Commiserate

Dear Long Lost.

      I talked to the Sweetheart tonight. I finally told him about my sister. He was surprised, of course, but courageous – courageous for me, I think, but only a little. I think he was mostly courageous for himself. It brought back too many painful memories. I had to tell him though. I couldn’t bear it if I put him through what he put me through. The not knowing. The lost time. The utter shock.

      He said all the right words in all the right way. We didn’t dwell on it, actually, we moved on quickly, but it was just enough to feel like he was holding me close to him across the miles, the way I did that afternoon in his kitchen. It’s strange. The way I hear his emotions, hear the smile in his voice. We laugh more, too. I think back to the days we were together, and I know we laughed – we laughed long and often, and yet it still surprises me when we laugh now. Maybe it’s because of all the things that happened in between then and now. The serious things, the tragedy. Should those things have stolen our laughter? If they ought to have, they didn’t.

      No, we still laugh. Still love.

      In fact, I’d say we do it better. We do it better than we did in the old days. What a cruel irony, isn’t it? But we had growing up to do back then. I’ve rambled about this before, I know I shouldn’t bore you. I’m moved by the feelings he stirs up inside of me, though. I’m moved to nostalgia, moved to be pensive. It makes me wonder, too, about whether or not you and I still have growing up to do. Is that possible? At our age? That we still have growing up to do? It almost seems silly, especially with you on the cusp of fatherhood, but it’s possible. It’s plausible.

Love,
      –

Almost frantic

Dear Long Lost.

      I don’t want it to be too late.

      That’s all I can think about this evening – how I don’t want it to be too late to save the greatest friendship the world has ever known. What a lofty, exaggerated thing to say, I know, but I believe it. A love lost like ours would have to be mourned in a poetic, even if silent and unknowing sense.

      But I don’t want it to be over. I don’t want it to be too late to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry. See, you’ve already said it, so maybe all it will take is for me to say the same. I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done, knowingly or unknowingly, to disappoint you; I’m sorry for every time I’ve disappointed you.

      I’m sorry for every lie. Yes, every one, even the ones that hid truths that you would want to hate me for – even those I would take back if it would retie the string that binds us.

      And that’s just it, Long Lost. Loyaulté me lie.

Incompletely yours,
      –

A note

Dear Anonymous Reader.

      Once again I find myself surrounded by scraps and pages I’ve collected over train rides, over car drives, over plane flies across the Heartland, down the Coast. I need to be better about my travel writing. That’s why God invented wi-fi, is it not? Blackberries? iPhones? I’ve been bad though, Reader. I’ve been lost in thoughts so deep they could only be cured by a sea of pen and paper. But fear not: their record will be kept. Look for them in the coming days.

Toujours,
      –

Pride and Love and Sin

Dear Long Lost.

      I am taught and retaught the meaning of good love. The Gospel today was about the Lord as our shepherd. Previously, of course, I referred to my priest, the one who left our parish, as being like a Shepherd to me. I still feel this very deeply, though I’m coming slowly to realize the error in that feeling, perhaps best described by the surrounding text of the quote about “good love.”

      “…Well, that, too, is blameworthy, even though it is spiritual and conceived in God’s name. Because even the love felt by the soul, if it is not forearmed, if it is felt warmly, then falls, or proceeds in disorder….”

      I assigned too many divine qualities to a man who, however devout, is still nothing but a man; a servant of God, perhaps, but not an angel. And nothing has illustrated this to me more clearly than the man who has come to replace my old Shepherd. Though of an age with his predecessor, he is so much more human, his flaws, and I daresay insecurities, bared before the critical eyes of all of us who fill the Sunday pews. (I’m sorry if my conversation bores you, but these thoughts consume me after mass). I looked upon these flaws with judgment, as I could feel the others around me doing, but then I stopped myself. Because who am I to judge, after all? And are not his flaws a lesson to us all? That we’re imperfect? How different that message used to be coming from my old Shepherd, standing serenely in apparent perfection. We would look upon him and think to ourselves, “Yes, we are imperfect, but perfection is possible.” That’s not true though. We are imperfect and will remain thus, no matter how we try.

