A man's man

Here's the memory I'd written and shared at the first meeting.

I told how I was sitting in my neighborhood bar y pizzeria on a Sunday afternoon, writing about some things that were on my mind--

To immigrate, to fight, to think about revolutions or sleep in the street.

And then something happened that I love when it happens. Writing, that most solitary of activities, led to a real human interaction--

(This is where Fabian started talking to me, asking what I was writing, where was I from, then, and introducing me to the people there and the people coming in--Jose, Carlos, Ema--who proceeded to talk to me, too, while he went to smoke or take a piss. Buying the national whiskey, discussing Uruguay and the US, the day he decided to move to Montevideo, the pilgrimages he would make in the footsteps of the Che. How for reasons of power and economic interest the US state acts unjustly, and the people are able to disagree but not avoid the wars, the imposition of ideals we ourselves cannot live up to. How writing is good, for remembering, imagining how people are, their inner world and ours having a conversation.)

Now Fabian and I have become good friends. We talk about writing a lot. And that is the sort of thing I'm hoping will emerge from this workshop.