There is a light that never goes out

El abrigo viejo

2005-07-13T15:35:00.000+02:00

Paul despertó esa mañana de jueves porque un rayo de sol caía directamente sobre su almohada. Le pareció extraño que estuviese la cortina corrida, y le molestó, pero cuando se giró para pedirle explicaciones, Marla no estaba. Y eso le pareció aún más extraño.

Marla nunca se levantaba de la cama antes que él. Si se despertaba, simplemente se quedaba mirándolo mientras dormía para, como decía ella cuando la descubría, intentar recordar porqué se enamoró de él. Aunque a Paul eso siempre le había molestado, el cambio en las costumbres que suponía su ausencia aún le molestó más.

Cruzó el pasillo hasta el salón y miró en la cocina. Nada. Quizás había salido a comprar croissants para el desayuno. Hacia años él solía hacerlo los domingos, esforzándose para llegar y llevárselos a la cama antes de que ella abriera los ojos. Le encantaba ver su cara de sorpresa. Aunque estaba convencido de que la mitad de las veces ella no dormía, simplemente fingía hacerlo. Pero hoy no era ningún día especial. Pensó un rato en ello pero ya no recordaba exactamente cuando fue la primera cita, ni el primer te quiero, ni ningún posible aniversario que justificara semejante sorpresa.

Miró en el recibidor y algo le llamó la atención. El viejo abrigo rojo de Marla estaba allí. Se lo regaló él en una de las primeras citas cuando al pasar por el escaparate de una tienda que ya no existe, ella se paró a mirarlo. De eso hacía ya unos años pero ese precioso abrigo rojo de lana con enormes botones redondos de plástico seguía protegiendo a Marla en los días fríos como hoy. Había sobrevivido a modas y tendencias, a lluvias y nevadas e incluso a veranos de intenso calor dentro de un armario.

Marla lo había llevado puesto el día que él le presentó a sus padres, la semana que estuvieron en Londres de viaje por primera vez, la noche en que les atracaron al salir del restaurante, y esa mañana tan fría al salir de la clínica, después de saber que nunca podrían tener hijos. Era incapaz de comprender como podría haber salido ella hoy sin él.

Se sentó en el sofá y esperó. Hubiese comido algo pero la verdad, no sabía donde guardaba Marla el pan ni la mermelada, ni mucho menos la tostadora. Estaba preocupado y eso le iba quitando el hambre. Vio que la mesa estaba puesta y recordó la noche anterior. Él había llegado muy tarde del bar y la encontró sentada en la mesa, con velas encendidas y las mejillas manchadas de negro por el maquillaje corrido de los ojos. Le había parecido estúpida, allí sentada, mirándolo con esa cara. Él estaba cansado y había bebido un poco. Gritó. Pero no más de lo normal. Él ya había comido. Apagó las velas y fueron a la cama.

Paul empezó a inquietarse cada vez más. ¿Y si se la han llevado? Nunca iría a ningún sitio sin su viejo abrigo, sin decirle nada antes. Volvió al recibidor y cogió el abrigo. Se lo acercó para olerlo pero ese olor no le decía nada. Corrió a la habitación y miró en el armario. La ropa de ella no estaba. Con rabia se acercó a la cama y empezó a arrancarle las sábanas, como si ella pudiese haberse escondido entre sus pliegues. Y entonces lo vio.

Era un pequeño sobre verde que había caído del colchón. No debía haberlo visto antes. Lo abrió y con la pequeña y concienzuda letra de Marla leyó: “Estoy embarazada. No quiero que vengas a buscarme pero he pensado que querrías saberlo. Adiós Paul.”

El abrigo rojo aún estaba en el suelo y Paul lo miró sin entender nada. No sabía como podía haber salido Marla sin su abrigo, ni se le ocurrió pensar que quizás por fin, ella había comprado uno nuevo.

antony and the johnsons

2005-06-03T14:59:00.000+02:00

Esto es un texto sobre el concierto de Antony and the Johnsons en el Primavera Sound. Lo escribí para un concurso del país y lo han publicado en la web del nuevo suplemento ep3 (www.elpais3.com):

"Desde la tercera fila del auditorio miramos atrás. Casi 3000 caras, 6000 orejas y unas 600 cámaras esperan el concierto de Antony & the Johnsons. Se apagan las luces. Aparece Antony, y empieza.
Nota a nota, tecla a tecla, las canciones nos desnudan el alma. Canciones que hablan de soledad y melancolía, meciendo a tres mil desconocidos, uniéndonos en un único sentimiento. Ya no estamos solos. Su voz en la acústica del auditorio es tan preciosa que casi duele, sus manos se deslizan por el piano con un suave efecto hipnótico y los arcos de los instrumentos de cuerda nos acarician, un escalofrío recorre nuestros cuerpos.
Pero termina, y despertamos del ensueño. Se ha ido y no podemos creerlo. Ansiosos, pedimos más. Antony emerge de nuevo, y por un momento todo vuelve a ser mágico. Pero cuando termina, tres mil desconocidos nos levantamos en silencio. Volvemos a estar solos."

La nostra sensibilitat...

2005-05-23T10:33:00.000+02:00

"Potser la nostra sensibilitat ens fa sentir el costat trist dels acudits, la comèdia de les desgràcies, la tonteria de les conclusions més sàvies i la profunditat d’algunes tonteries. Som dels que ens divertim avorrint-nos i ens avorrim divertint-nos. (...) Potser és que l’equilibri ens sembla lleig, i sempre ens alegra la vida veure que les coses son asimètriques, descompensades i contradictòries."

