‘I wish I had the security of a straight white man’ is a phrase we’ve adopted in my group, and one we say more often than we’d like. We’re mostly gays and girls and we don’t have that many straight white male friends. Perhaps because of that, because we’re not used to it, we can quickly distinguish the overconfidence of some of them. They are gestures with which they show that the world loves them unconditionally, that they always land on their feet, that they don’t have to ask for permission or forgiveness, that they don’t have to question anything. It’s doing things without having thought about it at all, advice they assume you need, a comment or an unfinished sentence with which they expect you to make the effort to understand them, instead of them making the effort to explain themselves. It’s a feeling of impunity and immunity that is frightening. It’s audacity, in short. And I love them all the same, though, because they are my friends.

It's very hot. Suspended dust. Heat and humidity. Another plane crosses the sky, cloudy and heavy. Heat like from an exhaust pipe. The Tramuntana is not visible from afar. So hot that you can't go outside. The ring road at five in the afternoon. You can't even breathe. The highway, at the height of the airport, at any time. According to the forecast, tomorrow will be even hotter. Two girls are arrested; they say they had a banner at their home with the slogan 'SOS Residents'. Heat and anguish in the street: we don't know where to put ourselves. Gasoline is going up and yet everything burns: fire on earth and fire in the sky. Orange sunsets, beautiful as a bad omen, as a point of disaster. It's too hot: what if we take shelter from the fan? It's already the end of the month and we don't have money to spend either. Heat like a pressure cooker, as if about to suffocate us, as if about to make thunder.

I wanted to know what the obsessions of my generation are (that is, I wanted to confirm my suspicions). And, for this reason, I went to look for those responsible for fossilizing them: the artists. Specifically, six. And if time and space were not limited, the list would be much longer. They are Anna Picornell, Lluïsa Febrer, Mariona Jaume, Miquel Mas, Josep Alorda, and Lluís Garau. In these conversations, with all of them, I tried the same thing: to know what they feel, to prospect their souls, and to discover what obsesses them. Because – when we are sincere – obsessions are the only thing that truly makes us vulnerable, that betrays us as we are, genuinely, from the subconscious and without morals. I wanted to extract them “with a dessert spoon”, as Lorena G. Maldonado says, what this generation of artists feels. And what turns out to make them mortal, like the rest of humanity, is the same doubt, intrusive and inopportune: why do we do what we do and if that is success.

Ladies, we've betrayed ourselves. I, honestly, I try. We had agreed that we wouldn't think about our bodies anymore. We were all in favor of this collective delirium together. What? Advertising because “if you start in June, with this bikini operation you'll be unrecognizable in July”? It doesn't affect me. Capri pants are back in fashion, pants in which, even if they're my size, my thighs will never fit? I couldn't care less. What? You say you've gained weight and you look terrible? After telling you you're gorgeous, I won't think about myself at all, nor will I ask myself if I should worry too.

I remember the exact pressure I had to apply to the button on my mother's car glove compartment for it to open. Also the wide and round shape, and the soft touch of the plastic when I operated it, making a soft, muffled, almost spongy click. I liked the pleasant sensation of that button and the power it gave me. It was the era when we had the black Peugeot 206. That is to say, it was the early 2000s and I, the sole co-pilot of our vessel.

Life and I sign a pact of plausibility every summer. Weekends become a wonderful fiction and I, a very unreliable narrator. I tell myself that reality is what happens under this murky, whitish sky, so close the sun shines, and not the day-to-day illuminated by fluorescents. For 48 hours, it seems reasonable to follow the natural rhythm of things: waking up when sleep ends, honoring lunch by dedicating the time it deserves to be cooked and eaten, not leaving the house until it feels good, swimming if it's hot, and having dinner with the last rays of light. Days have no pretensions, hours don't want to last more than 60 minutes, time is what it is. And I believe it.

