Modern Romance

"don't hold on, go get strong, well don't you know? there is no modern romance."

This song has been the soundtrack of my walks around the city lately. Spring is coming, romance blooms, couples hold hands walking along the lake and I feel a bit like Bridget Jones. I have claimed lately that I will never love again, that romance seems disgusting, that I don't buy love and romance and etc. I have found myself annoyed by people who have been rubbing their "eternal, unconditional love" in my face (and ears).

And I quoted this song again, because this is how I felt. But I didn't give much thought to these words until someone pointed out to me: "but there is modern romance".

I denied what he said but soon realized that my arguments were a mere product of my frustration. And then he quoted Rilke: "It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work which all other work is merely preparation"

With these words I remembered something that I had forgotten. While all this time I am being bitter and rejecting those who want to show the world how much they love each other, I am forgetting something very important. With another failure I gained something. I took a step further into this ultimate task of learning how to love someone else, how to build something real with someone else. How to be myself with someone, instead of merging and smothering each other and calling it love.

And then, more words of wisdom from Rilke: "Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough."

I remember now what should have been obvious for many months already. And I remember too that if there is something that I like more than the song "Modern Romance", it is the hidden track after it, that says:

Baby I'm afraid of a lot of things
But
I ain't scared of lovin' you
Baby I know your afraid of a lot of things
But
Don't be scared of love

Cause
People will say all kinds of thing
That don't mean a damn to me
Cause all I see
Is whats in front of me
And that's you

Well, I've been dragged all over the place
I've taken hits time just don't erase
And baby i can see you've been fucked with too
But that don't mean your lovin' days are through

Cause people will say all kinds of things
That don't mean a damn to me
Cause all I see
Is whats in front of me
And that's you

Well I maybe just be a fool
But I know you're just as cool
And cool kids
They belong together


No further comments.

Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais

Scene for the screenplay that I will write someday:

Music for the scene:

A woman is standing in a living room. The sun comes in through a large window, the lights are off. She puts on a long black coat. Close up to her face. A tear falls down her cheek, and she wipes it off with her hand. She walks to a table with an old record player on top. Close up to the needle of the player hitting the record that reads "Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais". She walks to the door, where there is a bag and her purse. She takes both and walks out the door.

Close up of the record turning as the song plays.

A door opens and closes. A man stands next to the table with the old record player. He follows the motion of the record as the song repeats itself over and over again. Close up to his face. A tear falls down his cheek and he wipes it off with his hand.

As the song plays, zoom it to the man's face, while the woman whispers in his ear "I just came to tell you that I'm going, and all your tears won't change anything"

End of Scene.

In the middle of the lake

While they were on the phone, the song "Meet me at the lookout point" by Devendra Banhart was playing in the back.

-We should meet in the middle
-Of the Lake?
-Yes
-Should we swim?
-Yes, why not? Meet me at noon.

It was noon and they swam to the middle of the lake.

The tango song "Como dos extraños" was playing in the back. The first reason for this was that a tango song will likely play in the back when there is an Argentinian involved in an encounter. The second reason for this was that he insisted that she had been absent for so long that maybe he had forgotten what she looked like, and other details about her. Also, the lyrics of this song fitted the scene.

The water was cold, because it was the middle of the winter, but they were both smart enough to wear neoprene suits and gloves.

She had a hard time recognizing him in this circumstance, for she had only seen him wearing a suit and looking serious in the corner of the room. He told her she looked stupid, and laughed at her. But she was starting to understand that he needed to tell her all these things.

-We should get out of the lake and walk around rive droite, because rive gauche is too bourgeois- he said.

She gave him a flirtatious look.

-You are a flirtatious freak- he said, serious.

The song playing now was "You've been flirting again" by Bjork. For obvious reasons.

-I cannot help it - she fought back. She did not like having to explain herself all the time.

Many tourists were walking along the lake like them, and a storm was building up quickly.

-I never said I was deep - she told him - but I am profoundly shallow - she added.

It started to rain.

Everyone ran for cover except for them. The song "Heavy Weather" by Jarvis Cocker was now playing. They both burst into song. No one payed any attention, because it was Geneva, after all, and it was raining.

