Camila + Haruki

The last thing Camila told me before she cut off all forms of digital, haptic, and virtual communication, was that she no longer believed in the constraints of material reality.  When I asked her what in fuck's name that meant, she replied demurely, you know, clothes and such. There were a lot of things happening around the world and it seemed like I wasn’t in control of any of them anymore.  I was once again reminded of the concepts of dukkha (suffering) related to emotional attachment and rebirth and samsara (the painful and continuous cycle of life and death and rebirth that is the cause of our suffering), important Buddhist concepts I had written two separate chapters about in my dissertation, but concepts that I was personally incapable of embodying, subverting, or overcoming right now, ever since I got waylaid in Tokyo to feed children's medicine to a barking mad woman who loathed me in a (SFC) hospital I'm not even a member of and don't believe in.  Tell you the truth, I'm not ashamed of the dukkha in my life.  In fact, it has begun to define me ever since I left Hong Kong, ever since my longing for Camila has made me fatally nostalgic for our old life teaching, fucking, arguing, cuddling, grading shit essays in our bathrobes, standing on my patio and smoking Skyway Joints in the nude and drinking pistachio o-matcha lattes in my flat and walking on elevated sidewalks in Central district and shopping for retinal scan accelerators in SoHo and grabbing o-Saketinis in Sai Ying Pun and eating vegetarian buffets in Kow Loon and praying to the giant Buddha in Lantau Island and riding the cable cars into the clouds.  Ever since then, my dukkha has begun to define me, which is why I refuse to meditate until I'm back home in my flat.