As a child I was abducted by a Guarani tribe in Northern Argentina. I was found in Paraguay five years later by a Swiss anthropologist. I went back to Buenos Aires but at the age of 19 I decided to accept the Swiss invitation and went to Lausanne to study anthropology myself. Instead, I was paraded in all the European universities as the new Victor of Aveyron even though I wasn’t from Aveyron. When on tour in the Basque country I realised the potential of surfing. I convinced the Swiss to pay for lessons and I started training day and night. Thanks to my various surf exploits (once I heard an Aussie saying “that cutback is rad dude!”) locals shared with me their most sacred secret: the Outaka wave. Under certain rare weather conditions experimented surfers could ride a wave all the way from Sopelana to Tulum, and they invited me to ride it that same day. I didn’t hesitate. I was tired of declaiming Guayaki poetry to boring academics so I waxed my board and started paddling out with the Basque surfers. The beginning was difficult but once we caught the Outaka it was as if my entire life was designed just for that moment: the wave and myself were One. This mystical experience got me distracted and soon I lost sight of my fellow surfers and, I could add, I lost sight of myself since I totally forgot what happened next. An old fisherman found me ashore on a beach in Cornwall and alerted the police. Apparently I claimed to be a Belgian pianist and even spoke some Flemish to prove it (I don’t speak Flemish!). By the time I recovered my memory I have told so many incongruent stories (a stranded Queen Mary cook, a Czech chimney sweep, an Austrian BASE jumper) that I was afraid of telling the true (an Argie abducted by Guaranis). I decided to lie and I started saying I was a technology consultant, and that’s how I got my current job.
17
May 15
Sedimento
Sacudí el tintero unos treinta segundos y enseguida después lo dejé reposar en el escritorio. Esperé otros 30 segundos y observé cómo iban descendiendo las palabras. EN la parte de abajo era difícil distinguirlas ya que estaban todas apiñadas. En la parte de arriba pude leer “mariposa”, “ilusión” y “brisa”.
31
Aug 11
A clumsy bunch of green butterflies
Back in his hotel room Donald noticed that the light of the hotel phone was blinking. Maybe Valerie left a message? Somehow he was hoping that she’d change her mind and show a bit of pity for him. He picked up the receiver and followed the instructions to check the voice mail. There was no message, but for a split second he heard the recorded noise of cars in the street and then a male voice saying “Damned!”. Donald didn’t like this at all. Other than Valerie, nobody knew he was in Vegas, let alone that hotel. He couldn’t help his anger: he took the dummy and gave it a first kick on the side, so strong that the dummy ended up on top of the heart-shaped bed. Donald put the dummy straight and gave it a couple of uppercuts and, while in the air, a flying kick from the side. The puppet, with its wide-open eyes and permanent smile appeared impassive to such violence. On the other hand the uppercuts hurt Donald’s knuckles quite badly, and that irritated him even more. Deciding to take revenge, he stepped into the dummy’s right hand, then took one finger and twisted it and pulled it as if he was opening a bottle of wine. There was a knock at the door.
– “Who’s there?” Donald shouted.
– “Excuse me Sir, it’s the concierge here. I’m here with Mr. Sherman. He stayed in this room the night before you came in and he seems to have forgotten a puppet here. Do you mind if we come in and …”
– “There’s no puppet here!” Donald rushed to reply.
A long silence followed during which Donald tried to work out different case scenarios and the possible reactions.
-“Excuse me,” said the voice again, “but would you mind opening the door? Mr. Sherman is an old customer of this hotel and very much respected. We just want to have a quick look.”
Donald instantly understood that he was in a complicated situation. This Mr. Sherman seemed to have some kind of insider status in the hotel and he obviously knew that Donald was lying, and that the puppet was in the room. The best strategy he could adopt was a controlled transparency: he’d hide the puppet; tell them to have a short look and then politely ask them to leave the room. Donald took the puppet and put it behind the curtains. Then went to the door and slowly opened it with a big smile in his face. His first look of Mr. Sherman gave him goose pimples. He had very thick w-shaped eyebrows that run uninterrupted from one side of the face to the other, and a big, crow-like nose. Without saying a word to Donald, Mr. Sherman went straight to the bed, knelt before it like a monk before a shrine and then proceeded to put half of his body underneath it. When he came back from underneath the bed, he turned to Donald and with a very sharp voice said, “Where is it?”
