You don't have to write me a letter, however much I'd love to read another. Knowing you're doing well would suffice by now. I have other letters in the making, better than the ones I've shared before. I simply need to know if you'd like to read them. If you need all your time to focus on your projects now, I'll understand. If you want me to wait for a bit longer, I'll oblige. But if this prolonged silence is an invitation to forget you, I beg you let me know. Though like you I've learnt to live within uncertainty, sometimes not knowing can burden me so much. . So, please, drop me a couple lines here. Compared to all this doubt, they might be soothing words.

Quite frankly, I appreciate this exchange enormously. Writing is something that I had neglected for very long, as I mentioned the moment you proposed we become penpals. I keep taking proper care of my grammar and even more of my orthography. Perhaps my obsession with the latter is something I inherited from my maternal grandmother. She would take great pride in her flawless spelling and accentuation. And I suppose it couldn't have been otherwise. Her father, my great grandpa, was a man committed to literature and political activism. An eccentric intellectual dwarfing everyone around him in his impeccable white clothes. I've even been told that his personal library contained more volumes than the public one in my hometown. But unlike me, he never quit writing. His collection of sonnets is well preserved at my mother's place, in the same paper in which he typewrote them more than a half century ago. On my father's side, the names are even bigger, but I've never felt the need to outperform any of my ancestors. Nor do I feel the need to compete with you. Reading your words soothes me and excites me. It's moving. At times, a bit puzzling. It makes me feel that I'm very close to you, that I've been invited into your world and I've accepted without hesitation. I wish I weren't so rusty right now, so I could describe my surroundings and my innermost thoughts as you do, with that perfect balance of insight, poetry and intimacy. But I wouldn't try to match your style. Instead, I have to define my own. When you said "to read these words is to meet me", little was I expecting this experience would set me out on a journey of self discovery through writing. My first messages were brief and direct, but as I have tried to delve more deeply into a variety of subjects, I've noticed how cocky and self indulgent I can be (or have become). All in all, I'm so grateful I can do this with you. I had postponed taking up my writing again for so long, and then, I've found someone as talented, sensitive and sharp as you. And no, by no means would this black cat ever demand the fox write any faster. He's too in love already with her words and, despite being whimsical and mischievous, he has enough sense and heart to treasure the letters she puts so much effort into. And he wouldn't want them to be any different.

Sitting in the living room at my friend’s place, I look out of the window and lament not having a professional camera to immortalize what my eyes absorb. The facade of the building across the street is so quaint in the dim twilight lights, that it’d better belong in an illustrated book, one of those that seem to have been made entirely with watercolors. The long, narrow windows are actually doors and I can see so much inside, brightened with lights so warm they make me think of candles and a fireplace crackling, like in those miniatures meant to represent a wintry village on Christmas Eve. In one of the apartments the white curtains hang halfway down, pressed against one side, slicing in half the lives of those inside, for what hides behind that thin waning moon would derange the average human mind. In some weeks, when you come back, the light will create a different composition, the air won’t be as humid, the breeze won’t be refreshing. Yet we might still sit here and daydream of the supernatural events going on past our sight.

Sol suggested Lin struggle with language as well. I observed that’d be inconsistent given the further events involving her in the story. I also mentioned that some of the landlord's lines felt like he was making a pass on Surya. Other than that, I ignore what else I said during that meeting. You describe the way I affected you that day with cinematic beauty. To me, you were just a random member in a project I was struggling to take seriously and relate to. The contrast is immense. So yes. I was a pale presence passing you by. We both left at the same time. Actually, I was ready to go a bit earlier than you, but decided to wait out of basic courtesy. We walked in the rain, neither rushing nor dragging. To a passerby, we might have seemed two people too comfortable in each other’s presence. Yet our emotional realities differed. You had already been captivated by something in me. On my side, little did I know that just a week later you would have become the person I most wanted to talk to, if not the only one in our group. I didn’t hide my cynicism and kinda confessed my apathy regarding the short film. You said living in Terrasa was boring. I even remember you said you’d sometimes have dates in Barcelona and the distance complicated things. I could recreate more parts of the conversation, but I’d rather say that by the time we said goodbye, I was already a bit drawn to you.

