On Friday I prepared dinner for my family. I didn't choose what to cook as my mother and my sister went to the supermarket and bought steaks, ravioli and some vegetables (not disappointed). My sister had been anxious about spending time with her ex, I had even asked V. if she could host my sister in the event of a crisis, but it was all amicable and easy. I'm always skeptical of my sister's narratives, she inadvertently twists stories in order to fit a storyline she has made in her head and truly believes what she says, even if it all falls apart under closer inspection.
Take, for example, the brief period when she dry-dated my best friend. As it was a complex situation for me, I simply did talk about it with either of them, on my end my friend called my home, we chatted a bit on the phone as usual, and then he would say "hey dude can I speak to your sister?", and I was apathetic but would pass the phone. Then he would pick her up and they would go out for lunch or whatever. They would go out on dates for like two months and then it all stopped happening. I was completely out of the loop over what went on, but years later I asked them what had happened.
They both agreed on the basic premises: they had gone out many times, he paid for dates, chemistry seemed good so he declared intentions of official dating. She said no, I only want you as a friend, he said I'm not a simp (in kind words), we can't be friends goodbye. Not a kiss was exchanged between them.
Now, the part that changes when my sister says the story was that she was very young and innocent. She didn't know that a guy inviting her on dates and paying for them was a sign or courtship. They had a lot of fun together and were great friends until this thing happened, and she was hurt because he didn't want to be her friend anymore.
"Margaret... we are only two years older than you. Don't you remember you were already in university, studying psychology? you were 19 and he as 21. How can you say that a guy inviting you on dates is not courting you? Could it be that you liked his attention but not him?"
I saw her eyes grow open and wide, like a moment of realization, and said something like "I guess you're right, I didn't want to see that, I swear I remember the story as if I was 14 and him in his twenties, but that could have not happened because he's your age". Later on my sister has lamented multiple times that she had not dated him, because he's a great guy and I agree, and here is my sister dreading spending time with the father of his child, whom my sister calls a monster as a partner, but admittedly a great father and a great provider. I must question her narrative as this is just one of many examples of her twisting the truth in her narratives to make herself the victim in her stories.
After dinner we went to sleep quite early. I had a dream, the first one I remember in several months according to my dream log, it went like this:
I met a very sexy woman on the way to a party, we had good chemistry and she said she wanted to get laid with me but was hired in this party as an entertainer, so she asked me to wait for her to be done. I droned about waiting for her to be off duty while she flirted with everyone. My family arrived with Brenda (my therapist). Brenda was wearing a sexy outfit, and twerked a little bit, revealing her butt cheeks clapping against her loose dress. I debated whether I should go for the slut with a tinge of wholesomeness or the wholesome woman with a tinge of sluttiness.
In the morning my sister's ex and her son left for Barcelona, the reason for this trip is that hey will go to the inauguration of the renovated Camp Nou and my nephew will practice a bit with the local talented kids. His father wants him to be a professional football player and they invest a lot of time and money in it. Fortunately the kid loves soccer and it's all a dream to him.
In the morning I went with my sister to a Rocket yoga practice. My mother was in the class but only as an observer, she wanted to take part in it but I didn't as this is a very intense and quick style. After class we went to an art space in Madrid called Matadero and after seeing a couple of exhibitions I saw my patience with modern art grow thinner by the minute. I took a picture of a page-long description of an art project and asked chatgpt to summarize it:
The text examines how maps function not as neutral descriptions but as instruments of power that shape and justify territorial control. West Indian Atlas, an artistic project, juxtaposes two cartographies: an 18th-century colonial atlas that depicted the Caribbean and Latin America as resources for imperial exploitation, and the Environmental Justice Atlas, which documents today's conflicts rooted in extractive industries. By overlaying these maps, the project reveals historical continuity in the logics of exploitation, despite modern narratives of development, sustainability, and greenwashing. The work exposes the ideological nature of cartography and the persistent systems of domination embedded within it.
I wish I had actually taken a photo of the artwork itself, because I knew the original map and how this artist had transfigured it to fit his narrative (he redrew the map taking out most of the cartographic information and deliberately added resource based information. The artists was a Latin American student on a scholarship in Spain. Again, narratives of victimization, we can't trust the stories we tell ourselves, and yet we must acknowledge the part that is true in it, the people whom have no concern about truth are the ones who make us skeptical about it and we might dismiss it out of hand: the story of the conquest and exploitation of the Americas is much more complex than a simple story of bad guys vs good guys (and the bad guys won).
