2019 · Christian Ives Solis
RECORD III — 2019: asymmetry of security
In 2019, they moved to Spain.
At the time, the fact seemed administrative: a move, a change of city, of climate, of wallpaper. Later I understood it was not a detail. It was structure.
They both had nationality.
That gave them a specific kind of peace. It was not maturity. It was not emotional stability. It was ground: the difference between living inside a project and living by betting that the project will not expel you.
I was still in the United States.
The calls began to arrive with a different background. Street noise. Different schedules. I smoked and listened. Sometimes I paid more attention to the sound than to the conversation, as if a place could first be understood by ear: dishes, a door, a new echo, a home being assembled on the other side.
Barcelona began to exist that way: not as an image, but as someone else’s noise.
They spoke about home, about the neighborhood, about adapting. I listened to all of that and, even though I was happy for them, I was registering something else: the ease with which certain lives can project themselves forward when the right to remain is not always under review.
They spoke about home.
I checked for ground.
For them, changing countries was a project.
For me, any major change still retained something of a wager.