a love letter

My darling iridescent angel,

Today I cannot shake you from my mind. I believe my dreams must've been full of your singing, you adorable siren.
These days I am strangely silent, as if everything I want to say doesn't seem worth saying to anyone but you. You--you make my favourite topics even more dear, with the way you firmly grasp them and spread them out before you--the way they make your eyes come alive.

I don't know how much longer I can go without hearing your laugh and seeing the way your eyes and nose screw up with merriment. I am saving up amusing things to tell you--I've got quite a trove of them now. I suspect, though, when I finally am able to be with you I shall lose them all in the flood of my long awaited happiness.

My hands are cold. Every single bit of me is cold. I wish you were here to warm me.
The shipwreck known as me has never longed to land anywhere but in your arms, I hope you know that. Every day spent all these miles from you makes that painfully apparent.

All my love to you and many kisses. For the two little rascals, as well. (I hope you tell them stories of me every night, so they are not forgetting their absent father who would really much prefer to be with them then stuck in a mire of endless business.)

I love you for always--till the moon crumbles, till the sun turns to ash, and far beyond that too.

Ever your incurably infatuated husband,

C.E.


Postscript - Make sure you write your reply in the strongest ink you can find--I always fear I'll fade your words with my constant readings.

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I finished reading the biography Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy - A Lost Generation Love Story by Amanda Vaill yesterday and for some reason it inspired me to write this imaginary letter. There weren't really any love letters in the book, but spending time in the midst of that era (n.b. the 1920's and 1930's) and its people (the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds &c.)inspired me. Actually, it wasn't till I was looking up a picture of Sara Murphy that the letter started coming into my head. That would be the picture above, by the way. Isn't she lovely? She also happens to share a name with one of my favourite people... :)
The initials C.E. were pulled out of thin air, in case anyone was wondering.


Still don't really feel like talking about life. I am feeling pretty positive about this new year, though. I hope everyone else is too!

October

I miss his voice speaking in the distance as I wandered through the shelves of worlds waiting to be discovered. (As was I.)


I played hide and seek with my heart in the aisles. I hid from confronting what I really wanted: him.

As October approaches again, my thoughts drift like dead leaves into a pile at one place: his feet.

(I wish...
Why didn't I...
It's better...
this way
right?)

Yes.
It's just October sweeping through me with an incisive wind of near-sadness & almost-regret; bringing to the surface all I let drop.
Soon I will be able to let these things fall into the opaque waters again; but first I must remember, I must embrace each recollection: the barbed and the sweet. (Each one has been gilded with a sheen of significance they do not deserve.)
I let the words of old diaries pour over my cheeks, I try on those secret smiles again. (They still fit.) But more often than not they wrinkle into winces and I remove them with a sigh.


These things: I want to remember them because Common Sense is standing nearby and soon she will shake her head, tell me to put them--to put him--out of my mind again.
Bravely, I'll uncurl my fingers, let these cherished things sink and nestle in the arms of the depths. (All the while knowing perfectly well I will fish them out again. Perhaps too soon...)

...Definitely too soon. Already I've retrieved one or two: just my favourites! Please allow me those! I dry them off and place them in a box. A mahogany box that keeps secrets as well as my own heart; they're safe here, yet accessible. I am content.

(I just ignore the arrows Common Sense aims at my head. Their blows have grown as soft as sighs over the years, anyway. For she knows I don't care, and any effort will be wasted. She keeps on trying, though, and I admire that. Still, I will not forget for her; I cannot just yet.)

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Been feeling nostalgic lately, for it was October last year that signaled the beginning of a strange and horrible year that would turn me into a girl I didn't recognize. (A girl that still sneers at me when I look closely at my reflection.)
Of course, this piece focuses on one of the highlights of the year, though one that caused as much stress as joy (a stranger who happened to be perfect). Here's hoping this next year heals instead of harms...

I am happy, though, for it finally feels and smells like autumn! My mother asked me the other week what autumn smells like. I said the first thing that came to mind: Dead leaves and blooming hopes.
Though it was random at the time, I now realize: my hopes are blooming. All sorts of wonderful things feel possible in the autumn. Which is a sentiment I expressed during spring, I believe. It's true for both seasons, though! No wonder they're my favourites.



