Short story: endings and beginnings
Saying goodbye to a friendship is a silent dance. Today's story is my tribute to a dear friend, it's about how every beginning manifests itself just before an ending.
It’s time to write out loud.
Thank you for opening this email or this tab. This week I'm celebrating a chain of cause and effect. Remember I wrote a little story about Taiwanese apple cakes? Hung Shen Liu, our new roommate, read the text before traveling to Savannah. He arrived last Monday, with two (!!) boxes of pineapple and apple cupcakes directly from Taipei. Thanks to him, I learned that these cupcakes are synonymous with giving good luck, so I brought them on a short trip to New York, and on a small table in a cafe, I read the story out loud and shared a cupcake with Ariana Martinez. We admired the scribble in the package and talked about pens and notebooks, Ariana recommended a Taiwanese stationery store I visited and bought a new pen, which I’ll be using to write these stories. As Drexler says: "Nada se pierde, todo se transforma”. In this edition of Escribir en Voz Alta: something beautiful to read.
Work update: I'm writing this from the 15th floor of a building in Brooklyn, NY because this week I traveled to meet the fantastic Nuria Net, co-founder of La Coctelera. Besides having produced Punk In Translation (Webby Award nominee and winner at the Premios Ondas) Nuria co-founded Remezcla, an independent media brand to discover fresh alternative Latin music. Her articles were a constant reference for my journalism at Radiónica, as was Radio Gladys Palmera, where Nuria was Managing Editor. In other words, it is as if she and I were part of the same tribe but we had never crossed paths. Her work is magnificent and it is an honor to share with you that together we are going to work on a project with Luis Gallo (Producer of LOUD, the History of Reggaeton). I can't give more details but we are very excited. I share the news because more than the project, it’s a joy to connect with more journalists who like me, contribute to elevate the culture of Ibero-America in a global scale. Check out her work and La Coctelera.
I’m listening to: Ariana Martinez in “Compass, Glass and Stone: Audio Storytelling as a Reflective Practice”. For eight weeks, Ariana is sharing their reflections on sound as a compass to navigate the world, a lens to perceive, and an object, that’s shaped in time and can be carried in a pocket. I’m very happy to be in this workshop and seeing one of the greatest sound artists of the U.S. in action. Here’s a little bit of Ariana’s work.
Today’s story is inspired by Tanaya Khadke and it’s a tribute to our friendship. Enjoy.
Endings and beginnings
Saying goodbye to a friendship is a silent dance. She knows it, I know it, and we both know there is a date, but we live the last week like any other. My friend is moving to the big city and I know I want to stay friends with her. But neither of us wants to talk about how to make that happen. There's a date. There's the present too, so we get together as much as we can and in small time lapses we process the truth. The first one was in the evening.
Tanu and I were in the car, going 40 miles per hour on a summer night in Savannah, Georgia. I was driving straight, stopping at every traffic light on Whitaker Street. Trees loomed, like question marks, from the yards of Georgian homes on both sides of the street. I stopped at the red light, rolled down the window but started sweating within a minute so I rolled it back up. There's something about this summer air that makes you feel like you're trapped, that slipping through it is like trying to get a bunch of blankets off you. That night there was no radio, no topic of conversation. Then I asked Tanu if it was true that she met Nil in her first class of the master's program. A virtual class.
—Yes… I think we were paired to give feedback to each other —said Tanu— and after that we just kept talking an giving each other feedback even outside class. It didn’t feel like we were friends until we met in person.
Tanu and Nil's vibe is like big brother - little sister. When they talk, they’re activaly trying to tease each other. They argue, taking opposite sides, and when it looks like they're about to get into a serious fight, they're fine. They move on to another topic of conversation and that's it. Three days later they talk about the same thing and the loop starts again.
—It was a very lonely time for Nil—I said as I sped up—he was staying at my parents' house and didn't go out much, it was hard for him because he didn’t speak English that well so he attended and then rewatched the classes. It's weird, I remember those months as voids of great uncertainty for both of us, not knowing what was going to happen. I keep thinking about the fact that he met you during this time as if the next stage of his life began manifesting itself before the previous stage was over.
Tanu said it was also a lonely time for her. She was in India hesitating about studying in the US, it didn't seem like such a good idea. The family astrologer said that whatever happened, Tanu was going to be here before September 7th, 2021. Somewhat in response to that omen and curiosity, Tanu's parents were supportive and she started moving in this direction. It was written in the stars. She got her embassy appointment, visa, plane tickets, and housing in less than 3 months. So, she arrived to Savannah, on a summer night with two suitcases and an overstuffed backpack, at an empty bus stop outside the residence halls.
Tanu says she was afraid because she did not know where was the building entrance, so she just there and waited. After a while, another student arrived but he did not speak English well they couldn’t communicate. In time, she went by herself, still afraid, as she climbed the three floors of the dorm building using the stairs and more hopeless when she arrived in the dark at her new apartment shared with two other students. That night she cried alone, as I cried the first night I arrived here. Both of us, knowing we were thousands of miles away from those who loved us.
