Excerpt from a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo

It may well seem to you that the sun is shining more brightly and that everything has taken on a new charm. That, at any rate, is the inevitable consequence of true love, I believe, and it is a wonderful thing.

And I also believe that those who hold that no one thinks clearly when in love are wrong, for it is at just that time that one thinks very clearly indeed and is more energetic than one was before.

And love is something eternal, it may change in aspect but not in essence. And there is the same difference between someone who is in love and what he was like before as there is between a lamp that is lit and one that is not. The lamp was there all the time and it was a good lamp, but now it is giving light as well and that is its true function. And one has more peace of mind about many things and so is more likely to do better work.

I’m surprised by those who say they have no secrets.

Some say it like a sign of honesty, but I’m not sure if I believe them.

I have secrets, and many.

They float in the air, invisible particles to the rest, but I recognize them.

I have them inventoried.

Some letters for me hold a secret, they are a code.

Some colors, a musical note, a texture, a scent, some objects, a place, some images.

My secrets are winks left in the places I’ve been.

And all my secrets are there in plain sight.

On page 77 of the seventh book on some shelf.

Some of my secrets are hidden in my photographs; perhaps they’re visible sometimes, though I erased almost all of them years ago.

My secrets are sometimes written on the soles of my shoes or tucked into the tiny pockets of my pants or behind some painting.

My secrets are like that.

Sometimes I hide them on the surface, leave them on the table, next to every day, in the remnants of wine in my glasses, in the breadcrumbs, at the foot of the bed very close to a blue rug, camouflaged among dirty clothes waiting to be washed.

My real secrets are sometimes hidden in my fictions.

And that’s where they’re best kept. Right in front of me.

Today, when I wanted to take a nap after getting home from work, I couldn’t sleep well, my thoughts were liquid, and everything I saw seemed to be covered in water.

I kept getting in and out of bed, and whenever I tried to sleep, I could hear myself breathing and hear my heartbeat.
My arms felt like a stethoscope. You can try it like this: lie on your left side, with your left arm stretched across your body (like a \) passing over your heart. Your right arm should go in the opposite direction, but upward (something like /) so that your right wrist ends up on your left shoulder, and your head and left ear rest on your right hand, creating pressure between your hand and your shoulder.
It’s a bit hard to explain, but in other words, it’s like giving yourself a hug and resting your head and ear on one of your arms.
Finally, listening to my heartbeat, I fell asleep.

Oh, heart!

I always think of that phrase, “listen to your heart.”
I know well what people mean by that. But it’s very difficult to actually hear it.
There’s always a head/heart conflict.
Sometimes one wins, other times, the other.
Sometimes I’ve said with my head, “It’s the best for us,” and my heart has shattered.
I’ve also said, “This is what my heart tells me,” and then I haven’t been able to think for months, and well, in the end, my heart has shattered too.
That’s why we must be a mix of things.
(Although lately, I’ve been more of a heart walking around, and that’s why I write less)

There are days when you wake up from an afternoon or evening nap, and everything feels heavy.

As if returning with a hangover from a drunken sadness.

Sadness is a fat that surrounds the heart. When it beats harder and boils, this fat tends to spread and circulate through the veins and arteries, causing pain.

The stain left by sadness is called a blotch.

Sometimes sadness seeps out through our pores, our eyes, staining the lapel of our suit, the cuffs, the collar, the scarf, even the ground we walk on.

(That’s why, in commercials for detergents that remove grease stains, all the families are happy.)

Our body feels heavy as if instead of blood, mercury runs through our veins, as if we’re pierced by thousands of shrapnel from explosions that have left us deaf, with our heads full of holes through which all thoughts escape, leaving us with nothing, with burning hands full of dust and only a blur in our almost dry, dull gaze.

And so we walk through our daily lives, wrapped in a silk handkerchief.

And we search for the cure anywhere.

We look for the pill.

Even the fake pill.

The placebo.

The knowing that there’s a cure when the day is ending, and you turn off the light and see then, through the window, that outside, the sun is rising.

Which is no small thing.

