Tuesday, August 18, 2020

I listen to I Loves You Porgy by the Bill Evans Trio. I read Borges, «El otro, el mismo»

I think of the places where I have enjoyed sadness the most. Venice, in front of the central station in the morning, and in one of its parks in the afternoon. Florence, on the esplanade in front of the Palazzo Pitti. A bookstore in Coyoacán and a café. A cabin on Lake Zirahuén. The road that follows the river Emajõe in Tartu.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Today is my third anniversary in Estonia.

When I feel nostalgic I listen to Rockdrigo and Chava Flores to remember an already buried Mexico that I didn’t know.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

I miss even unlikely things: the buckets of paint that find a new life in the household chores, smelling of floor cleaner; the house of my paternal grandmother where I haven’t set foot in for over a decade, long, narrow and high, with its patio in the background always wet, full of plants and a couple of holey stones that, my grandmother said, were used to store rainwater; my maternal grandmother’s house with Debussy and Chopin always in the background, along with the hubbub of girls studying ballet, and the orange flowers in her patio that my cousins ​​and I used to drink nectar from.

Wednesday August 26, 2020

I listen to Son jarocho, I read El arte de la fuga by Sergio Pitol. The light of the day – a sunny day, astonishingly – enters the apartment filtered by the leaves of the trees shaken by the wind, sifted through the curtains: it vibrates like water. Right now I’m happy.

Monday, August 31, 2020

Suddenly a lot of energy, lots of ideas. I don’t know if it is the beginning of a season or at least a week of inspiration and productivity or if, like so many times before, it will be little more than a sneeze of joy. What I do know is that I want to take full advantage of it because now, for five days, I can take advantage of it.

Every time I feel like this there is already at the beginning a hint of agony, of despair, because I know that it always escapes me, that I am incapable of retaining these moods. It is a prodigious and desired animal, but willful and elusive. It can’t be searched for and even the act of waiting for it seems to dissuade it from showing up. One must simply go on living, distracted, self-absorbed, and suddenly one turns around and there it is, deigning to look at us, benevolent and sovereign. For now I must resign myself to learning the hard art of taking advantage of its presence. Perhaps one day I will learn to summon it.

I know that reading Sergio Pitol is having a beneficial influence on me.