Wednesday, February 26, 2003

This has been a hard

This has been a hard day that began when I read a powerful blog post at 4:30 am.  I tried to write a comment to it but everything went down and I don’t think it posted and I didn’t have time to fix it.  But I knew that some response was called for, so I wrote this open letter to my friend - you know who you are.  Yes, you. 

I read your words and feel beaten, battered by vicarious admissions, griefs, despairs and tribulations, recognizing in each verbal gesture you have made - graceful, tragic poetry - a whisper of the life I’ve led, but overwhelmed by sharp new failures (real or perceived), a bitterness of broken hopes as pungent as a spoiled soup.  My fingers clutch at air while desparate revelations rain upon me, sit here helpless to assist, to comfort, to assume the burden of your pain or even to express my sympathy, support, my own experience of shock, defeat, denial, sorrow…

I know better than to think a postcard from a total stranger could have salved the wounds that you have suffered me to view; my retroactive benedictions crumble in my mouth like pages of an ancient book too old and tired to be read, collapsing from the weight of years.  It staggers me how brave you are to tear off your integument, to reify your scars and piercings, launching truths into the ether that have brought you all the wisdom martyrs earn, sharing that which can’t be borne alone.

There’s much I cannot understand, that would evade me even were I pouring you a cup of tea and waiting quietly for tears to start or stop.  But know this well: I’m on a plane at thirty thousand feet, wedged tight between a laptop suit and double panes of plastic, peering out across a plain of clouds that blow beyond the curving limits of my sight, opaque and secretive, but still -

in this broad cloudbank there’s a break - small in comparison to all but huge when scaled to myself - and through it streams a vibrant sun that feeds the dusty fields below… and now it’s passed behind me, clouds converge again and swallow up the view, but I will not forget they broke to let the vital truth shine down, and someday I will eat the peaches, drink the wine of grapes that bathed in that evaporated, evanescent window in the sky....

I have in my life been blessed beyond my earning of it by the love of brilliant people.  All this began near twenty years ago, yet still is fresh and true as grass that bursts through frozen concrete in the spring.  I assumed that these dear friends were all I had been vouchsafed; still today I strive to prove to them how much they meant and mean to me.  Then just a year ago it started happening again; I found new places in my heart that had been filled without my knowing, filled with love for special people who had brought me unexpected joy and satisfaction of community.  Now, again, without a physical component, I perceive a gathering, upswelling, a renewed assurance that the world has much to offer, scattered places populated by new friends of genius, sensitivity and wit who habitate where I would never think to seek them out, but who have found me nonetheless.  All this must be reflected back on you, as you are truly such a central part of it for me.  I hold you in my heart and cherish friendship.

Descent begins - the blather ends.  The clouds have parted.  Sunlight shines on everything, and sundogs trail at my shoulder. 

Dan