Winter is Coming

“Winter is coming” my father says.

These words always bring a painful strain in my stomach.

These words mean that good times are over and bad times are coming.

They mean that from now on there will be scarcity and want, there will be pain and I will require patience and self restraint.

My father means that this is only one winter of many, that he has seen more than I have, and that I must learn from this one and from all that come after so that I can be strong.

These words mean that there will be less sun and less warmth and less enthusiasm, less food and less entertainment.

These words mean that a test on my character is coming, and what makes my stomach ache is being aware of it.

I prefer not to be aware, but it is impossible. If my father hadn’t spoken the words, someone else would have, to the same effect.


I guess I’ll move to the tropic.


D.

Girl Talk

‘That’s what it’s like, girl’ said a mother to her child.

‘You don’t need much help in looking beautiful until you turn forty or so. Don’t waste your time striving for it, you already have it. After that, age with grace. Us women have the privilege or curse of living physical decadence very closely, more than men who don’t lose shape over pregnancies and don’t really need good shape in order to reproduce.’

‘While you have beauty’ she continued, ‘strive to gain things you don’t have: skills. If you go the other way around you’ll be wasting time. You’d be looking for things you already have, and then things you can no longer get.’


D.

Kudos

People build up too many expectations around life.

It’s made of, what? Eight decades, tops? Then everybody gets all worked up about what you are going to do with it… I really don’t get it.

If I were to plan a great deed I’d need the first two decades to figure myself out, then another two to study everything that has been done in the past and what improvements I can make, how to be original and not just do something that someone else did exactly like me a couple of thousand years early. There goes four decades down the drain, only in preparation, you got half in front of you.

But then, that half has been possibly damaged by environmental factors, so you’ll lose between five to ten years to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and stress. Which brings me again to the next half: generally, we fall in love. There goes four decades for you, between falling in love with your spouse and falling in love with your grandchildren.

Just a simple little life, that’s what you get in the end, no big plans, ‘cuz you didn't have time to see them through, that’s for the highly lucky, exceptionally talented or extremely well positioned people.

To you and me, kudos, we get life.

D.

New Year Kind of thinking .2

By D. Salazar

As in every beginning of a new year, I tend to allow my head to roam around all possibilities of life design, working status, learning experiences and cleansing rituals I can get my hands on, convinced that, even if I can’t do them all right now –how impairing that feels- at least I’ll be able to do the ones I truly like the most. For this I rely solely on that power we humans have, the power of will, to keep attracting those things that attract us.

Choosing a working path is not easy, paradoxically enough we are forced to choose one at the same time our raging hormones can’t even decide on one romantic partner. University age is not a choosing age, at least not for us humans with a foggy but pleasant path spread ahead.

I prefer to live day by day.

While trying to decide a working path for this new year, I realized that the one that seems both intelligent and attractive to my intellect at the same time, requires money and time, maybe too much money and too much time. Considering that I also chose to pay for an activity that makes me incredibly happy and keeps my over enthusiastic head away from dark thoughts about the emptiness of life –and how we came to die and everything is useless and other fatalistic thoughts of the sort- I’m gonna need tons of money.

When you realize you need money to get money through a better job, and you also need money to have fun so that the process of getting money is not so tiresome, you fall into depression. A little voice awakes in my head and says “wtf man! When do I get to live and enjoy living?”

With some effort, I extracted the voices –real or imaginary- of the various people I deeply admire. I find they are the best resource against depression.

One of those voices, raspy and smoky, coming from the kitchen table, said “I have never concerned myself with the reasons I would be remembered by”.

Another one, rather sombre and smelling of wine, said “I only attempt to expose the manner in which I have come to certain truths”.

And then, the greatest woman who has ever lived says, while sitting in a corner sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup, “Freely be, whatever you are”.

Like a mother’s lullaby, these words clear the dark cloud of depression and get my ass on my working chair again. Whatever my choice of work, whatever the amount of money and time I need to spend to achieve that choice, doesn't really matter.

We admire in others the qualities that are inside us, yet unexplored.

Considerations on Lifestyle and Failure Part 1

By D. Salazar

Imagine you are approaching thirty.

It feels like a thin line between two territories. Whether one is good and the other is bad, or one interesting and the other one boring, is only a wild guess. You haven’t really crossed the line before, although you have met some who’ve crossed it.

What do you think of these people? Are they your parents? Teachers? Bosses? Are they boring? Are they severe? Are they lonely? Are they anything you’d like to be?
That’s just too many questions at the time.

Consider the line. It’s thin, you will cross it barely noticing its existence. The first question that arises may be “wtf man, why can’t I stay on this side?”
And then someone on the other side, right on top of the line, who is wearing a cowboy hat against the sunset, throws a rock at your head and yells at you “Get over it punk! If you stop walking the game’s over”.

And you’re like “shit, he’s right…” You realize that if you don’t cross the line you’ll have to turn the power off, because you can’t really stop walking.
The second question that arises is “what will happen to me when I cross?” Panic sweat starts dropping from your temples.

