The Write Thing

It is a cold night in Houston, with temperatures dropping below zero degree Celsius. My eyes hurt with the sting of the slow tears that have accompanied me throughout the day. Yes, I am in pain.

I was never drawn to drama, so I am not sure how I got myself into this. I am trapped in an icy prison, like that Dead Man Walking the Houston Grand Opera decided to revisit with Flicka Von Stade as the mother of the convict. I’m probably a dead heart walking, only that mine still beats, despite myself. I wish it did not. I wish it were free…to death or to a happier fate, if something like that exists.

I was recently watching the last movie version of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, with  Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes starring as the lovers whose fate is doomed by a too likeable husband (somewhat like a Brief Encounter type, with more screen time) and by the mother of all fates and relationships: circumstance.

Timing is always an essential ingredient to relationships, and yet lovers take it for granted. Perhaps because I am behind these prison bars now, I can look at happy couples with a renewed eye, knowing without their sharing in that knowledge how lucky they are to have fallen for each other on a tabula rasa, with no past to pay dues to, or to feel they have to. I did not know how much circumstance shapes facts and options until I met you. Perhaps it was because of the extended suspension of disbelief that accompanies the anesthetized initial romance, or the pursuit of seduction as a game, as an option, that fleeting moment in which we think we know where things are going, and when “inevitable” seems like an infallible word.

Oh, well, I’ve learned that “inevitable” is a nice umbrella word to cover up for the fantasy of thinking that we know, when we really do not. We do not know the secrets, the hiding, and mostly the lying that accompanies each strategy of seduction, the moves behind the scenes  to get what we want, not thinking of the future because it scares us, because it is too far to think about. Greene’s Maurice Bendrix is consumed by jealousy for what he cannot change and he cannot understand…for what he cannot see. In my version, there is only emptiness, as my side of the story becomes a tepid version of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black.

And now add to the tragedy of a lover’s plight the fact that you may be ill, and then the terror of hearing the worst prognosis is superseded by the certainty that I will be external to you in any process, as you let circumstances take over the fragile texture of a life that a radiologist’s report can change forever. I know more than you do, despite your technical expertise and the medical degree that probably decorates some wall in an unreachable house. I know that rotting out is not paying homage to whatever is left of your time anywhere, be it long, fruitful years, or the sad and lonesome count of a calendar the family you think you are protecting imposes on you. Rotting out is another kind of prison, one that you build around yourself, one that is hard to resist without real love if real love has come to you. And I know it has, and I wish you could stop fighting it like a disease.

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.

In an alcoholic anonymous website, somebody once wrote: I don’t know if the glass is half-empty or half-full, I can’t find the glass! Upon reading this clever line, I realized that in fact there is a third option to pessimism and optimism…absence. Maybe there is a glass, or maybe there isn’t. Whether it is empty or full, that again is a matter of perspective.

I have spent most of my weekend classifying books and deciding what to keep and what not to keep. Like an obsessed librarian, I was forced to open my own catalog of reading, my chronology of life through books. Moving out is certainly a time-consuming process, but it is also enriching. It forces us to pause when we cannot, because we are fighting our own lack of time, to look at what we are leaving behind. Some people are fortunate (or unfortunate?) enough to take themselves with them in their journeys. This time I am not. I have made a decision to take only the necessary part of me. Some of these books will make it to Houston initially, but others will have to wait for me to either take them, leave them or retrieve them if life sews a more permanent path to good ol’ Texas.

Yes, I decided to travel light. I want to live with less instead of more. I want to find the glass. I have been wanting to do that for quite a while, but something stopped me…it must be the reluctance of all human beings to change, or the fear that if we let go of things, of people, we will feel the emptiness. As I look back on the half-empty bookcase, I would say that it all depends on how you leave. It is not so much about the act of departure but about the way in which we go. Most of the time we escape — and believe me, I have been there — but sometimes, if we do the homework that life sprinkles here and there between the pages of our own mysterious book, there is a fair chance that leaving will be an action of growth instead than a side door to more of the old self.

The two bookshelves that remain to be cleared before they find a new home at my mother’s contain the effort of growth that stemmed out of the need of fleeing far away, where no old ghosts of bad family love could find me. Something good came out of escaping, but it only did when I had the courage to come back and face the demons I thought I had left behind.