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.

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.

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.