това го написах на един дъх, около полунощ
хомили не ми е портфолио, но това беше много спонтанно
15th of February, 2004
Dearest Cynthia,
(I am afraid this letter might start rather bluntly, so I hope not to find you unarmed, as one oftentimes is, for example, early in the morning before the second yawn, or, say, on a Monday when one is daydreaming on a bus. Please, if you currently lack the time and desire to read through this letter on one occasion, postpone the reading to a later time; though, please, do not delay too much. Enough insipid introductions! – let me not undermine my letter’s authority; I shall begin promptly.)
Something I never told you: I had a dream of you once wherein I kissed you. I never told you about that for the same reason I never told you a lot of things, this reason being one of them. I didn’t tell you that in this dream I was happy and at the same time completely unafraid, which doesn’t happen very often. The only other time when I was in a state like this – well, let me tell you about this time more elaborately, before I go into the story of my dream:
So the one time when I was in a similar state of utter happiness that not only crushed any and all fears, but seemed to erase any traces of such fears having ever existed – this one time was on the 6th of March, 2004. Yes, it was your birthday. It was a horrible party, excuse my straightforwardness, though I am quite sure you are and were aware of that. In fact, if memory serves me right – and God, please, let memory not fail me with this truly divine day – you were the one who used the word “horrible” to describe the mess that had become of your party. I felt so bad for you, I really, really did. Seeing, upon my arrival, the paper cups so carefully arranged, the bottles of vodka – if only you knew what the consequences of those would be! – ordered by size, brand, and flavor, the different chips distributed equally and lovingly among the different tables (that detail alone gave me one of those idiotic smiles I can’t get rid of all night) – all those unremembered little acts of assiduousness you had done prior to my arrival really brought me down once the party went into a mode of self-destruction. I remember going to the balcony for fresh air – as loners often explain their inappropriate and socially inadequate self-isolation at parties – when you came out, too, and said, “This is horrible! – even you aren’t having any fun.” When I lied I actually was having fun (and I knew you knew I was lying) you smiled with this – “cute” is most definitely not the right word for such a, well, saturated and confidently affectionate smile. That smile (oh my God I still have to grin like a dork when I think of it) gave me the courage to do what I did – namely, to behave totally naturally, whatever the definition thereof might be. It gave me the courage not to slip into any of those roles which I was oftentimes, even (I am both amazed and ashamed) in your presence, tempted to slip into, despite my most certain knowledge of the outrageously lousy quality of performance I am usually able to give. But that evening, on your balcony, after you blessed me with that smile (and I dare not attempt to describe it again, since I am positive I shall fail miserably) I was not at all tempted by the actor in me. Not acting is so much more difficult than acting, but you gave me the courage I needed. However, fortunately or not, the courage to resist the actor is, alas, the only courage my “effortless” me (I hope this word to be less inappropriate than “natural”) has. I am, at heart and soul (what an embarrassing and unmanly confession, really,) a true coward. But since you did not provoke or push me in any way that night, my cowardice stayed unnoticed, like the ignorance of a layman who beholds a painting and is not asked to interpret it. Oh how grateful I was and still am in retrospect for your calmness that night! But let me not digress – after the smile I dare not describe, you went on explaining you didn’t even know that asshole who was vomiting in your toilet (not that I believed you – illuminated by the orange glow from the inside and with those truly magnificent earrings, there on the balcony, you looked more omniscient an angle than I had ever imagined – if you didn’t know something who would!) I said I didn’t know him either and felt, moments after, completely daft for being so utterly joyous about the rather irrelevant discovery of us having one more thing in common. I took a sip from my vodka and relaxed, not so much from the alcohol but from the simplicity of the act of drinking. From then on and for the next two hours (maybe more, maybe less? - I honestly cannot guess objectively) we talked. Fortunately – God seems to be thoughtful when it is important – we were not interrupted. We talked about so many things, going from trivial to fundamental issues (if there is indeed such a polarization), and from the profane to the sacred – I am confident there is most definitely no difference here, for I fail to see how the matter of who said what when giving you the presents is any less pertaining to man’s relationship with God than the matte of what your grandmother’s last words to you were or who said what at her funeral (I have to admit I was amused and almost inappropriately