Genís Segarra (Astrud)

Chuck Palahniuk & the American Dream

2005-01-31T21:27:00.000+01:00

Chuck Palahniuk: diagnosis of a disillusion

Throughout history literature has always been a chronicle of the problems, afflictions and monsters that have haunted humanity. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Kafka’s human beings turning into bugs, great writers have been able to make a diagnosis of culture, and as culture changes we need new analysis of the diseases that afflict society.

At this time in which “American culture” is the United States’ most important export and an important influence in almost every other culture that exists, it is necessary and even a sign of hope that new writers have taken on the difficult task of offering a diagnoses of this culture’s sicknesses. The young American writer Chuck Palahniuk is a good example of this.

Chuck Palahniuk broke into the literary world when film director David Fincher made his first published novel into a successful film: Fight Club (1999), starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. Despite the fact that at his first attempt to publish a novel he was unanimously turned down by publishers (who admitted they personally loved it but couldn’t take the risk), it was all uphill from there. Since then, Palahniuk has published that first novel (Invisible Monsters, 2000) together with four more: Survivor (1999), Choke (2001), Lullaby (2002) and recently Diary (2003).

His immoderate satires and outrageous cacophonous fiction has provided him with the reputation of being “a master of depicting the dark and depraved underbelly of our society” as well as making him the “torchbearer of the nihilistic generation”.

All his books deal heavily with the disillusionment of the American Dream. In fact, Palahniuk himself could be set as an example of this Dream: as a child, his family was so poor that his father would wake up the kids to loot train-wrecks in the middle of the night. After majoring in journalism at the University of Oregon and less than a year at a minimum-wage job, he became a truck mechanic until in his early thirties he began attending writing workshops with a few friends. With the success of Fight Club he was able to quit his day job to begin writing full-time. Nowadays he is a multi-millionaire and his work has reached cult status.

Nevertheless, he rejects the idea that his life-story is an affirmation of the American myth of the poor boy made rich. He is a full-on critic on the idea that working class Americans, if they only work hard enough, can pull themselves out of poverty. The reality is that the United States is a socially rigid society with even less class mobility than Europe, and getting worse. While George Bush cuts taxes for the 500 richest families, the poor get poorer.

Chuck says: "I only made good when I gave up on the model embodied by the American Dream. I packed in my job at the construction site. I said, screw this: I'm going to dedicate my life to learning one self-expressive skill. Even if I never get published, I'll dedicate my life to writing one really good sentence. My whole life, my parents said, nobody will ever pay you to read books. Nobody will ever pay you to write books. It was only when I gave up their American model - work more hours, kill yourself working - and dedicated myself to the impossible thing that I succeeded. "

The inability to see beyond the definition of the American Dream as a lifelong struggle to achieve money and material property which will necessarily lead to happiness has left us with a generation of the disillusioned. His message: "I realised in my twenties that the social model for happiness that my parents had brought me up with - based on trying to get money and property - just wasn't going to make me happy. I could live that life, but I'd be miserable. But I couldn't see anything beyond it. All they could tell me was, you know, get a nice house and pour all your energy into your garden. Work hard at having a really great yard. That's all they could say."

He predicts an epidemic of angry, uncomprehending people taking violence into their own hands, as the weapons that can cause serious damage get easier and easier to acquire. About Eric and Dylan, who massacred their classmates at Columbine high school, he says: "They were disillusioned because they saw through so much of the American dream. The Columbine kids were affluent kids, and they saw that affluence doesn't translate into happiness. They saw that comfort doesn't translate into happiness. They couldn't see any road map to happiness, and they knew the road map they had been given by American society was bust. If people have no way of expressing themselves, no route out of misery, then they pick up a gun as a last, final gesture. It's the same with the Arab world. 9/11 was an enormous gesture, a huge piece of performance art. I remember thinking as a kid: I can spend all my time smiling and being charming and be famous like JFK, or I can just pick up a gun tomorrow and be as famous as Lee Harvey Oswald."

In fact, Palahniuk had to deal with one of these desperate individuals when his father was killed a few years ago and his body dissolved in a garage. The man who murdered his father (for sleeping with the killer's wife after they met through the personal ads) was involved in the white supremacist movement in Idaho. When he was sentenced to the death penalty, the killer announced he had built five anthrax bombs and buried them across the city of Spokane, and that if the state executed him, he would never reveal their whereabouts.

"This kind of destruction is going to become more frequent," he says. "Right now there's a man in New Zealand who's built the first privately owned ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) and thrown all these governments into disarray. He has no warhead, obviously. But they're realizing that this can happen. Individuals are gaining these capabilities. It's happening.” However, Palahniuk’s anger makes this kind of mass-destruction seem unfrightening to him, although sometimes this anger mutates into bitter despair: his novels are filled with thoughts of suicide, and a leifmotif is the belief that, in far more circumstances than most people will admit, death is actually the least-bad option. "Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer," the narrator of Fight Club says, "Maybe self-destruction is the answer."

Choke, his fourth book, marks his shift from nihilism to existentialism. It is the point at which he starts to offer a positive philosophy; before, he only offered a diagnosis of terminal disease. Victor concludes at the end of that novel, "It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos." This philosophy stands in a clear line of descent that can be traced from Fyodor Dostoevsky through Herman Hesse and Jean-Paul Sartre. Palahniuk believes from this point on that once you hit rock bottom and see that there is no meaning in the world, you are entirely free, because then you get to create your own meaning. Soren Kirkegard - his favourite philosopher - said that once you accept nihilism, you are free to make a vast leap of faith to believe whatever you want.