I have a friend who has kept

my dead beneath his bed

has cleaned the stains of my crimes

has mimicked my voice on calls

my friend has been me

and I have been him

my friend knows what I think

and sometimes that’s why he gets angry

enough, stop doing that!

so I don’t trust people

who I later have to distance myself from

my friend writes to me at any time of the day

wakes me up

asks me if everything went well today and if I could finally sleep

and laughs

my friend has a box of my memories

a bag of my secrets

of my “well, never again”

of my “hopefully this time, yes”

my friend always tells me he doesn’t believe me

and by not believing me

he is my friend

my friend is a good person

loyal

and has a very particular laugh

very contagious in any gathering of friends

and everyone catches it

my friend sings badly

but doesn’t care

one day he will be a pilot

and maybe I’ll find him in Kathmandu or Patagonia

or perhaps playing soccer

with other friends

he tells me to have more fun

to not pay attention

that it doesn’t matter

that nothing really matters

because after all

he also always falls in love

and that’s how it is

my friend sometimes solves the world for me

writes three words

to change my life

he builds alibis

saves me from judgments

he is my judge

and my part

In the past, my friend used to tell me

that not everything was lost

when I was drowning in tears

my friend kills my monsters

revives my plants

he told me that wine stains

come out with mineral water

and that the others

are just a matter of time

my friend looks at me intently

when the needle pierces my veins

and I bleed out

in doubts

and he covers my eyes

when hatred once came

to sit at my table

and dine with me

my friend told me

that one day

we could buy land

in the north

at a dollar per square meter, friend

maybe we should buy it

right now

doing the math

between the two of us

maybe 5000 meters of sand

in front of a beach

build a fence

with everything we have

memories

songs

words

afternoons

dreams

food

smoke

clouds

hopes

and lie on our backs

to watch the sky

together as brothers

waiting

as always

as friendship waits

nothing

This evening after my nap, I woke up with that phrase in my head. If someone had woken up next to me, instead of “good evening”, I would have said “someone has to take care of the soul” and then yawned. Afterward, I would drag my sleepy body, which never sleeps enough, to the bathroom and brush my teeth with my eyes closed.

With each brush stroke, I would think: someone has to take care of the soul.

Today I had that phrase in my head all night, hammering at my simple life.

List:

• Coffee
• Bread
• Orange juice
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Yogurt
• Ham
• Someone has to take care of the soul
• Detergent
• Razor
• Sparkling water

Now that the weekend is over, you start to meet people returning from their short trips. Most go to roast like shrimp in northern Peru, get drunk with 50 soles in downtown Lima (something they can’t do here), and dance salsa in Miraflores and believe that’s the most Latino thing there is.

Someone has to take care of the soul.

I was returning by taxi down a small street, with the driver not exceeding the speed limit. Everything was perfect.

(Except my thoughts, except me).

That song “No Rain” was playing on the radio, reminding me of when I was in school

And I don’t understand why I sleep all day And I start to complain that there’s no rain And all I can do is read a book to stay awake And it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape…

Then I thought about an accident happening. A mega accident in this quiet city. So big that it would be on the news worldwide.

I would be there in the accident. Among the debris, the injured, and the dead. I saw myself injured, with a broken and bleeding forehead, with dirty hands and my face on the pavement.

Then I would see God and the Devil descend.

I thought, trapped between the twisted metal, about my phrase: someone has to take care of the soul.

Who would say it first?

Then God and the Devil look at each other and say it at the same time. Then they part ways amid the disaster.

God closes the eyes of the dead with a kiss, and the Devil starts to cheer up the injured like me with violent slaps on the cheeks and shouting.

Red light.

(Devil’s pupils)

Someone has to take care of my soul.

Today was the first time I got really nervous since I met you. I wanted to tell you that in this hemisphere, if someone tells you they want to talk about something important with you in a very serious tone, it’s a sign of alarm and the nerves in the other person freeze, and one usually turns pale. At that moment, I imagined my nerves were like thousands of whips tensing under my skin.

