The Write Thing

My birthday passed like the month that hosts it. It takes place at the end of August and I love the feeling of completion that a celebration at the end of the month can bring. I guess one could say the same about opening a month, but I’ll just imagine myself privileged for the sake of my self-esteem. She invited me to Seattle, and we were there sharing the sights, the sounds, the beauty, and the love that synthesizes perceptions. There was dinner at a French restaurant, which was funny because the escargots were nothing like those you’d have in France, although the poulet roti in a way compensated an evening in which you were edgy after two days in a row of living with an inverted daytime, in the cruel shifts society imposes on your profession.

Then came another distance, a couple of weeks in Houston for me before my conference in Rio and then playtime in Buenos Aires, where you joined me and where we confirmed — as if there was a need to do that — the foundations of whatever it is that we are building. We can name it love and that would be all right. I loved having you meet another friend of mine there, someone whose loyalty and trust have given me hope and made me believe that sometimes there is no vested interest bringing people together. It is funny how some of us do perceive the truth about this cruel exercise of life, in which we are born and die alone, so the only form of happiness is finding the sidekick to seal that unspoken pact with us, be it as a friend, family or lover, to know that it is OK to trust, because what is out there is what there is and if we are loved, we must be loved for what we are.

There were Freddo ice-creams, asados, alfajores, my mother’s home cooking bringing you an arroz con leche that gave you back some of that lost childhood. There was your friend sharing with us, being a funny accomplice to the game of teasing you, like two people who love you in different ways. And I loved your shyness around me, the way in which your body tentatively sought mine when we were walking or standing near. I loved the stealth kisses and your happiness, your wholesomeness, the real you that emerged in an atmosphere of simplicity and cool spring chaos.

Now I’m back to Houston, with a book by C.E. Feiling that my uncle gave me without knowing that he perhaps owned a collector’s item. I’ll be reading that, and I’ll get back to the life of office work and odd interruptions from you in those days when you work late or not at all. I’ll get back to the waiting time that has now become a staple in our dynamics, the longing for you that feels like a pang in my stomach for a few more days until I see you again at the airport and I give you the inevitable kiss. Then I will lead you to my car, to my place, to us and everything will be all right for a treasured moment, for now.

Hurricane Alex, humbly downgraded to Tropical Storm only minutes before it hit the Galveston shores, made it to Houston. It is the first major weather event in Hurricane Season to happen in June for over 45 years, which suggests that this season is going to be heavy on mother earth anger and last-minute evacuations. I will think about that later, once I need to get ready to load the car, grab the dog, close the house and leave for a more benign Austin or wherever north begins to look like an option of well-being.

Because of Alex, Houston was flooded today. It happened much in the same way as it does in Buenos Aires when it rains heavily. Here the rain amounted to 6 inches or more, and it went on for a full two days, more heavily today.

I went to work, but was wise enough to return home before the rush hour began. Part of that was my need to pick up the dog from his grooming appointment, which he hates. So at some point we found ourselves in the car talking to the woman I still love and eating a sandwich a few blocks away from the apartment. It was good to get home earlier, as recommendations on the TV by the time we arrived were to stay wherever you were and wait it out.

So Houston treated me to its bad weather reputation today and, interestingly, it was not much different from some things I have already seen: cars stuck with water almost reaching the roof, people wading through heavy rain oblivious to whatever lies underneath their knees, well-buried in the water.

By the way, a difference is indeed that the Mayor spoke on the radio and she was later on TV, but at no point was her administration questioned on account of a storm, which is a weather phenomenon and not a capricious human decision. I could not but feel this was a more pragmatic society than mine, which expects her to do her job without blaming her for absolutely everything, such as the weather or World War I.

I personally cannot defend any single Mayor of BA I have experienced in my several years of life there. They have all at some point or another failed me or others. However, I have always been kind of alone defending the point that, if it rains heavily and the city floods, it is not totally a person’s fault…it is the weather. There are no subsidies on offer here for those who got their cars stuck in the water, or whose shops got flooded. You knew that it would happen when a heavy storm came, so you are on your own if Houston’s climate does not suit you.

This is America, right or wrong. This time, scary as it may seem, I have the feeling it is right.

It has been ages since I was last able to sit down and write for me instead of my clients. There is such a dreadful gap between what I promised myself I would be doing systematically once I landed in Houston and what I actually have done that I feel like an addict with no chance of recovery. I have promised myself I would be writing more, but I ended up spending most of my evenings working or deciding on furniture purchases.

It is only for the past couple of days that I have owned a rather pricey but charming desk with a banker’s lamp that I always craved and never quite indulged in. In Woolfian terms, I have only now secured a “room of my own”. So I might as well use it…although I must confess the couch and small Ikea table I got for myself simultaneously in May are tempting enough to write on. Parts of this place that I now start to recognize as my home are coming to life, designed by me and my taste (or lack of). It is a major step towards the overcoming my own homelessness, the snail’s shell inside of which I am finally free at my pace and with my choice.

Yet all of this housing independence — minus ownership — is happening while someone is by my side, albeit still quite physically removed to make anything simple. Perhaps that is the most obvious and challenging side of my freedom, the planning on my own while I know that we both might plan otherwise one day. I know the time for togetherness will come, and it will be the way it is meant to be. For now, my own time is this, set on Houston rhythm, with large roaches that hang on trees (like they did in Buenos Aires), with hot mornings filled with sunlight entering the kitchen, with her sleepy voice at the other end of the line when we can speak, with me retreating into myself for now, going without much thinking of the future, as if I was taking this for granted. It is not, or it may not be, but she and the space she gives me makes it all feel like home.