Five friends write in english. They write to each other, or to themselves, which might be the same. They meet, or not, long years ago in another country, where they grew or studied or both. They became friends in those turbulent years, right after adolescence and before adulthood. More than once they saw their own desires and dreams, fantasies and nightmares too, in the eyes of the others. Sometimes they got closer, sometimes they backed up. They moved on too, they got their degrees, their jobs, their partners. Their kids. They spread themselves on the surface of the earth, they travelled, and they travelled again. Five friends write to each other, in english. Never mind that their own language is spanish.
There is a sensation of awe, and there is also a loss. I feel my friends as tendrils, brilliant like silver and thin like an hair, connecting across distances and times. Like if my people would be part of a marvel of a network that covers much more than I would ever cover myself. Through the photos and the lines that we exchanged along the years I have heard about Silicon Valley and Kiev, about Mexico City and Ilheus and Rome and many other places. A tiny bit of me have been there, when I heard and see my long gone friends, those peoples that I love and haven’t seen, or touch, in decennia.
And there the loss, too. Because those silvery tendrils are never enough, precious and fragile and way too long. The nostalgia for the table of a bar, or chairs I don’t care where, to receive them, to pour them whatever drink they are having and say nothing, and share a silence and a smile. All a dream that will no happen, not anytime soon.
So we keep writing to each other in english, in spaces that open now and then, in emails or in the channel of social media that is fashionable today. Then we lose track of each other again, and we find each other again, and in my photos I will look older everytime, and my girlfriends will always look awesome and we will write about it, and we are happy, and we see our kids, always growing and wonderful and we will say so.
In english.