The Unexpected

THE COCKROACH

11/05/23. Abrera, Barcelona.

      Three days ago, in a row I had a cockroach at my front door. (Beside the small Buddha statue) On the first day I was scared (How stupid of me, really!) On the second day I was surprised! And annoyed at her… and swept her off again! But on the third day I looked at her in astonishment: is she trying to tell me something? She wondered off, of course, as she saw the brush coming…

I was curious… so, I looked it up on the internet. And it seems that in many ancient cultures such as the Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian, American native… when a cockroach appears is a sign of good omen, and a message of resilience and strength in difficult times… oh! I thought I was hostile, and all the while She was trying to make me feel better…! I felt so bad. How could I make it up to her! But I couldn’t.

I realized then that I had been the scary thing to her! And that perhaps every little creature and being that comes into our lives is for a reason. Sometimes we might believe them to be a problem, but in reality, they will probably turn out to be a valuable learning lesson about ourselves: so, my little friend, next time you come back, I will not brush you off again, but I will let you be in peace to spread your knowledge: as for one thing I should not be afraid of such a harmless little creature! Or be annoyed and so quickly dismissive of a being that poses no threat or menace to me… something to reflect upon…

US AND HIM

05/06/23. Abrera, Barcelona.

(Psychology business, stream of consciousness)

      It might have afforded her some consolation to know that he did notice her, in a subtle gentle way. She captured his attention, not because of any beauty at first, but because she was direct, outspoken, and yet, shy. She seemed to be embarrassed of certain things and yet she was unabashed and unashamed about others. He knew some secret of hers, one that she had only spoken while sleep on the operating theatre. She had been gently drugged that day, and as it seemed that kind of unesthetic was not as strong of a dose as when you would be fully operated upon, as it would be the case in a few months’ time. In the meantime, she was there smiling about something she had said, but he was just pretending to listen, and nodding. He was observing her legs now. They were long but small, and she had a mark in her left thigh, a small dark mark, the size of a little finger, shaped like an inverted squashed north America. She moved with agility despite her recent operation, she reminded him of small wild deer that had been captured and submitted to all sorts of formalities, as she was now restraining herself. Although every now and then a bobble escaped of her mouth saying something unusual, not inappropriate, but somehow unorthodox that showed him that she cared for him. She loved him, very much, but it was a different kind of love: it was not passionate to start with. Not that it could not be if things were different, but they were not. She loved him with a mix of tenderness, fraternity, loyalty and disinterestedness, and sexuality, that although she would love him to be with her, she wasn’t sure what kind of ‘’being with her’’ she would like. She would like for instance they became friends at first and develop an affectionate bonding that would allow her to be especial to him. She would like to move him inside with her gentle smile and curves, with her deep hazelnut eyes deep like an infinite well full of thoughts and emotions, and to carry him away with them and stay there for an infinite moment that would tell her that he liked her too.

      But he didn’t. He never used to talk much, and then she made that blunder of a comment that would hunt her forever ‘are you happy?’ why? Why in the name of God did she ask him that out of the blue, in the middle of no conversation at all, while lying in a stretcher being checked up inside. Oh my God, that was clumsy, and yet; that was what came out of her spontaneously, without even thinking, because she cared. He didn’t notice it at first, he just replied casually, like nothing, like if she had just asked him about the weather, ‘fine’ he said. ‘There aren’t many covid cases now around, things seem to be better.’ That is what he answered. He was good at getting out of sticky situations, and she was grateful all the same that he was skilful enough to make sound natural what could have been embarrassing. Did he know then that he loved him or was it before? When one of his nurses handed him an envelop with her name in it, an inside a letter that gave nothing away except gratitude and yet, it said it all.

He didn’t reply of course, he did however send her a WhatsApp three weeks later after the operation, twenty minutes after she had been to see him for a check-up after the intervention. The WA said ‘a million thanks for the little present.

