Otanjyoubi omedetou gozaimasu, Minori San. Hontou ni aishitemasu.

Life Is Painfully Full of What-Ifs

Everything is reduced to the road not taken —Frost was such a wise man...
We look back, and a whole different chain of facts unfolds before our eyes.
Could another path take us to a better point of view on the same landscape?

Our journey is full of crossroads through which we peek into what we couldn't choose,
And our perfect imperfection suddenly reveals a noticeable crack.

If we had followed a different road, would we have met?
Would we have spoken?
Would we have recognized ourselves the way we do now?

And if we had... What then?

Can you see all the possible endings on the infinite horizon?

Interviú

I met a girl from my high school when I was about to enter my Japanese Culture class. She graduated two years after me, and even though we had never spoken before, she was very nice. While we were talking, she accidentally brought back to my mind what my main purpose for majoring in Literature was. Strange as it may seem, I had forgotten that I wanted to become a journalist. I don't, anymore; I'm not exactly keen on current events. However, there is a part of me which likes to inquire about people, dig into their lives to find unique jewels to admire from time to time. Thus, I enjoy conversations with strangers in the bus, or with some of my classmates —those who seem lonely, those who seem bizarre. I collect all sorts of trivia about them in my mind, their likes and dislikes, their childhood memories, their dreams and recollections.

I have found very interesting things in my ramblings. There are tongues coated with cynicism but filled with sheer emotion; there are amazing clippings of lives which continue, there are voyages and people and feelings and food and everything needed to turn these stories into other, maybe more twisted stories.

I desisted from becoming a writer some time ago, so I don't know what these characters could be useful for if all the fiction will remain in my head. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to take the pen again, get rid of the monsters which filled up my soul when I started pursuing my degree, and finally turn all the apparently vague conversations in buses and classrooms into otherworldly scenes.

The theme song for The Virgin Suicides keeps playing in my head, and suddenly I'm all melancholy.

Dreams

Dreams, like eggs, succumb to the first touch of a long fingernail. In white yellow blobs, nobody can tell how perfection used to be contained in such a wreck, how happiness used to be a synonym of such a sorry sight.

Le livre, la langue, l'ennui

Music flows within my body, and I want to dance. However, I feel trapped within the pages of innumerable books. I'm b0und, and the binding hurts... the thread is tight, and it has pierced my skin, pulling it in an unnatural way. I can reach change, but I don't seem to want to change. I chose the easy path, and now I'm paying with huge doses of boredom.

Things should get better someday... When I graduate, for example. I do not want to start over somewhere else. I'm doing this, I must finish. Then I will find something better at another level. However, I've been sitting here for so long, doing this equivalent to nothing at all... Besides, I have no sensibility for literature. I used to, but I no longer do.

The girls from my school sit right behind me in class, and sometimes I'd like to ask them whether they like what they're doing... It's obvious they do... But for me, these are words, words, words... Words which go nowhere, words with no connection between each other. Words to be read with pleasure, not with a critical eye. I'm so ignorant... I chose to be so... What is it that I want to know?

I want to speak as many languages as I can. I want to understand when people speak, I want to see the magical connection between two cultures as one person becomes a bridge between two languages. I saw the connection in La Dorada, when I became a bridge between Minori and my grandfather. I saw the door, and the door was suddenly open.

So what am I doing here when I could be learning Mandarin, or Arabic, or Russian, or Uighur (okay, not Uighur)? I love the pain of not being able to understand, I love to strive to be understood... and when your ears finally open and the words flow into your brain, clear as rainwater... isn't that beautiful?