Here where I am, in Tokyo, it is evening — almost night.
Where you are there is still sun, and perhaps you are out somewhere eating an ice cream.
God, how I would love an ice cream right now — hazelnut and pistachio. And maybe some cream on top.
I really should be making dinner, but I have no desire to. I will smoke something, then sleep. Maybe, if Morpheus deigns to grant me the favour.
Perhaps first I will sink into the bath, water at 38 degrees to dissolve some of these thoughts.
The ofuro: something the Japanese cannot do without. It is more than a habit — it is an almost constant element of their daily life.
Today I needed to hear from you, but while I was trying to prise my eyes open after a somewhat sleepless night, you were going to bed, or perhaps already asleep. And who am I to interrupt your sleep? That precious moment of the day that I am beginning, a little, to forget what it feels like.
To tell the truth, I did pick up my phone, did open WhatsApp, was given a smile — but then I let it go.
I waited 8 hours.
7 time zones plus one. To give you at least enough time to get your coffee and realise a new day had begun; while mine was slowly drawing to a close.
I waited 8 hours.
8 hours imagining you awake and daydreaming about how you might have spent this last Sunday in May. Who knows what the weather is like where you live; I could find out in an instant, but I enjoy ignoring it and carrying on imagining.
Here it is already 30 degrees. Are you at the beach? A walk around Villa Ada? Breakfast at the bar at Andrea's? Or are you at home working hard on your projects to earn more money, because you want to travel? Because you need to travel.
Or perhaps you are in Ventotene, taking a dip.
La Molara.
What I would give right now to breathe there, suspended in the water. Just me and the sea, nothing else.
Or perhaps you are getting ready to go to the stadium to see the last match of the only captain who, like many Romans, I have truly considered as such: Totti.
I waited 8 hours, but I did not write to you — the moment had passed by then. Being able to share things at the very moment you feel the need or the desire to do so is a luxury I gave up more than a year ago.
Life in the time zone. It is this too. It is living a little here and a little there, with one eye often on the clock, doing the minus-seven calculation and figuring out whether at that particular moment I am interrupting your breakfast, a work meeting, or a date with someone.
It is not always being able to follow your own emotions and thoughts; it is having to wait for a reaction or a conversation; it is living in the future relative to you; it is knowing things before you do, but sometimes not knowing them at all, because this country is not exactly great when it comes to spreading information.
It is feeling a little alone, but also very free; it is feeling a little like a narrator, being your eyes on a world so different and distant from the one you live in. It is making you discover new things, showing you other cultures, other places, seeing your wonder and being happy for it.
Living in the time zone is feeling outside the world I left behind, reading what you write and having absolutely no idea who or what you are talking about. Not being able to laugh with you, not being able to pass you a tissue to dry your tears, or simply not being able to share silences full of words whispered on the same wavelength.
It is perceiving vibrations from nearly 10,000 kilometres away. Living in the time zone is a powerful, revolutionary experience. It is a journey.
{Written on a Sunday in May, lived much more often.}