For a brief moment when I wake this morning, to the sound of a mosquito zigzagging across my face, I experience that confusion of not knowing where I am. Not just believing that I am somewhere else, but forgetting where I am and how I got there. When realisation overcomes confusion, there’s nothing else to do but lie there and wait.
My window looks over what I know isn’t a courtyard, but I can’t find any other word to describe it and I’m sure one exists. It’s a perfect, concrete rectangular hole that has been sliced out of the middle of this building, stretching six floors down to the abyss. Narrow windows, carved into the walls like the days left of a sentence, spill the usual kitchen and bathroom rumours that provide me with the only clue of what life is doing downstairs on the streets. From the windows, threads of wire shoot out at various angles onto which sheets, towels and clothes cling in a desperate fight to prevent falling down into the dark and stinky doom.
The light is different. The smell is extraordinarily different.
When I open that door and walk out to Plaça del Pedró today, ready to start my new job, all the apprehensions, the excitement and uncertainty of the past few weeks will come with me. And while I can’t escape the burden of myself, I guess that with each step out the door, day by day, I’ll lose a little of something and gain a little of something else.
Illustrated Shorts 