Passages from letters to my life partner
By FARHA GUERRERO
“I’m incapable of speaking less. I always have something to say. It’s always a litany of words.”
“I have come to reconcile the fact that I think aloud.”
“My words are spoken much more than they are ever written. How is it that I’m writing so much right now? It is because I’m speaking.”
“But whether one speaks or listens, the words are heard—not read.”
“By taking away reading, I am now using the greatest asset that I own, and that is my voice. I am now learning and processing everything by listening.”
“I wonder now why I became afflicted with such a strange illness, but maybe illness can bring something out from within.”
“Francisco Goya is a striking example. After he became deaf, his art changed dramatically.”
“So maybe an internal dialogue that knows what is coming.”
“And maybe I will write more than I’ve ever written while disabled. And why not? Why not go against the tide? The salmon swim upstream, against all odds. These are not clichés. They have real meaning. And I’m proving that to myself right now.”
“It’s too bad the invisible scribe doesn’t exist in my head. How nice it would be—it would capture all my words as I write up a mountain hill—on foot, by bicycle. There must be something about the slowness of climbing, as I’m doing now, walking up the Microwave Forest Road, that allows us to think this way.”
“Something in the upwards movement, or the rhythmic heartbeat, that brings about words—and sometimes it’s so poetic, and so perfect. I have written many stories in my head from the bottom to the top of the hill. It’s just too bad they weren’t captured.”