Loop

by Brenda Lozano

  The word of the day, according to the online Oxford Dictionary, is Hikikomori: ‘(In Japan) the abnormal avoidance of social contact. Japanese origin, literally “staying indoors, (social) withdrawal”.’

  Dear Oxford Dictionary, Kafka wants to argue back: ‘There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.’

  I read this article in the paper: ‘The British police apologised today after one of their officers shot a blind man with a taser, having mistaken the cane he was carrying for a samurai sword.’

  Last night I saw an infomercial I thought was funny, and I told Jonás about it. I realise the word ‘infomercial’ doesn’t appear in the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, but it does appear in the Oxford Dictionary. I don’t share the Spanish linguistic authorities’ contempt for the word ‘infomercial’. The Spanish economy has the same problem as its dictionary: it’s as inflexible as a broom handle. Latin America is the future for Spain, just as it was in the past. Among other things, because we have the word ‘infomercial’.

  Do they wear ecclesiastical robes when choosing which words to include in the dictionary?

  I’ve finished work. I’m on a bus back to the apartment. A woman on the radio says that a bishop has carried out more than seventy thousand exorcisms in his long career, and that there’s a branch of the Vatican which looks after paranormal matters. A bishop in Mexico receives between fifteen and twenty calls a day requesting exorcisms, the woman continues. A big controversy in the Vatican: is it possible for the Pope to carry out an exorcism? The lines are open. Now a trovador is singing on the radio. What a terrible song. God bless the nurse who sang Shakira.

  I read the top corner of a cargo lorry: ‘Don’t like how I’m handling this vehicle? Complaints to 5286 8738’. A truck drives past: ‘This vehicle is protected by satellite’. On a green post, a sign: ‘Wicker furniture repairs’. Travelling home, I read some of the signs and write them down here. Don’t like how I’m handling this notebook?

  Now I’m writing as I walk. Incredible, isn’t it? The ideal notebook could have its own infomercial.

  Sir! Madam! Overdoing the hikikomori? Sick of being cooped up indoors reading? Tired of the British police mistaking your cane for a samurai sword? Have you lost faith in the Oxford oracle? Overworked your writing in your creative writing workshop? Do you write novels you think are shit, compose prose you think is crap? How many balls of paper do you throw in the bin without managing a single line? Then it’s time to buy an ideal notebook! To hell with Second World War novels, sir; to the devil with historical fiction, madam; forget all those stories about middle-aged European men. Plots come and go, action is secondary. The voice is what matters. Listen to your voice, however it sounds. Practise in the bathroom. Jump up and down a bit first. A-E-I-O-U. Practise in your notebook. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Do it again, only this time with your words. One word after another. You don’t need to move from your kitchen, all you need is a chair and a table. In fact, you only need the notebook. Dare to pick up that pen.

  This afternoon I saw the dwarf in the distance, walking with his back to me and holding his miniature cane. That cane wouldn’t have been mistaken for a samurai sword. Maybe for some nunchucks.

  Silence and distance, do they bring us closer to the people we love or take us further away?

  At the market, I saw Pessoa in the distance. I remembered his phrase: ‘It is not love but love’s outskirts that are worth knowing’. Waiting is its outskirts; maybe that’s why it’s worth knowing.

  The father of Ernesto, my ex-boyfriend, died when we were living together. I think his father’s death brought us closer. Why is your mother’s death pushing us apart, Jonás? Why such a long trip? In the apartment Ernesto and I shared, we had an electric oven where we made toast. Huddled around that little oven, we talked a lot about his father. Why aren’t you coming back? Why won’t you try talking about it?

  Guillermo and I left the cantina at three in the morning. The chairs were upturned on the tables. We were drunk, we were the last people there. He walked back to my apartment with me. In the middle of the street, he started to dance something he called ‘The Glitter Dance’. With his two index fingers pointing upwards, Guillermo sang, ‘This is the glitter dance, ding-ding-ding-dang-dang-dang’. I couldn’t copy his moves because I was laughing too hard. We were both laughing, without really knowing why. Eventually I was laughing because he was laughing. Lying in bed with the lights off, I remembered and laughed some more. This morning he sent me a message: ‘I’m hungover, take me to the market for some tacos, ding-ding.’

