KAFKA’S SMILE

A Sometimes I forget I came to the world to spend eight, ten, twelve hours a day sitting in front of the blind glare of a screen, breaking the back and the will and eyes in a tiny cubicle where barely fit in my swivel chair with his legs together To the trash can, under a yellowish plastic desk covered by an almost imperceptible film of dust under which are also my stapler, my coffee cup, my post-its of pastel colors – in which I usually write reminders, numbers Telephones, lists of super and slopes: urgent telegrams for myself- my small collection of pencils and the distant and increasingly discolored photo where I appear on a cold Atlantic beach, full of stones and birds, which came along with me A letter on the day of my last birthday; And that I have attached to the wall with a tack at each end, to one side of the calendar in which are marked the days of holiday, payment and my holidays scheduled within seven months, and the little blue sign with my name wrong Written in white letters, although I got tired of spelling it, whose only function is to allow when someone has something to tell me can call me;And I then remove my hearing aids and stop listening to the same old songs and filling out countless Excel tables or responding to emails almost entirely in one line: “We require Vo. Bo.ASAP “,” Okay “,” I’ll check the presentation now “,” Could you give me the images in high? “” Thank you “,” Attached new quotation “,” Here are the changes “,” I confirm my attendance at the meeting ” , “No more staples, please ask for more in stationery”, “Yes I will cooperate for the cake of the human resources” and other things like that; And I am grateful that a superior knows my name – even if I pronounce it wrong – and I can, without the background music, reach to hear fragments of the conversations that my colleagues hold about someone who is stealing all the envelopes of Splenda Of the kitchen, that the lawyer is throwing himself to the accounts, that Rodriguez fell asleep again in the videoconference and that “have you seen the heels of ‘guess my chamba’ that brings the designer?”, All at the same time , As in a chorus, and above the ceaseless ringing of telephones becomes a buzzing that numbs me and drills the head; I can almost see that cold sound digging tunnels that bifurcate in my brain as I look at the clock or turn to the window of this tenth floor of a building anchored in the center of a corporate complex – which is exactly nine metrobus stations, seventeen Of the subway and a minibus from my house – and on the other side of the glass a sky without clouds or color is crossed again and again by planes full of people who are indifferent to my eyes, as I also went on a plane Many skies – while someone might be watching from below – to an Atlantic beach full of stones and blue where the wind disheveled and took off the ladies’ hats and raised the kites of the children, while the gulls took advantage of any minimum Distraction to steal the food from the absent-minded tourists who ran and left their markings on the sand or took photos; In one of which I appear, with my back to the sea, with my eyes half-closed because the sun was beating directly, showing my teeth in a laugh whose sound was forever trapped in that rectangle of colors as proof that I was once able to smile (According to the letter I received on my previous birthday); But all that was before, when I still did not know what had come into the world; Now I see that image from time to time and I do not know why it reminds me of that other black and white photograph where Kafka appears in a bathing suit, shirtless, sitting next to his friend Max Brod, with his left hand on the sand, happy : Kafka smiling – an ominous oxymoron; As if he had just understood a joke they told him long ago, and I think maybe eventually we can understand that joke, and that’s when I forget, I said, why I came to the world and I smile too.