In front of me, three television screens.
Silent, but with captions.
In the first, the news; in the second a chef cooking decadent dishes; in the third, a program about weight loss and nutrition tips.
There I was, captive audience, in the most superfluous but relaxing activity, getting a manicure.
My eyes, like a pendulum, oscillated between the wars, a thermidor lobster, and the glass of lemon juice that you have to drink in the morning to lose weight (which would only be possible if the lemon tree is ten kilometers from your house, in my opinion).
And so, ad infinitum.
Screen 1, catastrophic landslides in New Guinea, thousands of deaths. Screen 2, Wellington tenderloin.
Screen 3, benefits of impertinent, sorry, intermittent fasting.
The girl finished with my hands, I paid and left the salon, with my head still swinging, as if hypnotized by a spiritualist.
How can tragedy, epicureanism and misinformation be reconciled at the same time? How can I digest that daily menu of pain, delight and skepticism while having my nails painted?
I felt terrible.
The bombardment of information and/or misinformation, added to my own frivolity, for a moment, made me feel absent from the world and its penuries. Insensitive.
I remembered a dialogue that I found funny once and this time it struck me as tragicomic.
– What is worse, ignorance or indifference?
– I don’t know and I don’t care.
I woke up from this trance with a certainty, there is nothing more pernicious than indifference.
I went out willing to be closer to people, to their dreams, their loves, their sadness, and try to add “my little grain of sand” as we say in Spanish, my contribution, into this vibrant chaos called life.
A kind gesture or a smile can be a good start.
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com