Notes on the Abyss

 No title -  ink on paper and digital technique, 21x30cm,  2020 Two junkies sunbathing leaning against the window of a jewelry store -perfect synecdoche  of this city- and pretty girls heeling their way  down the stairs of the subway at nine in the morning zigzagging between Peruvians clutching their shadows. Crestfallen men of clay smearing  of dirt to delicious busy women, sad men and freshly showered women, clean, goddesses. My troubles  never have women's names anymore, they have the names of big companies electricity suppliers or gas providers. Women in the subway. The younger ones protect their red faces on the pages of political propaganda; it's not blushing  it has nothing to do with fleeting and frightened glances they are just exhausted;   it has nothing to do  with sex, it's nine o'clock in the morning they're clean, but it's just water. There's hardly any time left  for make-up or dreams. Raymond Chandler is dead, I hear them say and then the scr

    Ho Chi Minh Nights ( diptych )-  acrylic on canvas, 30x30cm,  2023 Let nothing pass you by, transcribe everything of this day: the smell of the coffee has to be the same as yesterday, remember cheap coffee, honest, from an electric coffee machine and also tell them about that girl and that you saw her panties on the escalator, and don't forget the platform and the harsh smell of the night and the rock/roll in the headphones and the faces, the faces... Tell them also about the guy you saw lying on the ground last night, at dawn, coming back from work and why you didn't help him. Tell them about his face. Tell them about the fear of the taxi drivers, about the sweat... tell them about the soot, about the ad men, about the lost shoes in the drains, on the sidewalks, [on the telephone wiring... Show them the underground tunnels  that make it all make real sense. -----------------------------------------//  Orignal  version below // No dejes pasar nada, transcribe todo de este d

     * No title  -  acrylic on canvas, 30x30cm,  2023 I saw you sitting there every evening I saw you scrutinizing the shapes of things, the sky, dirty, grey, grimacing ugly, the people walking elsewhere, the sad, dull buildings, the ochre paint. Blending in with the grime the half-closed windows and the neglected gardens, the barren leaf litter, your cigarettes, the automatic sprinkler as a farewell when you enlisted the night and  locked everything up. You were so beautiful with your winter make-up so exotic for this month of August, so impossible and yet underneath the elusive and aged look that we all get after a few months here in Madrid, under the cornices,                   [so far from the Gran Vía, smoking one of your menthol cigarettes under the sky                                                                                         [dirty that the only thing I could think of was whether the next day you'd be there, on the other side of my window, that overlooked your

       Alka-Seltzer , 100x70cm, acrylic on wood panel WOLFDOG (POETICS)   Yourself is impregnable and with mirrors, you always run the risk of not recognizing yourself -and I speak of mirrors when  I speak of the mental illness of the instant photos; call it whatever name you want - as I was saying, with mirrors, you risk of realizing that you don't look like yourself enough. Remaining still, watching the events unfold, like a surprised animal on the freeway, is in its own right an act of creation and death; and no one wants a new face for himself.   II  After several weeks of unsuccessful search                                         [in the word processor I found one of those memories that take you by the hand right to the edge of the cliff: the image of our wolfdog. A sharp, accurate vision of how that animal smiled naively -and I would swear that dogs don't get to smile- after killing all our sheep and my father blaming it

    Shanghai Kid , tryptic 70x150cm, acrylic on wood panel I drink something strange, it tastes good I don't care about the price of happiness I keep drinking-drinking-something-strange it's hot as if it were today and I think maybe it is today as I swing my clumsy arms among hundreds of sunny blocks; trains go by, dodge me it's all too hard for them, they keep rattling fast, silent swimming in a dream of worn out colors.   I think I'm getting my bearings, I can still see the star shot to God, I say to myself. tasting every gasp like a last breath  as I try to move with poise among sixty kilos of purity that just started this Monday                         for the first time. It's good to look for something forbidden when it's hot, the sky all around, buildings that play with the sun while we let the world go on without us and I say to myself, let's get on with it I say to myself, let's play maybe it'

     Once, so I can forget you. Acrylic on wood panel, 100x70cm, 2004 I woke up next to her when I was nineteen, she had the mannerisms of a stewardess and small eyes. For two weeks I followed her everywhere: She knew how to sit on rooftops without showing her underwear, the shortest skirts I'll ever see.   She was seventeen, I thought things would work out the way they always did: her lack of direction would make her lose herself in the details                                               and I would just have to undress her. She had long, shiny hair, I was dating a girl with long, shiny hair. she was afraid of losing her virginity to me because she wasn't in love with me, and well, things seemed very easy and very complicated                                                     [at the same time. I've never been nineteen again like I was then.   There's no need for details, she became one of those girls you don't make love t