The two girls I have in front of me are the ones who are the most well-behaved in the entire group of third graders in Primary school who are now surrounding me. They were the first to sit down, further away from the rest, as soon as they entered the carriage. They remain oblivious to what is happening in the background, to their classmates, who are jumping, shouting and fighting to get into the photo the teacher is taking of them. Occupying the minimum space of their seat and with their legs crossed, they hardly move, nor is their voice heard during the subway ride. But those of us who grew up with the phrase “You, look and be quiet” recognize each other. I look at them and they are quiet. I don't need words to discover their universe, hidden behind the mobile phone screen.

“I don’t have a free weekend until August”. You will have heard it or said it yourselves, as if a packed calendar were synonymous with good social and work health. We stuff ourselves with tasks and plans, myself included. And they reproach us for being too weak, for being victims of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), for being afraid of missing something, for seeming like we don’t know how to be alone, still, at home. How easy and reductive the world becomes when we have an acronym to define us. That’s it: we have FOMO, as quick and simple as saying it. Do we really only need four letters to crystallize the feeling of a whole generation?

There are weekswhen I ask ChatGPT why it's possible that I can't stop crying and if I should worry about it. And there are weeks when I listen to the dirtiest reggaeton on repeat, so confident that I see myself capable of posting a selfie in the bathroom mirror. But at no time am I aware that this feeling is the product of my hormones. Every month I feel cheated by myself: another time, I surprise myself, as if this same process had not repeated for almost 20 years. That's why, and for when I feel I can't trust myself, I have monitored what happens to my body and my mind in the 28 days of my menstrual cycle, according to my mobile app.

We met at a party. When Tito’s was still Tito’s (which makes me feel very old). It all started as good love stories begin: with two glances that met in the middle of the room. “What’s your name?”, “What are you studying?” and a kiss as a promise that I would look for him again. And I did. Some supernatural force wanted me to end up finding him on Facebook (which also makes me feel very old), just from the two questions I asked him.

The only daughter is having her birthday: one, specifically. And, with only a few days difference, my mother too. She's turning 55. I like that I fell into this coincidence, because it reminds me more than ever that without a unique mother there would have been no only daughter. I started writing more inwardly and less outwardly when I discovered that the world could be explained through the stories we keep within ourselves. And the story with my mother is one of them. The first one, I'd say. And perhaps, one day, it will also be the last. Because it's a story that never ends.

There was a time when I loved my grandmother very much. And then, a time when I didn't, when I felt I had stopped loving her.

I like to hear the knife sharpener. I feel pleasure watching the pleasant women and the pleasant men selling black artichokes or borage cabbage. When I detect a sign with eighties typography that says ‘Bar Centro’ or ‘Bar Sport’, I stop to observe the hustle and bustle. But my knives are all from Ikea. I do all my shopping at the supermarket (fresh produce included). And it's very difficult for me to drink a coffee that is torrefied and without oat milk. I am a hypocrite.

I am stretched out, on the beach, half reading, half looking around me, catching other stories in passing. A mother emerges from among the beach umbrellas, almost crawling on the sand, struggling to reach the front line, laden with everything. She is accompanied by her twins. It's not entirely clear who is dragging whom. But she lies down, defeated, on the towel, which she hasn't even bothered to straighten when she took it out of the bag. She hasn't taken off her clothes either. And I can see her bikini through her white, Ibizan-style blouse. She's also wearing some denim shorts that she has no intention of taking off. And some black XXL sunglasses, where the expression I'd like to decipher is hidden. The twins don't move much from her side. They lie around her, adoring her, like in a Sorolla painting. They touch her hair, resting their little heads on different parts of their mother's body, also looking at the sea, in silence. After a period of rest, the two girls start to stir and liven up. They put on their swimsuits and go for a swim. The mother shows no sign of movement, let alone concern. The fact that she doesn't feel any unease seeing her six or seven-year-old daughters go to the sea alone makes me think she has already saved them from something much more dangerous. Whatever it is, it has devastated her. I feel like I am witnessing the conclusion of a crusade, as if this moment were the last chapter of a long story, the scene just before the final credits.