But in this society we live in, washing off disillusion with antidepressants, the problem is that "they allow you to escape the moment when you have to face up to the failures of the social model you're living in. You never reach that nil point. You never hit despair, so you never come back from it. Kirkegard didn't count on Prozac. Prozac allows you to skim along and avoid reaching the crisis that forces you to make a leap of faith." In fact he himself uses the anti-depressant Zoloft on and off, mainly in the winter now, but he believes they have a dangerous social function. "Anti-depressants are drugs that allow you to tune out and watch those lifestyle network shows. They're part of an America that tells you: Keep repainting the house. Keep dying your hair. Keep rooting for your football team. And then, sooner or later, you'll die."

Palahniuk's fiction returns repeatedly to the blanding out of American culture, and the idea that capitalism occupies and nulls the consciousness of individuals. In Fight Club, the narrator says, "Our culture has made us all the same. No-one is truly white or black or rich anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing." In Choke, a character says, "We're so structured and micro-managed, this isn't a world anymore, it's a damn cruise ship." In Lullaby, he reveals the philosophy behind this: "Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted?. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix? With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world."

Maybe this is the reason his novels have been able to connect with the bored, disenchanted youth of America. "When you think about what a small percentage of the people in this huge culture actually control things, it's staggering that more people aren't controlling their culture. It's only a tiny handful. And why is that? That's what breaks my heart. And I think young people, with the Internet and the availability of technology, are more and more able to get their stuff out. But then I worry whether by the time they have the technology we will have cut expressive courses in high school and college to the point that no one has the ability anymore to express themselves in an entertaining, balanced, or interesting way. Band and art and creative writing, or any of those things that we don't see as vocational, could actually be the most important courses, because they give kids a way of expressing themselves other than breaking things."

At this time in history his fiction feels more realistic than ever. Indeed, his novels are all located in a world where ideas and visions are breaking down. In Choke, he writes that "the Enlightenment is over. We are now living in the Dis-Enlightenment." He also says that, "The one recurring theme of our age is that all the big narratives, all the big stories are breaking down. We don't have any stories to replace them yet. But we want a rule-book, we want a Bible." Yet when these belief systems are created in Palahniuk's novels, they are terrifying examples of how despair can be suddenly replaced by a blind, wild faith in a single strong man. "That's a big worry. Once you have the hunger and longing we have in America for a leader, there's a big danger. The best way to unify power is to create a common enemy. George Bush is doing that. Osama Bin Laden is doing that. It's the easiest way to pull people together."

Still, at these times when the American Dream is under question and these kind of cultural diagnoses seem more than necessary, even Palahniuk has been forced to take a more mainstream approach in his last two novels: "I have switched to writing horror novels, because in America today, you just can't do transgressive fiction. Nobody wants to hear that message, and certainly nobody wants to laugh about it. Americans don't want to be criticised right now. They just won't hear it. The day of 9/11, I realised this was happening. You could not have published Fight Club on September 12 or since. The American public is not going to have any sympathy or understanding for subversive art or arguments for a long, long time."

"Whether it's eco-terrorism, monkey wrench gangs, or cultural terrorism like Trainspotting, people just do not see it the same way anymore," he says. "They can't laugh at it. If you're going to say anything about culture, you have to do it carefully and in a charming, entertaining way, like George Orwell did with Animal Farm. In the 1950s, people got so good at using science fiction and fantasy to say things about the culture that they couldn't say straight out. So that's why I've moved to horror novels."

So is the author who wrote some of the most daring, smart anarchist critiques of American culture selling out? Turning into Stephen King? He insists that his message hasn't changed, just the medium through which he conveys it. "Protest has been thoroughly co-opted by companies like Diesel Jeans now," he says. "They use protest as a marketing tool for the very things it's meant to be a protest against. I mean - Madonna dressing as Che Guevara! When you get to that point, protesters have to put on a nice white shirt and try something different to get your message across. I do it through my novels. Michel Foucault said that protest needs to evolve into something fun, something that doesn't seem threatening, but does gradually change the way people think."

At the beginning I said writers become pathologists of culture. Sometimes by pointing out the diseases of society they can make it easier to find a cure, sometimes it is enough that they recognize the illness that goes seemingly unnoticed and is even confused with health. It’s hard to tell what’s the case with Chuck Palahniuk’s work, if it will make it easier to find a cure. However, in my opinion, the disillusion that he describes is a sad reality in the United States and in the Western world in general. Maybe the American Dream needs to be questioned to its core, hope as a main value does not work anymore. Maybe things will never change unless we take action, do something to go beyond the model of society that we have inherited, based on material happiness and the need to fit in, to blend with the rest. To quote Palahniuk one last time: "I see hope as this rather pointless, amorphous emotion. Hope doesn't accomplish anything. Action accomplishes something. The idea that a possibility creates something... Sitting around hoping for something doesn't do much."

About Requiem for a Dream

2005-01-24T20:36:00.000+01:00

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
the story of an addiction through editing and cinematography

Requiem for a Dream, directed by Darren Aronofsky is based on a novel by author Hubert Selby Jr. It tells the story of four characters, Sarah Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion and their friend Tyrone.

Sarah is a lonely widow whose only perks in life are sitting in front of the television all day and her son’s occasional visits. One day she gets an unexpected call announcing she has won an opportunity to be on her favorite television program. Determined to lose some extra weight and fit into her precious red dress she starts a dangerous diet, the price for her dream to come true.

