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| Man's Tailcoat LACMA M.2007.211.958 |
Hello. Sometime between last night and this morning, I could not stop packing my trunks. There were so many aged photos, letters and old bills from a decade of living in New York.
I caressed the pigskin trunk, with its protuberances coming to me. Almost all of my clothes will be creased by the time my train arrives to my destination. Even now I face uncertainty about where.
Every face that stared back at me from those pictures and the handwriting of everyone no longer here… I sat down on the old sofa, the aubergine suede nightmare my sister had picked for the new flat. My eyes looked at the voluptuous oak-panelled library with its volumes of delicious sins dormant in skin-bound books with tenderness.
Wow, I think of ten years of life in this city and I smile. After looking at Father’s tailored worsted wool three-piece suit in the closet, I smile even more as I am leaving it behind.
Last night I wrote a note without thinking much about it, only feeling. It said:
Living. I breathe through my nose and exhale through my mouth. Vision is alert and perceives millions of colours, all there for me and for others, too. Scent. Touching my limbs. Walking to the door and resuming the activities in a sequence I call living. Sound fills the evening. My friend, your light brings to me that sweet moment when we speak and I feel as though you and I have never parted physically as we whisper on the phone. Your voice, hearing you…
There was a different moment, when the colours dimmed and the scents were bitter. Touching the sheets caused pain of unspeakable sharpness and profound regret. Lying in the imaginary cube in which I found myself, with my arms around me and music caressing a moment I knew was over, I wept. It was an end to us, to the possibilities.
My eyes closed and ennui came from impatience at the seconds slowly piling up like dried fallen leaves. When? How much longer? I got up from my cube and walked with fear. The cold was that much more stinging and acrid outside. Snow pricked my skin on contact. The darkness was my friend and longtime acquaintance walking next to me. Resignation came.
I made a promise to myself: to withstand it all, if I could continue giving, loving, crying and laughing. Living. The darkness left, but the sun that came after was paler than I remembered.
Last night I wrote a note without thinking much about it, only feeling. It said:
Living. I breathe through my nose and exhale through my mouth. Vision is alert and perceives millions of colours, all there for me and for others, too. Scent. Touching my limbs. Walking to the door and resuming the activities in a sequence I call living. Sound fills the evening. My friend, your light brings to me that sweet moment when we speak and I feel as though you and I have never parted physically as we whisper on the phone. Your voice, hearing you…
There was a different moment, when the colours dimmed and the scents were bitter. Touching the sheets caused pain of unspeakable sharpness and profound regret. Lying in the imaginary cube in which I found myself, with my arms around me and music caressing a moment I knew was over, I wept. It was an end to us, to the possibilities.
My eyes closed and ennui came from impatience at the seconds slowly piling up like dried fallen leaves. When? How much longer? I got up from my cube and walked with fear. The cold was that much more stinging and acrid outside. Snow pricked my skin on contact. The darkness was my friend and longtime acquaintance walking next to me. Resignation came.
I made a promise to myself: to withstand it all, if I could continue giving, loving, crying and laughing. Living. The darkness left, but the sun that came after was paler than I remembered.
Something was left behind as I contemplated walking through the door at the end. Thank you.
Everything is peaceful and more balanced, but innocence is now that old book in my library. It was something I had felt and lived, but is now another part that I collect; treasures that arrive when I summon my past with trembling hands. How cynical of me to remember things this way.
I could not. Something inside me said I should not cease to be. Perhaps it would be over another day, but not at that moment. There was a brief and shiny vision of me walking away and learning how to live all over again, but this time without the sickness, without the ignorance and the fear, always ready to learn and feel everything that came to me, knowing right from wrong and willing to experience it all until it was the right time to go. This was what I thought and felt last night.
What is at the end of this lesson? The incredible happiness of living, of always being hungry and of being eager to walk and breathe. I will dance again and smile like the free man I am. A new beginning in a new city, but without you. If we don’t meet again, just know that I will always love you. I must call my cab now.
Yours truly,
Lucius
© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Ashley Van Haeften/LACMA
This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 
1 comments
Deep, cathartic...speaks deeply to my soul 🌜🌛
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