Miamidos Miamidos bar, red wine, EL PAIS newspaper, bartender chatting up customers in deep throaty Catalan voice, pale sardine strips on plate under glass case, not appealing; TV above, strange show on "Hand Fishing," rapacious young men in wet suits, hair wet, spiked like spears; busty beautiful Barbie-doll young woman with thick braid of blond hair and eyes that eat you alive so that you will want to eat her alive, I guess—and she struggling to maintain her grip on a slithering, blue-gray fish with bulging eyes—organic as you can get on TV without an orgasm ... What is this all about, and what is this town all about? Concealed from me, maybe to the people of the town itself. Outside old people walking stiffly about, not into "active" senior programs—authentic at least!— and young, alienated, brat-kids—car drives by, driver honks, young woman leans out, shouts something at me but wasted in Catalan; old narrow streets of the town guarding the secrets of another time, giving up nothing but taking nothing from you either, peddling no lies about youth and beauty, a long, sexually active life, the message being only silence and emptiness of the ages ... And now I am back at my daughter's apartment and my niete (granddaughter) walks into the room, takes one look at me and starts to cry. Is she confused too? On the stove, food, lentils and chorizo, but I have lost my appetite, both for food and life. Hand me the bottle. El silencio, el silencio del silencio; el vacio, el vacio del vacio. Yo soy no más. I am no more.
	—Louis Martin