  It’s Sunday afternoon. I’ve spoken to Tania, Julia and Carolina. My friends know each other, they say hello if they cross paths, they speak every now and then, but they don’t hang out together. I see them separately. This morning I saw Carolina. She gave up coffee when she got pregnant, so she had a juice in the café instead. I had lunch with Julia, and Tania called just now. I’ve been friends with the three of them since we were teenagers. We didn’t go to the same school, I met them in different contexts. Tania is an artist. Julia runs a film festival and plays the guitar pretty well, though she’s a bit shy about it. Carolina studied literature, and now she writes and has a small press. I don’t go to a psychologist, but if I have any kind of case history, you could say it’s in their hands.

  The first story I wrote in primary school was about a giant, and now I’m writing about a dwarf. As a girl I had big handwriting. The two lines in my exercise books were like the floor and the ceiling, and my handwriting was like Alice, squashed uncomfortably between them. Over the years, my handwriting has shrunk. As if every so often it took a little of the blue potion. Maybe that’s why I feel closer to the dwarf than to the giant.

  My first story was about a giant because the first thing I read and fell in love with was about a giant. I was seven when I read that Oscar Wilde story. Some children play in the giant’s garden. Time passes, and eventually the giant gets old and frail and can’t play with the children any more. He sits in a giant armchair, watching them play, admiring his garden, looking around him. I was a big fan of Oscar Wilde’s giant, so I put the giant in my version on the patio behind my house. My parents and the neighbours got on well with him too, so he grew old out there on the patio. Sometimes the giant went with me to the market.

  A giant armchair. The dwarf’s made-to-measure furniture. The medium-sized wooden chair I’m sitting on. The giant who plays games, the dwarf with his elegant cane. What’s the median? Is the average a point in between the two ends? Is there an exact centre? Is the present a kind of average? Am I all the sizes of handwriting I’ve ever had? Do my handwriting and its diminutive size contain my big writing from when I was a child?

  Does this story contain all the stories I am?

  It’s Sunday. I’m going to the cinema with Guillermo. But before I leave I’m going to tell you something, Jonás. I love you, I miss you so much.

  Emmanuel Bove’s first novel is called My Friends . It was published in 1924, when Bove was twenty-six. I’ve been looking for this book for years. To no avail. The only part of the book I’ve read is the title. I think it’s beautiful because it’s so simple. If I weren’t going to the cinema tonight, I’d write a version of My Friends . Tania, Carolina, Julia, Guillermo, Tepepunk, Antonio and Luis Felipe would be the seven chapters of that novel I’m not going to write. Jonás would feature in all of them.

  I’m back from the cinema. Part of the magic of the ideal notebook is that hours, days and weeks can go by from one paragraph to the next, but because the paragraphs live side by side like neighbours, it’s as if only a few minutes have passed. Amazing – something that takes years to write could be read by someone else in a couple of hours.

  The dwarf, Jonás and I form this story, but we could
also form a band. Music for two identical notebooks and a piccolo cane.

  On the way back from the cinema, Guillermo pointed out an advert in the street. ‘Do you want to grow taller?’ it said, beneath a photo of some platform shoes. I asked him to drive more slowly so I could read the small print. He said that when he was a teenager his mother took him to a growth clinic. The doctor told her he was the height of a Lacandon Indian. His mother was worried, she wanted her son to be taller. Guillermo refused to go ahead with the procedure: ‘We’re the same height, mum, what are you talking about?’ His mother bought him some platform shoes. ‘Mum, please!’ said Guillermo when he opened the box.

  I haven’t mentioned this, Jonás, but if you were here, I can assure you I wouldn’t be writing.

  A question. While she was waiting, did Penelope masturbate?

  Do you think this trip is pushing us apart or bringing us together? I’ve also set off on a journey. This journey. Twenty thousand leagues under the notebook. A journey with no destination. An infinite queue. An eternal waiting room. I don’t really know how it will end. I don’t know where I’ll end up. Or if I’ll end up anywhere. Where am I going?

