L and E with matching scar tissue, Arnhem 2001

hallo, dear L,

Now that the cinemas have finally shut down (they tried their best to hold out as long as they could, seating only available in every other row), I could finally watch the end of the century go. And even if ever so subtle, it washed over me like the laps of a past self that had been thrown overboard so long ago, now cuddling up uncannily like the sound of the sea in a new moon darkness. Yes, as she said, “the way sounds, music, make you remember things you’d forgotten about yourself“.

I remember when you
(and everybody)
first got into skinny jeans,
but did you notice
that I was a bit deprecating about it?

It’s that self of we when we were more intertwined, so perennially you (is me, in admiration, is we, growing up together), and yet now grown into other realms. a wise father, still awkward (some of the cuts), still funny (still innocent), but more nuanced perhaps. It’s learning to speak from experience rather than in the voice of those we admire, just like you said. It is you, so perennially, ever you (they even look like yous), so much that i know you’ll laugh with me when i say that is a very gay man thing to do. Right around the end of the century you told me how you knew you were gay, and I can tell you from my woman’s experience that things on this end were not so straightforward, but that is me, and yous is yous. Those selves are another perception of time in a knowing-queer way, perhaps, and even so we can still be full of references (Buñuel, the assured knowledge of self in movement, so many conversations recalled, and a Barcelona to Linklater’s Vienna) because those are our experiences, too.

Amidst those fleeting points of reflective light that glimmer ever so often amidst now isolation, I was reminded to speak from a place of wisdom. Not to assume wisdom, but yes, to recall, revisit and retranslate those places we’ve been, the conversations we’ve had, and the feelings that have always been facts. Life, as she said (that someone else said), is less like the sturdy tree and much more like the weather. And fickle as that may be, we know beyond everything the colours of sunset and ensuing fall of temperature, the scent of rain, and those broad, striped gusts that ping the ear and make us hold tighter. That’s all there is. Weather, and wisdom. So let’s hold tight, as far away as we may be.

and on continuity:
a box-o’!
just slightly disappointed that it was
obviously empty—
javi drinking the last drop
repeatedly,
and ocho hesitantly taking it
still half full…
(or personality references?)

___

Fin de Siglo, now viewable online via Lucio Castro and/or a few links when you look for them.