The man in the hat notices it, takes a puff of his Cuban and says “You’ll continue walking” Smoke rises dramatically against the reddening sky.

There’s still some distance between you and the line. You may feel a mixture of impatience with regret, and a big amount of anxiety. Questions start to knot again inside your head.

So you sit down and have a nice nap. Questions can go to hell for now.

When you wake up the questions are still there and you have a headache, at least there’s two of them you’ve already answered. You check and find the weird man with the hat is still standing against the sinking sun.

So you put your mind in order and choose one out of the scrambled bunch. “What if I can’t make it there?”

“You made it this far” says the man, now sitting on a rock right next to you. You startle.

“I thought once you’ve crossed you couldn’t come back?” you ask, carefully sliding away from him, just in case.

“’Course you can” he replies, smiling slyly at your ignorance. “You can always come back, you know the road. Problem is, you don’t really fit in anymore. You grew out of that pair of pants”.

And that makes so much sense you have to remain quiet for a while to hide your shame.
“Let’s keep walking, shall we?” says he, and you both rise and continue towards the line.

“What’re you so afraid of?” he asks, in a casual sort of way, as he lights another Cuban.

You don’t really know where to start. Is it fear? Probably is, otherwise you wouldn’t be writing this article in the first place. “I guess… I don’t know what I’ll become, you know?” The man seems to consider your question and remains silent, so you go on. “What if I’m a failure?”.

The man’s silence punctuates how stupid you feel at the doubt you were mongering about. That doesn’t mean, however, that the doubt is less real. And while you spend a lot of precious concentration on keeping yourself from blushing like a bride, the man stops walking. You turn around and face him, now standing against the rising sun.

“You’re gonna die” he says. “At some point between the place where you started and the place you are going to, you’re gonna die”. He seems to consider something for a moment, spits hard on the ground and approaches you. “That’s the trick, you see?” he strongly grabs you by the arm and steers you forward towards the line. “If you’re a failure, it means you’re losing. But all you gotta do is walk from point A to point B. Point A is where you start, point B is where you stop. How can you lose?”

He keeps walking, but you, in shock at the simplicity of it all, cannot move.
It makes sense, right? It seems strangely correct.

Another gush of questions arises, what about dreams and hopes and goals and plans and all that stuff? What about wealth and success and first class air trips and cruises? What about your life partner and kids and grandkids and glory?

But as you stare blankly into the air, the man was steadily approaching you. He’s now standing by your side, offering you a Cuban the size of your forearm.

“You like traveling?” he asks, depositing the Cuban on your outstretched hand. Since you keep staring at him numbly without answering, he goes on. “Have you travelled?”

“A little” you say in a hoarse voice.

“What do you do when you travel?”

“You mean on the trip or while you’re already in the place?”

“You worry too much… It’s all part of the same” he takes a quick puff. You look at the shadow his body casts on the ground.

“Well… many things. I can’t think of anything in particular”

“Yes, whatever. But do you have a clear picture of it on your mind? Things you do when you travel?”

“Yes”

“It’s the same thing” he says as he casts a sly smile on your direction. “Going from point A to point B… There’s no difference”.

For a while, you simply can’t speak. The both of you walk side by side towards the sunset. You have lit your cigar and you ponder. The line was still some distance away.
“So, you can’t lose?” you ask.

“Not from where I’m seeing it” he replies.

“But, what if…” you start. But you must cut the phrase when you realize the ‘what if’s’ are not occurring to you immediately. “What if I become a beggar? Or a homeless person? Or a drug dependant? Or…”

“Do you really believe that is possible?” he says, cutting you in middle sentence. “You think that as a possibility in your future? Becoming a beggar?”

“Everything is possible, I guess…”

The man seems to reflect for a moment, biting the tip of his cigar as you both kept walking towards the sunset. “Yes and no…” he says. “What do you see around you?”.
You briefly describe what surrounds you. He continues, “do you think this is likely to change abruptly?”

“Not likely. But it does look a little boring.”

The man laughs at this and says “Could you perhaps be looking only at the big picture? You keep staring at the sun in the horizon? Of course you’ll get bored if you only look at that.”

At this point you don’t really feel like talking anymore. You just want a little silence and a good night sleep to clear your head. Life feels a little more depressing now. You wished you hadn’t asked so many questions. You try to cheer yourself up by thinking of those people you love, those who you admire, everyone you feel connected to. And then you get a terrible headache, and think “fuck it, I’m going to sleep”.
You wake up a little sore. The man hands you a glass of orange juice. You continue walking. The line is drawing closer.

“Listen” he says after a while, “I’m gonna go back to where I was. I have some stuff to do. I’ll leave you with this: You are travelling from point A to point B. Enjoy it”.

This is enough for a first consideration on lifestyle and failure for one day. As you forget about the line and continue walking, you realize thirty is still a little far. You’ll know when you get there.