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| celebración nocturna |
How can I forget that time, during an interview in TVE, the writers José Saramago and Eduardo Mendoza were born to an ocean view, because they were from Lisboa and Barcelona respectively. I, in the other hand, was born in Lima, which means four or five thousand meters over the sea level and therefore the ocean… Anyway, is very well known that I hate to bother or to interrupt and that, besides, we Peruvians usually choose the eclectic ways. Which means that I had no other alternative than to depict to the reporter, more or less, the next: since my earliest childhood my parents took me daily, every summer, to very diverse beaches of the city of Lima, although, of course, not without going through snowed crests, mountains and gorges, abysms, ravines, defiles of fog and precipices from the devil, in a crazy attempt to teach me how to swim, while far off, distinguished gentlemen from Lima were sailing away towards Europe in the remarkably elegant Reina del Pacífico, something like a Titanic without tragedy that died of old age. People from Lima, from yesterday, from today and in the future, have endured and will endure, urbi et orbi, summer temperatures that make us die of chill in Seville in August for example. And this owing to the fact that Lima is the capital city of Peru, and this country was the nerve center of the Incan empire, or of the empire of the Sun, ergo we people from Lima are, eclectively speaking, of course and not to bother, the greatest bearers of asphyxia temperatures of this universally world. And so, the Elle magazine, a few years ago, in a beautiful photographic reportage about the Andean Peru (the only country that has an ocean view or not according to what reporter are you using) placed the huanaco, an almost unknown animal, in the surroundings of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, although, they referred to them, needless to say, as “fine cities”… What can we do if Latin-America introduced itself in the universal history of the Europeans (which means, in the same history that have read and studied the Latin-Americans too) in the chapter Renaissance, and among other discoveries or inventions such as the magnifying glass? Be sure, cherished reader, that I will do no eulogies regarding the special goodness of the reporters of my country. There are some as loathsome as possible, as the one who assaulted me in Lima’s airport when I had just disembarked from Spain with the perfect question for a compromised writer: “what do you think about the new measures that the minister of Economy is going to implement”. Neither he nor I would know what those measures were, of course, and in the best of cases not even the sir minister of Economy would know about this still, but I was very much invited to throw my candidature as major of the city or ready to do something equally absurd.
Adapted from a text by Alfredo Bryce
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| my drawing / mi dibujo |
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| bocadillos y cocteles |
Uno vive estresado en Lima, y la carga negativa se va acumulando a lo largo del año y por eso, creo yo, en verano es obligatorio abandonar nuestra querida y caótica ciudad. Cien kilómetros en dirección al sur puede no parecer mucho pero es, a veces, distancia suficiente para poner las cosas en perspectiva. A mí, al menos, me ayuda muchísimo para relajarme. Me encanta estar con el celular apagado y desconectado de internet aunque sea por un par de días.
Por supuesto, no hay nada más divertido que pasar el fin de semana con los amigos de toda la vida (somos el mismo grupo, nos conocemos desde los 5 años y ya todos tenemos 28, así que son más de 20 años de amistad). Y regreso a Lima revitalizado.
En esta ocasión, sin embargo, también hubo un evento especial: la tan anunciada inauguración del clubhouse. Además de una amplia variedad de bocaditos gourmet y de las mesas de Otto Kunz con quesitos, jamoncitos y panes de todo tipo, también hubo un sinfín de tragos. Empecé con un clásico pisco sour, luego un camu camu sour, un chilcano, un mojito de menta, un Bloody Mary, un Apple Martini y terminé con un whisky Johnnie Walker Black Label. Siempre es refrescante contar con tantas opciones al mismo tiempo, y aunque seguramente me faltó probar algunas copas, las que tomé estaban deliciosas. Realmente, este ha sido un fin de semana para el recuerdo. Espectacular de verdad.