      Decisions, decisions, decisions… decisions that carry us away and condition our entire life: I was only twenty-one and I felt lonely, and I wanted a family, and I chose wrong, because I was insecure and lacking in abilities, or so I thought then. Twenty-eight years past, when I was so young, decisions made that change my life for life. Yet that girl had ceased to exist, but she had to live with the decisions taken then: a marriage that ended in disaster and two sons, two sons that she wanted to have then, and naïve she, thought they will bring her love and joy forever: well no. Maybe they would have chosen not to be had, like many people in this planet. After all, we are not asked whether we want to come to the world or not, we are simply had, out of the lust, desires and wantings of others. Some spirituals would believe we do want to come, and we choose our parents before coming. But the fact remains: I don’t recall it at all, and if I was to be asked now, I don’t think I would choose to come nor my parents. And so many of us people go on wondering why we are here in the first place. To go on in a merry-go-round of eternal births and deaths and whatever learning we have acquired from previous lives, I don’t know if it is registered in the following one. Still, here we are living with our many past decisions of a time when we would not be recognised anymore, and yet, we still must live we those bold decisions. Scars that we must bear for life.

      Who am I? a mix between a devil and a saint, or something in between I suppose like most human being? We have felt like something or the other, and we feel like one or the other when we react, feel, and suppress emotions that we would rather express, but we cannot. I wish for instance to spit on my husband when he gets angry and throughs the pity act on me, because he is got cancer and anything you tell him he doesn’t like he starts to victimize and feeling sorry for himself; he disgusts me during this times, and then I feel like a witch in hell, but I wish to hit him on the hear and push him away and tell him to drop dead and live me alone and let me be free and run wild. I wish to tell those two grown boys the same: to go away and let me be free, that I am sick of their dependence on me and that is twenty six and twenty four year they been clinging on me for food and housekeeping and that I am sick to the teeth, and that I don’t want to pretend anymore with him either and feel angry if I please. But I can’t because he makes such a fuss then on me, that he will not leave me alone feeling pitiful, and I am so sick of it, sick, sick, sick.

But I can’t run away. I have to stay, I need him, he needs me and so we will go on, pretending that we love each other so much, at least I will, dreaming about a better life, a free life like when I was fourteen, except that now I am forty-nine, and I have lived half the way of my life and still not free. And decision I made have tied me down over and over again. And so here we are.

We are not Indians in the forest: we need money, and we need to work and pay for things. And even if we were in the forest, we would still need to be with a group to help each other for our subsistence. So, we are tied down, we are always died down.  

      Only when we are in love, we don’t mind being bound to someone, because we need them. But the spell, runs out, last only a few years, and then, you are left with the reality: you are tied down.

Everybody tells me I must be good, a good girl for him, make him comfortable and happy and tranquil, when all I want is to scream to the top of my lungs and run away.

I got to hide, lock inside in oppression and missentiment. I don’t know what I love, who I love and why anymore.

      He was my escape route, he is still sometimes, dreaming about our encounters that are nothing, that mean nothing, and yet, they make me fly. They remind me of something, someone I was, happy, and with expectations of something good. Of myself being good and perfect and beautiful still, and free like a flying bird in the sky.

It is dependence of someone love at all, being used to someone and the routine. We love them because we are used to them? or our brain somehow needs them and the company; after all it is necessary… I will go back to my books in the meantime and hope for a better future and that stability will make me freer, maybe.

      But I will go on, trying not to go mad like Virginia and commit suicide; try to keep it together and be sane, because the alternative is horrific still. In this, our world we must fit in or be cast aside and suffer the consequences. Because every single person has its own fighting to go through in this earth, and fit in you must or perish and suffer ever more. That much I know. I will go on trying to be a good girl in service to those around me in spite of everything; and live my life accordingly with the hope that keeping sane and in valance I will not go mad completely and throw it all away, and be cast away, and have to start over alone in my island. Be rejected and unwanted from the world, that fear alone will keep me doing good, even if I don’t care, because I don’t believe in it anymore.

      We pretend, everybody pretends a feeling or other: love is just an idea, a conception in our mind when really, it is emotional dependence, and nothing more. The source, God has broken down into million little pieces that are us, and each one of us is capable of so little love that in reality it is imperceptible. That it is our world, where we go on with our little wantings, making things happen because of it, and there is nothing more.

Have we been deceived from reality, and there is something else, else where in another dimension? Perhaps. But in the meantime, we stuck here, and here we must remain, at all costs until decay come our way, and we waste away like garbage, and we rot inside, with pain, must likely, nice and slowly for all to see, for us to feel until we are no more in this material world of ours.

