The absurd

Because I can only question.

Cabo Rojo

I press the slice of lemon into the bottle, plug my thumb in and turn the bottle the upside down. The lemon goes up, dragging little bubbles on the way. I check my e-mail barefoot at the terrace of the bar with the sound of the waves crashing next to me. I should be happy.

Chr_nology

7:38 The neighbor has a birdhouse. As I was getting dressed this morning I was trying to remember whether the known whistle from one of the birds is originally its own or mine. I can’t tell anymore. I checked my e-mail, drank my watered-down coffee and took a picture of Camille sleeping before I left.
8:50 It’s absurd how much I enjoy to drive alone. I hate to arrive; it ruins all the fun. Today I concluded that this makes no sense as I am supposed to enjoy carpooling and public transportation rather. But I don’t. I realized I am, deep down, an egotistical, individualist, atomized being. So I made a lame apology to myself for being so ordinary, forgave myself immediately, of course, and kept singing.
9:40 Then I had to park and the day officially started.
10:00 I always torture myself picking five to six frames that look exactly the same at the optometrist; it gives me something to do later on. This time I went for the Goddard style with the little tip on the sides. Once in the waiting room the other optometrist made me think of Kiwi; he would have given her a 10. My checkup, however, was, far from pleasing, more like a scene from Lost In Translation. They all looked the same, like the burgundy carpet. I wondered if the optometrist could tell when one doesn’t really care and is simply naming letters randomly, like my Z that was really an X; I called both. Tonight I will surely have my yearly nightmare in which I chose the wrong glasses and can’t see at all. Why can’t they just guess the prescription?
12:04 I left, happy to have been in the mall and NOT bought a thing… Ok, I bought a pretzel, but that was it. As I left, the security guy came by to supervise the two ladies fighting over my parking spot.
12:30 I got lost in Miramar, which made for a good conversation with myself about my sense of direction and with the other cars for not showing me how to get out. I passed Paco’s (the photographer) house, my parents’ favorite restaurant, the new conservatory…
Eventually, I found my way to Carolina. “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” was playing; I thought it appropriate for the occasion.
…
6:20 If I’d have to choose, I would still say that the visit to the optometrist was the worst part - worse than 5:20. I took the long way back home.
9:24 I removed an O.

Got Jesus?

As I was handing my ticket to the flight attendant the girl in front of me turned and said “¡Hola, Denise!” … Yes, of course, from high school! “Patricia! ¡Hola!” It turns out we were seating next to each other’s row and Raquel, another friend from college was seating behind us. So we all decided to occupy a row, so the people around didn’t have to listen to our loud complaints about grad studies, long trips, final papers and common friends who either are married, or have kids already. Raquel studies Literature in Philadelphia, Patricia Biology in Pamplona. We had a lively conversation for a while. However, none of us had slept for the past two days so we took a nap for the rest of ride, leaving the others around us at peace.
We woke up when we could see the lights on the shore. Raquel said she dreamt something about me becoming a soccer mom and laughing like mine. Patricia had gotten over her dizziness and wondered how her boyfriend would spend the night sleeping on a bench back the airport in Philadelphia before coming home tomorrow. I just wished I could be dropped home and not have to go by car all the way back.
As we were approaching, I thought of how anticlimactic it is to arrive so soon. Raquel asked me if I would applaud; a very difficult question, indeed. Upon landing, just as the cabin lights were turned on again all three ladies sitting in front of us took out a comb and fixed their hair. They then finished with hairspray. Yes, in an airplane.
We grabbed our bags and said goodbye. I looked around for my family. I expected my sister to have stuck her nose to the glass window, but, alas, they weren’t there. I called my mother. They were still home! I was abandoned at the airport at midnight! So I did what all abandoned children do: I went to Wendy’s.
An hour later, as I was putting my bags in the trunk, I realized that our car now has a sticker that says “Got Jesus?” I thought it was tacky, but I got five hugs after that, so there are no hard feelings.
And then we arrived home. I’m pretty sure the dog was about to have a heart attack. There was dessert in the fridge, which I had with the lactose free milk that they now drink. There is, for the first time, a real tree (technically dead now), creatively (?) decorated by Camille, which beats anytime the lifeless, dusty, smelly, crappy tree from Kmart. I got a plastic cup in the bathroom on which my sister wrote my name even though I never use those and a very ugly t-shirt from the pediatric center of diabetes, that I can’t but wear proudly. My mother already made me part of a million appointments for which she feels she needn’t ask my permission. The chair in the office still squeaks. My closet still makes me sneeze. My old books are still piled up everywhere. I can hear the crickets and coquíes outside. I guess I got home.

