I wanted to write you a beautiful letter. I sat down. I looked at the page. And time and space split in two. Out fell baubles and trinkets, monuments and facades. Out fell trees and stars, the obsequies of love and the tied-down tension of passion.
Out fell symphonies and Child ballads, accompanied by whispers, soft sobbing and the careless music of words gifted to a trusted confidante. Wind chimes and church bells impressed glinting stars and bright supernovae onto my mind. Faintly, behind it all, was the radiant hum that never began and will never end but insistently defines the boundary of our lives.
I wanted to write you a beautiful letter. Not a poem, but still a singerless song. A message not made of words or clauses or punctuation but of the spaces in between. Yet the maker’s hand kept getting in the way, groping to make out the features of it-knew-not-what – perhaps the cold, wet spaghetti brains in a makeshift fright-house. Incessantly searching, but never finding, its energy was spent haplessly losing the truth. Science told us this would happen, but instinct told us first.
All these things happened. I swear it’s true. All these things pressed from behind the veil of my eyes; only gentle corneal surface tension prevented a deluge of meaning and a drought of truth.
I looked at the page. Serene. Nothing more or less than it ever was. Was the Zen master mistaken? Did he propose an onion skin of illusion while he merely smothered his mind with a blanket? Schopenhauer, too – so desperate – so honest – but specious – what kind of criminal was he? Was he thieving us of reality or murdering his conscience? Either way, he’s forgiven. Like a vandal, his destructive ego shielded the heart of a defenseless child.
I wanted to write you a beautiful letter, or rather forge you a symbol – a seal which could hold the menagerie – or perhaps a ribbon and bow with a protean label attached. And every time you looked at it you’d understand a different aspect of a truth not funneled through space and time. Inside the box would be the effluvia that dance through the mind – on one hand inspiring creation, on the other threatening destruction: hope, strength, despondency, wisdom, pain, foolishness, amongst others.
Love, too. Of course, love – in itself more given to transformation while also permeating everything else. It is the only thing which can translate this all for us, but it’s a blind poet. It will define everything in epic and ancient terms which will make sense but be ultimately useless. We’ll stay sewn into its mesh, but never see the larger picture. The only thing that can help us, the only thing we can grasp, is the single thread between me and you. It’s a thread, not a wire. It will never speak, but will slowly betray its purpose in silence.