Donald hesitated. As he walked to the window to add an extra security layer between Mr. Sherman and the puppet he replied with a flat voice “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mr. Sherman’s face turned purple and his fingers cracked as he clenched his fists. He made a few steps towards Donald but suddenly stopped and noticed that Donald’s eyes seemed to be distracted by something on the carpet. Mr. Sherman followed Donald’s eyes and found the puppet’s finger. He made a feline jump towards Donald who at the same time instinctively dived behind the curtains to take the puppet. Donald grabbed the dummy by the arm but before he could do anything with it, Mr. Sherman had managed to catch one of the puppet’s leg. What followed was a ridiculous tug-of-war with both men pulling from the puppet’s limbs and the concierge throwing short and weak “oh my gods” and making aborted and half-hearted attempts to intervene.
This was the state of affairs when an unexpected noise pre-announced the disaster: Donald suddenly tore apart the puppet’s arm he was pulling from and got ejected like an arrow against the window. With the weight of his body Donald broke the glass, went through the window and fell down. As he was falling Donald could see how several dollar bills where coming out of the puppet’s arm and spreading into the air like a clumsy bunch of green butterflies.
Donald got lucky. He fell into the oily swimming pool and only broke one finger, one arm and one leg. The same finger, arm and leg that the unfortunate puppet lost in the action. When he first opened his eyes Donald recognised Valerie’s face. The police tracked her down through the rental car and asked her to assist them with the investigations. Apparently Mr. Sherman had been under surveillance for several weeks. He was the main suspect in a scam that involved selling fake chips to groups of Japanese tourists. The cops hadn’t been able to gather sufficient evidence to indict him. The various dollar bills hidden in the body of the puppet could have been used as proof against Mr. Sherman, but the puppeteer managed to escape with most of the dummy, and the money stuffed in it. Valerie told Donald not to worry. Her testimony proved his innocence and non-involvement with the scam. She also told him that the nurse asked her if he was covered by a medical plan. A first estimate put the hospital bill for treatment and services at $11,000.
13
Aug 11
Mutilated mouth
“A ventriloquist dummy! A fucking ventriloquist dummy!” Donald hated those puppets! They have always been a source of repulsion rather than entertainment. He hated everything about those dummies: their oversized eyes, their eternal rosy cheeks, their ridiculous hairstyles, and their stupid fixed smiles. Every time they opened their mutilated mouths he expected coagulated blood to come out of it. He could never decide who was more pathetic: the puppet or the puppet’s master? Ventriloquist dummies always looked like they had a paralysis that only spared their mouths and eyes. And ventriloquists themselves had this dull and uncomfortable fixed grin on their faces every time the puppet talks. What was so funny about seeing this sad couple talking to each other?
Donald had some more scotch and then put the puppet on his knees, facing the mirror. He slipped his hand in the hole right on the neck of the puppet, moved its jaws and head and then almost immediately threw it back to the floor. Disgusting! What was he going to do with the thing now? He squeezed the plastic bottle of his scotch until the last drop and then threw it against the puppet. He put his back on the bed and felt into a deep sleep.
Three big thumps on the door put an end to a continuous stream of snoring. Donald shouted to the cleaner to leave him alone. What time was it? He checked the clock. Past one thirty. He could feel the poisonous tail of a massive headache drilling the back of his head. A really strong stench was invading the walls of his nose. He tried to turn his face but then realised that the horrible smell was following him. It was his own halitosis mixed with the more pervasive smell of old chlorine coming from the hotel’s swimming pool. Donald promised to himself not to go into the pool. Not only did it smell like a poorly sanitised public toilet, but also he remembered seeing a thick layer of oily liquid that covered the whole surface of the water. Gathering all his forces he got up and decided to take a shower. In his way to the bathroom he stumbled into the puppet. He almost forgot about the thing. Donald grabbed it and put it in the chair next to the bed and continued his clumsy way to the bathroom. He spent half an hour under the comforting streams of mild water. He checked his teeth and chin in the mirror, then started spreading shaving foam on his cheeks while he was trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the weekend. The hotel was already paid and his plane wasn’t leaving until Sunday afternoon, but he was totally broke. He was pondering the pros and cons of using his credit card when he heard a sound in the room.
