Camila + Haruki

The Book of The Living

I’d met Camila at a department party on the first day of summer vacation.  Her retro Mia Farrow haircut and skimpy mint green dress (exposing a mole behind her shoulder blade) was a bloody revelation to me.  I fell for her instantly.  Camila was a visiting Tibetan Buddhism scholar at HKU and I was a King's College London PhD student doing doctoral research in Hong Kong for my dissertation on Kierkegaard, existential liminality, Eliade life cycles, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead for a research project.  In seven days, we became colleagues, lovers, and SX-3 monogamists, exploring the permutations of our anxiety-heavy bodies, just as Big Boy was discovered for the first time throughout the world and the so-called meaning of life was simultaneously affirmed because "life is ephemeral," "life is dukkha [suffering]," "attachment is the source of all pain" and also extinguished because knowing exactly when life comes to an end destroys the fairy tale of free will.  This is why we spent that first month shagging, smoking Skyway Joints, and listening to music on my ambient virtual player.