(Mashing up something I read in the newspaper). A chili’s spiciness scientifically measured calculating content of capsaicin. A pepper’s piquancy is experienced in Scoville heat units. Imagine the American chemist Wilbur Scoville, (who invented the method in 1912) cleverly devising the Scoville organoleptic test using a panel of tasters all given chili extract diluted in sugar water. There is a final heat unit.

[The personal computer…] that ultimate manifestation of the intimate machine… -John Naughton   Computers used to be rooms where you could walk into. Now they are little boxes that get into you. You used to go to them. Now they come with us. Something hasn’t changed: we still live in them. My personal computer is an intimate machine. It goes to sleep with me. If you could see into my hard drive you would find him I think I am.

Induced hypothermia allows for temporary death, followed by resurrection. The procedure could suspend your cellular function without ending it. -Mikel Jollet, “The Big Chill”, Men’s Health, June 2007   Esta mañana amanezco con un velo sobre el ojo. El otro sigue aún dormido, se mueve en sonámbulo aríem mientras el cuerpo intenta levantarse.

A cut-out frame opens up the microscopic universe to the point of bacteria and then it’s all about the flow of oxygen coffee-grinding time, drop after drop dilluted into a black spot. Why would anyone use paper scissors to slit open an old page: a moist yellowed paperback, unread, like the ocean of hair at the end of a long day at the barber’s shop.

Over the photograph of the whole beach (the abandoned amusement park behind), a lonely bird. The next photograph shows the bird, white and black, flying, spread wings, such a seabird, a postcard of a living creature. My friend shows me the photograph, one he took knowing I’d see it, knowing I’d know what the bird, its colours, the closed beak mean, its shape cut against the grey sky, all the bloody melancholy we do share.

Giving, I think the poet meant, without expecting anything. Not even a response. A line would be enough. Like an emergency measure. Throwing a message (you know: in a bottle). How quiet, sometimes, the sea.

Gloomy day. Ceaseless rain. Walk like a blue ghost, covered in a poncho: it makes you look like a tired, retired superhero. The rabbits must be all hiding underground: they know better. I go from one concrete building to the other, change titillating screens a million times. The post office makes me wait and 68p go away on a piece of paper with the face of a future king. The red totem is there, still, opening its mouth. It devours.

tranquilo , remember two parallel lines get together in the infinite.

I wonder if everytime someone dies there are minimal, hyper-brief instants of micro-sadness in all the nights of the world. Most of the times, of course, we don’t even realize, but some other times, the next morning, we may be able to understand that little unexplained sigh, that unseen flashing in the sky the night before.