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.

Last night, before setting off, I spoke to Antonio: pure gossip, tabloid gossip about everyone we know. My friendship with Antonio is based on occasional phonecalls, long conversations in amongst the emails and texts. He lives abroad, with his wife and two daughters. Talking to him is a lot of fun. Our conversations are a closed circuit of in-jokes and nicknames – everyone has a nickname, we stopped calling people by their names and surnames long ago. I feel like whenever I see my friend Antonio’s name flash up, no one will get out alive.