Syntax: A First Attempt

I should have taken a bus all the way to Florida. I don’t like airports; they smell like hospitals and have too many stores. I also think they suffer a total lack of common sense and a saturation of paranoia. I arrived too early and now I pretend I’m doing something lest I should have to watch one of the twenty television screens surrounding me. I had the opportunity to leave earlier, but I was hungry and didn’t feel like lunching peanuts and diet Coke. There was a man who looked just like Gerson at the food court. As I was eating I entertained myself judging people by what they were eating; then I realized I was eating pizza with a small drink that would be extra large in any other country. I bought a fruit salad though.
I stayed awake during the first bus trip; of course, I drank a cup of coffee at 4:00 in the morning. I’m pretty sure I was the only one awake except for the driver, who shouldn’t have a license; I blame his driving and the caffeine for the thought of a lighted bridge belonging to the Amish. Eventually everything began to look the same; it was dark so I only saw the moon and the shades of the hills and trees. Every now and then a town by the slope of a mountain would appear briefly. I thought of my grandma’s little villages under the Christmas tree; they are certainly designed after any given town of Pennsylvania. Perhaps State College has always been under our Christmas trees. Bad thought.
John Sánchez has to return to security. I still have two hours to waste. The gate next to mine is boarding to JFK. Deep breath, Denise.
The stops: a town where there was an Econo Lodge, a restaurant named Restaurant and a coffee place by the bus stop called The Stop; all sizes were 69¢. A small stop. A short stop. A stop by an office. A stop by the PENNDOT. A stop at a corner. Two students tried to get down and the driver yelled at them and told them to get back inside and sleep. At Harrisburg, two ladies stole my seat so I waited by the door and hated all who opened it letting the wind in. On the way here, I learned that the lady sitting by me had worked twelve years in PSU at the Eisenhower Chapel. She was meeting her son, who is celebrating Thanksgiving with Puerto Ricans, or so I understood; keep in mind that the lady woke me up to talk about her back lesion and her son so I’m not really sure what she said.
I’m off to buy coffee; I still have to smile upon arrival.

Un sábado cualquiera

Son las 4 :30 de la tarde, y sí, ando en piyamas. Deal with it. De hecho, mi compañera de apartamento, Hasti, también anda por ahí en piyamas. Ella cocina un plato iraní para llevar a la fiesta de sus amigos. Yo termino de leer el capítulo del modo interpersonal para la clase de pedagogía. La bibliografía anotada sobre el anarquismo a finales del siglo XIX tendrá que esperar a mañana, porque, hoy, voy al cine.
Esta semana me deshice de la ansiedad que me ha asediado desde principios del otoño, porque, no se equivoque, el otoño no es la temporada más agradable del año. Desde finales de septiembre se viene anunciando. Mientras que en Nueva York teníamos que hacer excursiones para “ver” el otoño en un parque cualquiera, en State College el otoño te invade tan pronto abres la puerta. Día tras día, los árboles se toman turnos para cambiar de color. Me parece que los más jóvenes cambiaron más tarde; los viejos se acogieron al cambio tan rápidamente que no puedo más que pensar que se resignan a un invierno más, como los unionados a las vacaciones y a las huelgas.
Pero luego del cambio de color, comenzó la tragedia. Cada día estaba más y más ansiosa de que se cayesen las hojas.; siempre me ha asustado lo inevitable. Ya en octubre las hojas atacaban a la gente que caminaba felizmente por el campus. Siempre olvidé tomar fotos; nunca me importó mucho cargar con la cámara al salir de casa, creo que es porque aún le guardo rencor al pueblito y sus árboles, aún en todo su esplendor, han pagado mi desprecio. Y así me encontré rápidamente en un círculo vicioso de ansiedad: me agrada el cambio aunque no creo que el pueblo merezca tanta belleza, por lo cual, nunca tomé fotos a pesar de que sentía desperdiciar cada hoja que vi caer; deje que lo efímero fuese exactamente eso… Y se acabó el otoño.
Con la primera nevada, dos días antes de Halloween, me dejé de cosas. Ya nevó. Ya se acabó lo bonito. Me dejé de pensamientos melancólicos de jíbara que nunca ha visto un otoño de película. Me resigné a esperar el largo invierno que prometen los árboles y mis estudiantes. Seré normal y pensaré las temporadas como oportunidades para comprar algo, no sé, un abrigo, veinte abrigos, dos bufandas, té…