On how the Dead Sea died and other thoughts

"Converting to Islam is too easy" she thought, while floating in that large mass of water without any explanation. Without any explanation because the one she was given before, including moving mountains and molecules and minerals did not really explain why she would float. And it was just better to assume that it was magic that made her float like a rubber duck in a little kid's tub."If only so many things were as easy as converting to Islam, but now again, here I am, floating in water, like nothing, juste comme ça". She looked at the mountains and focused,narrowing her eyes, imagining what was laying beyond the mountains, in Jordanian territory. "How many must have repeated three times 'there is no God except Allah, Muhammad is messenger of Allah'? Is there a membership card?"
There was no one else there. She could not ask.But then again, she had no real interest in knowing, as her attention came back to the fact that the sea, the Dead Sea, was lifting her up. "Rejecting me? Islam would never reject me, or would it? As long as I said that phrase three times... I better not repeat it, just in case, I would need to actually consider the implications of converting to Islam."

Downfall

Last night in my dreams we were walking in the jungle. Going up mountains, through trees, mud, rocks.

In my dreams you were walking with me. We were both wearing "explorer" clothes. Very Indiana Jones of us.

We stopped in a very high peak and saw the immensity surrounding us. We were alone with the world. And I slipped.

Hanging on to rocks that were hurting my hands, making them bleed. Using every bit of strength to hang on.
My chin bleeding against the rocks, my eyes open in horror.

And you. Looking down on me. Not moving.
I asked for your help. You took some time to think. You like taking your time to think.

"I do not think this will work out. I can not be helping you all the time, you know?"

I climb up by myself. My arms hurt, my knees scratched.

I did not fall. In my dreams I understood that I am not someone who falls.

un año largo

estoy cansado. ¿te das cuenta las cosas que pasaron este año? vos te fuiste, yo fui Presidente. se murió Alfonsín. me hice radical. volviste, y te volviste a ir. y me hice mas radical!!!
fue un año muy largo, quiero terminarlo ya.

te fuiste como Perón
volviste por un tiempo como Perón

faltó la masacre de Ezeiza y ya está

hoy me pidieron que fuera a una manifestación contra el rector de la UBA
había troskos tirando piedras por todos lados

---

y yo qué hice?

vos te fuiste.

algo más?

quemaste todos los barcos y te fuiste.

qué barcos?

los buques...no sabés por qué, no?

no

cuando cortéz llega a america, para que sus soldados se dieran cuenta que no iban a volver, manda a quemar los botes.


por el amor de dios no pongas nombres propios.

"Rejazz"

I find it fascinating how human beings can go from being strangers one day to sharing the utmost intimacy.

We are out with friends, or at work, university, wherever or however. We meet someone, we like them, they like us, we draw each other into our lives. We start calling, texting, emailing, thinking about someone we never even knew existed a few hours or days or months before.
We start sharing the most intimate situations, like sleeping, with someone else. We open up, become vulnerable, make plans together.

Of course, I am generalizing. Every relationship follows its own pace and it takes different times to everyone of us to reach certain stages of a relationship.

But where every case coincides is during the time of the break up. It is during the break up where we are faced with a task: to take a person that occupied a special place out of our lives, heart and head.

I was never good with break ups. I never win a break up. I always want to call minutes or hours after we make the decision. Even if it is logical on my side that it does not make any sense to stay together.

What I hate the most is when I read, watch or hear something that the other would appreciate. And I cannot tell him, because I have to give him space. And because I should be focusing in a million things, no? Because he said horrible things to me, or whatnot. Right, even if it is my first impulse, because maybe even 24 hours ago we were taking each other into account for the decisions we were making, we were counting on each other and I could call him without considering the implications or over analyzing. Without fearing that he will not pick up or hang up on me.

I try to reason with myself. Try to convince myself that it would have never worked out in the future anyways "because he was not perfect after all, he made noise when he ate, he did not take me into account, he worked too much."

And then my friends will tell me that he really was not even good looking and he did not even like me.

Why was I with him in the first place, then? huh? I liked him!!!!!!

And its a big tornado of thoughts and drama and crisis and chaos and aaaaaaargggggghhhh.

I understand that human beings are complex creatures by themselves, so why expect any better when they are paired up and make decisions together?

Maybe I am weak or stupid, or a hopeless romantic who thinks that anything can be talked through. Who knows?

I am counting on Regina Spektor's "Rejazz" words:

Thought I'd cry for you forever
But I couldn't so I didn't
People's children die and they don't even cry forever
Thought I'd see your face in my mind for all time
But I don't even remember what your ears looked like

And the clock still strikes midnight and noon
And the sun still rises and so does the moon
Birds still migrate south and people move on
Even though I'm no longer in your arms
Thought the mountain would crumble
And the rivers would bend
But I thought all wrong and the world did not end


But, for now, all that I know is that I watched a movie you would have loved, and I could not tell you about it. And I wanted to send you cheeky text messages all day. And I learned the word cheeky and now I use it every two words. And that I really hope you think of me sometimes.