raya

Raya consisted of food, friends, coffee, phone calls, and the beach.

There’s not much to do in this city; you either go to the university, or take a bus ride to the beach, then walk to the city and board the next train to Sydney. Pleasant is the word to describe this place. One can ride bicycles smack in middle of the road at night, walk their dogs around the neighborhood and say hi to every stranger, surf at any beach they like along the stretch, take walks at the forest and hills and coasts and cliffs, read books at the park while the ducks scurry alongside you, watch blots of people skydiving every sunny day on the way to the university. For strange encounters with high, wasted people who will ask you, ‘Are you nuns?’, and speak of graffiti and acacias, one can go to Melbourne.

K and her sister has been everywhere around the world, from spending a whole day in the cemetery in America, to attending lavish weddings in Burma, to finding bacon in a strictly labeled chicken burger in Seoul. It is nice, to trot all over the world. Here, in my head, lies names of places I must visit some time or another; Jogjakarta, Konya, Damascus, Fes, Copenhagen, Andalusia, Cape Town, Paris. To work, to live, to learn.

Here is a bottle of perfume and a three page letter from F. “This has traveled thousands of miles to get to you”, says K. It’s always nice, to receive these writings; either on tissue papers, or your little Moleskin notebook (I’m afraid I have accidentally spilled chocolate milk on it while I was in Japan, dear), or your three am emails, or in autographed books from all those quirky authors.  You write, as always, with large spaces between the lines and words, airy and romantic. It’s impossible not to love him. He is the ideal. The one possible person.

The housemate says you can buy better perfume here, and even she could get me one. I say, no one (not even myself) has ever gotten me any. A scent is a way of saying; now, this scent shall be you,embody you, and therefore you shall forever be associated, symbolized, reminded, by it. In other terms – I mark you.