I've been reading your letter daily since I got it. Every time I do it, it is as though each message shone with a different light, revealing to me another piece of you I had hitherto overlooked. Such lights have a warmth. I feel it. It moves me deeply and invites me closer to you. After a few reads, I no longer simply picture you curling up in bed. I notice how you shiver. I see your eyes squint, chasing words and scenes across the shadows on your walls. I sense the pangs of longing squeezing your stomach. Maybe that’s why your sense of appetite seems to have suddenly abandoned you. And I imagine you imagining that I’m near you. I look at you, trying to figure out the best way to approach you. You pretend not to be aware of my presence and observe my patterns carefully. Last but not least, will you recommend some music to me? You’ve paired my words to Joni Mitchel’s singing. I wanna read you again while listening to whatever you suggest. Please, don’t think of the effect as if you were scoring a movie. It’s better to keep it spontaneous.

Today it’s raining and I love it. The sidewalks are so damp they seem slippery and the Palestinian and Catalan flags hanging from the balconies across the street remind me of someone who’s fallen fully dressed into a pool. Even the branches of the trees look juvenile, almost innocent and unusually happy. Days like this feel like a rare gift in a city famous for its perpetually blue sky. A boring blue sky obsessed with the sun. It hadn’t rained this much since the day we first met at Sol’s place and the people there rushed to praise your bold style, except me. I guess I was just trying to pass unhidden, purring on my seat while avoiding most contact. I’ve always liked it when it rains. A personal preference that sets me apart from most. Sunny days, on the other hand, drain my energy quite fast. They’re too much for my pale eyes and livid skin. The rain feels benign, like a soothing caress. I calmly embrace the melancholy it brings. I find it healing. And hardly ever do I want it to abate, let alone stop. Some of my most cherished memories are of afternoons watching movies, reading or just doing nothing, barely being, accompanied by the monotone riff of countless raindrops tapping on the nearly emptied streets, the windowpanes, the angry passerbies. And don’t get me started on my fascination for storms. There are black cats who are not afraid of water. In fact, some of us might enjoy playing outside in the rain, even with roaring thunder. You have one here who does. That’s probably why this cat doesn’t mind approaching the edge of a foggy forest to meet the fox. And if she doesn’t come out, this cat won’t mind venturing inside.

Since Isa is short for Isabel, the name of two of the greatest actresses ever, Isabelle Huppert and Isabelle Adjani, and renard is fox in French, I was going to propose crafting the character of Isabelle Renard: a French conceptual artist who’s very secretive, mysterious and hardly ever shows her face in public. What she does has yet to be decided. All that’s known for sure, is that she’s an even more eccentric alter ego of the self-proclaimed “weirdo” to whom I warmly dedicate these words. However, upon a quick search, I’ve found out the name’s already in use, shared by other women to whom it was imposed at birth, instead of embraced after they themselves realized what their spirit animal was. One of them is a sculptor, seemingly renowned. Now, let’s imagine the name itself carries some sort of mystic power that enhances the artistry of its bearer. If so, we’re left with two scenarios. First, chances are she’s already integrated it into her own psyche and branded her innermost persona with it, forming an unbreakable bond between her spirit and the faculties yielded by the name. But let’s say what happens is the opposite and she’s wasting its magic, leaving it available for whoever wants to use it. If so, we must still reject the name, for who wants to bother to explain which Isabelle Renard she is? Not ours. So, in either case, the name must be dismissed. The second woman is a lawyer. That career is very grounded in reality and that cries incompatibility with our Isabelle Renard. I am most sorry, but the character we’re crafting is everything but practical. She’s rather ghostly, a bit otherworldly, even ethereal. I might be giving you the impression that I’m too arbitrary here, but let’s be clear: our creation, our whims. But even if that crazy hybrid of talent and weirdness won’t be nourished with the light of our combined imaginations unless we give her a different name, I can still feel the name Isa levitating around me. It piques my curiosity and I must do a second search. My knowledge of Chinese is null so I rely on how we’ve spelled it all along. I’d prefer to have the Chinese version, for accuracy’s sake, though. But what the internet says, correct or not, lands better than expected. It says Isa means “reliable” and “elegant”. Time will prove the internet right on the former over and over. But it’s the latter I definitely have a quick eye for. You carry yourself with an elegance so natural that feels effortless. It reminds me a bit of my maternal grandmother’s. But unlike hers, there’s subtlety and serenity in yours, rather than a pride that feels defiant. That serenity is the essence of your gaze. It’s conveyed to your posture and it possesses your arms and legs, your neck and the muscles of your face. It seems to be disturbed only by a hint of nervousness at times, like a sudden sense of increasing awareness. Is it at those moments that the fox feels a looming danger approaching? Perhaps it’s just the atmosphere around too charged that saturates you as it leaks through your dilated pores. In any case, I’m too captivated by it. In my next entry, I’ll tell you what my name means and why I’m doomed to a most unlikely duality by it. I’ll go collect some of my books now, and as I reach my destination, I’ll be wondering what holding hands with a fox feels like.