Invisible Paths
silhouettes of moments
it was late when you made your way home, walking slowly down the hill (hands in pockets and tired).
I knew you would come and when, having asked your friends before. So there I waited, book in hand, staring at the pages, in front of your door. I do not even know what I wanted there, but an aching stretching pulling got me there. Tired that I was, pointless that it was.
We whispered, everyone else asleep, herbal tea and a candle on the kitchen table. So we spent the hours until it was light again, I pulled on my shoes as you made light with your mobile phone. I did not look up, could not, and will forever remember that silhouette of yours standing in the door frame, black against blueish-gray. Unmoving.
Cycling back home, tears on my cheeks, feeling so alive, the things lost and missed and only imagined: now I understand. I think. (probably not)
and yet - the pure beauty of countless and similar moments lives on forever as poetry.
for you
remember that purple light you always admired from my kitchen window? the light on the now-cold chimney. It reminded us about where we were, sometimes we forgot.
walk with me in the city at night. The empty eerie spaces. I take your hand, and we cross a square, a street, the river maybe, to reach our favourite empty places. Listen to the slight wind, traffic far away, not here in the centre. And the vent from a gloomy empty office building rumbles slowly. The broad sidewalk so wasteful without the thousand feet that descend on it by day; a rubbish van with blinking orange lights - whom is it warning? Shop windows too bright, for our attention only, and some workers stocking shelves inside.
Remember me coming home from those shifts? You made me breakfast and I stayed in bed to read all day.
Our steps echo in an empty alley with its damp
façades and small plants trying to grow in corners. The clouds are orange, like I saw them a hundred times from our bed under the drafty window.
You pull me closer and I squeeze your hand.
the end of poverty
due to my stay in hospital, and buying new lenses recently, I ran out of money. Fine, there is always my glorious Citibank account, still containing a good portion of my savings from Switzerland - I never take money out of it. So last night on my way home, I walked into Citibank, greeted the guard chilling in a corner, pushed the card in and out of the slot (in Colombia cash machines do not keep the cards during the transactions) and then stared at the screen...
what in the world was that pin again???
Ummm, I tried twice and then left Citibank again. Thinking about how I will survive on 20.000 pesos for a while. "At least I bought lots of cereal this week, and there are plenty of lentils and carrots" - things like that calmed me down.
Searching for a solution: did I ever write that pin down in a random place... Yes! wait! I wrote it into a book I was reading at the beginning of term. But which? I go through quite a few of them every month... and what is worse is that my books always travel on, find new friends, and change countries.
Finally I knew it. The pin must be somewhere in Sach's "The End of Poverty".
How apt.
A few phone calls, and I located the book in a bag in Alberto's new flat in London.
And the pin arrived in a text message disguised as a number of kisses sent by him...
what if you could not see for a day?
no, not complete darkness, but colourful mush?
I own two pairs of glasses because without them I see exactly that, so in case something happens to one pair I still have the other, or so the cautious German in me thinks.
A few weeks I dropped one pair in the bathroom and a lense cracked in 23 pieces. So they went on a trip to Germany as Sam left Colombia to receive a fresh lense from
this marvellous establishment.
One down, one to go.
A sunny day I arrive at the top of some stairs in front of an office building for a meeting, and changing my sunglasses for the white ones, I - yes... dropped them. The white ones. They toppled down the stairs, and I felt that certain cold creeping up my back. Picked them up, and of course the lenses looked like they had integrated spiderwebs. No meeting for me (with sunglasses no way, broken lenses errrmmm no, and without impossible because of the mush)
So: action. Being in the north of Bogotá Sergio and Alejo acompanied me to a posh shopping centre, where I was told that I would have to wait at least one week for the new lenses to arrive, and would have to pay the equivalent of 27% of a monthly wage for them.
The primary issues being: I do not have 27% of my monthly wage spare, and the day after had an important sales meeting (the follow-up of which could be the culmination of my career in sales so far).
Back to the story: 12.000 pesos spent on a taxi, the curves of "La Circunvalar", and 42 minutes later I stand in the middle of the centre of Bogotá, just before shops close. Around me one optician shop next to the other, vendors handing out flyers to passerbys. The strange phenomenon of Bogotá of always having all shops of one kind in one part of town finally pays off!
Presenting my spiderweb to the optician in the shop on the corner he tells me: "No problem! I'll take care of this straight away." (Ummm oh, excellent!) He proceeded to check the strength of my sunglasses, and returns telling me: "Uh-oh, this is complicated" (I knew this would happen - when people discover the kind of mush I see it generally evokes that comment), "and it will take a long time to make the lenses".
Por dios!
I was thinking along the lines of a week, when he continues: "one hour!"
Since he was closing, I left my glasses there, and he promised me to have them ready at 10 in the morning, just before the meeting. For 9% of my monthly wage.
The night proceeded. Walking around with sunglasses, without I might have fallen into one of Bogotás man-holes or tripped over any of the diverse objects one finds in the streets.
Later in the gym, I bravely decided to work out without being able to see. Treadmill was easy, just had to put my face really close to the dashboard to program the thing.
But then I ended up searching for weights all around the place, literally with my hands feeling along a wall, picking up weights, holding them 4 centimetres away from my face to read those little numbers printed on them.
A group of "tough guys" started making fun of me, and asked me "Why are you so blind?"
Nerve-wrecking and amazing. Life without seeing properly.
Now think about complete darkness instead of colourful mush.
brrrrrrrrrr
plans make me shiver. i know they are essential, but looking at a plan other people have made causes me to blank out. wonder why, i quite like working with
my plan.
naw, vain egotist?
but they also let me procrastinate heavenly. check out the
interesting post by
regi i fully endulged in!
on sun
according to Serge
Bogotá will disappear from the face of the earth soon.
Lala maintains that we will have 2 months of continuous rain soon (apparently the formula is 3 days of rain for each day of sun).
Bogotá has been spoiling us with blue skies. So the
Rolos of the
Dreamteam are starting to worry.
With warm days (25°C or more), and freezing nights (easily -1°C), true tropical mountain climate onion look is required, and fellow
Bogotá inhabitants walk with their favourite accessory (the umbrella) as sun protection. I have my cool black shades and sandles, leaving the house after looking down the hill on the coffee-coloured mass hovering over the city. More evident than in cloudy conditions.
