The Write Thing

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.

Time is relative, I have observed. I know, there is a calendar to abide by, a given set of numbers that decide how long a year, a month or a day is. Yet, time is relative. It is relative to what we have and what we lack, to our plans and our pitfalls. Our life, as it unfolds, sets the pace of time — and sometimes lets us become aware of its power.

A week ago, we were having fun together, playing pool as if we knew the rules at Houston’s Chances bar. A week ago, you were Texan and I was British, and we laughed over a few drinks as we mixed up our accents while we dared each other across the table. A week ago, Saturday morning would bring the garbage pick-up trucks early on and we would leave our bed to have coffee together in the balcony. A week ago, we would make love and nothing would matter…or everything would. A week ago, time was a clock that set an arrhythmic pace, a city of urban bohemia in the summer heat, a ride to Central Market, a granita and an iced coffee at the Empire Cafe, a failed Cajun restaurant, a disruptive conversation of unknown impact. A week ago, we were whole, and time passed.

After you left the apartment a few days later and I closed the door behind your inaudible sigh, the mourning clock began to tick. Your absence filled each room as much as your presence had, only minutes before. I endeavored to change my routine to no avail. Eventually there would be something that, had you been there, would have been natural, would have felt right. But you were gone, and this time I feared an indefinite abyss. The emptiness of you felt stronger, perhaps because this house was ours for some days even while it was not, both of us being strangers in foreign land.

With you gone, I had nothing to cling to, only impersonal crooked pictures and faded comfort colors that would lull me to sleep until you called from a remote airport, enslaved by your own withdrawal of us. As I woke up to set the coffee brewing before my shower the next morning, or even as I returned home at the end of my workday, time was always relative. It was relative to its forceful repetition of itself without you…it was relative to you.