There is no clearer sign that, with this virus, things are getting back to normal than the fact that your next-door neighbor is doing work on his house. It will seem silly, but yesterday I realized that the sound of a drill above your head can be the most unequivocal indication that the world has started up again. A few hammer blows at nap time are enough for you to receive a good dose of the harshest reality.
When you open your eyes, I felt a little confused. Just a moment before, I was dreaming about something. At first, the dream remained fresh and clear in my memory, as if I were still in that other world from which they had taken me so abruptly. After a few seconds, I would still be able to retain some detail, a loose and imprecise image, the memory of a sound, something he had said to someone he was talking to, a feeling. Then, I forgot the dream completely. Dreams are a very strange thing. In a moment, You are in a world with rules that seem most logical and reasonable to you and, suddenly, You realize that that didn't make the slightest sense.. It's curious.
They say that dreams are a reflection of the conflicts that corrode us or that we suffer inside.. And I have always felt that this is strictly so. in my childhood, I frequently dreamed of a very ugly monster coming out of my bedroom closet., fruit of the fear I had, during those years, to the darkness. When I'm older, when I was a teenager, I dreamed that I was falling off a cliff, metaphor for a motorcycle accident I had one summer in which I broke my leg and which haunted me for a long time. Later, in the most complicated moments of my marriage, I dreamed about a girl I wanted to date when I was in college. a girl who, by the way, when I proposed it, He told me that he didn't even want to see me in painting., thing that, safe, caused me some kind of trauma, something that I believed made me unable to maintain a serious and lasting relationship..
I must admit that these months of confinement have been the strangest for me.. There were days when I felt like I was out of my own body and others when, other way round, Not only did I feel more integrated with myself than I have ever felt before., but, besides, I let myself be invaded by a strange feeling of harmony with the environment, with the house, with my family, with the neighborhood where I live, with my city… What the hell, with my country! (I recognize it, I have a patriotic streak that I didn't know I had until now.). As I have tested, I'm not a particularly sociable guy. I do not know if this peculiarity of my character is due exclusively to myself. (some other trauma that I must have repressed) or the time we have had to live, in which people go to theirs without looking at what happens to the next person. But, during these weeks in which we have been locked in our homes, in some way that has been new to me, There were moments when I felt especially united with my peers., to your little problems, to your needs, for a while, They were also the same problems and needs that I had..
The relationship with my neighbor has been, since we met, more or less cordial. Neither too friendly nor quite the opposite. He's a weird guy, that must be taken into account. When I pass him on the landing of my house and greet him, He always responds to me with a kind of snort.. I never know if he's responding to my greeting or telling me to fuck off., but, although what he does seems in bad taste to me, I never say anything to him about having the party in peace.. Bueno, for that and because he is a tall and burly guy with whom I would not like to have any confrontation. What do you want me to tell you?, intimidates me. However, apart from the greetings, It doesn't usually bother me much. I only remember one occasion when, believing it was the work of one of his older sons, a teenager with panicle-colored hair who is a pure carbon copy of him, I knocked on the door of his house to ask him to turn down the music he had at full volume and I heard as if the speaker he was using was inside my home.. When he opened me, clad in a cloth robe, fresh out of the shower, I almost had a heart attack. Or those other nights when it seems like he's walking from one side of the apartment to the other, striding until the wee hours of the morning. What will it do?, I wonder every time I hear him hitting. Do you have insomnia? I haven't figured it out yet. But, despite these differences (It is clear that I will never go to him to ask for an egg, much less aspire to a more formal friendship.), During this confinement we have gotten along relatively well. And these situations make you see things differently., nerdier, if you want, I don't know, more human. I didn't want to get my hopes up about it., but I think that, at some point, in one of our many exchanges of greetings and snorts on the landing, I thought he smiled at me.
The beatings lasted all afternoon and as, since the pandemic broke out, I'm working at home, It took me a lot of effort to stay focused.. In the end, I had to take an aspirin. Late afternoon, when I went out for my walk, I ran into him again on the landing of our apartment. After the usual strange exchange of greetings, I dared to ask him if he had started what seemed like some renovation work in his house. Given his clear affirmative response, I also started to ask him how long he thought they would last.. He told me that things are going to, at least, three full weeks. It looks like the kitchen and a bathroom are being renovated..
And I don't know why it is, But I must say that this dream thing is certainly very treacherous.. He always discovers us. The point is that, when I got into bed that night, I would have sworn that I had already forgotten about the works issue. But later, around five in the morning, I woke up suddenly. So, I realized I was drenched in thick, cold sweat.. And I was already in the bathroom, in front of the toilet, doing my needs, when, even though a few seconds had passed, the image assaulted me, alive and crystalline, to the head and I remembered. I had been dreaming that I killed my neighbor. And for the record, it wasn't so much because of the noise., as i think. What I do not forgive him for is that he took me out of the fantasy world in which I have lived these two months and returned me, in that abrupt way, to fucking reality. GERARDO LEON