V. caught up with us at this moment. I told them I couldn't remain a minute more in this post-modernist shithole and that we should go rent a pedal powered four seater bike that I had seen before. We had great fun biking around and my family really liked V. whom they were meeting for the first time.
I must leave in a couple of minutes, so I'll just annotate to expand later (or not):
Expanded: after our quad-bike ride we walked to the Prado, along the way we made a stop in a bar for a drink. My mother quoted Eleanor Roosevelt saying: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people", in reference to an aunt who only discusses people. Then her stream of thought downstreamed into resentment: she remembered a time when her oven stopped working and started going to this aunt's house (the wife of her brother) to bake stuff. My aunt is a bit special about her kitchen, she loves cooking, and didn't appreciate my mother's use of it, so finally she asked for her to not come anymore. My mother was very offended and reminded her that decades ago they had lent money to them (which was repaid) as a favor owed, they grew angry at each other and my mother stormed out.
When she told me about it I was dismayed: "mom, that was decades ago, the debt was repaid, it's her home and she can ask you not to come to bake your stuff, it's not an essential need, please apologize". My mother threw a tantrum and I said "fine, if you don't do it, I will". And so I did, I called her and she invited me for lunch. We had an amicable lunch and I said that my mother had told me what had happened, I was thankful for the times she borrowed her kitchen to my mom, and that we would make an effort in getting our oven fixed. Situation diffused and things went back to normal.
As we were telling our side of the story in turns I said to my mother "well, remember Eleanor Roosevelt's quote? Here we are, small minds discussing people". My mother's gasped as she realized this, and was greatly embarrassed, then we all laughed.
We left the bar and a couple of blocks away I remembered I had left my backpack at the bar, so I told my sister and my mother to go on to the Prado to get in line. Along the way V. said to me "your mother was very embarrassed about you pointing out that, I used to be like that, people often transfigure their stories for them to make sense, things that are not factually true, so that they are the good ones of the story. But nothing positive comes out of it, only in exceptional cases, where you perceive that the person will receive benefit out of you pointing out the facts, that you should let them know.
The back and forth we had is too long for this entry, so I will just come to the conclusion: indeed there's little or no benefit from doing this, especially if you are espousing a holier than thou attitude, but "please, if I retell a story in which I'm not being factually correct, say what is true. For me, truth is more important than feelings, and I often reap great benefit when people confront my bullshit". She asked for the same. We reached my family in line at the Prado.
Govi, a super smart friend from Ecuador, was to give us a guided tour of a couple of paintings. I wish I had the time to describe all the paintings and sculptures that resonated with me, but I'm at work and I must be quick, so I will only describe Bosch's Garden of Delights:
The left panel represents the Garden of Eden. In it Adam and Eve are accompanied by Jesus (x-rays demonstrate Bosch originally drew God but changed his mind). There's order and peace.
The center piece demonstrates a still quasi-idyllic scene of people engaging in all sorts of pleasures, with subtle hinds of chaos chipping away at paradise. Pleasure might seem like paradise, but in the end sin degrades to chaos.
The third panel shows hell, the figures being tortured by the sins they committed: those that were consumed by greed were defecating coins, those who gambled had their hands pierced by daggers, those who played music for pleasure and not to heighten God's creation were tortured by the instruments themselves, and so on.
I've seen this painting a number of times, but this was the first time it truly created an impression, I think because my mind at this time is tremendously focused on carnal pleasure. I know deep down that this path will not give me any satisfaction, even if I could get laid with a different woman every night and extract great pleasure out of it, I would grow tired of it, but I want to grow tired of it. In my twenties I had a period of my life similar to this, drunk sex with a lot of women, feeling empty, etc. So I ask myself: what would be different at twice my age? And I think the answer is this: I didn't actually enjoy the sex, it was about the body count at the time. This time around I think I would find pleasure, and after pleasure what? Even if I could get this accomplished by acquiring seduction skills (I'm very skeptical about it), I would reach the same endpoint. But somehow I don't want to skip this period, I feel as if I must exercise sexual fulfillment. Mapped to a different experience, I would be a guy growing up dirt poor with aspirations of richness, and intuitively I would know that being rich wouldn't make me happy, _but I still want to be rich. I try to confront these feelings with honesty, I don't want to shut myself down simply because I'm not supposed to feel like this. Here is an underdeveloped aspect of myself, something stuck in my twenties that I must acknowledge and work through.
Co-workers are here. I must start working.