I find remnants in my home of things that are half-finished. Small daily failures. The leggings and the running top that have been hanging in the bathroom for two weeks, optimistic. The vinegar and the rice paper wrappers I bought at the Japanese week at Lidl, convinced I would make Goi Cuon, fresh Vietnamese rolls. The three books started on the bedside table. The analog camera that I proposed to myself – once a month – to learn to use once and for all. A table, which was more than a table, it was an investment to do a lot of work on and earn a lot of money. Versions of myself that I can't decide on. I want to be all of them at once out of cowardice, because I don't believe enough in any of them.

Marc comes to my 'functional' training class. At some point, 'functional' became a word to refer to a type of physical exercise and we all accepted it. It sounds strange to me. 'Functional' sounds to me like 'the minimum you can do to get by in life'. I'd like to know why it is, functional. Does it make you functional? I understand it does, that you get strong to be functional as a human being. Which is the reason I signed up for it. To have some strength, in the future, to be autonomous, control my sphincters and not defecate on myself after giving birth (if I ever do), for example, or to be able to carry milk cartons and not need the help of these children I will have given birth to. I don't know. I don't know why I think about it in terms of motherhood. The thing is, if I don't do anything about it, my musculature will start to detach more and more from my bones, until it becomes totally dysfunctional. Now I see it that way, in practical terms. But for a long time it wasn't like that: it was in aesthetic terms that I thought about it. And I feel sorry that Marc ends up experiencing the same thing.

Neus Canyelles said at the presentation of her latest book that she always carries a notebook with her to write down things that happen to her and then turn them into literature, as she does in Waiting roomsa. She didn't exactly say this herself, and I was surprised by her measured approach, her precise and well-proportioned words. Because she can say that she writes as if she were being "dictated" without sounding presumptuous. She can say that she can't explain how easy writing is for her, the complete lack of effort it requires, without seeming pretentious. You read her and, suddenly, you understand.

My friends don't know this, but sometimes I have an internal competition to see who has the better relationship. It's my secret vice, frivolously analyzing where my boyfriend and I are better and where we're worse, compared to everyone else. I'd like to say it's my way of taking the pulse of my relationship, of knowing what works and what doesn'tAlthough it really seems more like a reflex, an involuntary tic driven by the need for immediate gratification. A form of entertainment. And I'm sure we're not alone. Comparing ourselves is one of the things that makes us most human. Nothing makes us as fragile and rational as believing ourselves to be better or worse than someone else. We constitute ourselves in this exercise, in relation to others. Otherness ultimately defines us. That's why we need to understand it thoroughly.

We've had enough. Enough of this. clean look, with highlights baby lights, of traditional wivesFrom a return to mysticism and contemplation, to beige and the white Cloud Dancer. Enough of this nonsense. lattas, of bar, of playlists Pop Pilates Princess. Enough of that conservative stench that permeates everything and spreads like an odorless gas, slowly lulling us to sleep. Enough of this evangelization of good manners, of introspection, of the healthy routinesSilent and hangover-free.

The bus makes a sweeping turn of almost 180 degrees, and, as if showing it to me, offers a panoramic view of a vast open area filled with piles of earth, scrap metal, and machinery. This entire scene unexpectedly bursts into my gaze, lost in thought as I stare out the window. Is this the airport construction?I ask myself, elusive. I wish I hadn't asked myself this question. I don't want to know the answer. A pang of anguish shoots into the pit of my stomach. I try to look away, but the vehicle keeps circling, between merges and roundabouts, and there's no horizon to take refuge in. Everywhere I look, I see only powerlessness, unease, a legacy: a terminal that—if you'll excuse me—never ends; commercial planes, private planes, planes every minute; an army of neatly lined taxis; trolleysNorth Face suitcases, very tall people.