{1st image found here, 2nd image is my favourite painting, 'Eleven AM' by Edward Hopper.}

Dear You

(A post via Heather.)

Dear You,
It always make me sad to think of our friendship which was cut off so suddenly. You were gone before I even knew you were going.
It was all out of your control, though. Which makes me feel better and at the same time worse.
I miss you; do you remember me?
I'm sure you do though this all happened two (or was it three?) years ago. It frustrates me that I can google your name and come up with your prestigious family tree, but have no way of contacting you. Probably ever again.
That's the beauty and sorrow of online friendships: they're like signaling with a lantern across a dark abyss and receiving a reply glimmering back at you. Then one day you signal in vain, the only reply is a continued darkness.
Maybe I'm just living in the past but kindred spirits are not a dime a dozen, you know. I miss our messages back and forth, our jokes, our intangible bonding.
Dare I wish for the impossible? I will! I hope our paths cross again someday.
(If I ever make it to France, don't be surprised if I come knocking on your door.)

Much love from your friend,
Me


Now to pass it on - Jade, Kim, Shopgirl, and Ever, I ask you to write a letter to whoever about whatever. It must begin with "Dear you" and you can only use pronouns.
(And any other reader who would like to do this... do it, please! I know I always say that, but gosh... I always feel like I'm probably missing the person who really wanted to do it. Just let me be content in my paranoia, thank you! :P)


Funnily enough, a few days before this tag was passed on to me, I found an unfinished "Dear You" letter I had written a few months earlier. It got lost in a pile of papers (a typical fate!), so I finished it and decided I might as well post it now, along with the other letter.


Dear You,
Whenever I write, I always feel the need to address myself to you.
You, you! It's so ambiguous. You could be male or female. You could be my mother, you could be the dog next door.
Sometimes I'm not even sure who you are. You are my lover, you are my enemy. You are a sonnet, you are prose. You are sufficient; you will never be enough.
But you know... you always know. I can tell you those things I always wanted. Whoever you are, I need you. Because, in writing to you, I feel a little less lonely: you're reading along.
Thank you.

Ever and Ever,
Me


{Painting is 'Woman Writing at a Table' by Thomas Pollock Anshutz.}

mostly true musings on missing

I put my memories of you on the gramophone and played them all night long.
I awoke in the morning, stretched out on the floor like a cadaver.
All I felt was sadness and confusion. Had I awoken from a dream? I don’t remember.
But the sadness and confusion decided to make themselves at home; one nestled in my right pocket, the other in my left.

The rain sang drowsily all morning and dampened the world's colours. I sat at the window and mused how if I should touch any part of the wet world, the colours would come off on my hand.
I contemplated going outside and tracking the grass's green into the worn, grey asphalt. Perhaps I should have run my hands across our blue car and then streaked my fingers across the sky, making it blue again.


I took the poem with the cracked frame off the wall and replaced it with a Monet: vague, colourful, whoami?; it seems to fit my life right now.

Do you know how to say 'I miss you' in French? 'Tu me manques.' That literally translates as 'You are missing to me'. I love that.
The phrase 'I miss you' seems so solitary, as if the missing process only concerned 'I', myself. But 'tu me manques': your presence is evident, you are the subject of the sentence.
Likewise, you do not miss me, I am missing to you. Je te manque. We are a whole that makes no sense apart.

At first, I thought I would be fine. Now I feel as if my subconscious has been dyed the colour of your eyes. Underneath every thought and action it’s there, a wandering, green phantom. I can't wash it out no matter how hard I try. Though perhaps I was hardly trying at all... (It's too wearying to care enough these days.)

It seems to be my fate to miss the times and places that have gone, and the people too. The times and places cannot be helped, but the people... perhaps I am at fault. Maybe there is something I could have said or done, so that I would not be here, feeling lost and dreaming of you. Yet there is a thought that haunts me: I am happier this way, missing you. That I have made you transcendent as an intangible and your reality could never measure up.
For all I know, that could be true. But it has no chance of being proved or amended because... tu me manques (and I fear it will last forever).





{1st picture taken from text of "Miss Bishop" by Bess Streeter Aldrich, 2nd picture taken by me [the painting is, of course, by Monet], 3rd picture is of Paul and Linda McCartney taken from his 'Maybe I'm Amazed' music video.}