He went back to the room, looked around and saw nothing. Then he dropped his eyes in direction of the dummy and found it back on the floor, spreading its limbs like the wings of a helicopter or like a desperate creature crawling through the dessert in search of a way to save its life. Already this image infuriated Donald, and then he noticed that the puppet’s right index seemed to be pointing somewhere under the bed. He leant under the bed, had a quick look and then noticed the exact position where his missing wallet was sitting. The puppet’s big eyes were staring directly at Donald. A cold shiver went down his spine. “Fucking puppet wants to steal my money!” He rushed to the dummy, kicked it twice on the side, picked up his wallet and then sat down on the bed. In the wallet he found the card-sized remote control, his credit cards and a couple of twenty-dollar bills. Donald was so furious to realise he was broke that he was ready to jump on top of the puppet until it was reduced to pieces, but he held back his anger. Probably the fucking puppet was worth something; probably he could sell it for a couple of thousand and then try his luck again in the casino. Who knows, he might end up getting back his $11,000! With this idea in mind Donald finished shaving, put his clothes on and set off to the street. Before he left the room, he made sure to hide the dummy.
Donald sat at a booth in the International House of Pancakes, ordered orange juice, coffee and the house special. He seemed to be distracted by every passer-by that he spotted through the window. But he wasn’t paying attention to them. His mind was an endless spring of mixed ideas: a bit of bitching about Valerie, some regretful thoughts about stupid bets he made the night before, and lots of complicated schemas to get back his $11,000 before he left Vegas. The idea of getting money out of the puppet turned around his head like a cheesy song. Donald speculated that the thing was probably worth three grand, two at the minimum. That was enough for him to get started. He could begin with minimum bids at craps, to increase the initial sum. No blackjack this time, the dealer always had the upper hand. Once the first objectives reached, he’d move into the roulette, and place his bids on odds or evens, where there was a higher chance to double his bet. He considered the odds of green numbers but promptly dismissed it as a minor issue. Yes, with two grand and moderate luck he could easily get to $5,000 on one night. He would have enough time to think about doubling that on Sunday. The more he thought about the puppet, the more it became the only alternative for his salvation. But he hated the idea of the stupid dummy becoming his saviour.
A black cloud brusquely darkened his face, and all the bad memories about ventriloquists came back at once, like a sudden rain of dead pigeons falling upon him. Who would pay two grand for such an appalling object? Nobody in Vegas would spend even a minute considering it. People came here to spend their money in gambling and lap dancers, not in ventriloquist dummies! That dull puppet was no saviour, it was a disgrace! This last word came like a revelation to him: the stupid thing was all the time there under the bed of his room and it was obvious that there was a link between the puppet and his catastrophic performance the night before. The infamous puppet was cursed! Donald experienced such a sudden disgust that he almost choked with the house special. He coughed, drank some coffee and took a decision: he was going straight back to the hotel to take out his revenge on the dummy.
31
Jul 11
The thing under the bed
Donald shut down the door of his room and threw his wallet against the big mirror. Who could still believe in universal harmony when everything that could go wrong, went wrong? It was Friday at 11:30PM. Three hours ago he was arriving to Las Vegas for his first time. Three hours ago Valerie was giving him a wink when the receptionist assumed they were spending their honeymoon in the luxury suite with a heart-shaped bed. Three hours ago he had some $11,000 in his bank account… Now he didn’t have anything: he lost all of his money and Valerie just left him in the middle of his gambling frenzy, accurately envisioning how his obsession would replace the promise of a romantic first date in this city of temptation.
Donald took the bottle of cheap scotch out of the paper bag, had a sip of its amber content and soon felt like beating a dragon on a fire-spitting contest. Valerie’s bags weren’t there, and neither were the car keys, but her scent was still there, intruding his senses like a recriminatory reminder of his ridiculous behaviour. Wasn’t that really unfair? If she took the car then she should’ve taken everything with her, including her smell! Encouraged by his self-pity, Donald had a couple of gulps that threw him into a state of advanced hypnosis. He turned all the lights off and sat down on the end of the heart-shaped bed. His empty eyes stared at the image of himself and the kaleidoscope of promotional signs that overlapped on the window of his room. The night seemed to adopt two different speeds on the each side of the glass. On the outside, colours were racing and colliding, generating ephemeral shapes that then transformed again in more colours and more and different shapes, creating a vertiginous cycle. On the inside, the darkness of the room swallowed each of those shapes and colours with the same pace a dark quicksand would dispose of a helpless creature.
