To the love who tells me ‘screw Instagram,’ I think only of you

Today, our house smells somewhere between “church” incense (that is how they sell me the little stones at the Sanctuary shop) and fabric softener. Although I have never heard any complaint about cigarette stench here, I feel that rotten smoke had been impregnated in the long term. I quit smoking.

When I told Racca about using anti-smoking patches, he answered with a delicious guffaw, said “depends on where you stick them.” I immediately imagined a mouth taped shut with masking tape. It would have been cheaper than buying medicine.

I miss you in every interval of my day. While I fill the coffee mug, or go to the bathroom, or on the way to and from lunch, or when I dare to cook (if it is up to me, we will live on simple-to-prepare things) — basically, my day is these activities interspersed with work —, I think only of you.

For some years now, I have fallen into a terrible trap of seeming a happy person. That is, I think I took as truth the idea of doing complex things, which demand a fair measure of intelligence, like someone playing with a “crazy spring” (a Slinky; do you remember the crazy spring?).

Anyway, I do not think the degrees of difficulty of things are the subject, although I am telling you this now.

In general, women and men who have professional experience act this way, but do not “preen the peacock.” The trap is not having “humble self-esteem” (I am reading a book by Michel Esparza that is a punch in the mouth of pride), but thinking that I have the detachment, the self-sufficiency, the happiness of Instagram. I do not, you know — laughs. I know that part of what you like in me has to do with that, in any case. If I could, I would stay with you only.

For now, the two research projects I run, at two universities, take an enormous amount of my reasoning energy. In one, I am invited to look at the world in a “helpless” way, which is philosophy. In the other, we are all in a new area of study and it seems nobody knows exactly where they are going (and that is exactly the “field,” the instability of communication).

I cannot wait to meet you so that we do nothing beyond the things we already do, only whole because we do not miss each other. I dream of you telling me to screw Instagram.

I always wait for you. A kiss.