Autor:    Julián Silva Puentes

PERFECT DAY

It took me 9 years to write a novel, and now I have nothing to talk about. What happens to me on the way to work, what I read last week, that they tried to rob Diana and me while we were giving bread to the homeless on the street, are some things I usually write about. In that sense, putting myself to shame has become a kind of archetype of myself. The image of the loser whose optimism prevents him from giving up is something with which I feel identified, and that is why I express myself in this way in these small three-page pieces that Cronopio magazine and Editorial Zenú publish from time to time, given my own insistence.

“Juan, I have the best writing of the decade for you!”, I tell Cronopio´s editor as soon as I finish an article. "Henry —I speak to the owner and editor of the Zenú publishing house with whom I have published two of my books— I think that with this we did win the Pulitzer”.

Both of them, both Henry and Juan, share my optimism about the Pulitzers and the best writings of the decade, because they still believe that a few words can change the world. Like me, they hope one day to get that story that can rescue us all from the one and a half hour journeys on Transmilenio and from having to spend December 24 delivering activity reports, because otherwise you won´t get paid. Like me, they hope one day to get that story that can rescue us all from the one and a half hour journeys on Transmilenio and from having to spend December 24 delivering activity reports, because otherwise you won´t get paid.

It´s something worth looking forward to every morning. Something that makes you think that regardless of the circumstances, everything you dreamed of can be fulfilled as long as you continue to believe that everything can happen.

…

It´s sunny today and the view of the buildings much further north from where I am, reminds me of Melbourne in summer when people would go out in the streets in t-shirts and shorts on their way to the beach. It was very hot, but the music from the bars on the boardwalk and the lights of the streetlamps illuminating the bed of the Yarra River in the twilight of the day, made you think how lucky you were to be at that precise time and place in the world.

At this precise time and place in the world, I am a long way from Melbourne, but I can´t help but feel like I am there. Perhaps it is because we are starting the year and for two weeks the sun has been shining in Bogotá. It´s so sunny that you don´t want to work, but to drink on the beach from ten in the morning and then go to the movies and then home.

“Just a perfect day —Lou Reed sings—. Drink sangria in the park. And then later, when it gets dark we go home”.

I remember that song now that I´m on my way to work, because it makes me think about everything that worries me early in the morning, which is usual in my line of work.

“Just a perfect day. You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else, someone Good”.

Anything to get away from the problems of the day, right? The inevitable and terrifying future, even if such a thing never comes, because the future does not exist.

“Just a perfect day. Feed animals in the zoo. Then later a movie too and then home”.

Looks like Lou Reed doesn´t want to leave me alone this morning. It´s probably because I feel melancholic and maybe it´s also because I´m exhausted because we work all the time, including weekends, and we never have vacations. Perhaps it is because I feel that I am about to understand something important, something that can change my life, but just before reaching that light of knowledge, it escapes me and I am worse off than before, because it is one thing to live happily and ignorant of absolutely everything and not knowing that you are missing out on something essential, and another is not knowing that you don´t know anything and being satisfied with things as they are. Being a fool who doesn´t know he is is better than not being a fool at all and knowing that there are many things out there in the world that you will never understand.

Today is one of those days when the feeling of being on the verge of understanding something fundamental prevails. It is also one of those days when we remember the people who left us. I remember all of them with sadness, because death is a very sad matter for me. However, it is not for Diana. For Diana, death is as natural as breathing or eating. So is being happy or sad for whatever reason. Being and not being is as natural to Diana as living or dying, because everything that happens in this life corresponds to the same Tao principle: as above, so below.

The Tao is everything, and it is nothing, even if I don´t have the slightest idea what that means. The Tao is everything, and therefore I must be the Tao. If I am the Tao, I must be God. I know that, but I have to be careful not to say it out loud because a few years ago I went crazy and started telling my friends and people at work that I was indeed God.

Saying that someone is God has no importance for the world unless you are a political leader or the Pope. When you are neither of them because you are just yourself, that is, an office worker with no pretensions other than telling people about your new discovery, you go from being eccentric to a clown and that is not so bad after everything. In any case, in those days, after repeating the same thing over and over again, I am God!, people started to get annoyed with me. I didn´t understand it, I really didn´t understand what was so annoying for them when I felt so good saying it out loud. I am God! In fact, I wanted everyone to feel happy like me and that´s why I repeated it ad nauseam.

“I am god!”. I still remember to this day how good it felt to say that. There was really no point in knowing that I was God, because my circumstances were still the same and I definitely didn´t have the power to change someone else´s. I was still ME, but I was happy with my individuality and the fact that I was not a different person.

Come to think of it, I must have looked pretty silly repeating such nonsense. A 29-year-old telling people he´s God goes from eccentric to jerk in a minute. However, people are nice most of the time, because they don´t want to hurt your feelings by leaving you with the word in your mouth by turning their back on you in the middle of your speech about knowing who you really are. People are good most of the time, yes, but they get bored of always hearing the same thing and go from being nice to call you a buffoon to your face; then you tell yourself that they don´t understand because they are on a lower spiritual plane than yours, and you look at them with pity and then condescension is what you feel and one day you simply stop feeling that you are God. Then you lose it. The feeling goes away and everything is the same again, but much, much worse because you know that there is another way of seeing things, and yet the feeling that makes everything possible disappears, and you return to being yourself and your friends stop treating you like a fool because you say and do what they all expect. All of them must also be God, but for some reason that I still don´t know, they refuse to understand it.

…

“Just a perfect day. Problems are left alone. Weekenders on our own. It´s such fun”.

Today is one of those days when your skin feels thinner and everything affects you more than usual. But what is normal and what is not? It is not normal to feel that the cold makes you sad, and the same the heat. It´s not normal for buildings to remind you of Melbourne in a hint of melancholy, and yet you can´t stop looking at them and thinking about summer and the Yarra River. Could it be that Lou Reed is to blame? His Perfect day has the power to make me very sad or very happy, depending on how I woke up in the morning. I wish I had the power to feel how I want to feel any day by pressing a button. That´s why the music I play as soon as I get up is so important, because the way I feel the rest of the day depends on the spirit of the tune. I can´t listen to Lou Reed´s Perfect Day on the way to work because then I´ll want to enjoy this sunny day with Diana drinking sangria in the park and then going to the movies after dark. Come to think of it, maybe that´s what I should be doing right now instead of continuing on my way to the office. That´s it! I´ll get off at the next station and surprise her, surprise Diana by coming home for the afternoon. I know it´s not smart of me now that I´m starting the year and I have to earn this new contract, but you should see the buildings rising almost to the clouds like they did in Melbourne and you should feel the thrill that I feel knowing that I will forget, except for today, the annoying obligations by which we stop living as we are supposed to. Well not today! Today I´ll come home as a surprise and I´ll tell Diana to forget everything she´s doing because, in the absence of a beach, we´ll have lunch at our favorite restaurant and go to the movies after dark, with our heads full of celluloid fantasies and our bellies satisfied, we will return home. After all, whether it´s a perfect day or not depends on us and the sun that is shining high up in the sky like I haven´t seen in Bogotá for a long, long time. A perfect day, that was what Lou Reed called it. A perfect day that will be this precise moment and if we are lucky, it will be tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after. A perfect day, even if such a thing doesn´t ever exist.