Stuck on the living room couch like a bear belly up, He started thinking about all the things he would do when they let him out.. First, he would go visit his mother, whom I had not seen for so long, except for video chat. Not that I had anything new to tell him.. In fact, I talked to her almost every day, but it wasn't the same as seeing each other face to face, in person. See each other face to face again, in flesh and blood, at will, I would be, he imagined, the sign that they had regained their lost freedom. Then, I was planning to take a long walk through the city. He would leave his house and start in any direction and would not stop walking until his legs told him enough., we have come this far, it's over. On the way, I would walk the usual streets, but not as always, Of course, if not otherwise, different. in your imagination, everything from before, now it seemed new, another thing. Even breathing the polluted air of the large avenues seemed like a luxury that he did not want to deprive himself of when he went out.. He would walk through parks and go into dead ends just for the pleasure of exploring still unknown spaces., for the pure delight of letting yourself be carried away by your intuition. He closed his eyes and, suddenly, He saw himself sitting on the terrace of that bar near the center that he liked so much.. at the table, under the shade of a banana tree, a very cold beer, golden color, white foam on his mustache, under the nose. He licked his lips thinking about the first sip..
Lying belly up on the couch, swore that, yet, I would not lose the new customs I had acquired during the quarantine. Now that I had gotten the taste for doing gymnastics, something I haven't done since high school, He promised himself that he wouldn't miss a beat. He had been hooked on classes at one of those for weeks. influencers that a friend had recommended to her and she had realized that they were doing her very well. I would finish the list of books that I had stacked on the coffee table in the living room, without leaving one or skipping the order that he had programmed just for the pleasure of provoking the damn impatience. According to this agenda, would restrict his hours of television to what is merely essential. A while during the meal, to watch the news, and then another time at night, after dinner, If there was something that interested you. Otherwise, he would pick up the book he had started and start reading. No more spending hours in front of the screen, alienated, out of pure boredom. A revolution had begun and now it could not be left halfway, thought.
Continuing with your scrutiny, He promised himself that he would continue practicing all those new dishes he had been cooking these days.. In the long month that he had already been locked in the apartment, I had tried everything, desserts, roasted, soup, and he had discovered that he was not so bad at it. He, who had never fried an egg, now it felt like those chefs from the TV. If he didn't give him time before he was allowed to leave the house, I would finish painting the bedroom closet that I had been sanding according to the advice I had gotten from an Internet tutorial. And, in the end, the experiment went well, I was thinking of doing the same with the table and chairs in the living room and, then, with the study bookshelf. The house needed a makeover and now that the process had begun, I didn't plan to abandon it. In the same way, lying belly up on the sofa, He promised himself that he would continue maintaining all the relationships that he had been reviewing these days of confinement. old friends, relatives with whom he had previously barely spoken more than occasionally and with whom he had now discovered that he could carry on an animated conversation.
But, If there was something he felt committed to, it was that book he had finally started writing.. The idea had been on his mind for a long time.. He remembered the exact day it occurred to him. It happened one summer night, when I was twenty years old and still studying at university. Suddenly, He looked up at the sky and saw her.. It was an instant. It was like a shooting star, but it wasn't exactly a shooting star. It wasn't a plane either., I was very sure of that. The fact is that that light, which then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, made him imagine that it would trigger a series of events that would end up causing a change in the order of the world. The solution to the plot had not yet been completely outlined and there were characters that I intuited., but whose function in history had not yet been resolved. What he was clear about was that it would be a story constructed with a style different from anything he had read until then.. Actually, It wasn't a story per se.. Era, rather, a treaty. A kind of fictional essay that would move between the para-scientific rigor of an Asimov, the detective tone and, at once, K's metaphysician. Dick, finally combined with a good dose of that taste for the social criticism of old George Orwell. Said like this, it might seem like a mess, but in his head it was, Of course, a masterpiece.
Lying belly up on the sofa in his living room, I thought about all this. In the last days, He had heard news everywhere about the new world that was coming after the pandemic and he was clear that he wanted to be part of it.. Things couldn't go on the same as always.. Something had to change and that change would come., definitely, of this deep process of self-analysis that they had undergone during the confinement, individually, but, above all, as a society, as a group. The plan turned out, at a glance, very attractive, but, if I thought about it a little more seriously, he was wondering, What exactly was that change?? What were your guidelines?? So, He remembered what everything was like and realized that, normality back, all those obstacles that stood in the way of his good intentions and projects would also return..
And he, in the background, I knew that, when order was restored, would forget to call friends, like I did now (and his friends would forget to call him, each entangled in their own personal commitments). I knew that, if you gave him time, I would finish the bedroom closet, but the rest of the furniture, it would be seen. After all, He wasn't as crafty as he had thought when he started.. The cooking thing, well then, maybe he would keep that. In any of the cases, I had to eat. He didn't like television, but he also quickly realized that, then, When I came home tired from work and didn't feel like doing anything, It would be easier for him to “connect” to one of those stupid programs he watched, before starting to read, task that always demanded much more effort and attention. and time. We don't even talk about gymnastics. The beer thing, Yeah. I would do it with the same frequency as before.. I would take your walks, of course, shorter than I had imagined, well I also knew that, once the extraordinary became ordinary again, I would lose that illusion of novelty. And as for his mother, maybe he preferred to talk to her on the phone, after all. This would save a lot of trouble.. If the woman weren't so nosy, thought. I was tired of him getting into everything I did or said.. Sometimes, That made him very nervous and a little distance wasn't bad either..
and the novel. Bueno, the novel. Yeah. After five days working on the text, I had left it aside to rest. After smudging several pages, He had left them in a drawer and tried to forget about them.. With this strategy, I hoped to get them out several days later, in order to read them fresher, trying not to let it influence him now how much he had fought with that comma, with that point, with that point and aside. At last, he decided to take it back. when he read it, he was paralyzed. The truth is that that was real garbage.. It didn't make the slightest sense, a pure wandering towards a “no one knows where” that not even he himself, that I had written it, was capable of basting with a minimum of coherence. Where was that going??, he wondered. He got a headache. He took an aspirin and lay face down on the living room couch.. He fell asleep. when he woke up, he felt like a new man. Again, that feeling of fullness that had invaded him before reading the pages returned. He thought that he should not be discouraged. A stumble is not a complete failure, it was said. It was just a phase towards the next step. After all, It was the first thing I wrote. Maybe the problem was that he had set his expectations too high.. So, satisfied, He turned around on the couch and thought let's see when they let him out.. I needed to take a walk, see everything from a whole new perspective. He had been locked up for too long.. After, happy to see things differently, he turned around and thought: now I get up. GERARDO LEON