      He didn’t notice her subtle beauty, at first. I mean, after all she had lost her ravishing young good looks, but still, she was pretty. But she wasn’t pretty lying there on the stretcher, after having bled like a sick animal after shotting; dosed off still from the anaesthetics of the operation, that didn’t last very long, but still, it cost her some loss of blood. And being so weak and tired that she did not want to get up at all. But he did come to see her after a while, to see how she was. And then is when it happened: He told her she had been speaking during the intervention and that they had a bit of a laugh. He was not offensive, merely, it made him curious of her, and so he made a point to going back to check on her. When he walked in, they both recognised each other: they had been basketball playing mates. She watched in astonishment while reflecting on what could it have been that she had said outload. She reached his hand instinctually for a second; he didn’t fight it; he let her take it; and he told her some of what she said. Embarrassing: about the perfume she had put on her pubic area to smell well for the intervention. And I wondered then if I had said ‘that thing I did’ just before I was taken into the operating theatre:  They were running late, and me getting nervous I ran to the changing room and had an orgasm to calm myself down. I will never know if I said it or not, because he won’t tell me so and I will certainly not ask.

That was then. I knew I would have to see him again, and I had the gut feeling that my interventions were not over, that he will dig on to me again.

      The drizzle of emotions started to fall three weeks later when I went back to see him, it was a fine rain, and unexpected. He was siting in his chair, with a cool relax sort of look, full of confidence and a certain air of annoyance as if despite his well-controlled and relax attitude, in reality his mind was elsewhere.

      There are some of us who were already a girl or a boy at the age of four, not a child. Never had awaken much tenderness from teachers around: that might be one of the factors. And still a girl at forty-nine. And I guess I will always be a girl. Not as beautiful as when I was twenty, but still charming I suppose. I don’t like to be looked at anymore. I used to dress to be looked at when I was a young girl/woman, but I stopped, I don’t remember when. I guess once I stepped into my late thirties and early forties, I didn’t like it anymore and it seemed unfit to be conspicuous of one’s images. After all, we can still be attractive without necessarily being obvious and attracting attention. I find it so hideous of mature and old women to dress to kill, even if they’ve got beautiful legs, and waist, they look ridiculous to me and too hungry. I find it pitiful to be at that age and make it so obvious that you gagging for sex and attention and that you are still hot enough to play the part, not like other women of your age you would say…

      I got a few new dresses last month and I wonder when if I will wear them at all, since I don’t go anywhere, and they are so pretty, that I wonder if I will arise a brow or two on the street, and I don’t like it. Even to decide what I will wear to go to visit him in my next appointment in two-month time is a headache; I want to look pretty, but not to pretty. I want to look nice, but not to make it obvious. I wonder if he has checked his schedules and seen that I have an appointment booked up for July. Has he given it more than three seconds of a thought? I wonder. Probably not. It was him anyway who gave me the telephone numbers and addresses of the two clinics where he works, since he is not in the General HS anymore… I wonder if there was something else than just kindness. After all he must sense it; as no matter how well I hide it, there is something about me when I walk in his office that gives me away. I can’t figure it out what it is, but I son’t seem to control it, something in my voice or gesture, attention, quietness, or speech, whatever I do or say or not say, I have the impression that gives me away, again and again without control from me.

      He took notice of her, I can’t say when, was it the day she was discharged of the hospital or was it before? Or was it the visit after on the following check-up, when she was wearing that little cream dress, loose at the waist but fitting all around her. Was it her light energy and smile and disinterestedness, and yet captivating of your attention that got a hold on you?  Or was it when you got that note from her after she left was discharged. When did he get it? Did the nurse who had it gave it to him the same day she left, or three weeks later as he told her by a message after she left from her check-up…? How did he feel, curious, surprised, indifferent, I wonder. All these things she will never know. Is he keeping her letter and little keyring present somewhere? Where? Or has he thrown it away… who knows, she will never know, not now anyway, nor ever probably. But he told her where to find him for the next check-up, whatever it meant, professionalism, kindness, or genteelness, he did do it. He didn’t seem to her like the kind of man who would shy away from a situation, but he was straight alright, he would not get mixed up in something he didn’t think fit or inappropriate. He was clever, too damn clever to be fooled by a pair or nice legs and two dark eyes looking at him from a short distance… oh no, but she was more than that, much more: she had a secret liaison with him, for everywhere she went and every single thing she did, he was on her mind, in every decision she made. He was on her mind, while walking, talking, and waking, while watching tv and reading: he was on her mind. Every place where she read his name, she would blush, and he would be set harder still in her mind… and always wondering if perhaps by feeling him so real and present, he wouldn’t be thinking of her too a little, it seemed to her like her energy could flow to him and find him wherever he was and settle somehow in his heart and mind too. A little, just a little.

