ROOM WITH A VIEW

by Lorena Moreno Vera

After having visited so many places, after having lived in various places, today I find myself sitting on a balcony in this small town near M. with a half-open window through which the sea breeze, the murmurs of the street, and a rather hot wind blow through.

Given these architectural tendencies that agglutinate people in infinite grids of living spaces, we constantly find ourselves face to face with that stranger across the other side of the tower. We exchange glances, move heads in a friendly but automatic gesture, so both can finally try to enjoy that balcony in the heights, trying to annul that other’s glance.

There are times when I simply can't resist the urge to stare at them, to conjecture, even to invent dialogues with characters and everything. Sometimes I feel like Calvino's Palomar, pursuing a futile task of observation, trying to understand existence as sometimes distressing, sometimes wonderful.