17.December.2023.

Time flies as air in my curly [for now] hair. BAE came to the city after three hard weeks of finals and a lot of hard work to try to recover at the end of the semester, after all my identity was fragmented through the traumatic and beautiful experience of studying abroad, now he is here.

I had a really shameful experience in a presentation. My English was awful, and my memory went blank in half of the production. In the end, my team and I wrote a full-length paper of 52 pages on psychiatric violence as a final assessment. We had to present our discoveries in front of the group, and we were supposed to have a 10-minute presentation for each. Three days before, I made a whole speech about the aspects that I had to talk about, actually not aspects, about the paths and recommendations to states about how to address psychiatric violence. Then, one of the three late professors distracted me when I was talking the whole speech. I lost concentration and forgot all the information I was supposed to present. My paper was well done, so I'm praying to the gods that my professors consider this. I've been dealing with this, and of course dealing with what I'm gonna do after this.

Emotions are complex movements under the ground of my soul. As Nussbaum explained Emotions should be understood as “geological upheavals of thought".

That's the way I'm feeling right now. I have an immensity of gratitude about studying abroad, actually in my second country: the United States of America. But also, the hardest months are coming, about what the hell I'm gonna do.

Let's see, where all this whirlwind take us....

8.11.23

I´ve been kind of low-vibing this week. On Monday, I had a really traumatic deadline. Basically, my team helped an NGO on psychiatric violence to make a really long memo, about 30 pages (in English), explaining how to adjudicate psychiatric violence with the international human rights approach, so you can guess how traumatic it was for me trying to finish my part on time. I worked the most part of the week and so much time on the weekend. I realized that I hate to write with other people, and I want to put all my force into not doing it again. The project at the beginning was really excitement, but my team was not so happy about working together.

Last week was crazy; in my insane efforts to look for what to do with the rest of my life after the LLM, I talked with a guy from the PhD on Jurisprudence at Berkeley. He was a lovely guy who supported me (a stranger from another country; he was from Chile) in applying to it and gave some specific (really good) recommendations. The problem? The time is against me. The deadline is supposed to be next month, on the 15th of December, and I need a perfect paper of approximately 25 pages on that deadline. I had a rush of anxiety about the time that now is running so fast. So, I decided to do office hours with one of my professors and discuss the thing. Even though he supports me with the application, he knows and advises me about the time, and he suggested looking for something else after graduation, like a fellowship in a think tank. So, at the beginning of this week, I changed my mind.

Sunday came, and I ended, after finishing my part of the paper, in an Italian Crazy Party at my building. I smoked a little bit and felt it well (until Monday, yesterday, I began to feel really sad). The party was crazy. I met some handsome Italian guys, all straight, of course, but with exciting stories. In the end, the party was for a girl leaving my building, and all of them were her partners in her job. They all work for a famous restaurant named Soho, which is really close to my street. I was dancing so stoned when a guy began to fight another, and in one moment, there were two really muscular guys holding each other on the ground. It was a small fight with a long homo-erotic performance. We thought that the thing was serious, but they were just playing.

This week I have a lot of work in my RA position, I even can't imagine how I will do it, but we have to try it...

Buildings and structures.

It seems that I've directed most of my energy toward people, stories, and emotional connections rather than the mythical buildings that constantly surround me. Don't get me wrong; I haven't forgotten that I live next to the Capitol, with all the snobbery, morbidity, acidity, and bitterness that comes with that reality (given today's world). However, my experience has been rich in people, beauty, and an abundance of music (seriously, a lot of music). There have been fears, ideas, art, and, of course, the imposing, all-encompassing mythical architectural design. Curiously, the building itself has become a secondary landscape.

Nevertheless, I embarked on a mission to document the overlooked beauty that exists within the shadows of great structures. Consider it my humble attempt to reveal the poetry hidden in these ancient and wise structures; sometimes, you hear how they laugh at us in our desperation while trying to find answers.

31 October 2023.

I didn't know what to write here. . Today, I woke up at 09:00 am. It was supposed to be a very productive day. I was so tired and filled at the same time with so much energy. I took a public bike in front of my building and just rode at the national mall. The weather was not so good, and I felt the cold in my legs (I was wearing tiny sports shorts and a black hoodie), but I didn't care about it, I rode till I arrived at the Georgetown main campus.

