The Write Thing

What do you write about when you cannot think? What do you write about when you can’t deal with a lie, and the only thing that stays printed on your brain, in your heart, is the absence of words?

Perhaps you write about the nuances of words, so I should write about the odd conversation we had a few days ago, while you were still edgy with me because I stepped away from the peace and quiet you wanted that night over dinner. We talked about three verbs in English that are summarized into one in Spanish and two in French. We talked about wait, hope and expect. I asked you, the native English speaker, to pick one that would boil down to the very origin of the meaning, that could be the one that would eventually stand above the rest, if you had to choose only one. It was a tricky question, but I like to ask those, because you always find a way around them, and eventually I know that, just as in our conversation over dinner, I will end up struggling to steer my boat towards the shore I wanted to go to.

You picked “hope”. I think you got extra help there, because you do speak Spanish, although you won’t admit it. It does not matter, you still picked the only one of the three that clearly depicts an emotion. So it might all start with an emotion, but then as that emotion matures, we evolve into some form of passivity and then some form of impatience. I would agree with you, and start with hope, only because that’s the only choice in Spanish. You are definitely right. I would also start with the emotional “esperar”, instead of the passive or the certain versions of it. I would then grow into the less interesting “wait”, dispossessed of excitement and sequestered into the trap of clocks and Blackberries. Finally, I’d go for “expect”, the ironic combination for pregnancy while even that can fail, and leave you empty-handed six or seven months into the infallible future. I wonder…is the fall harder because you “expect” the child? Shouldn’t we wait for the child, or simply hope for it?

I wonder how it must have been for you, and whether you ever experienced the three. I wonder if you hope, because I feel that is the only one left for me when it comes to us. I know that you wait, mostly at airports, until I make my exit on time, like I did last week in the unusually hot Pacific Northwest. Something tells me you are good at expecting, but that comes elsewhere, and it does not involve me, but your priorities.

I used to think this absence in you, as I perceive it, was a temporary feeling, but now I’m beginning to feel it may not be. And it is too sad, because soon I may lose my root. And I may no longer hope.

I am reading Emi’s post on Don Giovanni and I just realized how much I’m missing an opera night. Here in Houston the season will open shortly, but for now opera is unfortunately a wish. However, I have already told her I’d like to see one of the highlights of this season Madama Butterfly with her. That is when she shared with me that her mother, in the final years of a long-lasting illness, had expressed a wish to see that Puccini classic.

So I am now set off to book our seats for one of the performances in October or November, as fall here once again signals the beginning of a working year. Before then there will be Buenos Aires, her own Portland earlier on and Seattle for my birthday. However, there is that specific image that I keep replaying on my mind, her hand on mine, enthralled in the story of Cio Cio San’s love belittled by Pinkerton’s «butterfly« desire. It is that vision alone that gives the wait its meaning. And I have waited for you. And I will wait for you as long as it takes you to trust the love I bring, knowing that you may be Pinkerton to my hope, but you may also stand up to it like the woman I think you are.

Regardless of outcomes, life, or potentially thwarted plans, Butterfly’s final scene will remain with me, like the first time I listened to the opera, which I have never had the opportunity of seeing live yet. The final aria, Con onor muore is Butterfly’s goodbye to her son as she puts an end to her life in search of the honor she failed to have when she was alive, according to her own traditions.

I, for all life is worth, will prefer to live with honor, with the truthfulness of a word that does not falter, a love that remains and gives, and the belief in the you I know, rather than the dim hope of your memory.

Two sister towers stand imposingly at the center of Kuala Lumpur’s downtown, on a hot and rainy afternoon. We made that trip together from Singapore, trying to absorb the contrasts of South East Asia in a symbolic nutshell. The flight was short, but the ride from the airport longer than we had considered. There was little time…there is always little time.

And we crossed the frontier with Malaysia, back into safe, police-controlled Singapore, to catch up on sleep while fully dressed before our early morning flight. And there was a last look at the hotel rooftop, where we had slept the night before under the stars. And I could tell you were already mellow with me, different, as if I had grown into you despite yourself, as if you were no longer fighting that inner battle between saying it or not saying it. And I could sense you drifting away into the land of your own demons.

We crossed a less marked frontier in that trip, and I still choose you. My racing heart betrayed me yesterday as we lay on the couch and you finally told me what your life is really about in that city on the West Coast where I have been banned to set foot, at least for now, the outcast of our love. I knew you were going to say something important, and I still don’t know what else I will be learning about your life before me. Yet, oddly enough, we keep blaming space and time for the complexities in our relationship.

Space and time we may not have, so perhaps it is best to go with what we do have. And that is love, unknown as experienced in this life, flaky and afraid, trying to withstand the fears of us. All we will ask of it is to surmount the great divide between our mirror images, so different in many ways, and see if it makes it through and it finally builds the bridge. For that, we only need to hold on to the walls of the Menara as we climb.

You hurt today, so much, and I love you.