November 29th, 11:30 p.m.
Before bed I’d begun to think about my day, studying my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Taking a troubling inventory. The usual sneak preview, unfurling itself in the form of a corkscrew, or in spirals; something that will probably be noticeable at some point, if I survive a few years, or more, I thought, searching out a little hope. I lay down in pain. It’s the pain of each day, a migratory pain; one day it appears in one part of the body, for a little variation in this whimsical ache, in this swelling; in the muscles of my neck, of my arms.
The pool, I also thought of the pool, and of the work to be done.
For a while now, actually putting my plans into action has been like rolling a mythical stone uphill. Getting around and pushing myself, going to the YMCA, I ought to start swimming, I repeat to myself and I sleep, before bed I skim the profiles of the next day’s obligations and I repress the thought, I fall.

November 30th, early morning
I had a dream, I’ve just slipped out of it. A pleasant dream; in the beginning, a woman unseen, but long desired, sat down by my side, wrote by hand in a little notebook (they say that the faces we see in dreams are real faces we’ve seen at some point in life, but it’s a lie). It made me happy to see the pleasure with which her hand flowed over the paper, writing out each word. Species. An endangered species. A stabbing pain pierces my sternum, I lose my breath, and suddenly I’m on a nearly empty bus, traveling along a Caracas highway, the sharp pain continues, it spreads upwards from the base of the skull, I imagine an invisible loaded gun pressing into it, hot and about to go off. I’m holding my youngest daughter in my arms and one of the seats has caught fire. My daughter in my arms, the driver accelerates, the woman sketches the words in her little notebook and I scream, stop. Stop. Stop!

A little later on, that morning.
The scream was real; my wife’s awake now and is trying to calm me. I don’t tell her my nightmare, the alarm goes off in the room next door, an automatic and irritating kind of rooster call.
I ache. I whine. It’s no secret, everyone in the house knows of the pain that’s been traveling through my body for months now.
The pool, I should arrange things so that I can do an hour of swimming. It’s ok, but I go down to the dining room and sink into the aroma coming from the percolator. It’s a pleasure to smell it and to enjoy it. In any case, I should write and think, and solve the dilemma: whether to write the autobiographical piece that’s been haunting me for some time now, and which I still don’t see, or to descend further into the formal marshes in which I’ve wandered lately, in search of dystopia?
The whole system’s on and running, tablets, smartphones, and computers. I remember the woman from my dream, passing her hand over the surface of the little notebook. That’s all.
The day will be divided between reading The Legend of Arthur, Dracula in English, trying to study the grammar of the language I’m learning. I should stay away from activities of procrastination, pointless arguments, avalanches of information, etc.

Night.
I worked my shift rummaging around for hope, thinking there’s still time to carry out my routines, my improvements, swimming, writing, reading. Telling myself lies and trying not to believe them. Mixing different factors and turning them on their heads, gathering others and making sure I move along the fabric of a storyline, confronting all antagonistic forces, from A to Z.
I can’t run as fast as I once could, that is one thing pain does. I should learn to slip through the water like a skipping stone or a piece of corkwood.



See also:
[Selva Almada] [Maximiliano Barrientos]