Georgetown's main campus is in the most beautiful area of Washington, D.C. The zone is full of excellent coffees, stores of used books, and gay hipsters: the promised paradise. I bought falafel as my lunch and entered the main campus. There, I wasted some money on two beautiful and warm hoodies. Then, at the Barnes and Noble bookstore, I discovered a fascinating book: "Health Communism." In the beginning, I was not convinced about buying it. I'll be here for just 10 months and want to avoid carrying those books back to my country. But I read the first page, and it was absolutely amazing. After all this time, one book makes great questions on health issues from a philosophical view. So I found it on a strange webpage in "pub" format. I would probably write more about this book and its ideas. Then I returned to my area, on the electric bike this time. It took me about 30 minutes, and I paid about 3 dollars for that ride.

My friend from India, Udbhav, invited me to go to the theatre. I'll meet him outside of McDounagh Hall. The weather was freezing. On our way to the theatre, we stopped at his apartment because he forgot to feed his cat, Cindy. We realize that Cindy is probably sick because she threw up all the food. We watched a French movie named "Anatomy of a Fall," it was terrific, the premise is the murder (?) of the main character's husband. The film shows the complexity of marriages in the writer's life, complex relationships, and power between men and women (in this case, the emphasis was on the side of the woman, in my view). We had the opportunity to watch a complete criminal trial of murder. The lawyer and the prosecutor were fascinating. They connected a lot of isolated facts and made the three hours of the movie interesting. Both of us liked the movie so much. There was a promise about going together to other news movies. I like that guy, who also is a writer.

Uno vuelve siempre a los lugares en donde amó la vida (?)

Y así lo ha sido recientemente. He amado la vida. Aunque también la he llorado bastante. Decidí por ello volver aquí. Abrí tumblr hace... no recuerdo la fecha, pero bien pudo haber sido hace quince años. En ese entonces, yo no tenía ni un carajo de idea de lo que sería mi vida al día de hoy. Era un poco torpe (aunque lo sigo siendo) y pasaba mucho tiempo en internet, la mayoría del tiempo en boberías.

Sí que logré casi todos los sueños que más o menos durante esa época pude tener, cuando incluso mis sueños en ese entonces se encontraban de por sí, bastante limitados. Terminé la licenciatura en derecho que quise estudiar, aún y cuando mis padres estuvieron a punto de no querer financiarla. Encontré un amor suficientemente revolucionario durante la Universidad, lo suficientemente revolucionario como para tocar cada una de mis fibras musculares. Lo suficientemente revolucionario para oponerlo con gracia ante una sociedad conservadora como lo es Guanajuato. Amé mucho, amé con locura y amé en excesos. Conseguí el empleo más top que mi entorno me pudo ofrecer, lo acepté, lo quise y lo padecí. El mismo que hizo que llenara mi cuerpo de antidepresivos y ansiolíticos, y el mismo que me trajo a estudiar una maestría en derecho (pagada) a Georgetown.

No sé por qué de repente siento como si estas palabras, estuvieran siendo una carta de amor dirigida al Mr. C de 15 años. Estoy consciente que has recibido pocas así, pequeño polizón valiente: la vida te dará una gran paliza, sí, pero la vida hará que la ames, que la ames de a deveras con todo y su misterio.

Seguirás creciendo torpe, y quizá esto jamás se te llegue a quitar. Deberás controlar la añeja rabia de terciopelo (también encontrarás a un par de sabios que te ayudarán con esto). Despreocúpate, que desde el futuro te estoy diciendo que las cosas se ven bastante bien.

Procura levantarte más temprano y sé consistente con el ejercicio. Disciplina es lo único que necesitas.

Lo fuí, lo fuí, lo fuí.

Jorge Luis Borges, El conquistador.

Roman mosaic from Antiochia from the House of the Evil Eye.

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

Carl Jung

Jaime Sabines. Si sobrevives. Yuria. [04]

Mario Benedetti. En pie. Contra los puentes levadizos. [01]

Jaime Sabines. A veces. Maltiempo. [09]

La Fraternité des Peuples by Aimé Jules Dalou, 1883

Kamada Matahachi Killing a Monstrous Cat in the Mountains of Ise Province by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Edo Period)

Ig: andres.alvarado._

Matilda (1996) dir. Danny DeVito

Madonna del Magnificat (detail) 1481. Sandro Botticelli