Mi vida loca

Lately I’ve been hanging out with an angel.

I met him in a party, one of those where you cannot tell who’s a he or who’s a she: everybody with long hair. But there he was, standing out somehow, with his shoulder-length black hair.

It was one of those nights when your head was full of worries and things to forget, when you just grasp the first glass, and then the second, and the third and the… tenth? And suddenly your head is just not there with you anymore. Then is when you see him; you don’t know where he came from, you’ve never seen him around before… But there he is! And he looks at you, and he smiles at you and… Suddenly somebody pokes you and you remember you came with somebody else! Is not that I was really thinking of dating this person that came with me or anything else, but as he paid dinner I thought I should pay at least some attention to whatever he had to say. And so I lost my angel in a sea of smoke.

Later on, we moved to another party. Another friend of mine joined us and the guy I came with just happened to like her more… So there was I: no angel and no friend… and as crappy and sad the situation may seem, my friend Jack was there with me, so I really couldn’t care less. I just kept on drinking and drinking, and answering all the crap people would ask me (sometimes it’s annoying being a gaijin!).

Eventually we moved back to the place we were before. My friends were already kissing in the taxi, which made me realize how depressing my situation really was. However, this didn’t really affect me because, when we got to the bar where we started the night, there my angel was! White t-shirt, black leather pants.

I don’t know why but that night I didn’t feel brave enough so as to approach nobody, so I didn’t even approach him. I just sat down next to the bar and asked for another drink. Then I saw my angel leave… He waved goodbye to me, but didn’t come close enough to talk. “There my angel goes”, I thought. My angel with evil smile, that makes even my bones melt. When you lose and angel and then you find him again and you let it go once more… you just don’t hope to meet him again. So I just looked back at my drink and resigned myself to the idea.

Then these guys started talking to me (by the way, just in case somebody is curious about, all this time my friends are just standing at the bar, completely wasted). They were really drunk, but still I guess they could guess the pitiful situation I was in. One of them was a gaijin like me and the other one Japanese. The gaijin is the most wasted of the three, so I and the Japanese guy just keep on ignoring him. The Japanese guy asks me the usual questions and, after a appropriately long conversation, he invites me to go to karaoke. “Why not?” I say, and there I am: on my way to some karaoke somewhere with a complete stranger… so typical of me!

To my surprise, there is a bunch of people waiting for this guy at the karaoke. Eventually I found out I am in an after-wedding-party karaoke! I guess if I hadn’t been so drunk I would have felt hell embarrassed, but in my state… I just couldn’t care less.

However, that was not the only surprise… There was I, talking to all the people, introducing myself and answering for umpteenth time that night the same usual questions people ask a gaijin, when suddenly I spot a familiar face in the crowd. He was as surprised as me and came to talk to me: “what are you doing here???”. My angel’s voice was sweetest than the sweetest of the voices. I just don’t know what I told him, all I could focus on was his voice, his eyes, his smile… Then everybody moved to the elevator and to the karaoke room.

Again, as I came with another guy, I left my angel and followed the guy. I enter the room and sit next to him, to my other side another guy. My angel enters the room, spots me, and manages to reach the spot where I’m sitting. Moving the other guy away, he sits right next to me and starts talking to me. Again the same usual questions, but this time I am more than pleased to answer them. He looks like a gaijin too, or at least half, but no: he is 100% Japanese. We talk and talk while everybody else sings. They make me sing too, and I sing. My angel sings too: the song I picked for him. Now I know what “música celestial” is.

The night went on and the morning came. 8 am: time to leave the karaoke. I already exchanged numbers with my angel, so this time, when I lost him in the group, I was not worried anymore: I could contact him and meet him another day! It was a rainy morning and thinking about the hour by train waiting for me made me very tired, so I just said goodbye to everyone. When I opened my umbrella and was ready to leave, once more my angel appears from nowhere, saying: “I’ll take her to the station”. My heart smiled.

(April 17th at Baskin Robins aka 31)

Right now here I am, eating ice-cream, listening to music. Half of my thoughts are on this piece of paper, trying to reflect what I feel, how I feel. The other half is wandering between the music and my phone... Is not that I'm really expecting him to call so soo ("I need time", he said), I am just waiting for something, don't really know what. So, here I am with my ice-cream, my music and Ms. Patience, thinking and writing, writing and thinking... I like to believe this I write is poetry, prosaic poetry to be precise.

Anyway, the thing is: I really want him to call, but dunno if I want him to tell me good or bad news... Hell, I don't even know what those good news that I'm waiting for are...

"Waiting", what a word! It's like "soon"; you never know how soo that soon is gonna be... Here we are again old friend! I never thought I would encounter you again, my sweet Patience (God, I'm not even sure of the spelling...).