  Now that I’m phosphorescent I can see Jonás in a bedroom in one of his aunts’ houses in Valencia. In my phosphorescent state I can see Julia smoking before she goes to sleep, and Carolina lying on one side, her belly large, and Tania getting an early night, because she said she was jetlagged today after coming back from her exhibition in Basel. In my phosphorescence I fly over all the people I love, and my light goes out when I get into bed.

  Last night I wrote Jonás a long email. Now I don’t feel like writing or talking.

  My notebook is my guitar. I miss Jonás so much. And what if everything’s over when he comes back? I’m scared, I don’t want it to end, it feels strange that he’s not here. Every love song sounds the same and it’s Orpheus’ fault. The Greek curse has hit all the radio stations.

  Tragedy is a change of scale. Jonás’ mum died tragically. Jonás’ tragedy seems to give him a different scale to other people. He feels misunderstood. Feeling misunderstood seems to make him a different size. Perhaps that’s why he’s isolating himself, why he’s running away. But what is there to run away from if we can’t run away from ourselves?

  A garden full of trees: that was the locus amoenus in medieval times. My locus amoenus is this notebook. It’s where I play the guitar. Where I feel sad. Where I’m horribly sentimental. Oh, my little notebook that was a bush in a past life.

  Wind is easily dealt with. You can close a window, zip up a sweater. But the sea is invincible. In that sense, Poseidon is a fiction. That’s why I find him the most beguiling of all the Greek gods. In The Iliad they give him the sea. Here you go, it’s all yours. The waves of the sea: the blue lines in your notebook. With a favourable wind, perhaps these lines will carry you to shore.

  A fork is Poseidon’s dwarf trident. You can stir up the waters in this glass to prove it.

  If beautiful Helen of Troy had had an aquiline nose, the course of History would have been different. If I’d bought vanilla ice cream instead of mango sorbet, perhaps we wouldn’t have moved in together so soon after meeting. How can we know? The slightest thing can change the course of any story.

  I’m not sad any more. One advantage of being born under the sign of Wild is the Wind is that you can move easily from place to place, like the woman with blue eyeliner told me.

  Change. Unlearning yourself is more important than knowing yourself.

  Today I saw a dwarf in the distance and thought it was the dwarf from my block, but it wasn’t. This one didn’t smile at me.

  I bought some biscuits that were really delicious, but a bit expensive. I recommended them to Tania. Before I’d finished describing them, she cut me off: ‘Listen, I used to buy Barilla spaghetti. I’d spend fifteen pesos and make pasta that kept for three days in the fridge. Ever since I discovered this fancy Italian brand I’ve been spending a hundred pesos on some fusilli that only lasts one sitting. It’s hopeless, I can’t go back to Barilla now. That’s the thing, you can never go back. Maybe it’s the curse of nice things. The other day a collector’s secretary offered me a coffee, rubbing her hands like she was trying to tempt me. And it was instant! I’m sorry, but once you taste good coffee you can’t go back. Forget it. It’s like good sex, once you discover it, there’s no going back. So forget it, I’m not trying these biscuits you’re talking about. I’m sure they’re better than my María biscuits. But seriously, forget it.’

  No news from Jonás.

  Tepepunk and Nina arrived at their residency in Tokyo a few days ago. This is how Tepepunk’s email begins: ‘I’m writing to you from the future, and from here I can tell you that everything’s going to be OK with Jonás. I should also tell you that in the future I have very precise dreams and every afternoon I drink tea with a wise Japanese man. Now’s your chance: I’m in the future, ask me anything you like. I’m your oracle.’

  The cat trapped his paw in an armchair. He got hurt, I took him to the vet. Luckily it wasn’t serious. Back home, I called Tania. ‘I’ve realised I really love the cat,’ I told her. ‘I love him too much.’ ‘I need a pet,’ she said, ‘but I’m allergic to cats. Maybe a dog? No. They need a lot of attention, you can’t have two needy personalities like that under one roof. A fish? No, I don’t like them, they don’t do anything. Remember how there used to be fish tanks everywhere in the eighties? Hilarious. Even on the ceilings. A ferret? No way, not even a juggling one. They’re basically sausage-rats. I know, I’ll buy a canary. A canary in a cage. Do you know if you can get plastic canaries?’

