it's only a paper moon

Dear K-

Time keeps progressing onward. It doesn’t quite feel as if it is sailing by me, like some lightweight clipper, but rather like a steadily chugging ocean liner. When viewed at the horizon it hardly seems to be moving at all, but in actuality it is persistently pressing onward at a respectable pace. Working 7 to 6 every day, I don’t get a lot of time to sit and reflect upon my days. I move from one day to the next, trying to find small events to motivate me through the weeks. My days are spent looking at people’s eyes, which I guess isn’t too much to complain about since that is the career path I settled upon. Eyes are beautiful. But now, when I try to relax, I still find myself noticing the slight amblyopia of an actor in the movie on the television, or I try to guess the eyeglass frame my old friend is wearing on her trip home from college. It’s the first thing I notice. I don’t even think about how long it has been since we’ve spoken and caught up on each other’s lives. Instead, I think about her -3.25 OD and -3.75 -0.50 167 OS prescription. I wonder if I’m losing myself.

At times, I miss the student’s life and I find myself picking up old text books for my night reading. Of course, spending each night reading Remington’s “Clinical Anatomy of the Visual System” doesn’t really compare to your Marquez and it doesn’t lead to very entertaining dreams, but it keeps me focused on the present. It’s somewhat depressing to admit that your life isn’t the makings of some great novel. We’ve written bits of ourselves into so many of our short stories, poems, novels…But, as you stated, those are merely characters. They get to progress through the bodies of text and find neat little solutions and tidy situations which circle around to make some point. Our lives, unlike fiction, don’t necessarily have to make sense. Reality is quite a bit messier, and not always so eloquent.

It’s been over a month since I’ve seen my love. I regret to admit that with each day that passes without his presence my heart grows gradually more remote. While I adore companionship, I’ve spent the majority of my life alone. Left to my own devices, I revert to an independent lifestyle. My heart grows cold and dormant, and I think of him less and less. It’s hard to remember his voice. For the moment, I still miss him. I am not the type of girl who will make demands, but regrettably I am the type passive enough to let a good thing fade away through disregard and cowardice. I hate getting sentimental. I’d rather focus on things more useful and meaningful, like chemical reactions, trains, or iambic pentameter.

Tomorrow I fly to Phoenix alone. I’ll switch to the more personable, extroverted facet of my personality, the portion which has been trained and practiced over the years and is usually recessive, by my choice. Smiling and responding to interview questions with comprehensive, intelligent quips, dressed in a suit and maintaining an air of confidence…it’s an exhausting routine. I enjoy the experience, but when I go home at the end of the day I’m self-critical and weak. Perhaps it will be different in the dry desert air. Maybe it will be good to get out of the Midwest again.

I’ve started writing letters again.
I love the way the air feels this time of year.

Yours truly,
-K

Leitmotifs Don't Really Exist

Dear K,
Whoever told you to stay? For that matter who told you to go? I know I told you both, but we both know you shouldn't listen to me when it comes to these things called decisions. I've been reading a lot of Marquez lately, ridiculous amounts. I read Love In The Time Of Cholera twice, and I'm almost through 100 Years Of Solitude for the fourth time this year, not to mention the collection of short stories that I stole from a friend three years ago. I read that last week.

I've been waiting for this job to start, and everyday when I put down the book by Marquez, I go and look in the mirror. I think maybe I'll see myself grow old before my own eyes, because the books and the waiting and the trembling thoughts about being a taxpayer and a job holder and that gleaming stainless steel future that awaits beyond make me feel as if my youth is a rope or sand running through my fingers, and in my mind I'm grabbing and holding the rope made of sand but gripping around it won't work and it seems as if the time is almost up.

We're talking as if we've already settled into the antiseptic beds of the last hospital we'll visit. As if the phantoms of our failures and successes and our loves and losses are already surrounding our death bed.

I found something out though, we have a common problem. We've read too many books and we've seen too many movies, and probably the worst part is, we've written too many stories. The thing I found out is that we're not characters in a book or a film or even in the New Yorker. It is a trick of memory that makes us think so. Do you know what this means? It means anything can happen to you and it doesn't have to mean anything, but it can if you want it to, and you can really do whatever you want, because there's no giant author there up in the sky deciding what you do.

I'm writing, and soon I'll be out there in the world, living again, and I'll sweep away all these waves of disappointment and displacement. Why are you mourning for a past that hasn't happened yet? Whoever said you couldn't change your mind?

Regards,
K

you take the red line to morse

Dear K-

I headed out into the woods yesterday evening. Just as the sun began to dip in the sky, I jumped the last fence and wandered deep into the timber and brush, with no real destination in my head. But how is that different from my everyday life? Do I ever really seem to know where I’m going?

It felt good, that crisp, early autumn wind; I ignored the thorns that caught on my pant legs and sleeves and tugged me in various directions. After an hour or so, their tiny claws dragged me to the creek bed. The creek bubbled thick and black, like tar, as it ambled lazily past. I sat on the bank as night crept upon me and I just stared at my reflection in that murky water. Eventually, all I could make out was a shadowy figure with a glowing red flame for a mouth, the embers of my cigarette pulsing orange with every inhalation. I couldn’t help but think of all the crunchy dead leaves cluttered at my feet as my ashes gently drifted to the soil. Smoky the Bear would have cried that night.