      I encountered for the first time, under the guidance of my old Shepherd, a sense that perhaps God was truly reaching down during mass. When he would hold the host and cup aloft, praying for God’s presence and blessing, I could almost see a holy light, almost hear the angels sing. There was something about the way he always looked so pious, so earnest, garnering the devotion of all those around him that made him seem…divine. But this was wrong of all of us to think, as I’ve already said, for he was just a man, and a prideful one at that. Because beyond his pious looks and easy manner there was pride, too. A deserving pride, for he no doubt took great care in both his appearance and movements, but he would have been first to tell us that any pride is wrong. Perhaps he would have pointed to his own wrongful pride – his pride in being at the head of a flock who loves him so dearly – and called out that though there is a difference between a good love and a bad love, there is no such thing as a good pride, which is why it has long been called a Deadly Sin.

      So though my Shepherd could not have purposefully deceived us, nor in anyway consciously led us so slightly astray, it was still, I think, a disservice. And one that may yet be repaired with the humility inspired by the uncertain hands now holding the helm of our parish.

      Listen to me waxing on so profoundly, as if I have it all figured out. But I feel compelled to admit how endeared I am to our new priest. How curious I am to watch him grow and change and reshape the role vacated so recently by one, as I’ve said, so loved and worshiped in his own right.

      Only somewhat related, I’ve been meaning to ask how you mean to baptize your daughter (in what church).

Toujours,
      –

“A Girl of the Limberlost”

Dear Long Lost.

      This evening I say goodbye to the Lake. I roll through the remnants of the Limberlost, back the way I came. At least I’m traveling appropriately, not disturbing the tender passage of time.

      I had never seen the Limberlost before – until this weekend. I had never seen the trees growing out of water nineteen inches deep. I had never seen a forest swamp so untouched by anything but the soft flutter of a butterfly’s wings. That’s enough to break the spell if you let it. A butterfly. How fitting.

      It’s been a hundred years since the birth of the Limberlost. In many ways, you could call it a hundred years of solitude, but you’d be mixing genres. It’s as if we’ve all been in a deep sleep since then, and as if, while slumbering, we’d forgotten all about the Limberlost. If today we’ve woken, I wonder that more people aren’t wondering what became of it. What became of the Limberlost, of the talking trees, of the Swamp Angel? Did they all fall asleep with us, or were they awake the whole time? Have they aged or stayed forever-young? I used to wonder sometimes back when I was thirteen, sixteen, twenty…

      I feel it’s recent memory so clearly though, closing my eyes against the melting of the evening’s scenery. It’s Friday morning again. The sun shone through the secret places, glinting off the pooling water soaking through my canvas shoes. Steadying myself and finding my way, my hands gripped the bark of birchwood tress, the soft skin coming away gritty. My skirt became caught in the reeds of the grass and low branches tugged my hair. In the air, the noise of nature swelled in symphony, the birds, I think, conducting it all – calling to one another and coaxing songs out of the surrounding air. The hum of bugs. The click of crickets not yet chased away by the rising sun. The wind through straight and narrow plants, through leafy greens, along the surface of the water, and on top of it all, the sound of my disruption. Every step. Every touch. A diminished chord.

      And yet, I am a part of the Limberlost. As much as I’m apart from it, a piece of me has never left. Deep in my subconscious, I’m still sleeping, still waiting for that true love’s kiss to find me, to wake me.

Lazy and dreaming,
      –

Open my eyes: I see sky

Dear Long Lost.

      What would you say if I told you I was home? If I told you I was sitting on my old back porch and staring up at the sky as it changed from day to night, from night to day? I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t watch the sky this way. But I will say that the sky seems changed. Of course, this was the only sky I knew until I went away at the tender age of seventeen – how often I think of seventeen. Leaving and returning showed me how lucky we are to have the sky we do at home. It’s so much bigger here. So much taller. I can’t really describe the sensation, precisely, but it’s as though my inside stretches to the length and width of the sky and I’m somehow carried away upon it.

      It reminds me of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay poem called “Renascence” – you may know it, but perhaps not:

“All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold”…

      I shouldn’t have copied so much of it, but I would have much preferred to included the whole thing, if only it wouldn’t annoy you. Let me put the last part though, the last part is also so much a part of what I’m feeling right now:

“The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”

      “But East and West will pinch the heart / That can not keep them pushed apart”…how true that feels. In the evening air, the sky still a cerulean blue, nothing feels truer, and I imagine I can feel the ends of my soul, where they push hard against all directions, keeping the sky from crushing me.

      It’s heartbreaking, you know. But in a way I know you’ll understand isn’t sad.

A kiss goodnight,
      –

Losing It

Dear Long Lost.

      I got distracted this afternoon by what I think might have been an epiphany, though one not yet fully formed.

      I just don’t want to lose you.

