introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- on letters before full moon midnight - fifth of june, 2001-after a very productive nite- "if i wrote you you would know me and you would not write me again."~dar williams i got a letter today. it was from you. The timing was perfect. you see, this is the time of year when i'm most likely to be writing letters. this is the time of year when, as is the tradition with the end of spring and beginning of summer, i've been sort of yanked away from all i know to return home to my parents house (should i still call it home?) and i leave memories behind in a small town in the hills of pennsylvania. well, except for last year and a summer a few summers ago...but even then, things came with change. others left while i stayed. others joined me while others flitted from the grasp i had on them and a sorted out stability. this is a time for writing letters to those who i've been torn from by the warmer days to find shelter in a new place. this is a time for writing letters and if that weren't enough to remind me.... ...i got a letter in the mail today. i knew it was coming and the anticipation was incredible.... and he was writing something about the letters never sent that was making me think of all of the letters i've never sent myself. i was pondering over how i sometimes write letters with the intent to find a stamp soon and get them in the mail but they never seem to make it. i was mulling over how things slowly don't seem to matter nearly as much and how, when i find the letters finally, i sometimes tend to frown and wonder why i ever wrote it all down anyway. in a sense, these letters left unsent become letters to myself when i find them and they make me question myself over and over again. and if that weren't enough to remind me... i got a letter today. it was from you and i had been checking the mail every day since friday. well. every day since friday not counting sunday. (i sometimes think that the postal service is the only real company that remembers that sunday should be a day of quiet rest.) the letter came in a white envelope that mixed well among the pile of mail that comes to the house every day. usually, there isnt' much for me: the occasional invite to apply for a new credit card that will no doubt be declined anyway, stray bills, and sometimes, a postcard from someone who thought to remember me on a vacation to anywhere but here. and then there she was promising a love letter; telling them (us? i do check, you know, maura...every time its new and sometimes, when its not new.) to hold her to it and it made me think of how i always say i'll write. and i do....but its like i said: i have this habit of keeping things unsent. and when she finally wrote it out, it made me think of the letters that you'd sent me. it made me think of how nobody ever wrote me letters with that much feeling compacted into the words; with that sort of emotion charging every sentence-thought. and as if that wasn't enough... i got a letter from you today. it came in good time, seeing as you sent it on friday. at least, i think so. its amazing how much faster things seem when you're patient. faster like the time going by til friday when i'll once again feel your arms entwine with mine in what i know will be just the hug i've needed for weeks. i got your letter and i think that if i hadnt' opened it to read what you'd read inside, i still would have been as delighted, just knowing it was there. i took my time opening it. i love to relish those feelings. and it was just this week in my newsweek that i read the article about the romance of letter writing and it was like a kick in the ass to me, for a moment. for, i too, have become guilty of ten second letters....typing off my email inscriptions and sending them off with a click of my aging mouse and receiving replies most often by the end of the day. and i tore the article out to send to you with all of the letters i've written to you and haven't sent. i think you'd appreciate it. and if that wasn't enough: i got a letter from you today. it was just the thing i needed. they were just the words i needed to read. it was in your voice, ebbed out on to lined paper in black pen in the scrawl-script that is yours. i felt closer to you somehow as i slowly took in each word, making myself read slowly as not to rush through and miss a single thing. i read it. i reread it. i got a letter from you today. and though i don't send enough of the letters i write to you, i want to try to be better. but such are empty resolutions sometimes...and i so want for this resolution to mean something. and i know i don't send enough letters. and i know that this isn't my handwriting, scrawling and curved and flowing. but this is a letter for you. june 5, 2001. tuesday night. late-ish. my darling T, i don't write you nearly enough letters. i don't expound nearly enough on how much you've come to mean to me. i don't tell you nearly often enough about how you saved me from my own bitter self at just the right second. in one letter i once started writing, i wanted to tell you about how much your voice calms me down. i wanted to tell you how knowing that you're there to just listen sometimes is enough for me. i wanted to tell you that i don't care if i win the go fish game so long as i get to spend those hours with you...watching you...hearing you think out loud...watching you smoke those cigarettes. that those hours will each be precious to me in a way that i don't think i could ever put to words. i tell you all the time that you render me speechless and you do, you know. sometimes, i just can't fathom the tenderness with which you seem to cradle my heart. you are the most careful person. and i wanted to tell you that i had him pegged wrong all along, you know. all that time, i called him the glass-hearted boy....but i think it was i who was glass-hearted all along. and i know that i try to present this stainless wrought exterior sometimes, but you know the fenton that lies beneath. you somehow managed to peel back layers and layers of shell to find more than a few stained glass slivers inbedded in me. i wanted to tell you that being able to tell you everything that night...meant the world to me. i wanted to tell you how much more clean you've made me feel. i wanted to tell you i feel like fresh linen on a clothesline in the summer sunny breeze some days and its because of you. its crisp and raw and rough and sweet and i can't get enough of it. i wanted to tell you how good slow speeds are cracking up to be...i wanted to tell you that i'll wait forever or explode tomorrow with you. that i'm in it for the long haul. that i'm not going anywhere without you; that without you, i'm going nowhere. i wanted to thank you for remembering my friends' names and for giving me a hard time....for not taking me too seriously but knowing when something's wrong...when there is something amiss with me that maybe i wouldn't otherwise tell you if you hadn't asked....for just being amazing. most of all...i think i just wanted to tell you i love you. because i do. and i've said it before, its true...but i've never said it more comfortably. i've never said it with the ease and grace i do now...and i've never said it to a more profoundly amazing human. human. you're human and incredible and you make me feel human, too. you make me feel beautiful. you make me endlessly happy. i wanted to tell you i love you. i wanted you to know. until, baby. love, me PS: i love you. ******** be well, cats. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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