The Write Thing

The flight landed exactly an hour later than scheduled. The airport was humming with the first sounds of that unwanted somnolence that fills the gap between the late night and early morning flights. My fellow travel companions and I were on the other side of the divide — the select cast of late arrivals. Even the frantic hailing that normally beckons from tiny taxi boxes as one exits customs was absorbed into the general airport sopor. Nobody was supposed to be waiting, so it was just a question of picking the most unassuming box (or with the shortest waiting time) and paying for the ride home. It was no longer raining in Buenos Aires, I was told, but that to me was a dynamic reference to a past I never had to deal with. I came from sunny beaches and warm summer weather, and in that slice of bliss the rain is simply a musical interlude that enhances the general piece, like Thaïs meditation.

My driver was a tall, athletic and handsome man in his early thirties. He was polite in that simple way in which some people can be polite at 3.00 am in the morning, commenting on the weather and his ruined weekend plans, and sincerely concerned over the repeated postponements that his Christmas Party had undergone on account of the lousy weather on both sides of the Río de la Plata in the past few weeks.

Taking the highway home so late in the foggy night was delightful, as the risk of traffic jams was clearly reduced to nil in the early hours of a Monday. I was home in a third of the time I would have needed during the day. I dropped my bag on the floor beside me and started a quick negotiation with myself for fewer hours of sleep in exchange of a goodnight email to her.

The house was silent, my dog having gone to spend time with helpful family members. The night brought a strange mix of company and solitude when I crossed the doorway earlier, as if there was actually someone present when nobody was actually there. I sighed as my fingers started a short dance on the computer keyboard.

Who knows? Maybe silence is a companion with a presence of its own, if we want to listen.

North of Brazil – 11.30 pm of Thanksgiving Thursday

No simple tourist camera could do justice to a deserted beach at night. A wooden deck acted as a pier of sorts where I sat down to contemplate a dark sheltering sky, intermittently lit by a multitude of stars. There was a half moon and lukewarm port lights presiding over a sprinkled sea of tiny fishing boats. The breeze was soft, perfect to accompany the dazed thoughts of my tired mind after an early morning flight…and thus began my first stop on a Brazilian beach ever.

In this dreamlike scenery, it was almost inevitable not to yield to the charm of the sea. It was as if its vast overpowering presence suddenly revealed some of its secrets, as if its mystery could become clear right there before me. I enjoyed the delusion, and could not help feeling a curious empathy for those who choose death at sea. Take Storni or Woolf, for example. I do not know Storni that well, but Woolf and her river Ouse are somewhat closer in their pathos and their fate. True, Woolf’s choice was in a way more modest, but still open enough for the arbitrary categories I came up with as I sat there, contemplating the vastness of a Caribbean Atlantic.

Yes, why not playing with the idea that by choosing your death you agree to categorize yourself, or you are perhaps simply exposed to being categorized? I would see two main options – death by expansion or death by restriction – the latter being a preferred pick of those that would kill themselves by gas inhalation in the kitchen or car fumes in a garage. In a way, if choices in life make us, so why not our choice of death? As I write this now on a small balcony overlooking a swimming pool from which loud exchanges in Portuguese and heavy laughter rise up to distract my otherwise lazy state of mind, I realize that a pool would not make it to the first category….no, sir. It would be death by restriction.
.

I find myself writing on this blog instead. I have been so disconnected from writing this past month…although it is not really the case, as I usually spend most of my time writing for my work. I should probably blame it on the time of the year, or on the fact that November brought her back to me for a brief period of time.

She was here again, in my house and in my bed. She came, she saw, she won. She did all that without my noticing, once more breaking down the barriers I initially lifted between us over a year ago with serene firmness. Now she belongs, and she is perhaps more afraid of that than I could ever be. November is a good month, preceding closure and consolidating the ten months that went before. Whatever it is that you did not do in November, you may not do in December, choosing instead to postpone it for the year ahead. November is like a corner turning around the end to find a new beginning. And now I know there may not be another November in Buenos Aires for me in the shorter term…well, do I?

All of my life I will probably feel at odds with the part of the world where I was born and raised, but I will always defend the logic of its seasons, perfectly in tune with a year that begins and ends in a promising cycle. Yes, a year undoubtedly must end in summer — no, winter is not natural, it just doesn’t feel right. You need the lighter and sunnier days at the end of your year, because endings need to have some form of hope embedded in them. By the same token, a summer in the middle of the year is unacceptable…it is cheating. Europe and America do indeed cheat, so it is the South that makes the promise abide by the rules.

The South therefore received her with open arms in early November, after tsunamis had taken her to mysterious and faraway lands. Once the initial confusion of airport gates had passed and I saw her natural stride take over the arrival hall while she headed for the liberating doors, there was some form of restoration. A few well-built figures had to be dodged before we could get lost in our first embrace and then merge in a soft, tender first kiss. It is indeed in that kiss that all the past vanishes. It is that touch and the complexity of the feelings it conveys that makes the wait that has preceded it and that will follow it worthwhile. It is her hands on my face, her homely kiss, the image that my eyes confirm before them that finally bring a sense, a purpose. Her memory and her miracle converge and she takes shape as a reality, as my reality, and I know I do not want to measure my love or my words like an insulin dose. We will both have to put up with that, with who we are and what we create together. I know I am ready for the road ahead, no matter how many suitcases it entails. I hope she is as well.