"Patience", another hell of a word... is it really good to be patient? I guess so, that's what people say. Though sometimes people are also wrong (most of the time, actually). But, there are things in life that require time and dedication, which pretty much we can call "patience". "Rome was not built in an hour", my mum always tells me, from what we can imply that patience is not one of my virtues... Well, "nobody is perfect!", said Mr. Perfect (in Spanish it works, trust me).

Now, changing subject a bit (though not setting or background): don't you just love it when the weather adjusts to your mood? Or is it you who adjust your own mood to the weather? Anyway, the other day I realized what the CCR ment when they said: "have you ever seen the rain falling down on a sunny day?". The day had been sunny and warm, and the evening sky was bright, but those eyes, those words coming out of his mouth... Oh man, yeah, I could feel the rain falling all over me, the cool breeze of rainy days embrazing me... "What a feeling", somebody else also sang.

Again I don't know how this began, the ink addiction I mean. Since I was a child I always felt an especial attraction for this art BUT (the great but...) mum wouldn't let me. So I grew up, and with me the interest about tattoos.

It is not that I am a natural born rebel and it is not that I always go against what my mum says, I swear! There is nothing in this world that I like the most that share my things with mum and dad, BUT (again)... I tend to like all that which they despise: from heavy metal to black colour. And like this since I am a kid! Mum's sentence would be: "I don't know where does she get those ideas from!". I wonder that myself. I was born in a tiny village in between the mountain and the see, with a black and white two-channel tv and my friends where that kind of people whose absolute happiness was to go and check if the goats (yes, goats) had eaten the grass so that they had to move it... As a kid I used to get excited also about going to check the damn goat, all the perils awaiting for us in the fields, climbing up the trees (yes, you could not avoid them! those trees... and I hadn't read LOTR yet!), jumping on the rocks, and all those crazy things kids like doing when they are wild in the fields. Anyway, of course there was a time in my life when I got kinda tired of going to check the goats, and the horses and all the animals around... But they wouldn't! (well, maybe now their absolute happiness is to go to the same pub or bar in the same place to meet the same people and get drunk... great! And this doesn't mean that I don't love doing that... I'm trying to say that there are many more things in this life! Like getting drunk in Tokyo... maaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Anyway, let's go back to the story). So, with this situation, I just started to stay at home, reading, reading, reading... Visiting exciting places that where shown to me in those pages. I think this was one thing my mum always approved, though I have to admit I have hidden from her some books... I just don't wanna upset her, but I don't wanna give up being myself either! And that's how I ended up with 23, 1/3 of my body tattoed and she doesn't know (neither do daddy).

Anyway, I guess when I asked my mum if I could get a tattoo for the first time it is perfectly understandable that my mum said "NO", because I was... 11? 12? HOWEVER she made a mistake and said: "not until you are 18". So, as you can guess, I spent my teenage waiting to be 18. And I became 18 and... nothing happened. Mum wouldn't say yes. In the mean time, of course, I got my ears pierced (only like 3 holes... mum wouldn't let me...) and started developing my style until the limits my mum could stand. And then Hendrix (God) created university and separated the child from the mother, and Hendrix saw that it was good for both of them. Eventually I could be myself 24/7!

I started meeting people who shared my hobbies and who had different points of view, well, who had points of view! And my life started to make sense and I started to feel there was hope for me and my dreams and I started to dream bigger and bigger... and I wanted to remember that forever.

One of the reasons why people don't want to get tattoos is because they say they change and then, what they may love one day, they hate it on the next. That's a way of seing it. For me, my tattoos are memories I never want to forget, like those days in university, all the people I met... The desings won't tell no story to other people, but to me... they remind me that time I was madly in love, or that other time I was sick and tired of being sick and tired... oh! and those crazy nights with my friends, beer and rock and roll, and then the never ending exam periods, with no beer, no party, only books and rock and roll... yeah, all the rock and roll! And yet, the real symbolic meaning of the drawings speaks of something quite opposite, speaks of my innermost self...

Anytime I feel lost or I lose strenght or determination to achieve my goals, I only need to take a look at my tattoos and let my mind go with the flow and bring me memories, remind me why I'm here, why I am who I am, why I chose to be myself even when it would have been much easier to be the perfect daughter, the perfect woman... It's kind of meditation. When I look at my tattoos I also remember how I used to think in that moment and so I can contrast with how I think any moment I look at them.

I really hope when I'm old I have all my body (or most of it) tattoed. One of my favourite images of myself in the future is as a grandma with long white hair showing her tattoos to her grandchildren and grandgrandchildren, and telling them all the stories and hidden meanings.