Meanwhile, Harry and Tyrone, looking to fulfill their own dreams of success and Marion’s plans to become a clothes designer, start to deal drugs around their neighborhood, earning quick money but at the same time beginning a slow descent into the hell of illegal drugs.

There are two main themes in the film. The first is addiction, in many different levels. The four characters, each in their own way, sacrifice their present situations in exchange for a dream. This escape from reality through the search for an inexistent future creates a sense of emptiness in the present that needs to be filled with something. Whether it’s diet pills, television, heroin or hope, the obsession grows, devouring them and turning their dreams into drug-fueled utopias.

Another main theme in the story is the walls that separate individuals, the feeling of being close to someone but still unable to communicate, to simply say “I love you”. The characters are together in the nightmares their dreams become but, at the same time, great distances separate them, leaving them ultimately alone in their own suffering.

In consonance with the story, the film has a strong and harsh visual style that comes from the narrative. An important point is that it is told from a basically subjective point of view: we are not outsiders watching as the story develops, we are inside the characters minds, with their personal views and feelings.

To deliver this sense of subjectivity, the director uses many techniques. One of them is splitting the screen into two halves, so we can see what’s happening to different characters individually within a same situation. For example, this is used to introduce Harry and his mother at the very beginning, and the relationship between them. However, the most amazing use of this split-screen technique happens during a love scene between Marion and Harry, where we can feel what every kiss or touching feels for the two characters while at the same time, the topic of invisible walls separating characters is strongly present.

The story is divided into three acts and every aspect of the film serves this division: the music, a nerve-wrecking Requiem delivered by the Kronos string quartet separates the three seasons in the story, summer, fall and winter, each with their own realistic style of lighting and cinematography.

SUMMER the beginning of the dream

After introducing Sarah and Harry while we can hear the instruments being tuned, the Requiem starts, with a long establishing shot of Harry and Tyrone dragging a television around Coney Island and its ghostly roller coaster, giving us the mood and the ambience while describing the background to the story.

Once we learn about the dream the title speaks of, the obsession begins. All addictions are treated the same, whether its diet pills or hard drugs, with many cinematographic and editing techniques and in occasions, some subtle digital effects. Fast-motion, camera tricks and fades to white that represent the characters getting lost in their dreams, take us into an exaggerated but justified depiction of the characters’ mental state.

To create the illusion of the cycle of an addiction the director uses repetition of shots (Sarah checking her mail box obsessively, awaiting news about her television debut, pupils dilating, syringes being pushed…) and before and after situations (cutting from a shot with the characters feeling terrible to suddenly them being in bliss) to take us through the feelings brought by drug use.

At the same time, quick, repetitive music-video style sequences in the form of a collage of images and sounds tell us the story as it unfolds: the drug dealing and consumption, Marion sewing her designs, Sarah restlessly cleaning her apartment under the effect of pills… The extremely fast visual style takes the audience through their own high.

The first act ends with a heart-breaking scene between Harry and Sarah. He visits his mother, proud about his recent success and Sarah tells him about her future as a television guest star. Suddenly Harry notices something and there’s a sudden feeling that things are starting to go wrong. This is emphasized by the angle of the camera and the lighting: the characters faces are half lit. When they’re happily chatting about their success, the camera focuses on the lit side of their faces, “the bright side”. As soon as Harry notices his mom has a problem, the director crosses the line with a traveling shot and starts focusing on their unlit side, “the dark side”.

FALL getting lost in the dream

The second act begins as the first conflicts arise. The director uses the techniques mentioned before and new ones to increase the feelings of anxiety that appear when the addiction gets harder to keep up with. Accelerated and slowed down scenes, a fish-eye lens on the camera, triple exposition, all accompanied by distressing sounds help create a style that shows the desperation of the characters as they try to find, buy and take more drugs as their effects start decreasing.

An outstanding shot idea is also introduced in this act: a camera tied to the actors’ bodies that looks up at them as if looking from under their chin. The background keeps moving while the characters face is frozen in the middle of the frame, creating the definitive subjective shot.

With Marion’s desperate acts in order to score and Harry and Tyrone’s failed attempt to buy drugs, the second act ends with an incredibly hectic scene of Sarah suffering from hallucination as she sees people walking out of her television into her living room.

WINTER the dream is over

As the ending approaches the desperation and tension in the characters minds becomes more and more evident. Insisting on the subjectivity theme, the shots become tighter and tighter, from medium shots to close and extreme close ups.

Regarding the editing, the film cuts from character to character faster, with shorter sequences of the different story lines making them intertwine into a common feeling of pain as they all end in fetal position. The speed between cuts speeds up in mathematical progression, putting the audience into a state of great tension until a final last fade to white.

This is a hard film to watch, there is no happy ending, no end to the suffering as the characters, in their delirium, reach the limit. There is no catharsis, just a sense of loss. The dream is dead, after all, this is a Requiem.

In my opinion this is a film to watch, maybe not because you are sure to like it, but because you are most certainly not going to remain indifferent. What’s most outstanding is the way every single aspect (music, acting, editing, cinematography,…) works for the story, like all the instruments in an orchestra, perfectly directed to deliver a Requiem in honor of a long lost dream.

