Jan 28 2010
Yes, I’m back
There are moments in life when silence is all that is possible. In an odd, untimely way, I believe I had a severe case of this almost for the last two months. Lots of things are changing in my life right now. New doors are opening while others have closed apparently in a much more certain way than I would have imagined, or even liked. Oddly enough, it is in those times when writing becomes the obvious channel. However, I have not written — except for work reasons — for exactly 59 days.
I cannot possibly expect anyone who ever read this blog to even become aware of my return. Those generous souls who would now and then glance at the website for a peek into whatever oddity I would decide to indulge my keyboard into by now have probably given up all hope. Yes, lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate. You would do the right thing by refraining from trusting an erratic author. Life is much more beautiful when you do not have to be surprised by other people’s changing moods.
If I were a good writer, I would be able to summarize in a concise text my whereabouts since I decided to put this blog in the freezer. Oh, well…I don’t think I can do that. Therefore, I will speak about the future, about new horizons, about uncertainty itself. Houston beckons, this time for a more permanent contract. What this means is a lot and nothing. It means I still have a job, and new challenges, but it does not bind anyone to anything — including myself. A few years ago, Houston had also seemed to be the place where I would be residing on a longer term basis. However, neither life nor I were ready for the jump, so the whole fantasy only materialized in a short story I wrote at the time and which I named “Letters from Houston”. It was written in Spanish…and I’ll never know why. Houston was on hold, and in a very particular fashion, I was coming out of my own personal limbo of indecision and non-living. Many things changed in the two years that passed since a first door to the US was closed, partially by H1-B quotas and partially by myself. I plunged into my own abyss, emerged half-victorious and wounded, and created my own re-birth, as Sylvia Plath would say beautifully at the end of that prodigious scene of The Bell Jar. I played around the limits of desire and succumbed to the demons of dysfunctional relationships, I naively believed it was possible to set free a repressed love and not pay the high cost of its loss, but I also learned to let go. I learned that letting go is the only way of healing, and the hardest.
Yes, I miss her sometimes…her laughter, her friendship, her beautiful eyes, and I secretly know there will be no letters from Houston, and no Copacabana Palace. We are no more anything, and it scares me to think that I always knew…because I wrote the end of my own story throughout the summers of her absence and my pain and I was right, even before she severed the bond to escape a friendship that now she feared.
Oh, but this posting was supposed to be about my future. Well, nothing is really about the future unless it comes from our own past. So I will raise a symbolic glass of champagne and toast to us, to the land of no regrets, to the bitter taste that time will turn into sweet vignettes of a youthful Paris…the world we knew before, dont je ne regrette rien
Levanto mi copa con vos y te saludo. Te deseo lo mejor y dejo una de las frases simbólicas de Casablanca (modificada): “Siempre tendrán París”.
Bienvenida!
Si el brebaje con burbujas, es del bueno le robo una copa para brindar en español por el futuro….
Reciba mis augurios, mis buenos deseos.
¡Un placer que este de vuelta!
SAludos
“We are no more anything”… “Letters from Huston”.Quizá las relaciones siempre sean Cartas desde algún lugar preciso que nunca terminan de llegar. ¿Qué se era antes de dejar de serlo, de no serlo más? ¿Podemos definir qué somos en relación a quien amamos o deseamos ? “Letters from Godot maybe”.
Escribir una carta es una buena alternativa a esperarla.
“Just letters” “Just let”. Demorar la escritura hasta que tome el lugar de la espera, hasta hacerla desaparecer, inventarnos en el mismo gesto la memoria y el futuro.
PD: La leo desde hace un tiempo pero recién me animo a comentar. Siempre me produjo curiosidad saber cuál es su lengua materna. In fact, you are a good writer
Dear W. Von Dunajev,
Thank you very much for your comment and for sharing your mind. You raise very interesting questions, all of which probably have no certain answer…but I cannot help being a logical person, and I constantly find myself falling into the trap of expecting a scientific validation in order to find closure. Yet life is not about science, not even about closure. It is perhaps completely the opposite, and impossible to seize as such.
“Just letters”…the origin of a word and the chain of words on paper…”just let”…yes, opening the door to wherever it leads. Great observation of yours.
My mother language is Spanish (Argentine Spanish, to be more precise), but I use English in my life and in my work much more than the vernacular. Thank you for your words. I am really glad you stopped by.
Warm regards,
W.
Dearest,
You know I would not have anything but the best, especially with you. Thank you for stopping by and for your wishes. I will try to be a good girl and keep my writing flowing for the torture and delight of my readers.
A kiss and a hug to you, and see you around
W.
Dear Erica,
Thank you very much for your wishes. It is so nice to have you around. Yes, you are right…we’ll always have Paris…which goes to prove in a masterful twist of irony how life itself is a movie. Maybe that is why we like the world of film so much.
See you around.
Warm regards
W.
Y es lógico: ya a veces la vida supone una exposición lo suficientemente cruda para, encima, andar exponiéndonos desde la escritura !! Lo cierto es que ha vuelto y me ha gustado mucho la manera en que ha decidido contarnos todo esto.
(Creo que nadie puede escapar de la inocencia de creer que el amor libera espíritus esclavizados y que todos los cambios del mundo pueden ser posibles… eso sí hay que quedarse con la palita y el escobillón a mano para juntar lo que queda luego de las propias ilusiones).
Y por el fututo, después se verá.
Un abrazo
Dear Miss F,
Yes, you are right. I think writing is cathartic and incredibly visceral, if we let it. I needed to reconnect, maybe in a futile hope of finding closure, not so much of physical love as of friendship, which is perhaps the saddest part of the loss. Life is a wise guide that eventually shows us how wrong and how right we were in our choices and actions. I am glad to have lived what I did and shared it, from a “room of my own”, so to speak.
Thanks for dropping by. I am sending you a kiss, my dear.
Warm regards,
W