Donald didn’t notice that he had fallen asleep. He didn’t even notice that his snore could be heard from the lobby. But somehow he noticed that after a while his front was covered with little pearls of sweat. It took him a good couple of minutes to feel the first drops surfing his cheek. He was in a deplorable state and couldn’t remember whether he was dreaming or having a nightmare. He looked at the window and saw that the city lights were still there and he remembered the orgy of colours and shapes. The mix made him feel sick. He tried to stand up and shut the curtains but realised that a mammothian headache was putting all his weight on his head. He then remembered that the receptionist gave him a credit card-sized remote control that could do almost everything in the room, from switching lights, running a bath, and – why not? – shutting up the window curtains!
He also remembered last seeing his wallet by the mirror and started exploratory excursions with his hand under the bed. The touch of the thick carpet somehow soothed him, like a reverse caress. He kept doing that for a while, almost forgetting the reason of his search. Suddenly his index finger got trapped in something that felt like a mouth, but was cold. “Shit!” he yelled withdrawing his hand like if he was smashing a fly with a sandal. “What the hell was that?” Donald was scared. His finger still sensed the bite but he couldn’t associate that sensation with anything he knew. Whatever it was, it was solid like wood or hard plastic. Was it just an open box that bit him? But then he remembered quite distinctively the shape of a tongue. And teeth! In the blackness of the room, his hand searched the night table for the lamp switch. He found a box of matches. Donald lit a match and under its spark he saw reflected on the mirror a big eye staring at him from underneath his heart-shaped bed. “Fuck!” he thought this time. A body was under his bed and from all he could tell that body was dead. Without daring to strike another match, Donald hid under the blankets.
His mind was like a frenetic slideshow of thoughts and feelings. Was Valerie safe? Was it her body? No, no, no, it’s some sort of animal. An animal? In Las Vegas? Was it a coyote, an armadillo, or just a cat? Whatever it was, why was it dead, in his room, under his bed! He needed to do something. He didn’t want to call reception. He could imagine the succession of events that would lead him to the police station, and then thrown to the cops like a naked lamb in the lions’ cage. Nothing more appetising for those LVMPD uniforms than a drunk out-of-towner with no money and a corpse in the room. He couldn’t make a call to anyone until he was certain of what was under the bed.
He tried again to find the switch of the lamp. He put his hand behind the night table and touched something that felt like a cable. His finger followed it until they finally found the switch. His heart was beating really loud. Was he ready? He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and turned the lamp on. Slowly he directed his attention to the part of the mirror where he saw the reflected eye. Before trying to put his head directly below the bed, he tried to find out more about the thing. It was still quite dark below the bed but he could see a second eye and the shape of a head, a human head! Strangely enough, the eyes and the shape of the head looked familiar. His heart beat faster. He took the lamp and lowered it near the bed.
Then he finally saw it. His whole body instantly burst into a nervous laughter that made him fall out of bed and roll like a log all over the room. He kept laughing and rolling back and forward for a couple of minutes until he stopped right under the bed and next to the thing.
25
Jul 11
Diáfano y celeste
13
Mar 11
Esbozo de un homenaje a mi padre
Experimentó la sensualidad del barro.
Saboreó higos y uvas, olió esencias universales de primera mano.
Supo correr contra la brisa y apreciar la inteligencia de los seres mínimos.
Se detuvo a observar el progreso de las nubes, la cadencia del mar y el revolotear de las mariposas.
Anheló construir más que sumar.
Bajó muchos peldaños pero siempre llegó donde quería.
Observó los rascacielos como un niño.
Fue grande sin invadir y experimentó la levedad de los que vuelan.
Vivió la desdicha y la felicidad con la misma intensidad.
No culpó a los demás por los padeceres propios.
No ocupaba un lugar, pero su ausencia es irremplazable.
Se despidió dejando una impronta indeleble,
que por siempre me guiará.
17
Nov 10
Hemana twenty-three times
I’ve been here for a few weeks and I start grasping certain things about the language spoken by the locals. The first thing is the name: “Humala”, which defines the language and those who speak it. The litteral translation would be “those who speak from within this circle” which I found a bit confusing at the beginning, probably because during my studies I always read definitions such as “the forest dwellers” or “the people from the shore” or “sun descendants”, etc. The notion of “those who speak from within this circle” seemed to refer to anyone who could use a particular set of words in a strict geographical proximity. I tried to convey this idea to Menare, my informant, and he told me that the idea was quite accurate (he also mentioned that at the time he was born his name meant something like “the endless journey”). Menare explained that if I was able to speak their language I would automatically become a Humala, as long as I stayed here. As an example he mentioned a cousin who went away for more than two years. By the time the cousin came back he had to go through a process of social re-adaptation as he wasn’t considered a Humala any more. I asked around to verify this information an apparently that’s the way it works: you’re a Humala as long as you stay in the village and speak the language, but as soon as you leave, you become a foreigner. There’s a feature of the language which might help understand this cultural trait (although I don’t know if one explains the other or vice versa): words don’t necessarily carry the same meaning from one day to the other.
