tirer comme des lapins

Dear K-

Again I find myself apologizing for a lack of correspondence. This time my silence was not entirely intentional- I merely became sidetracked and bogged down and unable to adequately address your letter. Then, when I found myself ready to make a reply, I discovered the g key of my keyboard to be broken. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a response without using a single g. And so I waited, and now this letter may be full of as many g’s as I so desire.

And so with great grinning greetings I gingerly grate out my gentle correspondence.

I hear you have a new flat, something near the center of town and overlooking a garden. That’s all I really need to know about it, for I’ve already perfected a quaint image in my mind of what I expect it to resemble, and in some ways I’m afraid to spoil that daydream. I imagine there’s a firm wooden desk upon which you scrawl your letters and your prose, with your secrets laying stifled in the dark corners of the drawers. The place is relatively well-kept and enjoys lovely natural lighting, although you’ve purchased several floor lamps to aid in lightening the atmosphere at night. Especially now, as the days get shorter, you most likely find artificial lighting as the primarily illumination of your hours (as unfortunate as that may be for our health and happiness).

Whenever I imagine that garden, however, for some reason I picture a sort of graveyard or memorial. There are weeping angels made of stone that hang their dark faces to stare at the neatly trimmed lawn beneath them. The sidewalk is even and holds a gentle curve incorporated purely for aesthetic purposes, to maintain a sense of organic form. I like to picture you ambling through the grass in the dreary winter afternoons, avoiding the cracks in the pavement because you’re afraid you’ll hurt your mother. You imagine the statues to be alive, but to be moving so slowly it is imperceptible to your eyes. Only when you blink, that is what relieves them of their lethargy and for that simple split second when your eyes are closed tight, you imagine they look up to the sky and wail in desperation, they shake their fists and claw at the earth, and a few of them simply let their tears fall to earth to become small round pebbles in the soil at their feet. But maybe not.

Light dawns and marble heads. What the hell does that mean?

-K