Requiem for a dream (2000):
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans
Script by Hubert Selby Jr. and Darren Aronofsky
Director of photography Matthew Libatique
Editing by Jay Rabinowitz
Music by Clint Mansell, interpreted by Kronos Quartet

Me piro

2005-01-24T20:34:00.000+01:00

Me piro. He decidido dejar la ciudad. Llevo sólo cinco días aquí pero parece que hace siglos que estaba deseando volver y sacarme de una vez por todas toda la arena de la playa. Creía en el confort de la rutina, pero ya me resulta más asfixiante que reconfortante, así que me piro.
Primero fue llegar y llenar la nevera vacía. Pero en el super ya no encontraba nada en su sitio y, no se cómo ha pasado, pero han cambiado el nombre de todos los yogures. Todo parece distinto de alguna forma. Me fijo en la gente, sus caras sí parecen las mismas de siempre. Creo que nos pasamos medio año recordando el verano pasado, repasando las 500 fotos de la cámara digital, y la otra mitad planeando el verano siguiente. He visto a gente que aún lleva puesta la pulsera del FIB, cómo el que vuelve del Caribe con un collar de conchas. No pienso quedarme, no tengo ganas de volver a empezar ni libretas para estrenar. Me piro pensando que la vida era más fácil con los cortycoles. Me vuelvo al mar, la arena me parece ahora una molestia menor.
Al tomar la salida más cercana me doy cuenta de que no soy la única que se aleja de la ciudad, ¿será que todos han decidido pirarse también? Sonrío para mis adentros pensando, cuánta gente que se niega a conformarse, quizás nosotros también hemos cambiado. Pero la alegría me dura diez segundos, exactamente lo que tardo en darme cuenta de que hoy es viernes.

Idol

2005-01-24T20:28:00.000+01:00

It was the first time she’d had doubts about the plan. Since the day Eve and her met, Charlotte had decided to trust her, and just like she always did she’d followed her almost blindly into the mess they had put themselves in. Still, she had to admit it didn’t seem such a bad idea at first; it was an escapade, an adventure, a master plan to change their lives. And to be honest, at least to that purpose, it had worked.

She could hardly remember living with her mother three months before. Her mother’s life consisted in a chain of relationships with abusive men, drinking and the challenge to hold a job longer than a week. All that required a lot of time, so Charlotte was left to take care of herself, and she had easily learnt how to. She would wake up late in the afternoon, walk around the city aimlessly until dark and then meet her friends at The Hole. The Hole was a club were rock bands played almost every day and her so-called friends were those who like her, spent night after night there. Trite conversations, struggling to talk over the deafening sound of the loudspeakers, lustful glances through the smoke that filled the place, ending in alcohol-fuelled declarations of never-ending friendship and love.

She had met Eve there. She remembered the exact date because she had been waiting for that night to come for so long. The 10th of May her favourite band, Dementia, was playing at The Hole. She had been a fan since she was 13, when they’d first started playing four years ago and that would be the seventh time she’d seen them live. She was there early to be right in front, were she could get a good view of Rick, the lead singer. If Charlotte admitted there was such thing as the man of her dreams, it would definitely be him. Rick filled her thoughts, her dreams and her fantasies just like his pictures filled every space on her bedroom walls. He was tall, dark and very thin. A lifestyle of touring and taking every drug available was the explanation for his thinness and the shine in his eyes. It was also the reason why, after a hit single and a published album, the band was playing in such a small venue as The Hole. After continuous scandals on the tabloids, fights between band members and three years without any new material, everyone seemed to think they had lost it. Except Charlotte, of course.

Eve turned out to be as obsessed as her. They had met in the front row of the audience and spent the rest of the night commenting on just how great Dementia was, the best band ever, talking about how much every song meant, longing for Rick to look at them, to just notice them for a second. And that was how it all began.
They had started hanging out together after that night and one rainy afternoon as they walked around a supermarket to kill time Eve had told her about the plan. She had come up with an idea to kidnap Rick. It sounded crazy but she was convinced no one would take care of him like they would. It wasn’t your typical kidnapping and asking for a ransom, they would only hold him back until he was better, off drugs and writing new songs again. They would be helping him, there was nothing wrong about it and he would most surely thank them for it in the end. The more they talked about it, the more it seemed the best idea ever, and the girls hugged, happy to share such a great purpose. Shoppers walking by looked at them, intrigued by the two weird teenagers who were hugging each other so excitedly next to the milk cartons.

It was clear that weren’t going to do it by force. Both of them were small and thin and looked much younger than their age. Charlotte always wore a torn ballerina skirt and military boots which made her seem innocent yet mildly threatening and although Eve was much more womanly, she disguised her curves under layers of strictly black clothing. They would have to use their minds, and in the end, it turned out to be much easier than it seemed.

They pretended to be preparing an article about the band and contacted him for an interview. They asked him over to Eve’s apartment, which they had properly disguised as some sort of magazine headquarters, and after asking him about the long-awaited new album, Charlotte pointed a gun at him. It was a heavy old-fashioned gun her mother kept in the top drawer of her dresser. She never noticed Charlotte had taken it, nor could she imagine how natural it had felt for her daughter to point a gun at someone. It had really been as simple as that.

The first few days had been the hardest, getting used to Eve’s apartment, the room they had prepared to keep him in, taking turns to keep an eye on Rick. He was too resigned or too doped out to fight back at all, and they almost forgot he was meant to be their prisoner. He was probably glad to have an excuse to get away from all the troubles he was going through with the band. No one found him missing either, they were all used to him disappearing and leaving them stranded mid-tour.

