For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking about my grandfathers. They are both long dead. Looking back, they were the kind of men who should have never been parents, and who due to their shortcomings, created all sorts of generational issues for their descendants.

I’m pretty sure that my grandfather on my mother’s side was autistic. He was that kind of extraordinarily introverted person with rigid thinking who had sensory issues and hated being bothered by anybody, even his kids. He fathered six or seven people, but didn’t raise them: he spent all day holed up in his study, clacking away at his typewriter. Not sure if his kids figured out what he was writing. If his kids were heard at all around his study, he’d stomp out at yell at them.

Apparently, at the end of his life, he confessed to one of his kids that he regretted the fact that he hadn’t been more open to people. I recall the last time he spoke to me: I had been dragged by my mother to her hometown, to hang out around her family, which annoyed me to no end as I couldn’t stand them. I was reading Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, which I never finished (too heavy for a seventeen-year-old), when I noticed my grandfather staring at me. A few seconds later he pointed out, “You’re reading, huh?” I lifted my gaze to his, to that pathetic smile of someone who wants to interact while having no clue how to do so. I told him, “Yes,” then lowered my gaze to my book again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him looking around awkwardly as he rubbed his hands.

I didn’t like the guy. It’s no exaggeration to say that I exist because he was a complete shithead. He opposed my mother studying medicine, because he believed that women shouldn’t work. At the end of my mother’s first month as a nurse, he cashed her wages, and bought a book collection for himself, one large enough to fill most of the shelves of his long indoors balcony. My mother, outraged, skipped town. At the first town she ended up, she went searching for the first man who might support her, came across some doofus at a disco, got married and had children.

Regarding my grandfather on my father’s side, the situation was even nuttier. You see, until middle school, I spent the school breaks at my grandparents’, because both of my parents worked. I didn’t really interact with my grandparents (I can’t recall having talked more than five minutes total with either of them, if even that). My grandfather was the son of farmers from Valencia, and he got displaced as a child due to the Civil War. I remember him seated at their sofa, mumbling stupid stuff as he watched nature documentaries or cartoons. I spent most of my time at that home holed up in their guest room, seated at a desk to write or draw. At that point, I dreamed of becoming a cartoonist.

That grandfather was, let’s say, a bit peculiar. My primary school female classmates all knew him, and referred to him as “Jon’s grandpa.” One of the man’s hobbies was to hang out at the entrance of my primary school to approach little girls. He caressed their hair and told them what pretty princesses they were. This took place in the eighties and nineties, so he didn’t get in trouble; those were far more innocent times.

The last time he spoke to me, I came across him at a crossroads near his house. He looked sad and troubled; pretty sure he had already been diagnosed with the bone cancer that would eventually kill him. I remember him glancing at an African man passing us by, then saying, “Everything is changing so fast. I don’t know what’s happening.” I’m old enough to remember a time when meeting in this country a single person from South America was a novelty that prompted everyone to ask them questions. These days, half of the people you come across are ethnic aliens. Most of those accompanied by children are ethnic aliens. And we aren’t getting their “best and brightest” precisely.

Anyway, as my grandfather was lying in his deathbed from which he never stood up again, my parents told me a troubling anecdote: his caretaker had left for five minutes to buy some groceries, when my grandfather suddenly came with some bout of pain or something for which he would have to take the medicine. He called one of his children on the phone. The person told him, “Look at the row of medicine beside your bed. Take the one that says X.” My grandfather burst into tears, then cried out, “I can’t read!”

That man had organized his entire life around hiding the fact that he had never learned how to read. From the stuff he put on the TV, to the situations he involved himself in, if it included some text on the screen, sometimes he simply wandered away without a word. Imagine what sort of father he was; clearly he never taught his children anything. He must have gotten in his head that the shame of others learning that he was incapable of reading and writing was impossible to live with, even though it was understandable: he had been the son of impoverished farmers who couldn’t send him to school, and he endured the Civil War during his schooling years. Instead, due to the man’s choices, he produced a far bigger shame: that of a coward who hid from even his own children so they wouldn’t find out his secret.

In addition, that man allowed one of his sons, my father, to be physically abused for years. I never asked for the specifics, but my father’s uncle regularly beat him over the head, causing him obvious brain damage, if they committed any errors while assisting him as he played the accordion, or some shit.

Anyway, don’t know why I’ve thought about these two long-dead people recently. It’s not like they matter anymore. But the lessons I got from them, one that has been clear to me for a long time, is that some people simply shouldn’t have children; they have to recognize that in themselves and spare their descendants the pain. The world would be a far better place it people took that to heart.

EDIT: I fed this post to the Google thing that produces AI podcasts, and it came out well enough.

That was too short, so I produced a new one, and it turned out to be more interesting.

Last night, I was looking for someone in an unspecified South American country. This took place in a dream, by the way. A guy, whom I somehow knew was the leader of some notorious gang or cartel, told me that he would lead me to the person I was looking for. Although I was aware that he would probably try to kill me, I hoped to get the upper hand on him. I spent what seemed to be hours navigating very detailed, bizarre locations in this dream South American country; one of those experiences that make you wonder if through dreaming one accesses some parallel realm. Anyway, the dream ended without a resolution, because my phone alarm sounded. Six in the morning, time to go to work.

It’s so disturbing to dream for hours, looking at strange locations through a good set of eyes, only to wake up and find my right eye screwed up. As I mentioned in previous posts, I few days ago I suffered a retinal tear that sent me to the ER, and that they got lasered shortly after. I’m now supposedly recovering from the surgery. My vision, however, is quite diminished: a frayed lock of fibers keeps dancing in front of my vision, and the rest is dotted with the vitreous gel equivalent of dust motes. Imagine having a lock of hair trapped inside your eyeball and you being unable to do anything about it but shift your gaze around to try to keep it at the edges of your vision. I have some level of OCD, so this garbage is driving me nuts. I’m tempted to just wear an eyepatch. I suspect that such floaters don’t casually go away even after weeks or months, and that now I’ll be forced to tolerate this disruption permanently.

On top of that, I spoke with my general practitioner on the phone to tell him that for what seems to be months, I haven’t felt right in the head: I’m confused often, I make bizarre errors at work, sometimes I confuse the order of letters as I’m writing (even though I’m not dyslexic), and from time to time I feel pressure in the area of my right eye and temple. My right eye, by the way, is the one that has suffered a torn retina, and I can’t tell if that was a coincidence. I was told that my confusion and such would pass after my regrettable episode of hemiplegic migraine, but it hasn’t been the case. To be honest, though, I can’t be sure for how long I’ve been suffering these symptoms: these last five or six months have been an utter nightmare at work, as I was tasked with coordinating the replacement of about 940 printers, which forced me to endure high levels of stress weekly. I haven’t been fully myself for a long time.

In general, I feel like I’m falling apart. My general practitioner told me that he would put me in contact with some neurologist, and from there, perhaps I’ll get an MRI done to discard possible faulty blood vessels, or brain damage. Neither of them would surprise me.

Anyway, this afternoon I hope to start ordering my notes for the next chapter of my ongoing novel. Thankfully, my artistic endeavors make me feel like I’m progressing somewhere other than the grave.