  A long day of work and endless admin. I arrive home wanting to write the opera Bureaucracy in three acts. The main character would deliver an intense soliloquy in front of the photocopier. I imagine this main character, an office-worker. There’s a beautiful woman, coveted by everyone in the office. The main character would compete, he’d fight for her love. He wouldn’t manage to win her, and the situation would spiral out of control. An apocalyptic moment: the lights in the office begin to fail, some of the bulbs blow. Photocopies whirl around in the air. The telephones all ring at once, the computers turn off and on. The fluffy animals, picture frames and miniature toys on the monitors bounce up and down, and some tumble to the floor. A fax machine goes crazy, the photocopier hurls itself against the window. It’s time for the main character’s anagnorisis: he sings.

  Opera, musicals. Two genres I don’t like. Still, as soon as I work out whether I’m getting closer or getting further away I think I’ll burst into song.

  This evening I went for a walk in the park. Near the paved area, I saw two girls holding hands. Two sisters in different school uniforms. When I passed close to them, I realised one was blind. The younger girl, who was around seven, was leading her by the hand and describing what she saw, the trees, the dried-up fountain, a dog running along. ‘And what do you think the doggie’s called?’ her older sister asked. ‘Oh, he’s called Doggie, of course,’ the younger girl answered. A girl who sees the world through what her younger sister tells her. This is love, I thought, pure and simple. Isn’t the voice, at the end of the day, made for other people to hear it? And aren’t stories what create bonds? Isn’t trying to describe what the other person can’t see an act of love?

  9

  I ’ m in the waiting area. They’ve just announced that the flight’s delayed. This situation is also the shortest possible summary of this story.

  I’m at the airport. A man in a fluorescent yellow jacket is pushing a miniscule old lady in a wheelchair. The old lady, like the Sibyl in the Metamorphoses , is shrinking by the day. Or so it seems. I’d say she’s probably the same height standing up as she is sitting down. In this waiting area, at the back, there’s a Mennonite couple. They’re dressed in sombre colours. It’s like fluorescent yellow is a technological advance they’ll arrive at in a few centuries’ time, if at all.

  Perhaps if an old lady lived for
enough decades she’d end up the same height as a dwarf.

  I find the following products in the in-flight magazine: ‘Bigfoot, the ideal garden statue’ and ‘Gnomes, an ideal set of statues for the home’.

  I’m fascinated by anything useless. The more useless an object, the more of a triumph I think it is. As if it were made more to tell a story than to be of use to anyone. I’m the kind of person who’ll buy a drink because they like the look of the bottle. Even if I don’t like the drink, I’ll appreciate the bottle. In other words, I’d sooner buy a kaleidoscope than a vacuum cleaner. I wouldn’t buy the resin gnomes because I don’t like them, but I imagine the shrinking old lady might have Bigfoot in her garden. On her behalf, I ask something that perhaps she’d also like to know: why is Bigfoot not ideal for interiors?

  I imagine the conversation between the Mennonites flicking through the airline’s magazine of useless products.

  A hologram of Clarice Lispector appears in the seat next to me: ‘I should have liked to be other people first in order to know what I was not. Then I realised that I had already been those others and found it easy. My greatest experience would be to be the other of the others: and the other of the others was me.’

  In a gossip magazine I see that the Most Important Artist in Mexico is having a retrospective at the Tate Modern. I like his work, I find some of his pieces interesting; I think they’re good, they have depth. But fame doesn’t care about the work. In the article he’s standing between two tall, toned, glamorous women. There’s a picture of the gallery on one side, but not a single photo of his work. This cult of importance has strange ideas about what’s important.

  It would be ideal if Jonás were sitting next to me, on this plane heading for Chicago. He might go on a rant about the gossip magazine. But I enjoy visiting the outskirts like this, not to mention they have the best horoscopes.