—That year I learned that I was not as weak as I thought— Tanaya told me.
The next morning she walked around the neighborhood so as not to get lost again, she bought groceries, she overcame the feeling through action and distraction. Like when a baby falls down and realizes that no one is looking, so doesn't cry and keeps going. In those early days, Tanaya and I learned, even without knowing each other, the practice of shrinking in our feelings at night and expanding in the days, maybe because of dignity but mostly for knowing that crying and crying was not going to fix anything. The problems changed. They became shared problems eventually, especially in the last three months. Tanu graduated at the same time as Nil and both were left adrift in the brutal shrinking and layoffs in every creative industry in the US. No clients, no projects. No one knows when it’s going to be the same.
Waiting for the upturn to come, we start having the same conversations "If I don't get a job I will lose my visa... and if I leave... and if I get hired…if I do this maybe there’s a chance". We updated our portfolios, emailed people, went through our contact lists and think and think and think and think, at 50 miles an hour. In every space of silence, in every place of calm, we had the same looping conversation of "It's just not up to me... maybe we just have to wait... just until the end of the year... but then the visa... and then again". The conversation was so cyclical and so hopeless that Tanaya started calling all these problems "oranges". Present and simple, you really don't know if they are sweet or sour until you taste them.
—I spent the night at Arundati's and we talked about oranges until three in the morning—we knew there was nothing more to talk about.
I would like to tell you that there was a magic moment, an unexpected change, a miraculous mail or a meeting that changed the course of our lives. But it didn't happen that way. It happened in long summer afternoons, in the slowness of Sundays, at the breakfast table in the mornings and texting after 11 pm. In long walks, each one on her own. In moments of silence. Tanaya made the decision to leave to New York and bet her last four months of her visa permit on finding a job, that job, that will let her know whether or not the American dream is for her. You Only Live Once. When she talked about it, my heart cringed and I wanted to stop her. Don't go, that city is too expensive, not even those who live in New York can afford to live there. Don't go without a job. Don't go, I still want us to be friends. Don't go...I want to go too. Something in the TikToks she sent me about how to believe in myself even if I had doubts, in the plans according to the full moon or new moon, in the Youtube videos she texted me about how to carry plants in a carry-on suitcase I knew that Tanu knew well all the risks behind this decision and that for her the desire to know what would happen if she lived in NY, despite everything, was more powerful. One day she told us "I bought the ticket" and I smiled. The most loving thing you can do for someone is to push them to be free. I told her that no matter what, I was going to take her to the airport.
Thus came Sunday, my friend's last day in Savannah. At the breakfast table and over afternoon coffee, we did a collective closing.
— I learned that having friends is important— said Nil
—That’s it?— I laughed
— You know, friends help you resonate with what you really want to say—Tanu added.
She said she already did it for Savannah. I said that this year had been one of painful learning about how change is not about letting go but opening space. Tanaya closed:
—Whatever you do today is the mood board for everything that will come later. I learned to be more compassionate with myself and be able to take a stand when people give me opinions or advice. All your friends give you opinions and advice, but they're not the ones who do things, you are. You are the one who decides what you give a chance to.
On the last evening in Savannah, Tanaya Khadke decided she didn't want a ride home, she wanted one last walk around town. She said the house she liked living in best was the second one, on Walburg Street. That if she could, she would buy a house in the neighborhood where her third house was and that she is sure she would not have been happy any longer living in her fifth house, on Whitaker Street. Tanu walked around Savannah, looking up at the treetops, changing her route like someone who picks up her hair knowing where the gray hair is.
There is something about endings and beginnings that is so hard to define. When something comes to an end, a person, a place, a call, or an object anticipates the new version of our lives. For Nil, it was meeting Tanaya. For me, it was the email I received just the day my contract ended. For Tanaya, it was a tingle that she felt stronger and stronger every day, a feeling that turned all the "No" answers about New York into "Yes". That made me ready to go too.
The next morning, Tanaya posed for me holding a tote bag with her plants. One last photo. Nil and I helped her take out the two suitcases and pack everything for the airport. She told me she was taking her plants with her because a mother doesn't leave her babies behind. One clear and cool morning, on the way to the airport we rolled down the windows, at 70 miles per hour on a highway lined with trees, like exclamation points.
—Bye-bye, Savannah. Thank you for the education, for the friends and the trees….
I write this from a corner of a store in Chinatown, Manhattan. Hair pulled back, and cool blue pants, Tanaya admires the store's mugs and turns to me.
—Dude, I really can not believe that you’re here!
Plants are OK. Shared room with shared roomies are OK too. This is New York anyway. We have breakfast and she gives me a little notebook. It says "Live by the sun, love by the moon". In an hour I leave back home, back to Savannah.