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.

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.

Before I continue with this post, I want to publicly thank for an award, my first, recently given to me. As stipulated in the conditions issued to the winners, I am now in the process of selecting ten blogs that I consider deserving of the same award I received. It is this phase of the aftermath to my honorable gift that has so far stopped me from acknowledging the award as I should have. In view of this, and despite my partial compliance with my share of the deal, I would like to express my gratefulness to my fellow blogger, Miss Fiamma, for including me as one of her choices, and publicly state that I will be paying my dues on this choice in full very soon, on the pages of this blog.

Having relieved myself of a self-conscious feeling of irresponsibility vis-à-vis a gift that I can only marvel at and be thankful for, I now proceed to post my entry of today.

This morning I spoke to my ex-girlfriend, for the first time since we parted ways two years ago, about the person I am deeply in love with. I said it finally, after a couple of months of pondering. As I spoke, part of me poured out in the retelling of my new feelings, while another side exercised a form of restraint, as in an Edith Wharton novel, perhaps in an effort to say just enough.

It is good to tell the truth, when the truth is palpable. It is better to tell the truth with the best possible words, those that do not hurt but communicate. And it is even better to live by the truth we know for a fact, because it may be there for a purpose.

Another cycle has in a way ended now. I have always said that lesbian ex-girlfriends never really become your friend but something else, undefined, oftentimes confused with some form of friendship. There is a certain affection, because something brought you together in the first place, and there is also the sea of differences that set you apart. And then, after a while, if you have remained close in some way, there is that brief instant, before you speak, when the truth still lingers behind the curtain, waiting to go out into the scene and feel itself in motion, as an actor does. You do not know what your audience’s reaction will be, but you certainly hope they will at least understand what you want to communicate. If the reaction is good, it means that they do.

Today my audience understood, and I am glad I told my truth.