Friday, August 08, 2008

Numbness

If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

– Fight Club 1999 –

The alarm from my cell phone goes off, resonating in my chaotic little room in that small youth hostel in La Recoleta and ending yet another night of weird dreams. I’ve been having vivid dreams of my father lately, so real and intense that I woke up each time looking for him and it took me a few minutes to realize that my Life has taken me far beyond his existence, both in space and in time.

Thursday morning, 7 am in BA, that means it’s already 1 pm back home. Time for a lunch break, and three more hours to waste at work before another lazy unplanned weekend. A weekend that could still dazzle you with the small variations introduced by chance on that endlessly repetitive theme of places and faces that add up to draw the outline for what you reluctantly call a Life.

Here in Argentina it meant I had two more hours before class. 6 hours of Latin American history and political science theories before my roommates and I start planning our weekend trip to the Cataratas Del Iguazú (That miraculous natural wonder on the borders with Brazil and Paraguay). A 27 year old Swiss-Italian (Studying music at Columbia), a 21 year old from Michigan (I still have no idea what she was studying) and I, were planning to rent a car and drive all the way from gloomy Buenos Aires to the sunny Northern tip.

But, there was something wrong, something missing as usual. That feeling of absolute numbness didn’t leave me for a second. A once in a lifetime trip to an exotic place thousands of miles away was to me as interesting as an eventless boring day at work. There was “Not an ounce of excitement” in me as I agreed to the plan, and acted thrilled about the car we rented, the wine we packed along, and the incredibly cheap hostel room we reserved.

Again, I was lying to myself with that myth of perfection I created to explain millions of dissatisfying moments and experiences. Acting as if I expected more out of this Life, when in fact I asked it for nothing. I’ve heard them all, every single label that comes to your mind: Unsocial, definitely; I held nothing but contempt for those tiny little clones that infested my world with their stupidity. An Alien, sure, why not; it only meant I was more advanced than the rest. Weird, hell, yes; I was simply unique. Detached, totally; it gave me a much better understanding of my surroundings. Emotionless, maybe; still, that contradicted with the uncertainty and the confusion I felt so often. Indifferent, sometimes; other times I was surprised by how much I truly cared. Judgmental, Racist, Sexist, Condescending, Immoral, Disrespectful, Arrogant; you can call me whatever you like, just fuck off and let me be, or not, I don’t really care.

A different person? Not really, it’s always the same old me…