I’ve decided on a number of elements of the choreography. The most important is that, despite Argoitia’s intervention, it won’t be staged in the Jardín Borda, but throughout the whole city. Now I have to start auditioning dancers. I’m going to place classified advertisements in the Informador de Morelos: “People of all ages wanted for a dance performance. Paid work. Dancing skills unnecessary,” with my phone number below. That should attract a few candidates. I haven’t posted the announcement on my social media groups because I think it will work better among readers of a print newspaper: I’m curious to see what types of specimen reply to an advertisement like that.

A neighbor here has a jackass that sometimes makes very strange noises; all the other jackasses I’ve heard speak differently.

Sonia, the only friend I made while studying at the CMA, called me today. She gave up dancing some time ago and, as far as I know, she’s now a full-time parent, but we’ve kept in touch and she’s the only person I can bear to have long phone conversations with. I get impatient with anyone else, including Conejo, after a few minutes and quickly end the call, but Sonia is different. I find the tone of her voice calming, plus she has a sense of humor—often directed at herself—that fits very well with mine. I also believe that when we talk, she unburdens herself and tells me all the things she keeps from her family. Today, for instance, she confessed that when she bathes her youngest daughter—a two-year-old—she likes putting a little of the soap lather in her mouth just to see the disgusted faces she pulls. Only a little lather, she said, it doesn’t harm her. Details like that make Sonia one of my favorite people.

I don’t know how the hell it happened, but Sonia had heard that I was preparing a performance for the Jardín Borda. She wouldn’t say who told her. I guess the rumor finally spread among my former classmates. Sonia told me that there’s a certain amount of speculation about what I’m going to do next: it seems I have a reputation for eccentricity among the fifteen people who attend contemporary dance performances in Morelos State. I have the sense that my friend wanted me to tell her what I was planning so she could experience a vicarious form of excitement (she once aspired to being a choreographer too). Instead of fobbing her off, I decided to offer an invitation: Why not join the company and see for yourself? I promised it wouldn’t take up too much of her time: instead of actual rehearsals, I’d be doing something that could loosely be described as workshops over three weekends before casting the roles; what I most wanted was to talk to the dancers, read them some articles, and carry out guided improvisations, but in her case I could fit in with her schedule and see her separately if necessary. Sonia initially said she didn’t think she’d be able to do it, said she hadn’t danced in years and after having given birth twice her body wasn’t in the same condition as when we were students. I explained that my choreographies were for bodies with history, not pixies and sprites. Sonia accepted the invitation and thanked me multiple times, which made me feel magnanimous.

I have moments of self-doubt. Why make so much effort for no purpose? Maybe I should focus on beautiful, conventionally graceful pieces; set aside these idiotic notes and assume the flat immediacy of prettiness. I don’t have a particularly interesting life. The only good reason I have for being a choreographer is a tendency to think in terms of movement, the body, and space. My insights are often impossible to communicate: private epiphanies in the bromeliad garden, sighs breathed alone after taking a swig from my flask. Apart from those isolated, unrepeatable instants, you could say I’m a phony. My sadness—my impatience—is the sadness of the scientist who discovers how to produce electricity but still can’t store it or change the voltage.

A part of me knows that only through disillusion, through the certainty of failure and an absolute absence of hope, am I going to learn to burn as brightly as I’m determined to.