les jours triste

Dear K-

I miss it all. I miss it more than I have in a long time. When I think of living out my days here in the Midwest, in some suburban house with egg-white siding, I can feel my soul sigh and drift to a distant dark space where it tries not to admit that this is life. I want to be back in the mountains, hiking through the Tatras, with the rhythmic pacing of Slavic tongue awaiting at every greeting. My life here is nothing to scoff at, mind you. It is content. It would definitely make do and be an enviable life to many if I continue on this trajectory. All the more, then, it seems so strange and unseemly to be restless, to desire to return to Eastern Europe and disappear from American soil.

Even we have lost connection. What remains here but the broken shells of former moods and inclinations, no longer a correspondence but rather a segmented diary of individuals. The entries have grown more listless ever since I returned 4 years ago. If it had been my choice, if it had been within my power, I would have probably never returned here.

Some days I wonder what life would be like if I had never left Brno.

I miss it. I don’t want to be here anymore, and I am not sure how to approach that subject or whether I should bury these sentiments as deep as I can and hope I can find satisfaction with this American life and prevent these sentiments from erupting again.
Hopefully your new love is treating you well and you are finding the recent autumn weather pleasant.

Restless again,
-K

i lost connection

Today I snuck out of the house as early as possible to avoid seeing him. I longed to know whether everything was resolved but too terrified to confront the truth. So instead I slipped out to my car before the sun was fully risen and set off for the familiar space of a big, empty room which would stay empty for the next few hours.

I fear what his next words will be. I shudder to think something so trivial could cause such a rupture.

I just want to wake up and have it be happy again. I'm sick of all the bile.

Adrift,
-K

Escapism

Dear K,

I wish I could laugh for you. I'm face with a crisis myself. Today I thought about the pointlessness of existence. I was in training for my new job, which I'm going to abandon in a few months. Everybody around me was talking about their weekend where they drank away last week, and about the basketball games. They talked about the commute to work. They talked about their children. Everyone was wearing khakis. We're learning how to take insurance payments for things that people own. My coworkers are working to afford more things to own so that they can insure more things, and I just don't want to live in a world where I'm concerned about the next paycheck because I have to buy more khakis.

But I need these people. I need them to buy what I want to sell, even though it isn't for them. They aren't my demographic. This sounds arrogant, but I'm too smart for them, all of them. I'm too smart for the whole god damn building of them. I am surrounded by people blissfully floating along in their lives. We're having a food day on Friday. Everyone is very excited about it. Do you know what a food day is? A food day is a rebranded potluck. Every person with a slight ethnicity is implicitly expected to bring their style of ethnic food. In my training group that is a sushi, even though the person isn't japanese, and then there's also one person who's supposed to bring "something from south of the border". Everything else will consist of cheese, potatoes, chicken, cheese, bread, corn chips and cheese. Every hour and half one of my new coworkers excitedly asks me what I'm planning to bring.

The walls are painted bright colors, and our cubicles are collected into groups named after bodies of water in Iowa. There are only two natural lakes in Iowa. There are four lactation rooms on every floor for new and expecting mothers. The walls next to the elevator are red and have a texture that reminds me of either waves of grain or ice on a frozen lake. On Fridays we can donate a dollar to charity for the privilege of wearing jeans. This is a very important thing. All these details make my days fade to grey already.

I don't want to live in this world.

I was happier when I was depressed about not having a job.

I won't laugh for you today, but it will be warm soon, and I will break free of this styrofoam prison and out into the sunlight.

Meet me there under the trees with green on their leaves, and we'll walk in dreams and the fogs of early evenings and wine.

Until We Meet In Sleep,
K

anxiety is cheap

Dear K-

Concentration is far from consistent. It has been a week now and still my thoughts drag in the turbulent eddies of last weekend. There is no shaking the sense of loss. I live in a big, empty apartment that echoes loneliness at every foot fall. It seems I can’t even sit to attempt to work or study without my mind drifting to try to fill those hollow spaces with some memory of him or a dream of what could have been. I try to keep my lips firm and appear to the public unscathed. Today is has rained all day, but it is fitting with my mood so I don’t mind it.

