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.

North of Brazil – 11.30 pm of Thanksgiving Thursday

No simple tourist camera could do justice to a deserted beach at night. A wooden deck acted as a pier of sorts where I sat down to contemplate a dark sheltering sky, intermittently lit by a multitude of stars. There was a half moon and lukewarm port lights presiding over a sprinkled sea of tiny fishing boats. The breeze was soft, perfect to accompany the dazed thoughts of my tired mind after an early morning flight…and thus began my first stop on a Brazilian beach ever.

In this dreamlike scenery, it was almost inevitable not to yield to the charm of the sea. It was as if its vast overpowering presence suddenly revealed some of its secrets, as if its mystery could become clear right there before me. I enjoyed the delusion, and could not help feeling a curious empathy for those who choose death at sea. Take Storni or Woolf, for example. I do not know Storni that well, but Woolf and her river Ouse are somewhat closer in their pathos and their fate. True, Woolf’s choice was in a way more modest, but still open enough for the arbitrary categories I came up with as I sat there, contemplating the vastness of a Caribbean Atlantic.

Yes, why not playing with the idea that by choosing your death you agree to categorize yourself, or you are perhaps simply exposed to being categorized? I would see two main options – death by expansion or death by restriction – the latter being a preferred pick of those that would kill themselves by gas inhalation in the kitchen or car fumes in a garage. In a way, if choices in life make us, so why not our choice of death? As I write this now on a small balcony overlooking a swimming pool from which loud exchanges in Portuguese and heavy laughter rise up to distract my otherwise lazy state of mind, I realize that a pool would not make it to the first category….no, sir. It would be death by restriction.
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I guess in our lifetime there will always be moments when we will be scared, moments when we will be happy, or anxious, or willing. When I am about to travel, the mix of feelings is quite unique. It was like that before you arrived. Now it is like that, but somewhat different. Regardless of the business I have somewhere else, there is you at some point…a reward to the many days we have spent apart since I last held you in my arms in a chilly night at the local airport.

The sound of your “I love you” almost got lost in the background noise, but you were still looking at me when you said it. I had to bring that moment back to my mind several times to stop the tears from flowing when I turned around to look at you and found you there, at the boarding gate, holding your hand up in the air in your farewell gesture.

The tears did not flow, because right before we parted you had said what I had hinted at the night before, when we played around the “sides of us” that are only percentages of us, and the word love was whispered as if we were speaking of others. I know we both knew it would not be long before we said it. There is a second when you become aware that you are starting to use substitutes. A second when you know that any other word you choose to replace the only one that fits would be a partial view of the compact reflection of you, now a vulnerable creature. And you have to be vulnerable, let your defenses fall, and simply love. Otherwise, it does not work.

I’m going on that plane now to do exactly that. In the course of the next days, I want to hear those words again and I want to say them, in silence, in darkness, while we simply indulge ourselves in the miracle of being.