It took me a while -and lots of misunderstandings- to realise this. In my first week here I learned how to say “Could you please tell me on which side of the river I am now?”, to which people answered using their index fingers to point horizontally in the direction of the river while verbally giving me other references. In one particular occasion one villager and his kid (whose name was Patom or “morning sage”) took me to the river and in a very didactic way pointed at things, slowly pronouncing their names. He unmistakably pointed at the river and said “inuma”. Two weeks after, other villagers would frown upon me and answer the same question pointing their index fingers upwards, and their references where mostly about the sky. After a few other conversations I realised that people were using “inuma” to refer to the clouds. At first I thought my assumptions about the use of “inuma” were wrong. Then, one day I bumped into Patom and he offered to become my guide for the rest of the afternoon. We ran different errands together and I kept asking him questions and taking notes. As we approached the river I asked him to point to “inuma”. He looked at the cloudless sky and made a negative gesture. I then decided to imitate his father’s voice and manners and pointed to the river. Patom started laughing but quickly understood what I was trying to do and, in the same didactic manner as his father, he tried to explain that “inuma” did mean “river” at one point, but now it meant “cloud”. He must have noticed my perplexity and tried to explain something about the central place gatherings.
He was referring to a particular gathering that takes place every other week. In those gatherings some of the eldest Humalas recite a series of words in front of a group of ten to twenty teenagers. One senior Humala loudly says words, looking at the other senior Humalas, changing their intonation as a cue for the next senior to continue. One could guess the final sentence for it’s the only one that is spoken at the same time by all the present senior Humalas. Then the funniest and most important part of the gathering takes place: the young Humalas pick one word and repeat it, while the senior ones answer with more words over and over until they get interrupted by the young ones who pick up a new word. At the beginning I mistook this practice as a kind of local literature club where older guys will display their stories and allow a debate with the youngest about the quality of their work. It’s actually something more complex and crucial: those gatherings redefine the meaning of words and they are closer to a parliamentary debate than to literature criticism.
I asked Menare about the gatherings and the way words meant different things at different moments. I wanted to know whether they kept a record of changes in meanings or not. He told me that it wasn’t necessary to keep track of changes as words would only be picked from a restricted pool of meanings and most times those changes were cyclical.
Polysemy is found in most languages that I studied, but I’ve never heard of languages with ever changing words. It’s difficult to imagine how a society can avoid chaos in such a linguistical environment. However, Humalas seem to be a quite happy and peaceful crowd. And chatty. It didn’t matter my total lack of command of their language: as long as I could mumble a couple of humala words from time to time, they would talk to me like if I was one of theirs. My biggest struggle was to keep up with changes in meaning, so I took to attend all the central place gatherings. I was lucky enough to be invited to join a couple of them (on the teenagers side) and at one point I was even offered the chance to learn one of their most sacred treasures: a poem made of the word “hemana” used twenty three times with a different meaning and which only makes sense to those who can remember the different meanings that word had through time. Here’s an approximate translation:
There is a side of the valley where the orange of the flowers melt with the light of the sunset. On that side of the valley, Hemana smelt a kiss so light that its scent could float for hundred years before becoming drops of heaven.
24
Sep 10
Para los que ven del otro lado de la luz
Yo no dije que el violeta de los manantiales, reflejado en el pico de los huitres metálicos, destelle una luz comparable a un arcoiris. Ni tampoco afirmé que el alma es una serie de tubos concéntricos que a mitad de camino se deshacen y forman un río de risas. Sin embargo hay quienes sospechan que un campo de girasoles orbita en torno al momento. Y eso a pesar que la suma total de la profundidad de los valles supere la altura total de las montañas. Quizás si tirásemos al mismo tiempo de la cuerda la canción sería cantada al unísono y las alas se soltarían a destiempo. Y lo que no esta afuera saldría y lo otro se quedaría adentro. Aunque no me sorprende que subiendo peldaño por peldaño llegues al faro que vislumbra la duda. Por eso propongo que los perros ladren y las noches no dejen de ser oscuras. Que el sonido de los trenes desde la distancia guíe a aquellos que vienen de la tormenta. Y que el camino se doble justo en los rincones necesarios para guardar todo junto en el interior de un pozo fortuito, sin transferir a quienes observan ningún vicio ni vacío. Ningún elevado ni ninguna simulación. Todo en términos neutros e infinitos como el verde regular de un rincón. O como las fórmulas que alisadas por el uso desprenden un último gesto vencedor y luego se hechan a esperar que las fuentes comiencen su espectáculo. Habrá que esperar que se extiendan, que se llenen de ese oxígeno sabio y que recuerden su misión. Y entonces de un solo trazo, dibujar el intermiable laberinto de toda emoción.
