"We know very little about people's true relationship with their belongings." "That is what helps us to organize the myth." "It is 40 feet tall, approximately, as you can be see, and is impressive." "It can be seen from far away." "Once seen from afar, it is an attraction to the park, to locate it." "Although electronic devices are the latest craze, for children between three and seven years of age there is nothing better than this." "Every element in the..." "And the orange light on the orange building, or maybe ochre, reminded him of other sunsets, other nights." "Sunsets when he was 12, 15, 20 years old." "Long ago, maybe from other places even." "Hundreds, thousands of sunsets." "And he felt the repetition." "It was not the 1st time the repetition took place, but the 1st time he felt it." "And he asked himself when all of this would end." "How ridiculous!" "How long would this last?" "THE CHAIR" "Hey!" "You'll break it." " Would you like to eat?" " No." "I can't." "I already had breakfast." "I have a certain paranoia with breakfast." "I can keep on eating while having breakfast." "I can keep on eating for hours, if I want to." "But after a while, half an hour, forty five minutes..." "You don't want any?" "After a while, I can't eat any more." "It's disgusting." " So you don't want any?" " Till lunch, obviously." "I used to hate these neighbourhoods." "Closed, overcrowded, dark neighbourhoods." "But I like them now." "There is light here." "Can I ask you something?" "Where are we going?" "What's going on?" "Us?" "Who?" "You and me." "We are following someone." "We are following someone?" "And why?" "Why are we following someone?" " What has he done?" " Nothing." "He hasn't done anything." "So if he hasn't done anything wrong?" "He hasn't done anything yet, but he will." "A chair exists somewhere." "An aesthetically pretty chair." "Simple." "In wood or metal, although a specially attractive and valuable piece of furniture as can be imagined from its description." "Son of a bitch!" "I've been looking foryou all night!" "I'm fed up!" "I can't stand you anymore!" "You get drunk whereverwe go!" "You go out with many otherwomen!" "Can't you show some respect for me?" "I'm tired of the same stuff, day after day, for4 years!" "You hear me?" "I'm fed up!" "And I won't put up with this any longer, you hear?" "And this chair, which he does not as yet own, and not only not own but cannot even imagine it exists, to him is his only possession unlike his home which, being totally his he does not feel it his." "I would even dare to say it is not his at all, although he paid for it, a situation that extends to the things he has at home that, being his also, he feels he does not own them," "that they are not really his either." " What time is it?" " 4 o'clock." " 4?" " Yes." "30 minutes ago, I asked you and you said it was four o'clock." "It's always four." " 3:30." " Excuse me?" "Before, when you asked, it wasn't 4, it was 3:30." "I told you but, you never listen." " Sure?" " Sure." "How do you set yourwatch?" "What, how do I set my watch?" "I don't know, here..." "There is no other clock around here to check." "How do you know when to have breakfast?" "I have breakfast after sleeping." "And how do you know when to go to sleep?" "I sleep when I'm tired." "So you know when to go to sleep." "You might say so, yes." "I do." "I know what time it is." "One of us must be mistaken." " I don't understand." " One of us, I mean, one of us is mistaken." "Yourwatch says it's four o'clock, and I just had breakfast." "Do you want to start all over again?" "No, not start again." "Start again, no." "We need certain discipline." "The last time we agreed that each of us would go his own way." "Yes, we did agree on that." "But there's only two of us." "We can't have a different law for each." "There are no laws." "We agreed on that too, right?" "Yes, we agreed on that too." " What's worrying you?" " Me?" "Nothing." "There's nothing to be worried about." "What could worry me?" "What brings us together, then?" "Please, tell me." "What brings us together?" "The sidewalk, the street, this fucking neighbourhood?" "What?" "This strange but yet familiar feeling that his home is not his and his possessions are not either explains his need to stay away from home as long as possible, walking through the city, but with an objective, that is true." "Sir, a table." "Sir, coffee." "Sir, coffee with milk, a table." "Some tea, sir." "A table." "How about some great coffee, tea, a drink?" "I'll set a table foryou!" "Sir!" "Please, come in..." "This is incredible coffee!" "This strange but yet familiar feeling that his home is not his and his possessions are not either explains his need to stay away from home as long as possible, walking through the city, but with an objective, that is true." "Because when he walks through the city he's always lookingfor a bar, a coffee shop that is right to have coffee." "A