where the world went once

WILL WE EVER KNOW where the world went when you once held my gaze from across a sea of madding crowd? Was it this place, an unknowable room for things lost? The space between paper and inkblots, between wingbeats: a lesser infinity whose hiddenness rivals the absence, silence of words almost said but ultimately not. Because it's not necessary; not for us anyway, not anymore.

the boxer

I SHALL REMEMBER YOU with a memory I have had in my childhood. One of my very first, really. It was past noon at Lola's, your home. I went straight for the balcony (which was where all the Almenanza grandkids went to hang in those good ol' days). Trudging up the wooden staircase, across the waxed floor, muffled music sifted through from one of the closed doors, that a few steps closer became a guitar progression and a voice, singing.


"Lay la lay, lay la lay lay lay la lay, lay la lay."


I go through a door and out into the blue skies, the melody pouring into the air, the hot laziness of the afternoon. And I listened. Looked into the window where it was coming from and there you were: propped up in bed, fingers plucking strings, lost in a song. Decades would pass before I learn it's actually 'The Boxer' by Simon & Garfunkle, before I understand the joy you had alone with it in that small room: folk songs are the best! I pray, wherever you are, that you can now sing the way you did back then, feel the same happiness deeply etched in your face, rest with the same...calm.


Until then, Tito. The song shall be in a loop, as you are.

what i talk about when i talk about murakami

READING Murakami has always felt like walking downhill, along a strange street, alongside a stream in search of the shortest possible route toward the sea, but gently, quietly, and you follow it with the curiosity of a moth to a flame. And when you finally find your feet being licked by the water, you realize: that street was not so unfamiliar a place all along. You've been there time and again, back and forth. You've always been there, standing on the shore, eyes full of wonder to the distant horizon of a dream.

after the quake

I HAVE NEVER liked the way you make yourself known, like a troubled ghost, sometimes a wave of nausea, a vertigo attack. The way you operate on faults nor how you always catch me unaware when you're there or not there. I have never ever liked the way you shake my world.

leftover

THIS FEELING doesn't get old, does it? The feeling you get as your train pulls away from a station, from a comfortable familiar place. Only, you're not the one leaving, but a leftover washed ashore from a sudden shift of the tide, impermanence at default. Gears turn. The machine whirs. The laundry spins, as does the world, along with everything else sucked in time: all parts working to force change, always. So remind me again. Change is good and ever bittersweet. It never grows old.