Claridad.

I often find myself wondering why I am such a mess. I think that it generally boils down to the fact that I was born in the wrong country. Now I know that sounds stupid but in all honesty, why the hell was I not born in Latin America? I feel more at home there and with that culture than with my own. The food, the people, the music, the language, everything. But I'll never really fit. No matter how good my Spanish gets, no matter how much time I spend living there, no matter how many songs I know or how much literature I can reference or how politically opinionated I am about Latin American issues, I will always be on the outside looking in. I will always be watching Latin America through a transparent curtain, watching and learning and loving but never being included. How frustrating.

I've moved on from all of the Neruda and am now into a collection of Benedetti poetry. It's lovely because all of the poems remember where they came from. They have distinctive roots. Benedetti allows his poetry to be biased, to be opaque to foreigners, and I can entirely respect and admire that. The poetry is what it is, the countries are what they are, and that is that. No pretending, no glossing over, no exaggerating, no romanticizing. It's refreshing.

At the moment, life is routine. A routine of contented nothingness. There is nothing left to do anymore, not much left to say. It is undoubtedly the beginning of the end. And in the face of inevitable end, there's not much else to do besides laughing and dancing the nights away.

I am not afraid of regretting much. I have been only what I am, and I really couldn't have done it all any other way. The only thing I am afraid of is how alone I am without you. I guess it was foolish to think that these two years would result in any different outcome, but still. It is sad, like we have been playing out this satirical tragedy for two long years and for what? For nothing, really. For loneliness. And although it may have been foolish to imagine things otherwise, I still could not have possibly been prepared for the reality of the end. But I guess that sometimes, there really is nothing else to do but to leave.

"Lento, viene el futuro. Lento, pero viene."

So true, Sr. Benedetti, so true.