unique moment for him to have coffee, a necessary moment, or so he thinks as he looks for the best place to have coffee or some coffee with milk." "And I say so because when he believes to have found the right place to have his coffee, he's not comfortable." "While he orders and drinks it, he constantly checks his watch as if he were late for a nonexistent appointment, or as if he had to get home, which we know he doesn't intend to do." "But he forces himself to go home, to his own home." "To the home he owns and is his." "He forces himself risking the feeling of total, absolute physical discomfort that he feels as he approaches his home and reaches its summit once inside his home, once he's settled in it." "Mom?" "No, no, no..." "He..." "He doesn't look." "No, no, He watches you." "He sees the things you do, and that gives rise to the question we all ask ourselves:" "How can we thank Him forwhat we are?" "For ourfamilies?" "The things we have?" "Humbly, and acknowledging He is the only true God." "He is the only one." " The only one in Heaven and Earth." " Exactly." "Verse 24/8 states it clearly." ""He shall be the only God to thee."" "And what I'm trying to say is that He is God and we are nothing compared to Him, but yet He loves us although we are nothing but simple mortals." ""Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."" "Exactly!" "And being God, He thinks..." "Excuse me?" "What did you say?" "He is the only God in Heaven and Earth." "No, the second thing." ""Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."" "That's it, Marta!" "Marta." "I can call you Marta, right?" "Yes." "Marta, I'd like to show you something profoundly related to what you just said." "About the dust." "Look at this, Marta." "Look." "The ultimate vacuum cleaner." "Finding only anxiety, unease in his belongings he opts for other people's, things, not his own, leading him to stay in hotels" "Preferably old hotels, the so-called classic hotels, because he cant stand modern hotels with modern names, modern services." "Those are not hotels enough for him, for they have been built with a family perspective, not "hotel-like", because they seem too much like a home." "Here is the minibar." "This is forthe heating." "This turns it off, this turns it on." "This is the main power switch." "You can switch everything on and off from here." "Can I whisper something to you, in your ear?" "Yes, of course." "Something." "HANDBOOK FOR THE EFFICIENT SALESMAN" "These hotels kept him away from home, not necessarily far from home, but away, and the proof is he stays in places three, two blocks from his home, and even once in a place right in front of his home." "Meanwhile, Jesus arrived, with them, at a farm called Jetsemanim..." " Jetsemani!" " Jet..." "Jetsemani" " And said..." " Jetsemani." "And said: "Sit and wait here while I pray."" "And he took Peter and both of Cebedeius' sons..." " Cebedeus!" " Cebedeus." "Santiago and John got sad and distressed, and He said: "My soul suffers from mortal anguish." "Wait here and wake with me."" "And then He walked a few steps forward and fell on the ground, face down, and prayed:" ""Father, if you can, don't make me drink from this chalice." "But it shall be yourwill, and not mine."" "Does it move you?" "Yes." "Let's see." "What does it mean?" "What do you see there?" "It's a moment of..." "weakness." "The Lord has a moment of weakness." "The Lord has a moment of weakness." "We are all weak, don't you think?" " That's true." "We are." " We are." "Sometimes we are." "I have something foryou, Marcos." "Something forthose moments in which weakness overcomes you." "Vitamins." "Vitamins, totally pure." "You take two in the morning, and one with dinner." "When you finish the bottle, you'll feel brand new." "Don't you have a smaller bill?" "The next thing is to stay in the street, remain in the street." "Where he actually lived for three or four days, but we can't tell exactly." "It is not easy to get away from a scheme, from any scheme." "That is not easy when one struggles against that scheme alone." "Therefore, maybe he reaches the conclusion that he should find the solution in others." "So he begins to make appointments with acquaintances, not friends, with the alleged objective to see how they are and exchange courtesies but, while talking to them, with the secret intention to get ideas, help, a clue." "Yes, we are fine." "We are fine, aren't we?" "We can buy cell phones." "We can buy cell phones in the middle of all this pain." "We can even speak on our cell phones." "Sometimes we also watch TV." "Oh, didn't we tell you?" "She is pregnant." "I'm writing, while I'm interested in the otherthing." "Do you understand?" "I'm interested and expecting the otherthing, that thing that happens, the opposite of writing, and takes us away from writing." "I call it life." "But I'm just kidding myself." "I call it life in an attempt to get it into writing, but