The first press article I published (1992?) was commissioned to me at dawn in a bar, I finished sketching it when the morning was already a noisy reality and at around eleven o'clock I had to dictate it by phone to a secretary from the newspaper.
He wasn't the only one in my fledgling writing career that I sent like this.
Then the fax would come successively and almost immediately the email.
One curious thing about growing old is that any time of your own, however remote, doesn't seem so far away.
Obviously, this is an illusion designed to prop up the fictional story of our identity.
That time of which I speak is not only distant because of the 30 years that have elapsed;
it is above all because most of my life, with its losses, conquests and learnings, has happened in between.
Am I the one who bought the next day's newspaper before returning home at night or who takes advantage of public transport to manage my day-to-day on my mobile?
The weekly moviegoer in original version theaters or the one who rejects dense movies with a click?
Who cut with the vanity of a whipper every appearance of his in the press or who limits himself to relying on the random storage of unknown servers?
And by the way: Until when?
Will there be archaeologists specialized in reconstructing cloud excrescences in the future?
Even when?
Will there be archaeologists specialized in reconstructing cloud excrescences in the future?
Even when?
Will there be archaeologists specialized in reconstructing cloud excrescences in the future?
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Instructions for getting a good job and a bad life
I'm old now, but that doesn't make me a rare specimen.
More out of laziness and modesty than as a result of a thoughtful decision, I have managed not to have a Facebook or Twitter account (there is one on Facebook with my name, but it is apocryphal).
Tinder tempts me as an experience, but I live happily as a couple.
I did open one from LinkedIn, although I did it by mistake when downloading some files and since then my only activity on it consists of accepting the friend requests that I receive, 452 to date without ever taking care of feeding my profile.
I have also been managing an Instagram account for two years that my painter father's gallery owner advised me to open in his name.
I post photos of his paintings, I report his exhibitions and I try to make it visible by giving
likes
to the pages of others, I don't do it indiscriminately, but let's say that the spectrum of my approval, of my little hearts and applause, is as broad as it is diffuse.
I guess almost everyone acts the same way.
During the last camp my son went to, five days at the end of last June, I received more than 350 photos in the WhatsApp group opened by the organizers to communicate with parents.
Hasty photos, of children practicing nautical activities or enjoying themselves in the hotel, which of course I scrutinized impatiently.
My son only came out in two, and from the side, but I didn't protest.
There were parents who did and there were even those who asked the monitors to focus them better.
At any time in the streets of all cities there are teenagers posing Kardashian-style before their enslaved parents.
Dim, stereotyped images.
Before, people came home from a trip and had something to tell, now they squeeze it into their networks before finishing it.
Have we gone crazy?
The billions of photos captured every second on the planet have perverted the very meaning of photography, which seemed to be to preserve moments of life.
We are fed up with them and yet we continue to capture and consume them knowing that they will hardly leave the memory of our phones.
The image has become the message and everything that is not must imitate its immediacy: medical appointments, scholarship announcements, press releases, condolences.
That constant, choppy flow has usurped the space of discourse.
Exposed to constant interference, we live at the vertex of the urgent, of the outburst;
in the domains of exhibitionism, of emptiness.
Who cares?
Although we try not to see, not to open, not to attend,
the effort demanded of us by refusal is enormous.
Not even the few who resist the smartphone and still cling to antediluvian mobiles are not safe.
vain hope.
All of society—politics and journalism as well—seems inhabited by the ephemeral.
We ride waves that break, beyond our sight, against the cliffs of ennui.
Our thought has become fragile and discontinuous, stammering.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
Not even the few who resist the smartphone and still cling to antediluvian mobiles are not safe.
vain hope.
All of society—politics and journalism as well—seems inhabited by the ephemeral.
We ride waves that break, beyond our sight, against the cliffs of ennui.
Our thought has become fragile and discontinuous, stammering.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
Not even the few who resist the smartphone and still cling to antediluvian mobiles are not safe.
vain hope.
All of society—politics and journalism as well—seems inhabited by the ephemeral.
We ride waves that break, beyond our sight, against the cliffs of ennui.
Our thought has become fragile and discontinuous, stammering.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
All of society—politics and journalism as well—seems inhabited by the ephemeral.
We ride waves that break, beyond our sight, against the cliffs of ennui.
Our thought has become fragile and discontinuous, stammering.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
All of society—politics and journalism as well—seems inhabited by the ephemeral.
We ride waves that break, beyond our sight, against the cliffs of ennui.
Our thought has become fragile and discontinuous, stammering.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
The shelves of our libraries are full of books that we no longer feel capable of reading, and since the superfluous often generates more noise than the important, we tend to think that nothing is.
But the worst is not that.
The worst thing is that, living in the constant present, we become forgetful and, therefore, we don't prepare for the future either.
Who remembers the lasting destruction of the last Gulf war?
Who remembers unresolved conflicts like the one in Palestine?
We constantly look the other way, at the screen of our mobile, entertained in trifles.
Now, when the war is once again shaking a part of Europe, we forget that its main culprit was until recently a strategic ally who was forgiven for his authoritarian excesses, his murders.
Did we care about the Russians who, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, went from scarcity to extreme poverty?
We cared more about gas and oil and the money that the oligarchs brought to our shores and soccer fields.
Climate change is here with more force than predicted, but next winter the heating of half of Europe will return to coal.
Hasn't there been time to prepare?
And when this war is over, will we learn from our mistakes?
No matter.
There are those who are getting rich manufacturing the weapons of the next wars.
Politicians have a habit of being late because they are always behind money and money, you know, is interested in sleepy people.
I am referring to the politicians who try to be fair, the others directly demean the debate with childish slogans like communism or freedom.
I would like to end with an anecdote on which to weave a hopeful metaphor.
I do not have it.
I look into my son's eyes and the love I feel is equal to my fear.
Presumably, it usually is, that the pendulum of stupidity will swing back at some point.
It happens that the times of history are slower than those of human life and that surely we will not see it.
How will we live?
What will we retain?
How will we study?
What will we be?
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