Yesterday I left work early and joined V. and Plutarco to see the total eclipse that happened yesterday in Spain. Initially it was only going to be the three of us but Plutarco received a last minute invitation to a house which had supposedly good views. Plutarco sent the owner of the house a link to a website where they could look through the phone camera to see the exact position of the sun at the time of the eclipse, to make sure the assessment was accurate.

Plutarco is a super smart guy. He has degrees in Mathematics, CS and artificial intelligence. Furthermore he’s a humble, curious and pleasant person. I didn’t have the heart to tell him such assessment was very unlikely to be carried out. Most people would shrug it off as unnecessary and come up with an excuse. It didn’t take long for them to report back that their phone had gotten wet and they couldn’t operate it properly.

On our way to this house I spoke with Plutarco regarding his recent incursions into tantra, the workshops the practices and all that. How we express and listen to consent, and how we work with other people to explore pleasure. It was all very interesting, but it didn’t bulge me into wanting to attend a workshop. However, something he said especially struck me: it’s a good training ground to express desire and face rejection. “People can decline you stroking their hair”, he said with a tinge of pain, and I completely got it, I’d irrationally think “oh shit she knows I’m a monster” and then have a little argument inside of my head. This struck me as especially valuable in my intentions to be more assertive and interactive in my casual interactions with women. I just realized that it’s strange that what would interest me from a pleasure-focused workshop is actually the pain.

We arrived to the house and it was indeed a wonderful countryhouse with a nice view. The trees partially obscured the view, but it was just a matter of finding a corner of the garden where it was visible. We lunched on cold meat cuts, cheese, wine, hummus, guacamole and all that and we had great conversation. Plutarco’s extended circle friends was really pleasant and left me in no way exhausted as people often do. They were around Plutarco’s age but they all felt young in spirit.

One of the ladies proposed a game: tell a personal story and we will guess if it’s true or of it’s made up. I went through my most unlikely stories and they sounded like boasting, and in this context boasting is blowing your cover, so instead I jogged my memory for something more neutral. So I told this story:

One day I was coming out of the library in Retiro and a gypsy offered to read my palm, for free. I said ok and she told me some bullshit which I can’t remember and then asked for money. I reminded her that she offered to do it for free and then insulted me, cursing me saying that I would fall off my bike.

And sure enough, that same day when I left the park, I was going downhill towards Pacífico when I when over wet pavement because they were watering the trees and I hit a red light. When I squeezed on the breaks, the bike skid and I fell on the pavement, scraping my leg and knee.

I won the game by fooling everyone into these two true stories were actually a single one, and it was believable because of the amount of detail (a guy said “I was sure it was true because those same ladies have pestered me at that exact spot”).

The eclipse itself was so eerie. For a large part of the occlusion I couldn’t find any signs in the environment that something was taking place, later on however I would look around and I’m sure I would question my senses, everything looked veiled, as if I was looking at the world through sunglasses. Full occlusion was spectacular, especially because the sun and the moon were close to the horizon, but it was brief (60 seconds) because we were just inside the total eclipse area.

I would have enjoyed the event just as much without the eclipse, but it was a very nice memento to have yesterday.