September 19, 2019

My dearest,

You show me your new phone wallpaper proudly. It’s the picture you took of the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse when we were in Ushuaia. Red at its base, a corset of white, then a red collar. A sentinel, a totem, a symbol destined to stay in our memories long after we’ve left this land.

The Argentines call it Faro del fin del mundo – the Lighthouse at the End of the World. It’s not entirely accurate but this does feel like the end of the known world to us. When we return home, months later, you will ask to watch Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together as a movie date night, you who never watch Wong Kar-wai willingly, not without making fun of the dialogue, too self-important for you.

But now that we have come here, you want to return, if only with this film. With the doomed leads who romance and ravage each other; with the naïve young man who comes to the lighthouse to let go of sorrows on behalf of his friend. He hears nothing or the sound of sobbing.

We aren’t sobbing but laughing as we watch the movie. Together we find the humour where I had never noticed watching alone before. Maybe that is the point of this story after all.

Yours, ever and always.