Dearest,
I am a fool for: cut flowers in a vase, the color green, a dark chocolate square in warm baguette, for summer. In spite of death I cannot help but hope. For months we don’t speak, we meet again and maybe it is not the same, but there is still love.
August ending every year and it is raining (pigeon leaves and tree feathers) onto the green grass. August ending and through it your smile holds.
THE ESSENTIAL READING LIST FOR THE HOPEFUL:
JOHN BERGER From A to X
RAINER MARIA RILKE Letters to a Young Poet
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY the Little Prince
Hope is: I come across this exhibition, this book at just the right time. Your text arrives as I despair. My friend sends a teabag with a postcard, not one oasis but two. It’s this camera angle in the picture you sent me from a place I have never been, but you carried my heart with you there and it shows. It is conversation with an old friend threaded through a common memory.
Maybe I am having the same conversation time and time again just with different people but that is wrong. I am building every conversation onto the last conversation. This repetition is not frivolous it is needle kissing cloth again and again. There is still work to be done.
Postcard says nothing other than I thought of you. Text says nothing other than I thought of you. I text you a quote, an article, a weather report. It says nothing other than “This made me think of you. I am thinking about you. Believe it: I am thinking of everybody I love all the time. I borrow your eyes and I envy their kindness”. It says “I am afraid you will die. I am afraid we are drifting apart.” Says “We are old friends but everytime we meet a small spring finds its way”. Says “I am at this museum and saw something I know you will like. We are not drifting apart. We could not even if we wanted to.” Says “I am watching this show you made me discover I am thinking of you every second and time is dripping honey-sweet.” Says “Wherever you stand, I hope the whole world is kissing you (sun and leaf and rain and dust)”.
Frank O’Hara writes the names of those he loves with all the light he can muster. I do not write your names in poems but I love you enough to endure forgetfulness. You are walking towards me through this crowd and my eyes can’t see yours but your footsteps echo louder to my ears. I close my eyes and trust that you will come.
Dearest, let this letter hold hope for you the way paper holds these words.
Books meet with conversations. The art in the exhibition you went to Saturday dances circles around that one question you have been asking everybody over and over again: ask and the world answers. Ask and your eyes will look at the world and provide answers. Ask and your heart will seek.
