I stayed up all night cleaning the house for my couchsurfing guest's arrival (literally, I went to bed at 7am). There was a lot of cleaning work to do and Claude was working for me in the background, I'd come back now and then to accept its requests for permissions. It wasn't personal work, but company work that somehow bled into the weekend, but it's a good sign in me to keep on working after work. It doesn't mean I'm pressured, it means I'm engaged.
On Friday I was to go to the San Isidro celebrations in Madrid. San Isidro is Madrid's patron saint, and they hold a lot of concerts and events in a park of the same name. At night, before going there, I went to procure some green stuff at the smoke club, and I sat next to two gentlemen. One was a traveller from Moldova, another a Pakistani construction worker. We vibed well with each other and some interesting things came up.
I particularly remember telling them the story of an acquaintance who worked managing an airbnb in the Riviera Maya. He was the boyfriend of the friend of a friend. He said, earlier in the day a couple of Americans had left the airbnb, but in their drunkard debauchery they had broken the TV. The guy overcharged them x5 and bought a cheap replacement at CostCo, pocketing the change.
I was telling this story in relation to how tourism has a way of destroying beautiful places not only by the forces of the foreigners who come to vacation, but also from the locals who try to exploit them. However, they both protested saying it wasn't even bad but expected that the guy would overcharge and pocket the difference.
I was flustered for a moment, and the Pakistani guy said: you are more Canadian than Mexican and I laughed and I said: probably you are right, most Mexicans would be on your side, and most Canadians would be on mine.
Then I kinda made the commitment to answering that I'm Canadian next time someone asks me where I'm from. I always say that I'm Mexican, simply because I feel culturally closer to that nation than Canada. But it's true that, when I lived in Canada as an adult, I recognized a lot of myself in Canadians. As of late the whole "identity through nationality" illusion completely falling apart for me, and so I no longer feel more "loyalty" towards any particular country. I'm already eligible to apply for Spanish citizenship and they I'll have three identity cards to draw from.
I was having a good time chatting with them but I told them I'd go to the San Isidro events and invited them to come. One of them was up but super baked, the other undecided. I told them I needed to grab a coat at home (which is two blocks away) and I'd be back in ten minutes. I promised. As I left, I told the attendant "I'll be back in ten minutes".
When I came back, I found the undecided guy leaving "oh you came back! no no I'm too tired thanks for the invitation, see you". I was flustered, I had said I was coming back. I went inside to search for the Paki guy and didn't find him. The attendant asked me who I was looking for, I described him. "He already left", he said. "Sannafabitches they didn't believe me I was coming back. I said I was going to San Isidro but I would just grab a coat". The attendant laughed and fist-bumped me "yeah dude that's bad etiquette I always keep my word, you did right in coming back", and he added "besides, these guys were baked and they would have only dragged you down", and then my indignation transformed into relief: "That's absolutely right, I would have had to do a lot of herding just to get them there, it wouldn't have been pleasant", and with this I left the club perked up.
I arrived late to the concert, which ended promptly after I arrived. It wasn't good anyways. Then a DJ. Crowd was young enough for them to be my children, I stayed dancing enough as to make the trip worth it and then made my way back home. I made a stop at Burger King where I had a triple whooper with onion rings that tasted like rubber bands, and three chicken wings. When I was about to get home I passed the 24h grocery store and got a sweet tooth (munchies happen for me with alcohol, not weed) so I went inside and bought a cookie, a muffin and a liter of yoghurt.
A homeless man loitered at the end of the queue, unclear if he has lined up so I took the space in front of him. When I looked back after a while and saw him behind me, I said "Oh I thought you weren't in line" and moved myself behind him, despite his protests. He said he was from Romania, that his family would call on Sunday, and he was drunk. He was buying a cheap cold coffee. At the checkout I split the cookie in half and told him it was for his coffee. We said goodbye in good spirits.
As I'm working on migrating away from Movable Type, I'm readying a lot of older entries. There's a lot of gaps in my registration of experience, many times something very important happens, but I don't register it because it's difficult to write about important things.
I regret the long and short gaps I have in my writing. Even when I write "My life has been boring and I don't know what to write about"... then I will go into whatever crosses my mind and looking at that from the present moment is a great hint into my spiritual state. I've always thought about my stream-of-consciousness way of writing as an inadequate and disorganized way of registering experience, but when I look back I see it's perfect: the purpose is extracting from myself my current experience, I can categorize, link and polish later.