We’re adults now, aren’t we? Doesn’t that mean we should have real lives and real jobs? You say you want the sterile house and the clean pressed dress shirts and the shiny shoes, and yet I’m still sitting out in the woods alone, chilled and ashamed. I want it, too. I want that life. I want the clean-swept apartment with wooden floors and imitation marble countertops. I want a window that opens to let me hear the city streets below as I read on the couch. When I go to sleep at night I want to know that when I wake up he’ll still be there beside me, and I can make him breakfast and kiss him sweetly on the lips before we each head off to our work.

But I don’t have that happiness yet. I’m still stranded in the small town of my youth, drifting through these autumn days and wondering if I should have stayed here after all.

I chose to stay. I chose to give up the life I had there, across the sea. And some days I still wonder if I should have just boarded that plane after all. I’m afraid that sensation may never fully fade away.

Consistently doubtful,
-K

Screaming madly east.

Dear K,

So, now it is Fall, and I've taken up running again, and I've also been looking back on everything I wrote to friends and family in the last year, because I keep a copy for myself. I've been so obsessed with myself. Really it has been disgusting.

But I guess it is only natural because I haven't had anyone telling me what I'm going to be doing five years from now, and I just realized that that has all ended. Now I know that I'm always going to remember this last year.

But I got a job, or anyway, now I'm living back in the town I grew up in. I've just realized that all those sappy sayings and movies and greeting cards about not being able to go home again really are true.

I just want to be clean. I want to live in an apartment in the sky, with white walls and a concrete floor. I want a shower with white tiles, and white towels hanging on the walls, and the sink in the kitchen and the counter-tops, everything is luminous and white, like some Scandinavian surgeon's dream. I want to go running through the streets in my appropriately anonymous work out attire. I want to shave every morning and wear a tie. I want to wear dress slacks and neat black oxford shoes, and my car will be clean and I'll have a briefcase and a stainless steel thermos.

And then a year from now I'll go screaming madly east, and jump into the hordes on the ocean shore and disappear forever in my youth.

What?
-K

i wanted you to feel the same

Dear K-

I’d ask you to forgive me, but I have trouble even forgiving myself these days. My life has been a wilderness, and I’ve become the naughty child who wanders off alone and off the path. Why should I be startled, then, by the twigs and branches which snap against my face and limbs? Why should I cry out in surprise when I feel the bite of the thorns and brambles against my flesh? When I decide to start deviating from the “planned course” of my life, I should surely expect to encounter a few unpleasant thickets.

I can’t go back there. my dreams are empty now. my memories are less like elaborately painted masterpieces and more like snowflakes which flutter and drift as small hazy specks across my face, leaving only a small sting of cold to even hint at their existence before they melt away into obscurity once more. I sat for hours today pondering a note I found scribbled upon an old notepad from a year ago. It asked simply “where does trolley 37 go to sleep?”

I couldn’t remember. I used to know every cobblestone, every jumbled Slavic street name, but now I can’t even recall such a trivial fact of where the autobus 37 shut down for the night.

I miss you, but somehow I don’t think it makes a difference. We’ve become each other, don’t you get it? Am I really missing you, or am I only missing myself? When I look into the mirror and find my nose bloody, am I the culprit? This slick, near-black blood that smears over my fingertips (our fingertips?) seems more like the juice of a summer blackberry than something so precious, so necessary for my life.

Speaking of life, the doctor told me that my heart skips beats.

Mendlovo namesti. Fucking mendlovo namesti. That’s where the 37 goes to sleep.

Regrettably mistaken,
-K

When Will Everything Be Alright?

Dear K,
Did you write that last letter to me? Or was it me that it wrote it to you? I'm still so confused. Did I do that when I was drunk? Did I hit you? Did you just pretend that you hit yourself when it was really my fist? Is my nose bleeding or was it your nose? We've got to figure this all out before everything comes apart at the seems.

Anyway I'm better now, I think. Maybe. Out here in the mountains I don't sweat at night, and I'm shivering in the morning even though it is summer still. The peaks aren't even white yet. The shack that I live in doesn't have insulation and there are holes that let moths in when I stay up writing with a flashlight because there is no electricity.

But I'm better. I think my insides are fixing themselves. I think that everything is going to be better.
It was nice to see you for a while though. Even though when you were around it felt like you were further away, it was nice to dance with you and maybe watch everyone around us age a little while we got confused about who was who and why we ever met.

But I'm better now.

How are you?

Have you left yet?

I'm going to miss you.

And I hope this isn't sappy, because I mean it platonically:

Love,
K

Dear K,
Was there ever any chance for us?
I mean right now I'm not so sure there was ever any chance for me.
My right nostril is bleeding right now. It is my fault. I thought that my arm would stop my fist before it hit my nose. That was my fault, I should have known that I'm stronger than I let on.

I'm messed up. Right now I don't think that anyone thinks I'm worth anything.

God is the cruelest person I've ever prayed to.

Apologies for introducing myself, K.