the otherthing is not really literary." "It's the passing of time." "It's being and leaving." "It's taking a shower while she watches you." "I hate that." "Actually, I hate it." "But, at the same time, I ask myself:" "Why should I miss it?" "...a few months..." "a year maybe." "It's about it being there long enough... between yourteeth." "A hair." "A simple, common hair." "It's that attempt of getting it out from between yourteeth that would end up deforming your body, causing scoliosis." "A normal hair." "A normal hair can ruin your spine." "Who knows?" "You might even end up being a paralytic." "And from then on nothing occurs to him." "After exhausting all possibilities nothing more occurs to him." "But he doesn't want this idea, this thought to paralyse him and in fact tries to use it, this thought, I mean, against the thought itself so something may occur to him." "For a solution to finally arise because he can only think, keep on thinking, that nothing occurs to him and will digress, but not mentally as mentally he is, totally stuck on "nothing occurs to me"," "but he will digress physically because he knows that if he stops, that "nothing occurs to me", the thought of nothing occurring to him, besides being overwhelming, has partial hold of him, will have total hold of him," "and will possess him with brutal force." "At times I think of how it would be to live differently." " That was not the deal." " I know, I'm sorry." " That was not the deal." " I'm sorry." " You never stick to the deals." " I know." "Why can't you stick to a deal?" "Don't you everthink?" " Do I think?" " Yes." "Of course I think." "I think all day long." "Not only of what's outside, but of all the rest." "Of all the surroundings, and all their stems, because the surroundings have hundreds of stems." "I think about this and that, and also about the beyond." "That's my cross." "To think, think, think." "Think about everything." "There is nothing I don't think about." "You don't need..." "I even think about thinking." "Have you everthought about thinking?" "Have you everthought about thinking?" "Yes or no?" "What do you mean?" "About abstract things?" " Everything is abstract." " Not everything!" "Everything." " It doesn't exist." " The table." "It doesn't exist." "Abstract doesn't exist?" "I don't understand that." "What?" "We need to get to work." "Peace finally arrives, little by little, and, as usual, it finally arrives thanks to the careful, meticulous construction of a routine." "A routine of walking, wandering, that consists of going to the same places over and over again." "Not new places, the same places." "This way, he's not exposed to the stress, the nerves of going to new places." "On one of those walks, one of those strolls, and amongst revelations of mainly old, repeated things, he sighted, and I don't care of anyone thinks sighted is not the proper word, he sighted the chair." "Should I let myself be beaten like this?" "What do you think?" "I ask you as an artist." "The strength of my works..." "I mistrust what I write." "That's the problem." "I don't..." "I used to write to change the world." "Now I don't think that could happen at all." "As an artist, my fear is to stop being considered an artist." "Actually, that's the way it is." "That would be the end." "To be inside." "Inside." "Not outside." "That's what one wants, right?" "What are you afraid of?" "And as soon as he sees the chair, he has the feeling that that chair is the only thing that can really be his, the only thing he can really own, unlike his home, which is his," "unlike all the things in his home, which are also his, but not belonging to him, things he doesn't own." "And that chair, being his only possession, being his only true possession, will let him get there, and not only get there, but once there, at the door of his home, go inside and feel good in his home," "be happy with it, feel at home again." "And he thinks and realises, right there, facing the chair, that that chair will be his salvation." "Not only then, not only for the problem of his home, but for any problem." "Because whenever he feels uneasy, when things go wrong, he will be at ease, he will regain his confidence by just thinking, by just focussing on that chair." "Wherever he may be or go, he just has to think of it, remember it, not so much as a useful, daily chair, but as a well-designed, well-finished object." "Have you ever played this game?" "Put your hands like this, raise them like this." "There." "There." "Then this over here." "This over here." "Tense it." "This finger over here." "Tense it." "This hands over here." "There." "Very good." "No, look here." "Now take this here, with these two fingers." "No, from the top." "There, that's it." "And now with this hand, there." "Now pick it up and go around the back." "That there, this here." "Here." "There, now lift your fingers and pull." "What?" "There you go!" " Let's play