Haruki was right. During Sundays, one cannot wind his spring here in Tokyo. I spent the whole day inside my room, watched an old movie, ate a light breakfast at 1 PM, cleaned the sink, separated my rubbish to combustible and incombustible, had coffee, and listened to smooth jazz. Quite, peaceful, and lonely.
If I were back home, I would have asked you to meet me in our favorite coffee machine right now, because I feel a thousand stampeding elephants inside my chest again.
I feel that everything here is so impersonal. Not a bit of how I spent the last months I had back in Manila, when I was living inside the university, and we had picnic for lunch some warm Wednesday, or watch frisbee until the sun melts. It is strange, melancholic even, to realize that some objects don’t talk no matter how close you are.
I’d like to apologize first because I feel that I owe you more other interesting stories. I remember that one night, at the balcony of the pub we frequent, I asked you how I should spend the long years ahead of me in this new city. Be a character in a book, you put it. I am not quite sure now if what constitutes my everyday is something you will read. Perhaps, I will bore you.
I’m dying for a talk, something that will punch a hole right through me to make me realize how it feels to exist again. Every phone call from you is another self portrait for me. But I’m dying to talk with you and look at you at the same time. I want to catch your words even before you speak them. I want to hear your thoughts raw, unbridled by wirelessness and words trailing from a cursor. I want to own you and you to own my time and sing what’s left of the remaining hours. I want you to catch me in that unfiltered light of a beautiful day in the park. I want you to grasp me, especially those words I don’t say, to comfort me that there’s one person in the 8 billion who can truly understand me with such clarity. I’m always wondering what you would say because we were always like that to each other.
Sundays make me feel glum. Nobody can wind his spring during Sundays. Haruki was right. One can only be as good as the memory of the last person who made him feel alive.
How many Sundays – how many hundreds of Sundays like this – lay ahead of me?
All the best from Tokyo,
Parenthesis
Post Script: I wish I could write snail mail again. This letter was for someone. Unsent, presumably.
