I read that images may be subject to copyright, and I can't quite believe that there are authors audacious enough to charge for those images, so poor, to call them somehow.
The protection warnings, when pointed out by Google or other multinationals in the sector, tend to be oriented towards their own pockets. But I must assume them, because I arrived at the place where I am after stumbling upon the Map application and fighting with Street View, which do not finish showing me what I want to see, a tree blocks my perspective.
I didn't say it, I say it now, I'm in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, which I reached traveling with imagination, because of, when not!, literature.
It all started with a computer update, whose expiration period crossed an artificial border, not because its health dictated it - it still works like a violin - but because of the greed of those who demand to "modernize" the operating systems.
And with that exhausting need, week after week, an order appeared on the screen simulating courtesy: "Schedule the restart. The installation of the updates will finish when it suits you. If the PC is not available at the scheduled time, Windows will automatically try to find a suitable time for the restart."
The same message, the same "adequate" paralysis of the keyboard, the same insults, the same waste of time, leaving my humble Aspire E15 captive, dancing to the music of updating and restarting.
The problem was that once the process was done, on its own, at my risk, I had to go back, because the capacity, let's say the stomach of the Aspire E15, was unable to digest as many silicon hamburgers as they were trying to make it swallow. Dr. Gates himself was in charge of purging it, to leave it as it was before the choking.
Only a few days, until, by itself, it realized that it was necessary to update with a new binge, new paralysis, which allowed me to go through the entire family tree of the owner of Windows, trying to find someone in his family to put some sense into it.
The matter, serious, degenerated with the last dance, which caused a massacre of such caliber that almost 24 hours of rehabilitation were necessary. The screen, fainted, resurrected with the bites removed, because on the desktop, among other changes, a file appeared with the name "Oliverio" vomited from some dark area of the hard drive.
When I opened it, I found that it was a curse made of art, it seemed like a miracle that it was there, and it cost me nothing to copy it, to dedicate it to the geniuses of planned obsolescence.
"May your wife cheat on you even with the mailboxes; may she metamorphose into a leech when lying next to you, and after giving birth to a crow, may she give birth to a wrench. May your family have fun deforming your skeleton, so that the mirrors, when looking at you, commit suicide out of disgust; may your only entertainment consist of installing yourself in the waiting room of dentists, disguised as a crocodile, and may you fall in love, so madly, with an iron box, that you cannot stop, even for a single moment, licking the lock."
After the catharsis I was hypnotized, going around literary memories, of the writer Oliverio Girondo, of the Florida Group in which he joined at the beginning of his poetic career, together with artists who met to share philias, phobias, gossip, anecdotes.
In that way, my memory returned to Girondo, Borges and their disagreements, moving me to Buenos Aires, to the place that housed them for a long time: the Confitería Richmond.
It had to happen; next to the name of the establishment I had a desire to know if it still existed, if the fame of so many writers who came to its halls, representative of a time, a culture, of styles that became famous throughout the world, still throbbed.
And there I was, standing, on Florida Street 468, in the same place that Borges and Girondo, Leopoldo Marechal, Macedonio Fernández, Victoria Ocampo and others frequented.
But I couldn't see almost anything, a tree covered my view, it didn't let me enjoy the front of the building, nor the splendor of its interiors, which for almost a century impressed those who came there to taste its food and admire woods, furniture and lamps.
The confectionery was very famous, for its visitors, also for the dishes it served, some baptized with its letters, such as the Waldorf salad. Perhaps I should transcribe the recipe, but I fear I am exceeding the nutrients of the comment, too much mixture of writers with misers, literati and restoration.
In Argentina it would be said that it is prepared with shrimp, apple slices, hard-boiled eggs, celery, hearts of palm and golf sauce, yes the salad, sorry, I couldn't resist, I said it!
In Spain, exactly the same, perhaps modifying by the "language", prawns instead of shrimp and pink sauce instead of golf sauce.
Finally, I arrive at the point where I wanted to, without knowing what it was, neither more nor less, than to Dr. Luis Federico Leloir. It is said that he invented golf sauce, it is not time to explain now how and where, although a close friend does not quite believe it.
By the way, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he received was given to him for a much more complex investigation, about the metabolism of sugars, and it happened in the year 1970, just when I was starting to study at the Faculty, not Dr. Leloir, but me.
It was Windows that was to blame for opening this window to nostalgia, without a happy ending. The fault: the photos I got of the old Richmond, those supposedly protected. They show the changes that "progress" generates.
