A Different Drum

When I came back from the sleazy bar to which I went automatically every Friday by 4:05 in the afternoon, I found her in the threshold of my crisis. Everything seemed contradictory for me. If my predisposition of fucking the world indicated that I should simply fuck her, why did I hesitate? The conscience has never played an important roll in my impulsive decisions. My body, in its balance and natural harmony gives me signals... certain impulses.

What the majority of people would consider impulsive actions, not pre-thought actions, I consider them instinctive actions. And it's fair to give credit to your instinct. I don't want to minimize the brain's importance, the logic thinking. But there are more things. The problem is that the man insists on synthesizing: the less, the better. If I understand something, I stay there. The so called, comfort zones.

Anyway, in the end I didn't fuck her. I didn't follow my instinct, and I did follow some... guidelines... moral? I've always complained about the moral. I think it's bullshit for the minds and modern perceptions, having to feel ourselves tied to commandments of past societies. Societies that have a little or nothing to do with me. But my intellectual posture doesn't matter to her. She attacked me. Hard.

I asked her – with that vague idea I have of being a gentleman – to leave. I had no interest in fucking her. There was something very nasty in the idea of having sex with a .. dead woman... don't-- don't judge me. It's not something literal, what I mean is that it would've felt dead, empty. I don't know. I think neither my body, not my mind have to do with it, or anything of metaphysics in my decision and change. It's a third person.

Her name is Cathy.

She took me out of my comfort zone.

Regressions

Do you remember that old man with cloudy eyes? That old man that stuttered every time he called you. That great man whose wrinkled skin showed you, centimeter by centimeter, a story filled with struggles, happiness, frustrations, loves, forests, seas, and fruits. That old man who was young sometime before and whose hand you held as support not to fall. That man who you considered your hero at least once. The one you didn't see during the day sometimes, and you simply resigned to dream of during the night.

That kind and tender person which you ignored for the most part of your life. The one you denied. Do you remember in secondary school or high school? Remember how you blushed with shame... SHAME...because your friends might see you on that great man's side? Now you only have the memory, and you cry, and you talk about him, and you want to take his hand and make sure everyone sees you by his side.

But those gems are perishable. The things that matter, the things we care about and we stick to the most are destined to stop existing physically. And your are a perfect example of this eternal irony. The human as an eternal adolescent, who doesn't know what he/she wants, and never learns to value anything. What a sad story the one of the father that's always there for his kids, even when those kids don't want to know anything about their father. It's the “natural” road, unfair and hard. Because they are the ones that are only left with their white hair, their wrinkles, and their labyrinth of random and fantastic memories; the ones that stay alone at the end.

I see old people. Those men whose eyes hide piercing screams that cry for company... for the no-annulment. I don't even want to imagine the memories, regrets, laments, and cries that are trapped in their deathbed, when they're surrounded by faces and silhouettes that are now hard to decipher. They must cry in silence. Cry behind a peaceful face.

And you, as part of those undecipherable and unrecognizable faces, just observe with incredulity how something that seemed eternal extinguishes slowly, at the rhythm of the erratic shaking of his hands. And is in that final irony when, if you pay attention, you could hear a spectral whisper, filled with calm, that says: “you've had me for years... don't torture yourself... take my hand and we'll be in peace.”

_______________________________________

To my father,

Leonard Cohen said

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

I've never denied you, I've never been ashamed by you, I've always admired you.
But I cannot stop feeling that I owe you so much.
I hope there are no final moments filled with guilt or regrets.

I love you, I respect you, and thank you for everything you have sacrificed for your kids,
the ashes of your life, the poems of an idealist and a dreamer.

Eight

Do you believe in inexplicable connections, almost magical, with something or someone?

I don't know if it's an obsession of mine for trying to find a proof of transcendental elements in a world where the spiritual and the magic are judged as stupidities. But the eight has followed me... I'm sure, and I'm stubborn about it.

Salvador, my name, has eight letters.

Martínez, my second last name, has eight letters.

When I lived in San Nicolás, my house had the number 208.

My actual home has the number 208.

The apartment I live in is number 1808, in a building with number 588.

My first feature script is around eighty-something pages in its first draft.

My student number in ITESM was 595888.

My girlfriend since almost eight years and now fiancé is called Gabriela: eight letters.

The first phone number I remember was 76-88-83.

My musical idol is called Bob Dylan: eight letters.

My cinematographic idol's last name is Scorsese: eight letters.

There are many things that connect me to that number. Why? I don't know, and I'm not interested in knowing. Is part of giving life the credit of its capability to surprise. I'm sure that if I make a deep analysis of my life and what surrounds me, I would find many other things.

Blessed eight, until now it has been a great trip. Lets stay together.