Oct 02 2009
Absence within absence
October began with the awareness of what we have gone through in this erratic year of bits and pieces that make our love what it is. There was an initial plan of Paris in the fall, but external constraints pushed it back. Its counterpart was the end of August in DF, the reality and the briefness of you as rain fell heavily outside our window, the partial city that we chose to experience mostly within walking distance of a return to us, always knowing how time once more was against us.
All through our story, we have witnessed life’s ironic game of happiness in slow doses, each of which shed away the delusional advantages of distance, hitherto seen as a form of protection. We learned how to deal with a companion that became rather ambiguous, supporting ourselves in the knowledge that the other was somewhat near, either in word or in thought. Relying on emails and text messages became a given, and our phone calls an indulgence of beggars that were choosers for a little while.
October promised and took away, but we know it will also clear the road for a November that should bring you back into my arms. However, our familiar tyrant now asks more of us, and we can only bow to his desire, having unwillingly made him the ruler of a story that now flows beyond ourselves. In the next few days, I will find myself reading about a small set of islands in the Pacific where you were deployed yesterday and hoping that you will be all right. A new test is laid out before us, and we know it will be hard, violent and cruel.
This time words, once a given, will be withdrawn from us until your elusive return. There will be no phone calls, no tones to guess at the end of the line. We will have to content ourselves with the intangibility of thoughts, hoping they will be powerful enough to see us through this new absence… a wider chasm, an absence within absence.
