you down, and her former flatmate, who lived there for thirteen days and who, one day, decided to get into a fight in a bar, get into a fight inside her home and, on top of that, break the sink.
Things that only happen in the Raval?
No.
They also happen in Poblenou, Barceloneta, Eixample and anywhere there are people.
Between one beer and the next, a few roars of laughter, the friend decided to throw some things away, and J., of course, helped with all the love and all the lower back pain that has been dragging on for more than a century. J. always deals with it with the courage and optimism of a red onion.
The dead rat, J.’s friend put inside a glass jar. According to her, it would be further proof of the conditions of the place. They want her out of there. It seems the building manager isn’t very fond of her. An idiot, of course.
Not liking J.’s friend is like not liking love.
But there are those who don’t.
The good thing is that she secured the dead rat inside the jar and now she is going to do what she considers important. And it stops it from escaping spiritually, obviously.
J. left there happy. The friend walked J. home. It was a spring night, in the small hours, with phenomenal weather.
The moment they left the friend’s building, other people were leaving a party almost opposite, on the corner. Eight young women emerged amid kisses, hugs and happy fingers. They stood still in the middle of the street in that typical scene of paradise. Nobody belonged to anybody, and everybody together does you good. For those who are there and for those who watch.
J. loves watching these displays of freedom. The young women were there for that. For the saliva that cures everything.
J.’s friend took J. by the arm, gave the typical laugh of someone who wants to buy a new mattress, and off they went, talking about how people drink with no destination.
They walked through the streets as if floating.
People moved along the pathways of the Raval. The windows were switching off their last lights of the night. The upstairs neighbour of J.’s flat seemed cheerful, was talking loudly and was surely dancing at three in the morning.
Her feminine noises were those of someone who was surely dancing.
J. doesn’t know her name, and she probably doesn’t know of J.’s existence, nor J.’s name.
That’s how things happen after three in the morning.
But today is Saturday and J. has decided to go to the shop.
Here is the woman of the sensitive dance. Remember?
J. stops.
She sketches a dance upon grief, upon longing; she knew the end did not exist. In the middle of the Rambla del Raval, before that human aridity, with nothing but the dryness of absences, she begins the ritual of oppression, of doubt and of return.
She cut through headlights, blades in her thoughts, and a part of her heart left her body to perform the protest about existing without invasions. With her feet, her legs and her arms, her body, upon the city’s ground, blended with the pollen falling from the trees of the Rambla. A sacred dust evoking another meaning of the machine-gunned world hung suspended, in silence, as if everything had frozen, static.
The woman of the sensitive dance shuffled J.’s eyes.
A few steps later, J., who wasted no time wondering where the pigeons in the square sleep, reached the supermarket.
J. was very well. Wanted to make a salad, eat chicken breast and be someone else for that weekend. J. had it in mind that anything could happen. J. was feeling sensitive. Really was. J. was far too fond of street festivals, church bells, vermouth and Brazilian tapioca. J. even thought of needing to kiss a mouth or to receive hugs with more tenderness.
I believe what J. really wanted was to buy ice cream, a few cans of beer and go back home. But J. bought healthy food and stood watching, from the queue, the unfolding of that grey-haired man who wouldn’t move.
The girl at the till said the amount, and nothing.
The man remained apathetic, disappearing through his eyes.
A wake was taking place across the street.
The television images exposed the massacred innocents.
The phones were sending terrifying messages.
It could have been just art, but it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a film, nor a broken poem, nor an actress tearing at the ears of the world.
—Sir, you can pay by credit card. Sir, I need you to pay. There are people waiting…
The agitated voices in the queue were already voicing their needs for time. Someone had to get home quickly, make lunch, do the washing, watch the television news, water the plants on the balcony, visit a sick neighbour, attend a wedding.
Too many things were happening in the world and that man remained motionless before the till.
— Call the manager, the zoo guard, call someone. He has to move.
— Take your clothes off, take your clothes off! Shirt, trousers, shirt, underwear, knickers or pants, or nothing, if you’re not wearing anything. Take it all off! — said a little old lady who sold pills for the desire to exist.
— Open his mouth, put one in there. It works. Believe me.
A young white man holding a tray of eggs began to grow furious. Those things offended people do. The omelette he intended to make was far more important and he protested with an almost carnivalesque fury, convinced he knew every universal concept. He had received a good education, studied at great schools and universities and had even spent a while studying off Earth.
Yes.
He lived for a few years on Jupiter.
He has a little holiday home there.
A friendly, empathetic, galactic being.
He was very well grounded. He never had to buy a pencil or a rubber. And he had to make that omelette before noon.
It was destroying his life.
He called his father.
The father called the mother.
The mother called the owner of the city.
The owner of the city called God.
And God, what did He do?
Nothing.
God was into something else. He realized that people were bent on paying for everything, even their own hanging.
God is very clever.
—Sir, say something…
An ambulance pulled up in front of the little shop. The sound of the siren was unbearable. A young woman walked past the establishment carrying her packed lunch to the university; she was shouting that she didn’t want to get wet, and it was raining on campus.
— I don’t want to get wet, I don’t!
The teachers set exercises in class and the students went on searching for dead beauty in art and praying to the dead God of philosophy. There were myths, poems, a new student, and nothing.
Doubts of those who pay to exist.
— Sir, unfortunately I’m going to serve some people before you. It’s impossible to work like this.
He wasn’t worried.
He had no other way of existing.
The shelves began to fall.
The watermelons grew legs and leapt through the aisles full of toppled shelving.
The spinach was singing Brazilian popular music.
The actors were posting yet another appeal on social media in search of new characters.
Everyone left the little shop singing some hymn or other.
They paid for nothing they took.
The place was left empty.
The man remained motionless, observing the silence.
In the streets, demonstrations demanded the end of joy.
The whole city was out of doors.
The cats were roaring with laughter from the windows.
Everything was perfect within the established order.
On the Rambla del Raval, the woman danced in explosion with her heart.
The sublime had been attained.
Impeccable.
An aeroplane crossed the sky with no fixed destination.
A banner.
More banners.
The woman of the Rambla danced with her feminine heart.
And J. dropped everything he wanted to buy right there, on the floor, and walked out of the supermarket…
I’ll tell you more tomorrow…
JFC – BARCELONA – 2026