Bizarre Day

The weirdness started when my brother and I walked up and down fancy stairs to get to the building's club house. Ready to work out, the cold and the constant light rain accompanied us all the way. It hasn't stopped yet, and yes, it is midnight.
Later in the morning, Colombia's Minister of Defense announced that Tirofijo, the FARCs main leader, was dead. He announced it in the middle of an interview, with no planning nor government back-up. He is said to have died in March of a heart attack, which to me is quite ironic. This terrorist, with once pure ideals of social equality and a fair government, wasn't killed in combat or by a military plot. He died of old age. That's how long this absurd war has been. To the point that those who started it are timing out and passing on the torch to their predecessors.
Then was the earthquake. A quick shook up of 5.5 in the richer scale that almost gave me a heart attack that would have put me in the same hell as Tirofijo. Maybe a level or two closer to the ground in Dante's inferno. It was long, and we panicked, and I ran under a door because they always told me in school that was the safest place. After the floor stopped moving and the books were left hesitant in the edge of their shelves, my mom told me, with a giggle,
"Andie, there are no door frames in this house,"
And she was right. The too modern apartment has those gigantic wooden doors that reach all the way up to the ceiling. And so I laughed, as my heart continued to pound, still to the rhythm of the seismic waves.
The epicenter wasn't that far away from Bogota, and around seven people died. I had never felt such a strong shaking of the ground.
And for the last occurrence, the lights have been out in my apartment building all night. They finally came back on, but it doesn't last long. It just seems like I'm going to wake up very very soon.

On writing a novel

There are all types of opinions on writing. Some authors I admire, like Irene Nemirovsky or Mario Vargas LLosa studied literature and absorbed master pieces, dissecting them and creating prose styles of their own. My father recommended I didn't do this; Most people who study literature have an occult or sometimes quite evident aspiration of becoming authors themselves. But closely studying masters usually trumps the imagination, he says, and many become easily discouraged when they start idolizing classic writers and realize they will never compare.

I realize I will never be a master. It's not an aspiration and not even a distant dream. But I do want to write, and I don't want to stop myself from doing it because of pure fear of failure. If I dont start now, I don't know If I will ever be ready. I am pretty sure I will come up with a manuscript, show it to a couple of friends and put it on a shelf, together with that cute story I wrote when I was 12 that involved all of my friends and some serious drama. I found it the other day, and it made me nostalgic. I remembered when I wrote it. It took me a couple of weeks, but I was absorbed and ready. I hadn't thought about who may read it and whether people would like it. I wrote it because it was in me; I wrote it because I enjoyed the process.

So this summer I will write. Until now I have thought a love story, as corny as that sounds, because I know love, and it is the only intense feeling I feel qualified to write about. We are in a generation with no purpose of being, with a lack of passion for life, of life-and-death drama, so we are left to ponder about our senseless relationships that we are trying to dramatize enough to fill that void that plastic lives give to us. So when I write that love story, I will let people know. maybe, who knows. But at least I know i'll be trying.

Again... life pondering

Coming back to Colombia would be the easy way out. That has always been clear to me, yet it is not until this summer that I have realized that I am not such a fan of what is comfortable.