in correspondence

the letters we wrote, so many, many words. our lives, day by day, replayed for each other in each other's days. i re-read them now, somewhere and someone else, re-read our promises and plans and wonder where they've gone, if they're waiting around to be claimed again. our loves, our dinner plans and illnesses, the wonderment of watermelons and worms, one christmas after another, autumn following summer around, wagging tails and raising our sails. let's go let's go let's go. there were holidays abroad and home, together and apart. many long silences as we found others and lost them, then another letter would arrive, digital but there nevertheless. pages and pages, i've kept your side of our conversations, i wonder where mine are. you've found another, kept another, so please write and tell me if i'm still bound to cook you breakfast on your ninetieth birthday because when that day arrives, i'm not sure if you'll be looking out your window, waiting to collect your dues.

it's the good, the bad,
the house i furnish,
the crystal clear sea,
the sound i worship,
the rush of the city,
the calm of the Outback,
the film called Life,
where my heart is the soundtrack.

Bliss N Eso -- Eye of the Storm

drink up, dreams

and then she and I shared two bottles of chards between us. The two of you sat with your dark brews and talked of old times, and all I could think about was whether you could see my well-placed lingerie peeking out of my shirt-dress. And four hours later when we were rolling drunk and I'd desperately had four glasses of water and one spew to no avail, you leaned closer and spilled the troubles of men finding women and women not wanting men, I realised that in another life perhaps we could have matched, would have completed one another like cheese completes a chicken parmagiana and a marshmallow completes a hot chocolate. We looked at each other in a way she didn't recognise and we thought maybe, but I leave in over a week though I don't know it yet, and you are searching for someone a bit more different, a bit more, I don't know, less stable maybe, somebody you can lose yourself with because with me you can't get lost if everybody reminds you what you should and should not be doing with me (or more to the point, they don't even know), how are you supposed to be that

and she sat with her vodka lemon lime and bitters and I sat with mine and she waved her hands about her head and said see, you're both dreamers and I'm a realist, and I said yes you need dreams apart from your work life, though she could not understand this, my fifteen-years-long friend, and you and I sat beside each other with thoughts of our respective will-never-be-published novels, and the world will move for us, because as much as you might not know or realise or want to know, my friend, the world does move for dreams. The world feels the power of a real vision, a truth and a goal of a person with a good heart and good mind. And you and I sat at the table with metal chairs and cold air drifting over the land and I thought yes, you know what, maybe I don't want you but I want this

Song.

The lemon floats in his tea as he sips, slowly thinking
And the sun divides his face in two, westward slowly sinking
Youth is wasted on the youth, but where does it all go
The sleepless nights, awake till dawn, if only we had known

He said 'Why can't I be alone,
have a place to call my own?'
Wraps his scarf around his head
and sinks into the ground.

Fighting the good fight, if only they will let you
Being kept in sight, if they don't remember to forget you
Give me your hand darling, we'll pack off, go away
Find it in some distant land and then decide to stay.

He said 'Why can't I be alone,
have a place to call my own?'
Wraps his scarf around his head
and sinks into the ground.

A life, a life, somewhere, a life. See him, there. Him, you, we. A sum total of others, of Oprah, punk rock and pedestrian crossings, of interest rates and sex tapes, the sugar content in Fanta and stem-cell research. All of this, the grey betweens that filled his hours, his cells. Running for trains, piled dishes, offers of upgraded mobile phone deals. Picking the keys off the hook on the way out, throwing bags down on the way in. Everywhere things ended, everywhere people left. Pico Iyer's continent of jet lag. Howard's taxes. Our own inner wars.

it's cocktail hour all night tonight;
we'll be roaming the dark streets like
lazy leopards who've escaped their cages.

I am cured, signori, because I know perfectly that I play the madman, and I do it here, quietly. Your trouble is that you live your madness in great agitation, without understanding it or recognizing it.

-- Henry, in Luigi Pirandello's Maschere Nude.