      And yet she loved him too much to want him to be worried and wondering like she was, she would want to spare him that, and let him be happy in his life, with his fitting wife, he probably had, and perfect children. For she could neither be always fitting and give him perfect children: For everything about her was boldness, challenge and struggle, everything, but perfect. Nice and well, but not perfect. And he wanted perfect in his life. Who wouldn’t if we could choose it, perfectt, the word had especial ring to it that, just enchanting.

      She could only pretend perfection since redoubling it seemed to be her fate, and it was all about her. She had tripped ones to many times, and she wore so many scars that it was impossible to come away with it. She was bruised all over poor thing. But it was precisely because of that bruising that she was who she was, and was the way she was. And that was alright. She was especial, but a kind of specialness that get you ‘not many places’ unless you work hard for it, and she always worked hard at everything.

      He noticed she was especial but nothing else. She could get to his mind alright if she let him, but he didn’t let her and that was her undoing. Because every time she met him for those brief moments in his office, she would come out with nothing more than nothing; with a feeling of certain noticed indifference that was frustrating and somehow hurting inside.

She wondered if they ever had a few intimate moments what they would say to each other. Probably not much, unless he wanted to, and ever then she wondered if she would not become too shy and timid and say nothing at all.

      Because this love that was built up on nothing and was there somewhere in space hovering like a stinging bee had no words to share and was locked inside in a deep and dark cage of her heart, waiting to be unfolded by something he could not give her. So, silence was her weapon against stupidity, the stupidity she did not want to show him by exposing her feeling. And so every time she went to see him once every blue moon, she would be enthralled by a powerful force that paralysed her from the core, so much that she wasn’t herself anymore. And still in command she walked away clumsily and proud to wipe her sorrow back home and dream for the next encounter to be nicer and to mean something for both of them.

      Sex, what a about it… although this days basically self-procured, I had good times with it, plenty of good times, I don’t know how far should I go back, but I can say that three year ago after meeting him something switched on in my head that I became sex crazy and I don’t remember how long it had been since I had so much fun with it for hours on end with my husband giving it to me from behind, I get horny just thinking about it. My poor sick man now, who looks at me from the side of his eye trying to guess what I am thinking…

I wish this text would be fun, any text that can provide fun to others it is sure to be good, no matter its content. I don’t imply that it should be read, but since it is a true story, it might interest some folks, feeling identified or curious about this crazy thing of mine, -and may someone feel happy reading it-. The Victorians wrote to enlighten people about the obscure realities that were being served outside their front door, while the romantics rejected all that and thought a text beautiful in its own merit without the need of being useful to anyone. Oscar wilde really took the biskit. He laughed at everyone with wit, intelligence and skill while he suffered his own struggle. In the end the current of society caught up with him and he was dragged down like all of those who did not conform, not even his noble birth could save him, he was turn apart like a maggot on the grown, crushed as if a few merciless children at play had been toying with him.

      Life is a mirror really; you get out of it what you are yourself, no more. It is a pure reflection of your entire being. So when you ask yourself why you got what you got, all you have to do is look inside you and you will find all the answers, as painful as they may be. Some ugly truths are there about you, and me too. I always thought beauty to be a reflection of our virtues and physical and mental decay the very opposite of it all. I don’t know how much truth there is in it, but some truth there is at least.

I like beauty and find hard to subsist among chaos and ugliness, old things and dust or dirt. I would cleanse everything with water shinning bright if I could, and rejoice with joy seeing the world spark like a star. It is so beautiful after it has rained, how the atmosphere clears and the air is fresh and crisp. The rest of the time we have a dense atmosphere, polluted and thick with dust and hit, even now in early May, the hit is already too much. It rains so little this days that we must be frightful for the summer to come, as it is going to be really hot again, and little water in the reservoirs to sustain it.  

      Sometimes you don’t notice someone, and then all the sudden Puf! You are there, somewhere you were not before, and you keep drowning yourself in the pool of their eyes wishing you didn’t, but intrigued all the same, and you play the game: advance, retreat, advance, retreat. You look at them now, but not again later, or today, or the next day. And then you meet again, and you know he likes you, because he is so shy with you and clumsy.

