I’m losing sight in one of my eyes, the right one, to be specific. So, since it’s impossible to recover – so I’ve been told by the doctors – I’m left with a bad eye and a good one. Half blind? Half aware? Anyway, half, once again, as I’ve always felt. In the worst case scenario, I’ll completely lose my right sight and become half blind. But is it something new? Haven’t I always been half blind? Still, one can never be half blind! Either you're blind or you're not. That's why we have two eyes, two kidneys, two lungs... So we can afford to lose one and still not being considered handicaped (what a deal for social security!).

Half of me as always been extremely aware. Half has always strived to see things the way they really are. Half has always given up too soon by realising how impossible to climb were the mountains of prejudice and circumstance. Overwhelmed, half of me has always felt joy.

Meanwhile, there was this other half of me, the going-blind half of me, the cloudy, shady, fictional, unclear half. And this half fantasised, dreamt constantly, was at the origin of several emotions, conceived new and strange worlds. This half, deprived of clear definition, chose myth over science, chose fiction over reality. This was always, maybe, the half capable of feeling love.

Next Monday, September 28th, it will be a year since the first time we talked to each other. We’ve met the day before at Riga’s airport, but our first words to one another were on this day. I’m keeping track of all these little things because that’s part of what you left me with. That’s how blind my blind half is!

One year, and it hasn’t gone away my love. It is quiet now, it is silent, but it’s still here. Even now, after all this time, I rather go on loving you than anyone else. I don’t want to be rude, but even dead you’re so much more loveable than any living woman I know! Of course I may be loving you with my blind half, but be as it may, I’m looking at others with the sharp and aware part of me. Lea, you are irreplaceable. I know that's almost like saying "water, you're wet!" But as I’ve said, I may be losing sight in one of my eyes, but still I only have eyes for you.

These last days I’ve been missing you more than usual; I’ve been thinking things I’ve never thought before, little details, like how profoundly sad it is to die in the snow: death over white, over purity. Me, at least, whenever I conceptualized a place filled with snow, whenever I imagined a snowy village, pure, beautiful, clean, white, death had NEVER a role to play. White as Heaven, I always thought... But is there death in Heaven?

Red over snow, like blood in Paradise: The world has definitely changed. No more sacred places, I won’t hide again. You see, here is the going-blind half of me: In the absence of clarity, illusion! In the absence of rationality, dementia! Maybe religion will still have a word to say...

I just miss you and don’t know what to say and how to say it, and because I miss you I don’t know how I can stay for so long without writing something to you. I just talk and talk, with no-one to hear words that will be lost forever.

You loved me once Lea. You’ve changed me and I will love you forever. Today it’s my birthday, but what I celebrate in me is you.