David Arioch – Jornalismo Cultural

I stopped walking for a few months, as soon as my body took control of my life

I still do not move and I can only think about the last time I stood up (Art: Mindcage, by Rodrigo Aviles)

I woke up one day and realized that my body was no longer mine. I tried to move myself on the bed, but it did not work. I belonged to him, but he did not belong to me. So, I kept lying there, watching the ceiling amid plaintive darkness. There were misshapen and oscillating traits. No! More than that! A dense and clear filth that reminded me of those awful bacteria that I saw in biology classes in my teen years.

I had never noticed how the liner could be so dirty. I think that concentrates the core of our rotting. Or, was it my imagination? Maybe, I was the bacterium itself, graced with a panoramic view of myself. Who knows! The truth is that my breath was still stinking and noisy. It was horrible! My nose simulated a landfill, spreading slurry every exhale. And what dripped from my nose, I didn’t feel or see. After all, I was relegated to a mere spectator of the repulsive spectacle that used my body as a stage.

How I struggled to silence my mind. Of course I could not! I closed my eyes for a few minutes, and the ambient temperature dropped to five or six degrees Celsius. I shivered more by hate than cold. I was covered with a white comforter, old and dingy, with some yellowish spots – circles of piss that damn neighbor’s cat gave me as a present when he invaded my wardrobe. What a bastard!

It’s alright! Soon I forgot the cat and wanted to get up to give a lesson in mother nature. How I wish to drag her by the hair. Maybe with each wad of hair pulled out, she would rise a degree of temperature. With 15 wads, I would leave her partially bald and we would have 20 or 21 degrees. And what a victory! And I could still use those hairs to make a duster or a little curtain for a puppet show.

Rhinitis, bronchitis and sinusitis, sinusitis, bronchitis and rhinitis, it was difficult to find out who wanted to screw me up. Dammit! Who am I trying to fool? I really smoked! And I smoked a lot! I’ve consumed four packs a day! I was a chimney more effective than any iron horse ever seen. I am the greatest collector of lung diseases that this world does not know. I should be in the Guinness Book! Holding my biggest trophy, the only lung I have left, so black it looks like a post-barbecue coal.

So what? My teeth were so blond, and my breath so grody that I could make cosplay of Beetlejuice. I loved to blow smoke on the people’s face, especially those who despised smokers. I came close, like someone who did not want anything. I concentrated on the smoke and I released it just when someone would open their mouth to say something. Then, I faked embarrassment – a pair of wide eyes, a deep breath and a nod of the head, I apologized and walk away. I had so much fun when there was a no smoke free environment. Oh! Never mind… I do not want to talk about this anymore!

Look! I had never noticed how the lining gets filled with dashed lines at dawn. They are like roundworms that dominate the backstage of the house. I think I am one because I no longer feel my vertebrae. I summarize myself to a dormant emaciated matter. It may be that all that I see and contempt is, in some proportion, a representation of myself.

I wondered how many creepy, hideous creatures inhabit this place night after night. I bet if I knocked it down, I’d find hundreds of nameless animals, never cataloged. They are beings that only exist for a few hours of the dawn, when we confuse reality, dream and nightmare. It may be that they feed of hopes, daydreams, and prolonged reflections.

Right! I still do not move and I can only think about the last time I stood up. It seemed so irrelevant, useless. “Watch your spine, correct your posture, one step after another,” How silly! I just wanted to sit and lie down, lie down and sit down. Maybe, I was born to be an armadillo. But rolling also takes so much effort that I feel shivers just imagining. And the abdominal pressure at the time of turning? Sad and painful! Being a slug is equally despicable because I’m impatient and want it all at the same time. Well, I do not feel represented by any animal, rational or not.

Dude, I love food! I fed my life so badly and it gave me the most unusual of pleasures. Where someone was feeding properly, I would approach and sit beside them. I wanted the person to be disturbed by my presence. I was a wake-up caller. I did everything I could to shock them, to see them astonished by my bad habits.

“That’s right! This is me! And I am against everything you believe in. I am here as the full proof that the world does not belong to you. The dictatorship of health will not prevail. We are still the majority and we will not be defeated. I will not allow it! Never! Never! Look! Look at his size, how much fat! I asked the clerk to put another 200 grams of bacon and 200 grams of cheddar cheese. The more industrialized the better! I demanded triple trans fat! Watch! Watch the oil trickling through the burrs of my snack. There is so much oil that we can fry a potato inside my mouth after I eat it. Do you accept it? “I suggested. Displaying my teeth caramelized by the churros that I ate before as an appetizer. Shocked, the girl next to me in the food court got up and left without a word.

Physical activities? I despised it from the first day I saw it! Wherever I passed, if someone invited me to exercise, I did not think twice before telling them to back off. What a shame! Fuck the damn thing! I will live and die as I wish! Why stand, walk or run? I hate all this with all my might! I do not even believe we were meant to walk! Whose idea was that? I hope the moron has died brutally!

Speaking of bipeds and quadrupeds, how I loved meat! I ate more than 15 pounds a week until I got atherosclerosis. Marvelous! What’s done is done. But there is no denying that it was one of the best phases of my life. When I walked through the downtown, people thought they were close to a butcher or slaughterhouse. No! There was nothing like that around us. It was the natural fragrance exhaled by my body. “What smells of raw meat, where does that come from?” “Wow! What a dead cow stink!”,”I think there’s a new butcher shop nearby”, I listened copiously.

My constant drinking also marked my life. Of course! I said it was just a social gathering. Funny! Fool of whoever believed. What I drank three times a week was what many did not consume in a month. I needed to be good at it. So I discovered an effective method to increase my tolerance for alcohol. Of course, I will not say what it is! Yes! I went so far, so far that my liver could not stay with me. Today we live in separate places.

Now, the memories of my transformation have come to my mind. I stopped walking for a few months, as soon as my body took control of my life. It was about where he wanted to go and when. So capricious, what a strong personality! If he did not like the idea, he turned off like a toy with a worn-out pile. Is he vindictive? Yeah! How can be so hateful? Last week, he allowed me to move my right leg and left arm for the last time.

I keep looking at the lining, aware of two lizards that feed on a beetle. Leaning on the open window, the neighbor’s demented cat, with its ears staring at the full moon, licks his own paws and watches them. I remember the Devil Scarab, so valuable and so useless, just as life is for so many people. I feel tired, oblivious to my body. My eyes close and I recognize that I am no longer human, only prey to who I was predator. “May your body not be the first grave of your skeleton”, wrote Jean Giraudoux in Notes et Maximes, Le Sport, 1928.