As I leaned over the little screen, I abandoned reading before reaching the very interesting page of the neurological experiments that demonstrate that tilting the head obfuscates perception. Attracted by another dose of dopamine that I get with every glance at my phone, I dropped the book on my legs, which received it with compassion. Poor thing, they said to themselves. It’s a shame that I didn’t read the chapter that tells us that our brain captures the information we read with our torso upright, with more clarity and optimism than when reading while leaning forward. Amazing postural question. Defeated by my cell phone, I didn’t realize that bowing your head makes you bow down, in every sense.
So, focused, as I say, looking at some things on the screen, just for a moment, I also didn’t notice that the woman in the next seat was licking her fingers eating a sandwich of some big cheese. I didn’t see a man on the ground or a toothless laughing baby. I also didn’t see the landscape that was arriving, nor the one that was leaving behind. I didn’t see the moment passing me. I did not see the exciting green of the pine trees with their twisted branches, moved by a morning gale, nor the fawns that make their first runs behind robust deer with impossible antlers, in those few kilometers of protected nature on the outskirts, before reaching the buildings shrouded in yellow fog.
In passing, no wild animals came to mind, I didn’t think of wolves howling at the moon, silver dolphins jumping in the oceans, cockatoos, conversations with pet parrots or anything like that. Nothing occurred to me. I didn’t even review the seven times table, the recipe for chicken with apples that I like, or the shopping list. I didn’t hum a little song.
I didn’t remember anyone either. I didn’t think about my aunt. I didn’t remember my friend’s birthday, the anniversary of her father’s death, or her phone number or her intimate concerns. Neither her name nor mine, nor that of her cat, nor that of Nazaret Castellanos’s book, Neuroscience of the Body, came to mind. I didn’t see my fears or my desires, nor anyone’s desires or fears. I didn’t see people who have nowhere to drop dead. Nor that the train I had gotten on was going in the opposite direction. I just didn’t see it.
