The wreckage, the chunks, the torn pieces, the ripped pages floating in puddles. Rubble, sunken fires, ruins barely standing, like thin, tired legs. Soaked drawings, ink swimming away. I was expecting it all just like it all seemed to have…
A tune was fading out. It sounded a lot like the ending of Good Vibrations but I couldn't be sure. I felt a carpeted floor under me. I smelled dust, soap and a pencil case I had when I was nine. A sneeze forced my eyes open. All my books w…
Right. I've come to this island. It's called Hunter's Island. I was feeling adventurous after a long time of the same old same old. Also, I'm a forager and I wanted to see hunters. What the heck. How they live and all that. I just like to …
A wise man left written on the back of a receipt that there are three things you simply cannot do in life. One is to get a waiter to see you before he decides to do so. Another is to defraud the phone company - if anyone is going to defrau…
Matt taught me the secret to love the damp, dark English winters. He's a calm, reliable guy, an inveterate optimist with a toddler with ringlets. Before getting married, he asked me to give him a hand with the groom's speech and I managed …
It was the first time I had fallen asleep after my dad died. Right before I woke up there was this split second when you can't remember much and you don't know where you are. And then everything came to me, like a concrete plank. The world…
I have this habit of being hungry before I eat. No merit: it's an automatic habit. I, like my father, eat whatever is there. Leftovers, burnt edges, rotten bananas. I cut what's rotten, I eat the rest. No merit: that's what he taught me to…
Yesterday, I swam for the first time this year. When I got in, the water was freezing and that was to be expected. The news is that for once I didn't mind the cold. You heard me well. I dealt with the cold like I deal with thoughts nowaday…
Two and a half thousand years ago, a man frowned up at the stars. So absorbed was he that the well under his feet went unnoticed. Needless to say, he fell in. A peasant began to laugh. The man turned to her and shrugged. ‘I worry more abou…
I have this bad habit of searching for meaning. I go to the dictionary looking for trouble in simple words, words I use daily, only to see if they are defined in ways that make me feel differently. Not sure why I need to do that. I wasn't …
I have a friend. She's a control freak. You don't get the vibe right away cause she looks a bit untidy, you know what I mean? But yeah, you can see that pattern in her. Once I went to her place and everything was just kept away, like I too…
You close your eyes and see two families of hedgehogs in an open field. The weather is not brilliant. The members of one family get together to maintain the warmth of their bodies. The other family has a different strategy: they also gathe…
When I think of hobbies, surveys come to mind. Escaping the severity of current times would probably be easier for me if I played guitar, chess or bought a pair of rollerblades. But we all know the ways of entertainment are inscrutable, so…
Once upon a time, in the most beautiful planet of the universe, there was a civilization formed by beings that used to be born, love and die. For hundreds of years its people worked to learn how to keep themselves alive for longer and mak…
It was a dusty place for the most part but it had tacky neon lights and cool reptiles of all sorts. I liked it. I was there on a mission to survive, so that land was as good as any other. One day, after work, I went to the local bar to hav…
It is one of those times when there is no sunset, just a mist. You stare at the sea and the line of the horizon is gone. You are in front of an abstract canvas, too close, with just one colour: grey. There is height and there is width, bu…
The wife of the Spanish poet Miguel Hernández had only onions to eat while breastfeeding their son. Hernández wrote Lullaby of the Onion for them while imprisoned by the fascist regime. Mother and son survived. He was denied medical attent…
It was Sunday, like today. I had just hugged my friend goodbye, taken a book from her, walked past the magnolia tree of my road. All the flowers upright, breaking the downward tendency of the branches, like the hands of an Indian folk danc…
I woke up and sat with your words after three weeks of not being able to tune into much. I guess I've been feeling towards the world a bit like you described, as if its image was washed away. Yesterday, like almost every day since I arrive…
It had been months since the last time I watched a movie. When you consider films events, you understand they require a certain state of mind. You would't want to go to the opera with an accute migraine, or attend a baby shower in the midd…
This movie title 'Reality bites' just popped up in my head. The 90's. A bunch of good-looking Hollywood actors in lumberjack shirts pretending they had problems, dancing in gas stations. I must have watched that movie in awe as a teenager …
"Did you know the color red is invisible under moonlight?" "No, I didn't. Did you know once the taraxacum blooms, its head dries out for a couple of days, its stamens fall, the bracts bend backwards, and its parachute ball opens into a ful…
Hey, would you marry me? How about a lifetime? You and me? Hm? Actually, God, give me eternal life. I'd strain spaghetti for Billy with a racquet every night, I'd stay at home, at the crime scene, with the Long Island skyline behind the gl…
Pouring it down. Four floors above some tiny street of downtown Madrid. 1:50 p.m. A boat's cockpit, a few windowed square meters that the landlord stole from the terrace, that's the kitchen there (or what my roommates call a testing ground…
A city made of nougat lying at my feet. I had never seen that place before, but a feeling of having dreamt of it was melting its corners like fondue. I had already tasted it, of course. Perhaps it was a forgotten dream, perhaps that's what…
"It doesn't matter what your job's all about, you'll end up alienated." "Oh, c'mon." "You can turn your head, you can live with your back to reality Carmen, but trust me, this is for sure: the system leaves no escape, this show is meant to…
Blessed are those who saw the unscathed light, who woke up today and didn't raise the blinds because they had been up all night. Who left the place where the pain was, those who headed to it once, twice, too many times. Blessed are those w…
I can't write today. I'm in a rush. In a couple of hours I'm leaving for another town. My sister is getting married. I'll give a speech at the ceremony. I've already read it to three people. The three of them cried. I think that means it's…
Table 4: "Check this out. I made it myself last night. I think it is not bad." "Let me read: COMPUTER ENGINEER, MAINTENANCE, REPAIRING, CUSTOMIZE, BUILD PER PARTS, RECOVERING FROM BLACKOUTS. FREE INTERNET SETUP. CONTACT ONLY THROUGH WHATSA…
At first he didn't know who I was. My sunglasses, my ponytail. He looked at my trainers. "You are 'la' Carmen, right?" It was fictional to return to that place and see how almost every leaf was untouched. A van with a scary clown sprayed o…