showed it when you retold the story of your uncle asking at the celebration after the funeral, “Where’s mom’s carrot cake?”) Once again (and “again” seems to again haunt ever so frustratingly my repetitious letter writing) I digress into unasked-for and certainly irrelevant contemplations. I seem to not yet have learned that the evening and night I am desperately trying to outline here is way beyond interpretations. It was what it was, and nothing more (I have to be exasperatingly foolish (or just too “human” maybe (how I always ignore my parenthetical boasting – but not this time!)) to still not realize fully how heavenly this time with you was, and how any further meanings, consequences or reflections I might want to add to it for decoration only dim its magnificence!) I will try to write outside of any parenthesis for a while now, Heaven help me. Our talk was so fluent, so lighthearted – but not light-minded! – and, really, so candid. Its spontaneity reminded me, only in retrospect, of course, of your make-up. You were the worst make-up artist I had ever seen and with that truly the best. The moment I saw you when we would meet in the evening some night for a party or for a section meeting, I saw your make-up, and with it I saw two things. For one, I saw its superfluity. Your make-up seemed to underline your natural beauty in the exact opposite way it was supposed to do it, yet with remarkable success. It appeared so out of place on that beautiful angelic face of yours that one became instantly aware of your innate loveliness. The second thing that I saw when seeing your bad make-up whenever I had the blessing of seeing it, is this image my mind conjured up (in a perfectly sane non-hallucinatory way, let me quickly assure you) of you putting it on. I seemed to see you in front of your mirror with all the little cosmetic items arranged before you like the ingredients for a magical potion. I saw how you did every single stroke with the blusher, how you applied your lipstick with such dedication to the act itself, with such love for the little things in the world that people say don’t matter. They matter! They matter for me! And in your make-up I saw they mattered for you, too, and this made me so calm, and instantaneously thereafter so nervous in your presence. Your make-up can be compared, I think, to the unseen paintings of young da Vinci – and by young I do not mean “early”, I mean aged two or three. I do not mean to imply that you will master the art of make-up to perfection (although I am tempted to hope that you will master – or have already mastered! – the art of imperfection to perfection.) To your make-up I compared our conversation on the balcony that night, and I am as confident in this comparison as a writer can be in any words he writes. All my dumb jokes, your tactless comments about my clothes, my distasteful mentioning of your ex-boyfriend, your yawn in the middle of a punch line to a favorite story of mine – all this adorned our conversation the way typos make first-edition books by famous authors so valuable. Who would not love to see the manuscript of his favorite poem and find a typo in the title? Would such an unwanted mistake not be the ultimate connection with the author, with the writer’s humanness? Well, if our conversation that night on the sixth of March was to be somehow magically transformed into a manuscript of a play, I am sure it would be full of mistakes and unfitting lines. It would be so beautiful in its natural imperfection that I seriously doubt anyone would have the courage or, rather, the villainy to correct it. That time we spent together, was far beyond correction. Indeed, what seemed to be so beautiful this evening, what made me so utterly happy and unafraid was not what we said (although the conversation was, be assured, most entertaining and enticing) but rather how we said it. Let me rephrase pseudo-poetically: it wasn’t what we said, it was what we didn’t say. It was the connection that we had; for just those two hours, it was this bond between myself and another human being, that freed me of all fear, that made me feel so content and peaceful as I have never felt before. Undeniably, all we did that night on the balcony was talk (fortunately so or not? – let me not question the past. It is, alas, a futile exercise.) At some point (I still rather stubbornly assume it was after two hours of conversation) you felt cold and wanted to go inside. Inside we were greeted (or rather, ignored, I have to admit) by the chaos of your miscarried birthday party. You were immediately distracted by the rumors about some occurrence in your own bedroom (your ex and some girl – you can’t deny, at least in retrospect, that this was amusing in a way.) After some more time I had to leave. That night, oh my God, how foolishly unwilling I am to conclude this part of the letter, was the first time in my adult life where I felt so perfectly safe in this imperfect world; I felt so perfectly secure in this imperfect existence; so perfectly happy with you by my side; you, my only true love since then.
(I had warned you of the bluntness of this letter, and by now I really hope you have taken my warning seriously. Nonetheless, mercilessly, in the frenzy of a writer writing the letter of his life, I shall go on.)
Now that I have told you of the first and until recently only time in my life that I was utterly unafraid and happy, I can go on and tell you about the dream I had, almost a year later. Unlike the majority of dreams I have, I remember this one in great, almost frightening, detail, not as if it had actually happened yesterday, but as if it is actually happening to me now. The setting was pretty simple, though it had its unreal features: we were in the backseat of a car, a dark purple Volvo, to be precise. It was a comfortable Volvo, and, no, this is not the unreal feature of the story. We were driving on a rather uneventful and plain highway. The only dream-specific characteristic of this ride was that we had no driver. This fact, albeit quite disturbing in real life, especially at the respectable speed we were driving, seemed to be perfectly normal to us, in that car, in that dream. The time of the day was absolutely clear to me: without consulting my wristwatch even once (and I remember not having it on but knowing quite positively that it would somehow magically, though for the dream-me not strangely, appear on my arm should I need it) I was confident that it was that time of the day when the sun has the intention of disappearing behind the horizon, but has not yet moved fittingly; it has only changed its attitude. At most, it has changed its color slightly. I remember at one time searching for the sun in the sky, not finding it, and you saying that I should calm down – the sun were on the other side of the Earth but still somehow managed to shine on us. “Alright then,” I remember thinking. Where were we headed? This is what you asked me right before I had asked for the sun: “Where are we going?” And I said, almost romantically, “To the sun.” After we settled our destination we continued doing what we had been doing for what seemed a carefree eternity – yes, we talked. We talked about various things. First, I remember, we discussed passionately a poem neither of us had read. You said its ending was too timid, not trusting the preceding lines and thus betraying them. I remember you said the ending was disloyal to the rest of the poem, and I said I thought the ending wasn’t disloyal, but rather cautious not to complete the poem, for completion would seriously endanger the beauty of the poem. I remember you looking out the window after that and then turning back around to say, “You haven’t even read the poem” in a totally non-bickering voice, much rather a kind voice one would use to recite a limerick. “Well you haven’t read it either,” I said in return, our car still moving swiftly. You looked at me with a knowing look of having the final argument and said, “Well, I have read it less than you.” For some reason this thoroughly convinced me of your rightness, and, with all the humanity that I was left with in this dream, I became slightly embarrassed and changed the topic. I asked you about the green dress that I had just noticed you were wearing. You smiled and replied that it was your favorite dress since no one ever noticed it. “No, don’t worry now,” you said, reading my mind, “I still like it. You can notice it.” I remember hesitating for a moment, wondering whether this was a compliment or the opposite. I looked your way, the car still moving driverless through fields and forests. Then, as unexpected as anything can be in a dream, I saw, as if as an answer to my preceding hesitation, a look on your face that I had never seen before, but which, for some reason, I knew perfectly well. This look was beyond analysis, and I remember not even trying to remember it. It was so disarming, that I was instantly freed of any fear and I was overpowered by sheer bliss. I felt just right, like that evening almost a year ago on the balcony at your place. I kissed you; yet the act of kissing you, in this dream, somehow didn’t involve us moving. Somehow, as we sat there in the back of this fast Volvo, the world around us, time and space, seemed to bend so that our lips touched and we kissed. And kiss we did. For a short blissful eternity we kissed, our lips and tongues caressing, playing, like two children building a tower out of sand, not saying a word, playing, yet entirely engaged by the activity itself and the safety that comes with it. The moment our lips parted, I woke up. Oh how I detested myself for having woken up! How I would have preferred to stay in the backseat of this fast-moving car, next to you, kissing you, loving you. Instead I woke up, so very far away from you, not kissing you, yet still, loving you. (I hope and am almost positive that these words will not shock you by now.) I truly, strongly love you and have loved you ever since you smiled at me on the balcony for having lied and being aware that my lie would not stay undetected. I fell in love with you, with all your flaws (and I call them flaws now only to stay true to the culture I was raised in – those aren’t flaws!) But really, as trite as it sounds (trite it has to be, since it seems to me to be the oldest of emotions) – I love you as you are, so much, so intensely. I love you as I live – completely conscious, here and now, with God, with time, with this world of unexplainable splendor. Amidst it I stand and love you.
Let me stop here before – before whatever it is that would have happened if I hadn’t stopped here. I shall be quick from here on. I haven’t seen you for almost a year now and I would very much like to see you, “very much” being obviously an underestimation. I will be home soon, in eleven days to be exact. On the seventh day from now I will meet you at half past seven at the café where you first tried Cappuccino (its name evades me but I am most confident you know which one I mean.) I will not put a question mark here or anywhere else until the end of this letter. I will meet you there and we will talk; and not talk, I hope and am almost sure. And that will be enough for then.
I love yuo,
Ray