This week in Argentina I had the pleasure of walking into the women’s restroom at a polo clubhouse in Lobos. The woman who accompanied me looked at the markings ”C” and “F” on the sink faucet before choosing one.
“F,” she said, “that must be for ‘Fuego,’ which is hot.”
“Uh,” I replied, “I think that’s ‘F’ for ‘Frío,’ which is cold. Unless you thought ‘C’ stands for ‘cold’ in Spanish too.”
“Oh.”
Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship… an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.
- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
When you’re a little blue bird subject to the whims of your seemingly unpredictable human being, you start to understand the concept of destiny. Jujy, despite all her opinions and outrage, lives in a cage that is her home and she goes where her home takes her. Recently, unbeknownst to her (as always), Jujy’s destiny has been in limbo. Will Jujy remain in my mother’s living room in San Mateo, California, will she be shipped across the Atlantic in a box to end up in a living room in Europe, or will she be surprised one day to discover her favorite human’s permanent return home only to be whisked away to yet another foreign living room? Life isn’t too complicated for Jujy, but it is uncertain. It’s uncertain in that worst of ways, the kind that gives no warnings and accepts no resentment. Jujy’s trapped in her cage, and if that cage takes her to Istanbul, well by golly, I guess she’s going to go there.
You might be thinking that this is merely the consequence of being an ornamental pet bird who lives in a cage. We’ll all take a moment to thank the stars that we too, are not caged birds. When it comes to people, we like to think that we’re in charge of our own destinies, that in fact, the idea of “destiny” or “fate” may not even exist. If I can make decisions, and my decisions affect changes in the future, then how can fate exist? Consider this: Jujy, when her cage door is open, makes decisions too. She decides whether or not she will come out of her cage, where she will climb to, if she’ll fly and where she’ll fly to, whether she will socialize with the other living room birds that day, and whether she’ll allow me to pick her up and scratch her head. It’s only when Jujy’s confined to her cage that her destiny becomes dependent on me.
Lately I’ve been in a position to make some life changing decisions about whether I will stay in Europe, return home to the U.S., or move to some other location altogether. On the surface, these seem like my own independent decisions. At a deeper level, however, very few decisions are free of outside influences, especially those that involve other people. Even Jujy’s decision to come out of her cage depends on my decision to open the door.
To say that we don’t have destinies, even if they are short term fates, is a crazy thing considering how significant a portion of our decisions aren’t ours to make. We’re confined just as Jujy is, to the cages of our hearts, to other people’s decisions, other people’s hearts, and to time and space and luck. While we’re never trapped, and we’re usually in better positions than pet birds, other people’s uncertainties can be our uncertainties, and my destiny can be Jujy’s as well.
A nasty, biting breeze. You’re wearing a T-shirt in the chill, shaking, defiant to the very end. Five a.m. Zurich and trams in the blue twilight. You took the summer home with you to Spain, and said to me at last, “I promise.”
Promise what? Promise only that you’d tell me when, but it’s more of a promise than anyone’s ever made to me before and I lean on it much more than I should, for all kinds of decisions that such a promise can’t support. Then again, my idea of forward-looking is fretting that I might fall in love with someone when it isn’t on the schedule, that I’ve left the lights on in California and need to go back to turn them off, that my horse doesn’t fit under the airplane seat.
“You are hard to love,” you said.
I know this. I’ve known it for years. But no one’s ever articulated it, ever pierced my soul with it like so many knives from an illusionist’s arsenal. I don’t think anyone starts out that way, or desires to be difficult. Assuming you’ll be like the past is unfair to you, to myself. But I’m headshy, and I know it, and I can’t help but flinch every time someone raises their hand, even when the hand is there to embrace, not to strike.
While my fears fulfill their prophecies my heart lures me ever onward, dangling like the burro’s carrot but beating fiercely real, saying there now, send that email, “Dear Mr. Guanín, I would like to learn Spanish, can I pay you in Swiss francs or with the lurid details of my trembling intentions? I would like to be conversational but not confused, do you have any money back guarantees that in your language, I’ll find love?”
And so it comes to pass that you’ve left, and I’m left, and we’re here to sort this out on our own, but not alone, bringing an optimistic solace I never thought I’d feel.
We have shared out like thieves the amazing treasure of nights and days.
- Jorge Luis Borges
feels like reckless driving when we’re talking
it’s fun while it lasts, and it’s faster than walking
but no one’s going to sympathize when we crash
they’ll say “you hit what you head for, you get what you ask”
and we’ll say we didn’t know, no we didn’t even try
one minute there was road beneath us, and the next just sky
- Ani DiFranco, Falling is Like This
Let me tell you something. Something besides the fact that I haven’t posted a real entry for months. Something I want to say to you but I can’t, because it’s like trying to hold back a sneeze, or worse, a deep down belly laugh that threatens to come out my nose in an obscene exhaled snort, in the middle of a quiet library where everyone is concentrating very hard on their important books and papers and are waiting, just absolutely waiting for me to make a squeak of delight that they can oppress with their disapproving stares.
I’m shoulders shaking like I’m crying but I’m not, hand over my mouth, glee in the corners of my eyes but I can’t let any of it out, and it’s giving me a pain in my abdomen that I haven’t had in years. The strangest sensation to rage against is the sensation that I shouldn’t enjoy this, that I shouldn’t be laughing here, that it’s not right. But something about this scenario makes my stomach hurt more, wrinkles my upper lip, bares my teeth in some kind of forbidden joy I can’t or won’t admit to, especially not to you.
It’s novel really, this thrill I get. Everyone always reminds me about the future, the plans, the situation, the morality, and the many reasons I shouldn’t let anyone know I want to laugh. I’ve spent so much time trying to hold it in these past few weeks that I forgot that a laugh is just joy trying to get out. I’m falling now, and it’s going to get out one of these days, and I hope you’re ready for it when I burst.
Moreover, a clandestine life shared with a man who was never completely hers, and in which they often knew the sudden explosion of happiness, did not seem to her a condition to be despised. On the contrary: life had shown her that perhaps it was exemplary.
- Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
It was not your fault; I do not blame you. Please forgive me for running away, and remember me with love as I remember you and our golden age.
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
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