After a few weeks he started to open up to them. He would tell them anything that went through his mind, and the girls would listen with their eyes wide open, like little children listen to storytellers. He had definitely lacked someone to talk to, and to be honest, these girls had paid more attention and cared more about him than anyone had in those last few years. Fame, although if it was only temporary and brief, had left him with a bittersweet feeling of loneliness and isolation under the spotlight, even while he was being surrounded by crowds.

Charlotte and Eve soon forgot that the plan had to end somehow and started spiralling down into an emotional well, trying to capture his attention with every word and every gesture. To please him, to feel approved by the person they had idolised and who in their eyes had turned out to be even more perfect that they could have imagined. It started turning into a permanent competition for his affection, to be the one who cared most, his favourite captor. Love or obsession is something hard to measure, but only one of them could win at that game.

And it turned out to be Eve. Charlotte would wake up after it was her turn to rest and find Rick in the other’s arms. Laughing, at their own jokes, in their own universe into which she was never invited. Once more, Charlotte was the one left out. But this time it hurt more than it had ever hurt before. She had believed he was the only one who could ever understand her. Every interview she’d read or heard, every newspaper clipping about him she had cut out and kept sacredly, had made her sure he had to be her soul mate. And those days with him, all those hours watching him, feeding him, feeling him so close, had only convinced her that she had always been right. Seeing him being taken by someone else in front of her eyes felt like a sharp pain in her chest, which travelled all through her body leaving her helpless and numb.

The situation got worse with time. Eve and Rick would act as if she wasn’t there at all. They would even sleep together while Charlotte, when it was time for her watch, had to sit awake looking at them. Their heads so close together, dreaming of worlds she wasn’t a part of, their deep rhythmic breathing drilling into her brain. Only then had Charlotte started to have doubts about the plan. She had been too naive not to realise before. Eve had used her and betrayed her in the worst way possible. And he had lost him forever.

Charlotte considered leaving, going back to her mother’s, to feeling miserable and forgotten, but it would be different. Until then, she had always had the comfort that he could be hers one day, that he would finally know they were meant for each other. There was no hope for her now and deep inside her, despair had started to take over. Jealousy is a blinding emotion; it leads us to things we would have never admitted to be capable of.

The gun felt cold and much heavier than the first time. A small ray of moonlight came in through a window and made the barrel glitter as she crossed the corridor into the room where they slept soundly holding each other. If she couldn’t have him, if they weren’t meant to be together, no one else should. Charlotte fired the gun twice and didn’t miss once. As blood trickled to the floor, still warm and bright red, she looked at the smile still on his face. The same smile he had on all the pictures in the posters she had daydreamed about. Thinking about it, she rested the gun on her temple and fired the last shot. She knew that she would never be alone anymore, that now he would never leave her.

Alphabet

2005-01-24T20:27:00.000+01:00

All that time he’d been wondering what were people talking about when they spoke of falling in love. Before that day he had always thought it seemed like a stupid thing that made people act like fools, something that films always talked about but not something that he particularly wished for himself. Could it be this fluttery feel he now felt inside him? Dozens of tiny ladybirds walking around his stomach, tickling him slightly.

Everything had started when he was sent to buy the ice creams after lunch. Firmly held inside his palm was the coin his father has given him, getting sticky with the heat and the weigh of the responsibility. ”Gelatti” was the best ice-cream shop in town and they’d all rather buy them there, even if it meant he had to walk a bit longer to get there.

However, this time, he never got to the shop. It was a beautiful afternoon and groups of boys were diving from the pier, laughing, screaming and pushing each other into the water. Jack, his friend, who was three years older than him and almost twice his size, called him over. Knowing him, he was probably trying to show off in front of the girls. Lately they all seemed crazy about Jack, especially since he’d grown so tall that last year. Most girls would stare quietly, blushing when he got close. None of them would dare talk to him though, all of them pretending they hadn’t even noticed he was there.

Once he was at the pier, he took off his clothes and decided to dive too. Probably because the tide was down, it seemed like a huge distance to the water. “Quack quack, you chicken!” Jack shouted. Roaring with laughter, it seemed all the girls were staring at him now. “Silly! “That’s a duck not a chicken” he mumbled.

That’s when he saw her. Under a blue and white parasol, wearing a breezy yellow dress, the most beautiful girl in the world was looking straight at him. What was that warm feeling he felt when he noticed? X-mas gifts under the tree where the only reason he’d felt that tingling before, his heart beating so fast it felt as if it was going to explode in his chest. Yelling, Jack was trying to get him to jump off the pier once and for all. Zipping by all the kids watching him, he ran as fast as he could and fell into the water with the loudest “Splash!” they had ever heard.

Dear Diary...

2005-01-24T20:26:00.000+01:00

I guess it was a good idea even though I snickered when aunt Helen gave me a diary to write in. I think I’ll give it a go, write something now and then, see what comes up. It’s not like I’m the kind that fills in pages and pages of complaints about how her mother doesn’t understand her and her father hates her because she’s not allowed to go out later than midnight. Actually I never wrote or read much until it all happened, but things change, and I have changed so much since then that I might as well try and see if I can fill in more than a page. It was never easy with Miss Ruth’s written assignments, that woman had us working like slaves. At least I don’t have homework to do for a while. Maybe I wish I had though.

Right now there’s nothing for me to do, and what’s worse, no one expects me to do anything. Except of course, “get better”. No idea what that means exactly, all I do is lie in this stupid bed and stare at my feet. My sister painted my toenails bright pink, she even drew tiny black flowers on them; they look great. Getting better doesn’t mean anything to me. No matter what, I’m not likely to walk ever again so I guess I’ll stay here until my parents have come to terms with what it will be like to have a wheelchair around at home. I wonder if they think now that a three-floor house in the suburbs wasn’t a good idea after all.