something else." " For money?" "No, no." "No, not for money." "Just forfun." "Forfun, we can continue playing this." "Look what I have got here." "Look how nice this is." "This is the Lord, of course." "This one has little lambs, and a cloud, and a little girl receiving communion." "And this one." "Look how pretty!" "How pretty." "Don't you like it?" "Not this one, then." "This other one with the Lord." "Now let us see just how far we can go to have the chair." "Do you see anything?" "Have you everwondered why people are bad?" "Why does anyone do something bad at a certain moment?" "Do you know why?" "Because of talk behind one's back." "That's why." "When someone does something bad, it takes a second for people to talk behind one's back, to mutter." "We exist because of those comments." "We come from them." "If you lose that, what have you left?" "We think we are what we are told, what we hear." "But that's not true." "We are what is said about us, the marginal talk about us, that's what we are." "Whatever is said to our face doesn't ever count." "We are someone when we are a third person." "The first person doesn't exist." "I, I, I." "Does anything lack more substance than that?" "He hasn't done anything wrong." "Yet." "But he will." "He will." "And desiring the chair so determinedly, he realises that he isn't concealing his desire, his need of having it, and he feels good, honest, for the first time ever, as he realises he has spent most of his time, most of the past," "the time before the chair, making believe." "With his personality, his attitude, everything." "This challenges his deepest convictions, for he's always thought, not only after the chair, but also before, that making believe is the worst, the most absurd." "We spend all day making believe." "And he sees, I mean, finds out another advantage of the chair, which is the ability to transform, rebuild him." "Not make him different, which is what one supposes of a transformation, but turn him into himself, truly him." "When he decides to buy the chair he realises he cannot get it out of the store, he can't take it with him given the weight of it." "Its dimension make it impossible for him to carry it home by himself." "That's why he was just recommend some movers who the people in the store say they've worked with quite often to deliver stuff to clients." "Work... work." "I work, work, work, and always ask myself the same question." "Am I doing it right?" "People don't work right." "Nor ask if they do it right." "Most of the times people don't measure themselves with really demanding parameters." "You know what I do?" "I'll tell you a secret." "I question myself, I compete with death, that's it." "That's what I do." ""Am I as efficient as death?"" "That is what I ask myself." ""Am I 100% as efficient as death is?"" "Yes, it's sad, I know." "But I can't help it." "I used to compete with the sea." "That was better, wasn't it?" "Going out to sea is betterthan dying." "Or isn't it?" "I don't know anymore." "We accept all our losses, but we have a limit." "Suddenly, we cannot lose anything else." "Do you speak Spanish?" "Do you speak my language?" "No, no, no." "There's no need to..." "Just a question." "Now I leave you alone with him." "What are you doing?" "I told you." "I tried to warn you, but you didn't stop me." "You said nothing about this." "It was all there, in what I told you." "It's strange you didn't realise, because it was all there." "No..." "No, it's not fair." "We prefer heavy things instead of light things." "Don't you think?" "But then we have to carry heavy things on our backs." " Let's talk about the chair." " Let's talk." "Excuse me, but we are talking about the chair." "I was going to buy that chair." "I'm willing to buy it from you." "I'm willing to pay you for it." "We want things... things." "Not money." "Money won't save us." "But I have money, I can give you more money." " Did you touch it?" "Did you?" " No." "You didn't." "Would you like to?" "Are you afraid your desire can diminish?" "I am a salesman." "Usually, I'm a salesman." "But I don't want to sell today." "But the day I don't want to sell is when I sell the most." "Do you know what I'm going to do?" "I'll report you." "I saw you selling pictures to that child." " Which child?" " The girl!" "No, how could I sell pictures to a child?" "I wanted to give them to her." "Listen, nothing scares me anymore." "Listen." "Excuse me." "I'm sorry." "I didn't mean to offend or bother you, but I need that chair." "Listen, please." "When you tell me what you see in it, I might think about it." "An object." "Maybe an object, right?" "Yes, why not?" "An object that redeems us of all others objects." "We hadn't thought about that, had we?" "No, no." "Fuckin' old man, give me the chair!" " Thief!" "Help!" " I won't give you anything." "Thief!" "You're nothing but a thief!" "Thief!" "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny."