Gustave.

La contemplación llevaba siendo días la misma: ninguna. Enfrascado en sus propios laberintos de la mente, cárceles al uso, Gustave no hacía más que pintarse espirales, una y otra vez, por las que en sueños recorría horas y horas. Desgastándose los pies hasta las rodillas. ¿Era en sueños? Por lo menos así se sentía. En sueños también nunca dilucidaba diferentes problemas, cosa que le fastidiaba, dormía para no tener problemas, y resultaba que al final del día su propia mente era en realidad más intrincada y aparatosa de lo que la supuesta realidad lo era, o lo parecía.

    En sueños podía ser lo que el quisiera, si es que ese `podía´ no era ya un `ser´, hacer lo que quisiera; no, eso no podía. Siempre en los mismo estrechos pasillos de muros altos, sin techumbre. Pasábase la mayoría del tiempo corriendo —como si no hiciese eso despierto—, de acá para allá, de un lugar a otro —si es que eran lugares diferentes—. Cuando no dormía, no hacía nada, o hacía lo mismo, huyendo de lo demás que le concerniera hasta poder volver entre mantas. Gustave no era nadie salvo él mismo, y él mismo en sus sueños, que acaso no eran ya la verdad, era todo. 

     En los eones de la existencia, Gustave se complacía de mirar a la naturaleza, pero no aquella contemplación romántica que la literatura y la cultura le hubieron metido en la cabeza tal vez hace siglos, veía un bosque y no veía árboles, nada más veía el `aquél animal, que, bajo instinto de supervivencia, ataca a otro animal, indefenso, provocándole un dolor indescriptible´, una y otra vez, lo único bello, tal vez sin sufrimiento, eran las estrellas y el cielo más allá de la luna. En el interior de uno mismo, como en el interior del bosque, solamente hay dolor.

— —

     The contemplation had been the same for days: none. Stuck in his own labyrinths of the mind, prisons to use, Gustave did nothing but paint spirals, over and over again, through which in his dreams he traveled for hours and hours. Wearing his feet down to his knees. Was it in dreams? At least that's how it felt. In dreams he also never elucidated different problems, which bothered him, he slept to avoid problems, and it turned out that at the end of the day his own mind was actually more intricate and cumbersome than the supposed reality was, or seemed to be.

     In dreams he could be whatever he wanted, if that 'could' was no longer a 'being', do whatever he wanted; no, that couldn't. Always in the same narrow corridors with high walls, without a roof. He spent most of his time running —as if he weren't doing that awake— from here to there, from one place to another —if they were different places—. When he was not sleeping, he did nothing, or did the same, fleeing from the rest that concerned him until he could return between blankets. Gustave was nobody but himself, and himself in his dreams, which perhaps were no longer the truth, was everything.

     In the eons of existence, Gustave was pleased to look at nature, but not that romantic contemplation that literature and culture had put into his head perhaps centuries ago, he saw a forest and saw no trees, he saw nothing else. `That animal, which, under the instinct of survival, attacks another defenseless animal, causing it indescribable pain´, again and again, the only thing beautiful, perhaps without suffering, were the stars and the sky beyond the moon. Inside oneself, like inside the forest, there is only pain.

— —

    Wandering about the whole evening through the wet and foggy streets of my town, I found myself lost in the bitterness of my own thoughts. As I got closer to a cafe; a tiny and overwhelming place, fluttering the smell of recently made coffee and sweets, the thought of getting in and sitting down there a while, to get my stuff straight was in crescendo. I sat by the front crystal, viewing the street in front of me, with scattered passengers by just as I was a moment before. I pulled out a notebook, a gnawed notebook by the time, with it’s spine awkwardly fixed with masking tape, and black front a back covers, titled with word “Diary” in it with white ink —though it was just a writing notebook, and nothing to do with a diary, even so, I wrote it myself—.

    An old hunched man, with little glasses that made his eyes wide looking, white hair, badly combed, and dressed as formally as an adult his age, come to me and asked me what I was having. 
    `A black coffee, please sir.´ I said, with a quite smile in my face.
    The day didn’t start well; I looked at my hands, all dirty from dried paint and black ink. But my frugal stay at the cafe made me feel a lesser down. Maybe it was the weather, a repetitive weather of wind and  drizzle, with occasional storms. I like that weather, but somehow at the same time it makes me feel more. As I said, the day didn’t start well, got a terrible headache, a nonsensical headache that accompanied me all the day along and part of the next, followed with the previous feeling of the month of November which is a depressive languishment of feeling too much nothing.
    Minutes later the old man returned with my coffee and a little piece of cake. I thanked him and got back my look at my notebook: what are we trying to write today? I said to myself. There I stayed, a couple of minutes more, contemplating the view of a pair of eyes that weren’t looking but seeing everything —perhaps nothing. I opened it. Grabbed the thread that was doing the function of a bookmark and open it entirely. And I tried to write something.
    A couple of bastard flies were fluttering around my head, perhaps because of my smell of death, perhaps because it was just so cold outside. They would land from time to time over my paper, on my hand,  on the edge of my cup of coffee… I didn’t mind them so much, even though they were a bit of a nuisance. I’ve always saw that creature as a sign of boredom, of mental and physical death —a symbol of my current stay of things. My house, a little untidy apartment far downtown, was at this time of the year, flooded with flies, so much, I even considerate them a guest of my own dwelling from October until February.
    I picked up the pen, a transparent, classic,  plastic pen of blue ink, with its opposite end all bitten, almost broke; took a sip of the coffee —the cake was of the flies— and wrote a little story of none but an alter ego, stumbling the streets, complaining about life, existence and the nonsensical procedures of what he calls “Providence”.
    That story led to not much conclusion, and was just a mixture of scattered thoughts and cries; and howls and screams.

    And the so I left the cafe, with more ink and paint, of art and prose, in the palms of my hand, than in that paper.