The bedroom is upstairs, on the right, in an intimate cube, a cube infused with light separated from the social areas of the level below by walls of concrete and plaster. The only thing you can see from the bedroom is the city. The first thing you see upon entering the apartment is the office, on the left side of the hallway, it is both closed and open. Half of it is hidden behind a wall covered with wood panels, then there is the sliding door of oak and polished glass, and the rest of the separation is transparent. The hallway, a washroom, the stairs on the right, and the kitchen on the left, and the kitchen is open, to the lounge, and both open up to the large terrace facing northwest, the terrace where we have drinks, and sex, and many stimulating conversations, where we wonder why all the people we see walking down below don’t get a little closer to each other. Just a little. Closer. As some walk around with shopping bags, or briefcases, and they get into their cars, and we wonder where they go, while some others walk further to share a moment and a drink with friends, pour over their anxieties but not nearly enough, there’s plenty left inside that’s being soaked by alcohol on an empty stomach. Beautiful cars, beautiful clothes, beautiful briefcases, materialistic make-beliefs so we can all get by and ignore the angst, the unease and not crawl under the evident lack of an explanation. And we see it from the height of our massively oversized balcony, a quality of air filled with pretence and uncertainty, by torment and worry, by awkwardness, discomfort, the fear of death. Together we have invented a breeze, we wonder if only we can see it, or if it is visible but silenced, shushed. It is unique, organic, almost human, just air filled with an imperceptible substance, a fog we can see through but that isn’t quite translucent, it is warm and cold, humid and dry, it lingers heavily, travels freely, it possesses its own layer right underneath the troposphere. We breathe it out, let it fly up, and it descends. Downtown it is fast and nimble, like worms of wind it sneaks its way in and moves with us, progresses with us, everywhere; its habitat is the distance that separates us from each other so we feel comfortable, as individuals. We are so sensitive we have managed to make every necessity of life pleasurable. Everything is a ritual, worth savouring, everything is an experience. We hold hands with our experiences and we record them to make sure they really happened, and we share them with the rest of the world so they acquire meaning, without the eyes and the approval of an audience, as anonymous as it may be, they bear no significance. Under so much stress we crumble, under so many demands for validation, some of us disappear. In the summer, when everybody’s out and isolation is a suffocating option, the solitaires among us get swallowed by the melting pavement. It’s easy to tell which ones are only alone for an instant and which ones are lonely. The swallowees-to-be tend to stare at the ground, perhaps trying to identify the cracks through which they will forever vanish. They lean a little bit forward, stunned by silence, knocked out by the terrifying absence of love, they look compact, filled up with unfulfilled desires, they walk slowly, encumbered by the weight of solitude. More people decide to die in the summer, more people just throw themselves to the ground, generating more heat and dissolving into the softened pavement. We wonder why not a little closer to one another. Just a little. Closer.
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