I know what the situation is, I’m not going to cry every day, staring at the motionless little flowers on my toes through a curtain of tears. At least being in this position let’s me see what people are like. I mean what they really are like, I feel I can almost see through them. Through their forced jokes or seemingly compassionate looks. Through their pity in the shape of useless gifts, and through every layer of clothes or make up they wear. There’s so much beneath their surfaces it’s incredible. And it’s, ironic is the word I guess, to think that on the surface too, I used to be “perfect”.

I had the looks, I had the clothes and I had the girls following me everywhere, adoring every stupid thing I did. Most importantly, I had him, the boyfriend every girl soaked her pillow for. His deep dark eyes, the way he took a drag from the forbidden cigarettes, his brand-new splendid motorbike. Micky’s bike. No one was allowed on it, and you were no one unless you’d ridden it.

Yet now, here I am in this bed, next to unconscious Mary, the girl who took a pill she shouldn’t and ended up sleeping for days instead of having fun. Looks are useless here, and so are miniskirts when you can’t move your legs on a kinky pair of high heels. The girls hardly ever come anymore, maybe because the sales are on at the mall. In fact I really don’t care. And him, well, he deserves a whole other page of this diary. I’m guessing he’s been visiting the garage every single day, to see if his ‘baby’, that stupid bike, is fixed after our accident. I should have known better.

The funniest thing about everything changing is that, despite what I said before, I guess I’m actually still the same person. Right, I’m spineless and apparently I can write now but I don’t think it’s something new. My fears, my hopes, the little universe inside of me, they haven’t changed at all. The only major change is that I’ve only just realised they were there at all. My mind has let me go further than my feet ever took me, to a place where I can see I had just been trying so hard to be someone else I hadn’t stopped to think who I really was. And in a way, it’s really comforting to know now.

Running

2005-01-24T20:25:00.000+01:00

At that moment he wished he had attended the gym as much as the pub lately. His side hurt. His lungs hurt. He tried to forget about his body and just keep running. But then his heart also hurt. And his brain, from thinking about her. Her crying. The door slamming. And how long it took him to get up and run after her.

Maybe it was too late. In fact, it hadn’t really come as a surprise. He was perfectly aware things weren’t the same anymore. And that’s exactly what she said. She said he had changed. He hadn’t disagreed. But he had thought about it better. He now wanted to show her she was wrong. So he ran. He ran past all the shops and cafes, the little backgrounds of their life together. He ran for her, because he hadn’t really changed. Maybe it was her who had changed.

She was the one who had given up easy. She had said the most terrible things as he had sat there unable to move. Frustrated by his indifference she had grabbed her bags and left. She must have packed before, she was gone in what seemed like seconds. He blamed her. He had to stop her and tell her. Tell her that he wasn’t giving up. No. So he could not stop running. Even as he felt the sides of his head pounding every time his feet hit the floor. He was almost there.

He tripped and fell on his hands. Passer-by’s gasped, not knowing whether it would be wrong to laugh. But he didn’t even notice, just got up and kept running. He was already at the bookstore. She had worked there, that’s how they met. The first time he had talked to her, he had walked her to the bus stop after the shop closed. It was only a few minutes walk. So he was almost there. He ran faster, he could still catch up. Such a short distance, that’s all it had taken to fall in love with her. He couldn’t let that same distance be the reason he lost her.

He finally got there, just in time to see the bus disappearing down the road. He bent down, panting. It was too late. She was right, it was over and it was time to move on. It had been stupid of him to think he still had a chance. Running after her had been like desperately reaching for air when you know you’re already drowning. Disappointment and regret mixed with the feeling exhaustion. No one was to blame. Love had slowly faded between them, just like the glow of the bus taillights in the distance.

My worst enemy

2005-01-24T20:24:00.000+01:00

I will never forget those eyes. I have never seen blue eyes like those again, so icy that they were almost completely grey. Together with her dark hair they gave an unnatural feeling, as if she was less human and more like a wild creature. A creature you would not trust to eat from your hand.

Of course at first I never noticed that. She was my best friend, or maybe my only friend. To be honest, at that age, she was most probably my first friend and I had no idea what to expect from such an abstract concept as friendship so I just went along.

Things started to get suspicious as the class grew bigger and we had more girls to play with. Until then, I had thought that I was just an unlucky child, a feeling that she, the queen of kindergarten, had happily helped me with. She was the one supporting me that time someone scribbled over my beautiful drawing of my family as it was hanging on the walls of the class. And she was the one who found my coloured bead necklace. She got to keep it, but at least I could look at it from time to time. It seemed she was always there for me when disasters happened. Looking back I realise that probably disasters happened because she was there.

Probably less than two weeks since they started in our school, Lori and Nuria were already walking behind her submissively. I was used to be her only follower and I had yet to understand that her power was unlimited. I became quiet, sitting back to hear the new girls speak wonders of her. Because her hair was the longest and shiniest, her mother made the best sandwiches for break time, she had the Barbie accessories we could only dream for, and even the uniform skirt, which was the same for all of us, seemed as if specially cut to fit her. She soon noticed I wasn’t admiring her full time like before, and that’s when her eyes started to seem scary.