I hope you are doing well. Your life is full of opportunities galloping before you, fluttering and glittering with such excitement. I am happy to hear of your potential and the fact that you are progressing forward. When you make the big move, you should call me to tell me how it all goes. Moving to a new city and into a new life can be terrifically thrilling. I wish you all the best.

I haven’t heard much in terms of my emotional progress. Just a gentle plea to be patient and a vague reassurance that all will be well. I want it to be well, I do. But the insecure, vulnerable vein, a marring flaw of my character, insists that this all can only lead to disappointment. How long does one wait for an answer before the realization sinks it that the answer may never arrive? It has only been a week…but it feels like an eternity on this weary heart. I think I’ve lost weight, if nothing else. The stress provides a terrific diet regime.

Hopefully, if he does return, he will recognize his love. She’s grown pale and thin and dyed her hair to match the blood that still flows sluggishly in her arteries. Will he be able to accept this skeleton once more? Or will he see the damage and flee?

Laugh for me.
-K

what a lovely war

Dear K-

You bring up a point I have tried to stress to others for years. For life to be appreciated we require variation. There must be epic heights and abysmal lows. There must be bile for the honey to taste sweet. The greatest love that could ever exist can only do so if one has also experienced heartache. I find the heavy days are more tolerable if you think how the later times will seem a bit lighter in comparison. At this point in my life I can’t complain about too many things of much consequence. Relationships are strained in some moments, but sometimes there is no other way. So it goes.

I apologize if I sweep to the dramatic at times. Occasionally I treat written correspondence with a great preponderance of professionalism and etiquette because I feel it to be a great overlooked, outdated form of communication. I like to keep it in the lofty erudite or artistic clouds since most electronic conversations have been reduced to as few characters as possible. Dismal Lols and ttyls. Disgusting.

Almost every day I run. It is one of the few things that brings me pleasure consistently. Even though some days are so bitterly cold and my bones feel weak and creaky, I still force myself to kick out the miles because I know I won’t feel right without it. Sleep is elusive once again, and it becomes nonexistent without logging at least a few miles of running a day. One day I’d like to live somewhere with numerous trails and routes to explore so I would never get bored. In Brno I occasionally would run along the river, on the deserted paths alternating between patches of loose pebbles and the sandy bank. Every now and then I would pass a lonely fisherman, sitting on the shore on an overturned bucket with his rod arcing gracefully over the gently bubbling waters. The river gurgled like hot pitch but I knew from a few slips and missteps that its water was still ice despite the slowly climbing temperatures that came with the spring months.

Some days I miss it. Today more than usual.

I think I am moving again.

Hope you are well,
-K

These Battleships Never Sink

Dear K,

Have you noticed how dramatic we've allowed ourselves to become? I suppose you have cause to be dramatic, being in love and in the hospital. That's fair I suppose. We write our letters though as if we were fighting in a great war. They are communications sent from a sinking battleship, or a city under siege.

I suppose we've been at war though. Life is a great struggle. Or anyway it seems like one when you end your adolescence.

What happens when the war never ends though? If the battleship never sinks, but just sits there half in the water? Or the armies never leave the field. People will go on with their lives. They'll ask the soldiers how the war is going, but still they will bake bread, and make soup, and gather crops, and have sex, and make children. If the siege never lifts it stops being a siege and simply becomes life. Soon everyone forgets why the siege began, and only that it is the way of the world, and the siege must happen.

But here we are, all grown up. Out there in the world, and I think we've found out that the war is not ending. The war isn't going away. The struggle won't end, because it is simply life, and life goes on and on.

Have you ever gone on a long run or hike? You follow a trail, and you've got this goal to get to the end. The whole time you are running along you say to yourself that this trail or road will never end, and the sun is shining and beating you down. You are covered in sweat, and tired and sick from the exhaustion, but because you have told yourself you will, you keep running to the end of the damn eternal road, it stretches on for miles and miles, it could be a hundred miles, it could be a thousand miles, but you keep going.

Then finally, finally you reach the end of the pavement. You reach the end of the trail, and you stop, breathe, and maybe sit and have a drink of water, and it occurs to you that you could run the whole thing again.

I think that is like life. I think that is what dying will be like. And I know it is what living is like.


You're city is under siege, and I hope the siege never ends,

All My Love,
K