Month: October 2006

Last Friday a couple of friends from the dorm kindly brought me a borrowed guitar to play in the dark.

I fell in love with it right when I felt the lacquered wood sliding into my arms. I gently plucked each string with my finger, miraculously drawing soft broken music out of it. I found I had forgotten the chords and lyrics from the songs I used to play, but that didn’t matter at all, for I could have spent the whole night caressing the ever so smooth surface, listening to each note as to drops of water from a secret spring in the midst of a cave.

Oh, brief romance; the night was over and we were forced to say goodbye. What deliciously wooden body am I to hug from now on? Where will my voice come from if utter silence is not enough?

I desperately need my own guitar.

Je ne manque à personne,
Mais ce n’est pas grave:
J’ai dejà passé un bon moment,
Un bon moment autrefois.

—Pink Martini

Falling ill while living abroad represents a huge responsibility. There’s no mother giving me hot agua de panela with lime right before sleeping, no father coming to my room to ask me how I’m feeling, no Himura running to my fainted side on the front yard, covering me with a sweater and blocking the sun from my face. It’s up to me whether I can take enough care of myself, whether I can get better soon or not. As I feebly glance at the sunset from my dizzy bed, I feel the crushing weight of loneliness, the diametric distance which can only be breached through words—and even words are not enough.

Suddenly, a friend shows up at my doorstep with bananas, vitamin C, and a few recommendations.

I’m such a lucky person.

Thank you so very much, Cora.

I can see it coming.

I’ll arrive when the class is about to start; it’s better than hanging there, wasting precious minutes in waiting inside a cold classroom.

I’ll wait for my turn to spit out blocks of nonsense which I managed to cram into my brain so poorly that it freezes in the middle of the process. The suffering will continue until the last shards of sentences are removed from my flesh, slowly, with no anaesthesia. What shall I do about these open wounds? Apply some lemon, add another paragraph, stare into the void while thousands of questions are being asked.

Yes, I’ve already tried looking at it from the bright side; I’ve even preached the possible benefits of this daily exercise, so reminiscent of Tom Sawyer. However, when I find that I have to dedicate the best minutes of dawn to thoughts other than my own, I wonder whether this is some kind of Dantesque Inferno at the end of which I’m supposed to, like the bitter poet, gratefully encounter the familiar yet breathtaking view of a starry sky.

At least Mt. Fuji is visible for the third consecutive day. That should be a good sign.