      It seems simple enough, but is it? To lose someone, you first have to have them, and you’ve always made it quite clear that I should never take you for granted; that I should never get comfortable in the belief that I have any kind of hold on you. (I’ve obviously ignored that). The idea of “having” someone is also so foreign. Can one ever truly “have” another person? Let alone in a matter so wholly and completely that “loss” is possible, even in part? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m making the argument too semantic, but it’s difficult to articulate the emotional possibility or impossibility of losing someone.

      For argument’s sake, let’s say that we belong to one another in some way, that we each keep some part of the other. Let’s also suppose that you have or are trying to let go of the piece of me you have, while I meanwhile am holding tight to my piece of you.

      I can’t say for sure how desperate I am to hold on to it, but I do feel very desperate. I would do anything to hold on to it, I think, even refusing your own desire or so much as I can, especially, of course, if your desire is for me to relinquish it. I would use any means, go to any ends. Because you belong to me. You can’t be an Indian giver with pieces of yourself, and I don’t understand why you would want to do this to me. Why would you want me to lose you? Why would you want to lose me? Why do things have to change, Long Lost, just because we’ve gotten older?

      I know it’s not just because we’ve gotten older, but getting older does make it more complicated. I’ve forgotten how to say certain things, and you’ve been sewing up your lips since summer 2004. So much of our original relationship was communicated without words – in looks and touch – that watching you slip away is the most painful thing imaginable. Please, help me to hold on to you. Please tell me I could never lose you anyway.

Please.
      –

Sunset

Dear Long Lost.

      I’m chasing down the sunset tonight, the longest sunset I’ve ever seen. I’m barreling into it, a hundred miles per hour, but it keeps falling away from me, farther and farther into the West. Will I ever catch it, do you think?

Reaching likewise for your hand,
      –

Tender is not the Life

Dear Long Lost.

      There was a time when I was steeped in kindness. Everywhere I looked and went, without even asking, there it was, held out to me. It was like a veil drawn over my world that I realize so clearly now I completely took for granted. I thought it would always be there.

      Is there no kindness left in the world? No gentleness? Where is Robert F. Kennedy’s dream that we might “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the ways of this world”? You know me, Long Lost, I’m a great believer in civilization, in the triumph of art and poetry and culture over the baseness of mere survival. I believe that we are called to higher things, that perhaps, even, God instilled this purpose in us. To strive and reach for our better selves – as Lincoln said “the better angels of our nature.” Why, then, am I faced with so many contradictions to this belief? Would a less stubborn person than I simply reevaluate their belief? Understand it to consequently be false? But I can’t. For some reason, I can’t.

      Nathaniel said to me today – and perhaps this is part of what’s spurred these thoughts – that you should be gentle with yourself because no one else will. But that can’t possibly true. Already Nathaniel treats me more gently than I do myself, thereby contradicting himself, or whomever originally said those words. And as I’ve already said, I feel there was a time in my life when I encountered nothing but gentleness. It can’t all be childhood, either, unless childhood ends at seventeen. No, it must be something more than that, and it’s eating away at me tonight – whatever took the gentleness away.

      Even you and I, Long Lost, even we used to be gentle with one another. Not because we were fragile, although we were, but I think because we were better people. Now we effortlessly subject each other to dents and cracks, send each other crashing to the floor. We think the other can handle it, has grown accustomed over the years to harsher treatment, but have we? I’m not sure I have, but the cycle perpetuates itself. The less gentle you are with me, the less gentle I am with you. Increasing harshness, bluntness, until all of our smooth edges are made jagged again. But we can choose to stop, can’t we? We can choose to remember gentler days and kinder ways, I’m sure of it. And maybe then I can finally stop crying.

With love and hope,
      –

Set on a fence

Dear Long Lost.

      I saw a white dove sitting on top of a building this morning. I’ve never seen a white dove in real life before, and I stared at it with somewhat more awe than another person might have. Next to it, also resting against the clear, blue sky, was a black bird of some kind. I thought that surely this must mean something. A confession in black and white of some kind. A devil and and angel waiting to haunt my shoulders…as if there wasn’t one of each already there.

      You know I’m superstitious. I couldn’t help but think about that blackbird all by itself, couldn’t help but think one for sorrow, two for joy. I think that every time I see a single blackbird, whether it’s a crow or not. But the white dove stopped me from believing that was true. It had to be about something more than sorrow. It felt like God, for once, was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear what He was saying.

      You think this ludicrous, of course. You think they were just birds, and maybe they were. Maybe they were, Long Lost, but what if, just if, they weren’t?

Curious and curiouser,
      –