Since I thought I had finally realised what friendship was about and it didn’t seem like much, I decided I was ready to explore the next step in human relationships. So I got myself a boyfriend. His name was Jon, he gave me the picture-card I was missing from my Disney’s Aladdin collection and I gave him my heart and all my spare cookies from breakfast each day. He was an animal lover, he took care of the class pet, a stray cat that had been abandoned in a box under the swing set. I guess the teacher was forced to adopt it by an army of wide opened 5 year olds crying “Ooooh, it’s a kitty!”.

But a few months later the kitty was found dead under the class window. After the teacher dealt with our grief and taught us about death we all headed to the playground. I was climbing up the slide when she came, Lori and Nuria following close behind. She told me it was my fault because I had distracted Jon from taking proper care of his responsibilities. I stuttered, “But cat’s are supposed to have seven lives”. She answered, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you”. And that’s when I fell to the floor from the top of the slide ladder. When I recovered consciousness a few minutes later I could only remember one thing: the evil shining through those icy blue eyes.

Blind

2005-01-24T20:22:00.000+01:00

The first time you invited me into your apartment I couldn’t say no. I didn’t even stop to think what that would have made you think of me, I was just too curious. I had already learnt so much from being with you for a few hours that maybe I was expecting some sort of revelation when you finally let me into your world.

Maybe you don’t remember much, everything and everyone has changed so much since then. You’ve probably replaced it with some recent memory, a happier memory that I am not part of. But I still have that capacity to remember things to the smallest detail, something I learned from you and that I treasure, even if it’s just a distraction to avoid thinking about myself and the present.

That’s why I remember how your enormous rusty key turned in the lock, the squeaky little noise the door made welcoming us, and the smell. Your place had such a powerful scent that it was hard to believe it was all just a part of you and not something that belonged to all the people who’d lived there since the building was there. Still, it felt inviting, like wood and red apples and cigarettes all mixed into one.

Three steps into the living room and you asked me to take off my shoes please, to keep the carpet clean. I thought it was odd since there was a big stain that looked like the shadow of a cat napping on the smooth hairy surface of the carpet. But it didn’t move and I decided to take off my boots quickly and not say anything for the moment.

An arm stretch to the right was the couch or the bed, or both. It was the same broken down piece of furniture and it served every purpose but you gave it different names depending on the time of day and what we were doing. Maybe it was a way in your mind to make the tiny place seem bigger, as if there was enough space for both a three seater sofa and a king-size bed.

We would sit on it close to each other towards the middle where it sank slightly, facing the stereo. We drank your favourite white wine, the dry one that smelt like summer afternoons and tasted like rain, while you played me your record collection. It was your treasure; you’d describe the music you knew by heart like poetry, while you caressed the vinyl surfaces with the tips of your fingers. You said that was the most sensitive part of your body.

I’ll admit that sometimes I’ll wonder whether you do hold memories of those times. Maybe you can still map out every piece of furniture in that place too. And maybe you can still see me in your mind, remember how I smelt, my voice and the shape of me that you outlined with your hands so many times on that bed.

Where were you last night?

2004-12-15T01:24:00.000+01:00

This is a short story by me...starting with an interesting question...

Where were you last night? The question keeps popping into my head as I try to get the coffee machine to work. I really need coffee on a Monday morning like this, and I really need to know the answer to the question. If there is one.

I remember we had a typical Sunday yesterday. Stayed in bed until late, read the newspapers and the weekly magazines. Yes, you were still there. You made a comment on that article about how much swearing goes on on television. I replied, but I don’t know if you stopped to hear what I thought on the subject.

We fixed ourselves some lunch. I suggested pasta and you said you’d have a steak instead. I remembered how you used to love cooking pasta on weekends, how we used to improvise recipes, making sauce with any ingredient available in the fridge and then giving it stupid names. “Tagliatelle alla us”. Yesterday’s were just for me. And they weren’t even properly cooked.

I don’t know whose idea it was to go to the movies. Maybe we just went cause that’s what we do on Sunday afternoons. Maybe because we both love films. Or maybe because it saves us from having to talk for a couple hours. The film was bad enough so we didn’t have anything to say about it when it was over either. Just our luck.

Later over dinner, I planned on talking about the trip to Amsterdam, we should start looking for a hotel as soon as possible. But I had forgotten the football match was on and you already had a sandwich on your lap. Your yelling at the referee brought some life to the apartment. I remembered what you’d said about swearing before. Maybe it only matters if there’s swearing on tv, not “at” the tv. The poor guy and his whistle received no pity. Could I be jealous that he was getting more attention than I was?

The bed was cold when I was reading in it and I was glad when you hopped in. I put my book down mid chapter but you fell asleep before I’d even turned the lights off. The bed was still cold.

I had a nightmare, nothing special, probably just your typical recurring dream. I woke up and looked around trying to figure out where I was. In our bedroom, on a cold night of autumn turning into winter, I looked for you. But you weren’t lying next to me. The body, the breathing, the heat coming from the pillow next to mine wasn’t yours. I know for sure you weren’t there. It felt familiar but totally unknown, a stranger. Who was it? Where were you last night?

This morning I had a feeling you were back when I heard you singing in the shower with your unexplainable workday energy. But as you sit reading the sports newspaper waiting for you coffee, I’m dreading to ask you the question. Where were you? And, are you back now? How long will you stay? I don’t think I can face a whole day or even less a whole week wondering if you’ll be here next weekend. Or the next.

What is this?

2004-12-15T01:22:00.000+01:00

I don't really know yet, it's nothing for now...I hope it actually becomes something though