03
Aug 10
La sospecha de los movimientos sincronizados
http://zonaliteratura.com.ar/?page_id=895
A través de la ventana de mi salón veo un edificio de un estilo bastante barroco construido quizás a comienzos del siglo pasado. Sus ventanas son amplias y sus balcones exóticos. El balcón puede ser visto como un apéndice de la vida interior que se incrustra sobre el exterior, un espacio extra de libertad, el zócalo de un ojo que nos permite ver desde una posición de privilegio el mundo que nos rodea. Pero el balcón también es una intromisión, una invasión del espacio público, una torre de control. Es claro que para muchos el balcón tiene una connotación positiva: existe el romanticismo del balcón de Romeo, o el fervor religioso que emana ante la aparición del papa en el balcón del Vaticano, el glamour de los balcones de las óperas.
Nunca me he detenido a contar cuantos balcones tiene el edificio en frente del mío, pero sé que en él existen setenta historias. No es un conocimiento exacto ya que ha sido extrapolado de la siguiente observación: un día por la mañana he contado la cantidad de personas que han entrado, les he restado la cantidad de personas que han salido en ese mismo período y utilicé esa diferencia como multiplicador de la primera cantidad. El número que obtuve fue sesenta y siete, pero como me gustan los números redondos preferí pensar que había setenta historias.
La observación también me ha llevado a otras conclusiones. Por ejemplo que en el edificio vive un arquitecto, una ilustradora, un bailarín retirado que en su juventud recorrió el mundo, la modista de una señora importante, un señor que enviudó joven y nunca volvió a casare, una estudiante extranjera que colecciona reptiles y una familia que siempre va de vacaciones a una aldea en la montaña. Hay gente que prefiere asociar los viajes a la búsqueda de lo diferente, de esa experiencia única que con el tiempo se convierten en anécdotas y que adornan la vida como bolas de navidad, o condecoraciones militares. Pero hay algo de sabiduría en romper la rutina con otra rutina. Al final todo parece indicar que somos animales de costumbre y demasiada novedad puede ser estresante.
Mis vecinos -los de las vacaciones de la montaña- tienen toda la pinta de ser personas relajadas. Las veces que he podido verlos cargar o descargar el coche según partían o volvían de la montaña, no he detectado signos de nerviosismo ni de disconformidad. Al contrario, si algo llamaba la atención era la coordinación de los movimientos, la fluidez en el desarrollo de la operación. Varias veces estuve tentado de bajar rapidamente para ofrecerles mi ayuda de forma casual e intentar sumarme a tal coreografía. No sé si me llamaba el ánimo de adentrarme un poco en esa harmonía universal, o si simplemente quería provocar algún tipo de reacción, probarme que no se trataba de autómatas o de zombis. Sin embargo algo me retenía: la sospecha de que perteneciesen a algún tipo de secta, de esas en la cual sus integrantes son bondadosos, inteligentes, sensibles, te invitan a tomar té, te ayudan en tus momentos difíciles de forma tal que poco a poco tu reticencia original se devanece, comienzas a encontrar coincidencias y un día eres un miembro más y ya te olvidas de quien eres.
Un día estuve a punto de caer en esa tentación. Bajé las escaleras y de forma acelerada y torpe me acerqué. Justo en el momento que iba a ofrecer mi ayuda o iba a decir algo para significar mi presencia me trastabillé con un lagarto del tamaño de un bebé recién nacido que salió como gateando hacia la acera. Creo que los vecinos de la montaña no notaron lo ocurrido y sus movimientos sincronizados continuaron sin interrupción. Yo en cambio estuve a punto de estamparme el retrovisor de un coche en mi ojo, pero tuve la suerte que una chica que también salía del edificio gritando “Aurélie, Aurélie!” me atrapó antes.