Coming into the world is a whip

Leaving the warm womb into the cold to hear how the sound of our own cry spreads through the air, running down our spine in a shiver like the aluminum where they place us while a nurse notes our weight and fills our foot with ink to leave a mark that we exist and have come into the world knowing nothing except that a cycle begins that ends in death…

Falling in love is a whip

Kissing another’s skin, touching, looking into each other’s eyes, speaking and hearing the echo of our words inside the other’s mouth, thinking about the other living inside us, climbing within the steep caves of our nerves, moving from the heart to the head…

Falling out of love is also a whip

The sounds of slammed doors echo within us, the “I don’t love you anymore” like shards of glass, the cold sensation of the half-empty bed, sleepless early mornings, heartbreak songs in the highest tone sliding like grease that lubricates our sad and tense nerves…

But that’s not the point

So,

I take a small knife and open my skin to see my nerves

and in them dwell

my early mornings and dawns

the warm sensation of some trips

perfumes

my restlessness when I see the freckles on your arms

the horizon of your eyes

your bright, beautiful skin

the pain of a knife

desire open on salt and sand

pianos

spoken words

foreign

written

secret

laughter

distances

hangovers

voices in airports

meowing cats

sirens

ghosts

your perpetual beauty in my eyes

storms

a woman crying

a sofa screaming

the smell of sea breeze

the noise of footsteps climbing stairs

the blue of the sky

they dwell in my nerves

the ice in my drinks

passions

your words that keep me alive

unpacked suitcases

glass

awake cities

books

brushes

caged birds

stones

hairs

colors

shines

blurry faces

names

skins

a red thread

I dwell in myself and my vertigo

And all these nerves are connected by an invisible current with your name that gives me life like Frankenstein, like a puppet that opens its eyes, gets up, showers, brushes its teeth and spits, dresses, combs its hair, perfumes itself, walks, eats, breathes, feels, thinks and sleeps…

(and dreams of you, who also dwell in my nerves)

I don’t have many things clear, so I ask myself a lot of questions and sometimes I don’t even sleep

Today I was wondering

how much can one love

I turned around

and again I told myself

that love

cannot be measured

I love you a kilo

I love you three meters

I love you a thousand kilometers

I love you all the degrees

of the parallels and meridians

that separate us

no

no

then I asked myself another question

until when

one

can love

like this

in the middle of nowhere

?

so I drew a line

that in my view

was time

I made several little marks

and a dot

the now

then

when I looked at the past

the now moved

and if I looked at the future

the now also moved

like those Chinese rulers

with little fish

or snails

that I used to take to school

and I would move them

and the little fish would move

and the snails would move

and the centimeters would become inches

and nothing could be measured anymore

because one

was always moving

then I told myself

there is no how much

nor until when

and I got tired

Maybe some song will give me the answer

There is a beautiful story called John the Fearless.

The title says it all: it turns out that John is not afraid of anything until one day the person he loves most falls ill and seems to be dying. Then, John the Fearless experiences the fear of losing something he loves very much.

I am a bit like John the Fearless.

Because one day I ventured into a very dark cave from which I emerged years later, blind and dirty, full of open wounds, but without fear.

I have also been to the bottom of the sea, which is thick and blue with no air. I have seen many fish die in front of me and above me. I have seen them decompose and watched as sharks came and ate them, passing right by me.

I have also been in the midst of gunfire, with bullets piercing everything around, and I walked slowly through it all…

One time, someone put a knife to my chest and took everything except my heart.

I have also experienced many turbulences, and the oxygen mask never fell for me, and my plane has crashed.

I have been next to an explosion and seen the shrapnel fly everywhere.

I have slept on vermin and nails, fought in a thousand battles, and perhaps lost them all, but I was never afraid.

I have also spent nights on the streets, been sick with 40-degree fevers for days, and once I had a nosebleed and lost my balance, but I wasn’t afraid.

A few days ago, I experienced the fear of losing the one I love most.

I felt the fear of all my lack of fears: I felt the bullets, the nails, the sharks, the vermin, all of it together.

Fear is sometimes directly proportional to love.

(But it’s over now)