I am not a writer of great talent, but I am not like those effeminate pale souls, the poets, who suffer because they did not see the perfection of their frigid
tight syllables. I like, of course: the astonishment that writing causes;the same if it alludes to a pigeon paralyzed by hunger,like a fiery and indifferent robot, focusing on people with only one eye, to see if it can quietly devour a potato in the most beautiful McDonalds in the world;

or the concept of men as naked and spinal chickens,
perched on the Avenue of the Allies of their lives,
with a row of purple trees that seem to say that autumn is coming and other green ones, in the yellowish cement of Porto, that remind us that the summers are ours, that we do not live in the brown sunset of our lives.

Men, and pigeons, as I was saying, move idyllically in the blue sky of the avenue.

Humans, although also mechanical chickens, have their heads covered with a precious and sublime substance; a transparent and illuminated helmet, which allows the unitary integration of the sensory scene, hunger or love. In that helmet inhabits an enchanted and ghostly loom, where all the nerves of the head, hands and legs converge. The pigeons already made a dispassionate brawl and the Germans had to get up. A little before, the woman in the background realized that I was writing, thin and sensual lines drew her translucent body; her kind look hid a diabolical interest and I felt the same thing that Lisa made me feel in Lisbon when she saw me in the same way; a mixture of love and nothingness.

Now, I’ve become one of the pigeons, and with parsimonious tranquility swallow the ice cream in whole spoonfuls, thinking about the unusual coincidence between the warmth of the candy and the coldness of its sweet milk, then, from the branch on which I am perched and moved, I see the transparent shadow between the lights of the trees, of a dark, sad and disheveled Portuguese man and with stoicism I contemplate the possibility of never seeing him again. Now I feel as if I miss Pato, Valeria or my hound Lucas. It's a vulgarity, that sweet forlornness (saudade), but it brings together the most different people on the planet and pushes genetic variability like a trickle, because its intoxication is not only reminiscent of family, but intense and wonderful. People often say that life should not be guided by desire, but by love, but no one has questioned the social role of how we surrender by tenderness. That was tenderness? Is life to be pushed by tenderness?

The enchanted loom is paralyzed in the spinal bombardments of the machine of my body, absorbed when my neurons are lit in the intertwined paths of temperature, light, sounds and affection; and when I see Filipe again as a transparent flash in the avenue, I blink to avoid tearing up. The enchanted loom squeezed the organs in my face, but I feel the same tranquility that Portugal inspires in me, like that day, the first day I arrived in Porto and I fell obstreperously in the Rua de Passos Manuel.

Interests

• politics
• philosophy
• science

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Met Mario Bunge, the most famous Latin American philosopher in the world

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Portugal

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, Mexico, Portugal