The same way he must know about me too, the eyes, the eyes said it all, doesn’t it.

      …And you know what you know. and there is not knowing it, even if you wanted to. Unless you get a knock on your head, but that is not likely. So you will continue knowing what you know, and that information is yours. Locked inside your head as the best security box there is ever. Because if you don’t tell, no one knows, it is your knowledge to keep and to safeguard of thieves of the mind…

But at the same time, what you don’t know, you don’t know it, and if you can’t find how to know it, you will be left wondering, and there is little or nothing you can do. Accept learn from it, suffer or wonder…     

      Sunscreen always smells of happiness, always, since my youthful days at the beach, and my teenage years and adulthood. And until three years ago, during the pandemic. When I would lay outside in the garden without a care in the world knowing that I had nothing to do until he told me he could operate on me safely. When I would walk into an almost empty hospital were there were no visits, nothing, except what was asked of covid, somewhere in a hidden aisle.

      But the sunscreen kept me happy for two months, losing weight and getting tanned; I would be beautiful rolled in the operating theatre; I wonder if he noticed. That scent of sunscreen and a mix of sweet clean sweat and lotion, and detergent has stayed in the towels for ever; handkerchief and bag that I took outside in the garden. They are now kept inside a wardrobe in the front room, and every time it is opened the scent will come out and the smell will just carry me away to that time and all those memories.

      It forces me to travel back to a remote past too… when I had laid in the beach feeling free. Because you always feel free in the beach, that’s its secret, isn’t it; being by the sea, laying in the sand close to the ground, it always makes you feel free and happy no matter the state of anguish that you arrive there with. When you get there, you are liberated and at least if you are not, the memory you are left with going home is of having spent some time in peace and freedom, and that is worth a lot anytime.

       But we always must get back inside, don’t we, and behave. I am behaving now as I have become numb to the senses, I had to for survival. I wish I could ever be number still. Completely dead, if that is what you became really when you feel nothing probably. Now I realise how much easier life is for people who don’t feel so much, for my dear friend and my husband. That is probably why they are always so much happier and content than I am. They just carry on with life, just so, just as it comes, without going back and forward with their minds with thoughts, half-thought, and feelings. They just move on, right ahead without too much concert and hurt.

      That is why it is so refreshing to be around them, liberating almost. Until you live with them that is, then, it can be suffocating. It is also suffocating to live with myself sometimes and others with too many emotions. So, we are trapped anyway with either misunderstanding or incomprehension or excess.

      Today for the second time in two weeks I heard that -worrying doesn’t help at all- no matter the circumstance, how good or bad those may be. I don’t know if worry too much. I think what it is: is to realise that there is nothing else, that that is it, that this is it. I could rejoice for all the wonderful things I have, an like the Sandman to believe that dreams are what keep us whole and sane and alive. But also they can be a source of frustration and deception and despair, as years go by and all you can see in the horizon is this quite wonderful peaceful life with two sons full of resentment and indifference and a husband that is wasting away with illness and with the only hope that he will recover soon and we will go back to the wonderful monotony that we have been having for year. This peaceful wonderful monotony that he loves so much and enjoys. And that is why being ill it is not so difficult, after all staying at home that is what he enjoys the most, nice and quiet. That is mean of me, he is not happy being ill. He is a strong man fighting his corner and being strong to carry on with a smile, and pushing through, despite his seldom self-pity. worrying about something, does it help? No, then…

      It is nice to hear the rustling about of people in the street, going about their business happily in the morning sunshine, it makes you happy to know there is another world out there, a world where there are no sick people about. That they are enjoying themselves together, walking together, shopping together, travelling together, all those things that you are supposed to do with someone you love. I am half single in a way and half married still. For I don’t live a life like well married people do with their husband, as I do all the outing on my own, all the time.

      And I am supposed to be most grateful because I have someone to share the expenses with, someone who helps with the house shores and gives me a hug every morning. I suppose that is a lot too, in the wild wild west where women need the support of men, as they have nothing else to look forward to. Am I selfish for wishing something more? Am I? am I utterly and desperately selfish for wishing there was more to life than this. Maybe I should concentrate in being happy and contented, knowing that there is a world out there and that perhaps I will be part of its wild side someday and board a plane and be done.