On Saturday afternoon Jonás and I went to a gallery opening. We saw a woman there who was more excited about the party than the exhibition. The artworks were just a bureaucratic pretext for the fun. I liked that about her. She was there to have a good time, plain and simple. ‘Some people prefer the cracking to the nuts,’ Jonás said, about this woman and her extravagant dance moves. Typical Jonás. Sometimes he takes things more seriously than he should. Needless to say, Jonás doesn’t dance.
On the dancefloor, I heard someone say that the Most Important Artist in Mexico was there. That phrase, it seems, has the same atomic number as uranium. Some people went over to talk to him. Later, the Most Important Artist in Mexico took a young woman by the waist and they danced psychedelic cumbias. I thought he was a good dancer. Every so often, people interrupted his dancing to engage him in conversation. It’s a shame the woman who prefers the cracking to the nuts didn’t dance psychedelic cumbias with the Most Important Artist in Mexico. The dancefloor would have gone up in flames.
The secret of those people going over to interrupt the Most Important Artist in Mexico while he was dancing, now that I think about it, must lie in the very word ‘important’. In this city, we could form a cult around that word.
We left the party at the gallery and went to pick up a few things for dinner. I thought I saw Oscar Wilde in the supermarket. I once saw Fernando Pessoa choosing fruit at the Thursday market.
Today is Sunday. Jonás is at his friend Marcos’ house right now. Here at home, it’s a Sunday for puzzles. What came to nothing first, the corny aunt or the corny poetry she liked to read?
A Sunday for making up pointless sayings.
All texts are grey in the dark.
Stories, like buildings and wars, begin with drafting.
Bookkeeper, keep to your books.
And you know what? A notebook can be a Milky Way of letters.
What does ideal mean? The ideal weight. The ideal height. The ideal house, salary, job. The ideal book. The ideal person. To me, the bell they ring when the rubbish truck is coming is ideal: no accident, no disaster, no catastrophe has the good manners to announce its arrival like that.
I’m swimming diagonally, look. It’s getting late, why aren’t you back from Marcos’ house? I’m not going to ask you the Proust questionnaire; I think the Beckett questionnaire would be better. Come and see.