The Write Thing

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.

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.

Would it be too irrational to say there are people who fear facts and people who fear feelings? Oh, I know…you would say that feelings are also facts, but that is where I think you go wrong. Feelings are not facts. Feelings change. They evolve, revolve, and sometimes even falter. They grow stronger, weaker…they fade. They confuse, dazzle, hurt, relieve…but all the time they are incapable of stasis.

Instead, facts do not change. They are. Intransitive verb, period. A chasm, a void, uncertainty towering because there is no exit. Facts are cruel and irreversible. Disease is a fact, love is not. Disease is a limitation with an outcome that eventually will be another fact, but love is not. Love is free as a concept, yet a prisoner of its cradle. It grows, and it fades, layers of its skin spread on a spurious surface, a requirement of blind faith for those who choose to indulge.

Yet I am more afraid of facts than emotions. You cannot fight facts, but you can fight emotions, and many people do. Or maybe you can fight facts, but most of the time the victory or defeat will be external to you, and already a given. Yet, many of us mistake emotions with facts and refuse to fight, expecting loss as a token…naive souls…loss is part of every game we play

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate

I am leaving all hope behind me, and here I am…crossing the door.