Dear Ben,
I am reading Murakami by the window, patiently waiting--Naoko searching for words in space. It's one of those uneventful Sunday nights when there's nothing really good (not that there's ever anything good) on TV. I have a half full mug of milk tea beside me, courtesy of a former student who just arrived from Taiwan, and an ashtray half-filled with cigarette butts and two empty wrappers of Flat Tops. The sea, just a hundred meters or so away, is so calm and silent that it might not even have been there. The dark night, a few degrees deeper than anywhere I have been in my life, conceals it. But it is there. I can feel it with unusual clarity. It is there…always have been and always will be.
When I was ten or so, a psychic friend of my grandmother visited us and read my future. Hazy as most of my childhood experiences are, I could never seem to remember if she used cards or read my palm. What I do remember is her telling me to be wary of water. And having had a few brush ups with drowning by that time, I couldn't help but agree. Of course, I drowned a couple more times after that before I finally learned how to swim. Funny now that I realize I learned how to swim at the exact moment I learned how to let go. Or maybe it was fatalism that I learned. I could never seem to draw the line. The details no longer matter. Only this: I found myself drowning, so I flailed, gasped, fought, got tired, went still, and eventually, floated. All these in a matter of seconds nobody even realized what happened. Those few moments may have given me all there really is to learn about life.
