Monday

People’s own fantasies: Yesterday, I was visiting some friends. My son was playing with their son, or at least, they were next to each other -which doesn't mean they were playing together. Anyway, when I came in to their house, they were having dinner. The husband had had a bleeding intestine crisis and he was terrified with the possibility of cancer. The conversation was running smoothly, full of the nonsense and small talk. I was telling him things  such as, “see, that was nothing serious”, “you’ll see that it’s going to pass with no serious consequences”, and so forth. My friend's wife is a fierce vegetarian and a defender of the healthy eating habits; a beautiful feminist. On the dinner table, there was soup and pasta, very simple, very plain. I don’t really care about their domestic life in any way. I just go there to take my son to play with their son while we have some trivial conversation on sports and things like that, and that night because of the health issue of my friend. Of course most of the conversation was about the convenience of keeping healthy eating habits. At some point I said that I don’t like salad that much. Then she looked at me straight in the eye and stated solemnly that a meal without a salad is unacceptable. However, of the many time I have been there at dinner time or my son have had some food with them, I have never seen salad on their dinner table, not even the classical tomatoes or avocados. It doesn't mean they don’t like salad, or that they never have it. What really takes me by surprise was the attitude, the sound of the voice, the gaze that she gave while making her statement on the convenience of salad. This made me think on the incredible capacity that we have to create certain mythologies that we believe to be true out of our own desires.