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correspondence with a great preponderance of professionalism and etiquette because I feel it to be a great overlooked, outdated form of communication.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