Felipe Rodolfo Hendriksen

Trying to Explain a Dream I Had to My Psychologist 

It’s like your world starts to become increasingly smaller. You feel like you belong to a parallel dimension or something. No one understands you (only the charlatans and the conspiracy theorists do). You can no longer communicate through the usual means, the mainstream ones, so you must look for secret places to meet and talk.

It’s like you represent one way of seeing the world, one that’s not canonical nor accepted. You feel like a heterodox, like a misunderstood genius. You think you’re centuries ahead of your time. You’re always fighting to make real that uncommon worldview you have, and you get lost in the fight. You condescend to violence and bigotry (and you end up celebrating both because you think they’re necessary). You start to become impatient and hate those who don’t share your opinions. There’s no time to waste and you have these guys trying to overthrow you? That’s when you go berserk.

And you start a war. It’s not necessarily a regular war, like a World War or something like that. It’s more like an ideological war, a philosophical war (if there’s anything near to philosophy behind your beliefs). But no one understands, and you never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, you’re the one who’s wrong. Millions of people are against you (so fucking against you that they spend whole years fighting your clownish army even when they know that leads them nowhere) and you’re the one who’s right? You think you know everything, but deep down you know you have nothing to back up anything of what you’re saying or doing.

But pride is more powerful than honor, and you were never a gentleman, so you keep going. You push your outdated agenda (because the whole world has lost its path and you’re the new Jesus, I guess?) and see how much garbage you can get legalized (and how many rights you can get prohibited) before it all ends in a big fiasco. Because you know you have no time. There never was. You hoped you were going to change the world for the better (better for whom?) and you think you’re almost there, but the alarm goes off and you wake up in your Argentinian bed, all sweaty and guilty, wondering what the fuck is wrong with you.

Hopefully, it was all a dream.

The Unexpected Witness

A humble man walks in. I can still see him as clear as day. No hat. That surprised me, especially because he was bald. Well, maybe he didn’t like hats, or he didn’t care that much about etiquette (I later saw pictures of him wearing a black fedora, so maybe he didn’t feel like wearing a hat that day). He had glasses and a cheap suit (perhaps it seemed cheap because he wore it too many times), but he had an air of elegance around him. Or simplicity. The two are, in the end, not too different.

He acted as if he weren’t looking for something specific: He walked through every aisle, stopping at every item to stare at it for a while and then move on to the next. He wanted me to think that he was checking and contrasting every option before making a decision, but I know he was determined. I saw it in his eyes when he opened the door and the doorbell made that uneventful sound it always makes.

He finally approached the counter and dropped the act.

—I want that new 8 mm Bell & Howell…

—The Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD, right?

I knew he wanted that one since he had entered. But I’m no magician: Everyone into cameras (and no one outside that world ever put a foot into my store) was buying that model back in 1962. Nonetheless, he was certainly surprised by my apparent mind-reading.

—Yeah, that one. Please.

We didn’t even feel the need to make small talk. There were a fair number of charlatans coming into my shop regularly, so it was a blessing to keep it quiet for once. He paid and went away, no big deal. It was a shame, now that I think of it. Maybe I could’ve told him something. I don’t know what, but something meaningful, a phrase he would later remember, that might have ended up recorded somewhere. But that time is long gone, and I wasted my only chance. All that I retain are those last moments of him leaving the still silence of the store and reentering the busy and noisy world of mundane routine. He seemed so happy with his new camera…

He didn’t know he had just bought a piece of American history.