Productos lácteos

Voici Candice, la vaca disfrazada de letrero del metro. Parte de la pizarra/imán de nuestra nevera, útil, en teoría, para la lista de compra y las cuentas del supermercado, Candice padece de crisis de identidad. Creemos que puede ser debido a que es ciudadana de la república (!) francesa, bretona o, claramente, adicta a la cafeína. En poco más de un mes, nuestra vaca ha sido sujeto de la clase media en los suburbios de París, la profesora de etnografía cuya única respuesta a todo cuanto puede decir un estudiante es un prolongado “¡Mmmmm!” y nuestro vecino misterioso, el cual Anna ha bautizado “the moaner”. De éste último no tengo fotos; basta con imaginar una mezcla sonora de borrachera, bulimia, cáncer estomacal, catarro y guille de fantasma, acompañado de una risa frenética luego de sus ataques. Esta semana, Candice es Josh, quien, a su vez, se cree Hillary Clinton; es, pues, como una meta-crisis de identidad (porque todo lo meta suena inteligente).
Fait-divers. El chófer de la guagua pública de al lado guiaba con el mapa mano para hacer el viaje más entretenido. En la retirada de la comuna de 1871, los parisinos intentaron derretir la torre de la Bastilla insertando barcos en llamas en los túneles bajo la plaza del obelisco. Por el contrario, el fuego sólo quemó los restos de algunos faraones egipcios que el Louvre había enterrado bajo la plaza. Bajo los Champs Elysées hay un arsenal de armas nucleares. Vivo cerca de aquel café al que fuimos la vez primera.
Apprivoiser. Ando sin el mapa bajo la nariz. Me entretengo demasiado en la sección de lácteos. He vuelto al té (Me 1, Tea 0); al menos de eso siempre sirven una taza y no un 'shot'.
Étudier. Ahora que sólo recomienzo, pienso en lo oportuno que sería la caída de un meteoro del tamaño de país. Geográficamente, sólo se pierde el espacio de Texas (el cual tampoco sirve de mucho). Hay vino en otros países y se podrían reubicar todas la vacas antes del evento. España y Portugal serían una isla, lo cual sería bonito, y Alemania podría tener, por fin, su espacio político correspondiente según la teoría de supervivencia del más apto (de acuerdo a Denise). Igual, la gente anda de vacaciones desde la semana pasada y, según descubrí mientras buscaba en vano a gente para entrevistar, medio país se va de viaje durante las vacaciones. Así, al regresar de sus viajes, quedarían unos cuantos franceses para facilitar los documentales del Discovery Channel y uno que otro libro de sandeces nostálgicas sobre la memoria colectiva. Por último, eso me haría estudiante de historia, al fin deshaciéndome del apellido ‘civilización’, el cual logra ser tan ambiguo como ingenuo…
Decidida, pues, a abandonar el campo, me matriculé en cursos de Pennsylvania Dutch.
Las otras dos vacas se llaman Elsie y Clara.