Memories of an old cellphone number

Let's start by the obvious: As of today my cellphone number changes from 09831175 to 099218037. Please those of you who keep cellphone contact with me switch to the new number.

It's pretty trivial, ain't it? You switch phone numbers, give away the new one and keep on going with your routine, right? Then I come to think about it and find that the whole cellphone thing has a long history behind it.

You know, I never wanted a cellphone to begin with. I believed that such a wretched device was nothing but a money outlet, an apparatus to keep you controlled and evidence of you slowly selling out to the system. And when I finally got my cellphone, I felt pretty disappointed with myself at first, as if I were giving up on my values or something.

This happened at a time when I was just starting to taste the bittersweet flavor of the young life, who would have thought that the "cellphone era" would be a good timeframe for most of my known emocional life. For the curious, I started with the classic Nokia "brick", big enough to kill somebody if used as a projectile.

With this number I spend the season with my friends in the University's central park, I fought with Ximena (my first real serious and longest relationship) over this phone, I would message and arrange my dates with Marithza and Giselle over this line, my first cellphone died and my sister lent me one in the meantime, and with that phone I met Val, and I wrote about 600 messages with her in only a month, back in those golden days where I dated her.

Over that line, I built up much of the actual Magic playing community of this city, I kept my friendships (with a new Nokia, a gift from my father) and flourished on another ones, such as that misfit friend of mine, Jazie, who would wind up becoming one of the most meaningful persons in my life. Of course it also become my main feedline for the people that wanted me to work for them, and recently, it witnessed the entrance of new friends in my life (Liz, JJ and the guys in the store, in particular) and it had to suffer the assault of Maria Fernanda, who in fact sent today a couple very angry messages to the old line. It's kind of funny and sad at the meantime to know that the only way I could get out of such a sickening relationship would be with laissez faire ("let things free" for the French impaired).

And now I have a new line, and what should be trivial and meaningless suddenly has a sense of renewal and change. Something as dumb and inconsequential as a change in a cell number becomes the sign of a new era, the end of one of the most joyous and at the same time, most miserable times of my life. A time when the passion and intensity of a few, priceless moments seem to balance the years of anguish and frustration. Indeed I feel kind of surprised to accept that, through all the shit, I can still confess to be happy and thank a mysterious God for every single moment and feeling.

Now I try to start over and build a new self, for myself. And along cames a new number, 099218037. In that line I hope to make new job contacts, meet new people and perhaps be able to build for that relationship that somehow resembles the one I've been dreaming about all these years.

There's a song by Caifanes that says "para un alma en pena toda piedra es un altar" (for a haunted soul every stone is an altar) . In the end trivial things are no longer so for those that actually live through them. Which is another way to say that nothing is trivial after all.

And before I move on to -hopefully- bigger things in my life, another seemingly trivial thing seemed to provide me with an answer I've been looking for years. Why would a sane, stable, mature and rational person need such a thing as a couple relationship? I could go on wanting one just because I felt I needed one, but y'know, intellectual acts such as mine prefer to feed on reason than indulge in senseless passion. Besides, sometimes I need to snap an answer when I get asked about the biggest obsession in my life. And as such things often happen, the answer came from the most unlikely of places; an Anime series!!

Those brainfuckers called Gainax -producers of Evangelion- also made a teen-love-flick called Karekano, a redemption of "Danielle Steel meets Sigmund Freud meets The Three Stooges". Take your average teen-love story, add a lot of hysterical humor and add to the mix self-analysis and interiorizing worth an entry to the Arkham Asylum and you start to get the picture on what Karekano is.

At one point the girl in the series, a very clever and pretty girl with an absoulte obsession with image and accomplishment, discovers that her relationship with his male equivalent becomes increasingly complex and uncertain to the point where she wonders...

how comes that I can accomplish pretty much everything and my relationship with him seems impossible to me??

ouch.

And after things sort themselves out much in spite of the effort on both sides to sabotage the whole thing (as usual in humans) she realizes that the reason she wants to be with him is because it's so nice to have someone to support you now and then. She had supported herself for all those years without needing anyone else, but it was so soothing, so relieving, and so rich to have someone that would hug you when you were cold, talk to you when you were down and caress you when you felt almost lost.

But of course, the whole beauty of it clicked on her head when she realized that HIM, in turn, could lean on her for support, because no one has it soft and every help you can get to make your life a little easier is always, always welcome.

Bingo, my answer lied there right before me.

You don't need anyone else to fly high, but ain't it grant to feel supported enough to visit the stars?

I hope can tell you about it sometime, about the time when I soar to the skies with that roguish person that flies along with me to meet the future.

Good luck in your flights my friends, may God take care of your wings and never let you drop again.