Dear Ms./Mr./Mrs./ {whatever} Universe,
This is the second time that I write a letter addressed to you. The first one was out of innocence, I suppose. Call it juvenile but it was sincere. Now, I find myself writing to you again, inside my kitchen, sitting in front of my laptop while my friends are watching "Gilmore Girls" in the living room {talk about setting the scene... and yes, I think they need intervention... and maybe so do I}.
Why, you ask, am I writing to you for the second time?
Boredom, I suppose?
Instinct?
Solitude?
I really don't know.
I am sure of one thing though. I am writing to you now, not to lament or even to ask for anything in return or any favors or random blessings that you might want to bestow upon me or whatnot. Perhaps I am writing to you because writing is the only thing that grounds me. It keeps me sane. I am shivering as I type the words. I am on my second pack now. I'd like to cry but I can't afford it. Like I told you before, I've never cried genuine tears. Although right now, I wish that I could. I'd give anything to shed raw, unabashed, unfiltered, tears. Salty tears.
You probably have figured it out, Ms./Mr./Mrs./ {whatever} Universe, that your lovechild is not so hot right now. Sad would be the operative word. I wouldn't go as far as existential or ennui or whatever the fuck people call it these days, so I'll stick to plain and simple sad. Yes Universe, your brown child is as sad. Probably sadder than Al Gore was when he lost Florida. And this brown child is waiting for the fucking Nobel Peace Prize that would never come. Salty tears is what he needs right now. Somehow, his brain cells tells him that he shouldn't be expecting any salty tears.
I have always been open to you Ms./Mr./Mrs./ {whatever} Universe. You know everything there is to know about me. You know my addictions, my frustrations, my joys, my desires, my passions. You know what goes inside my cesspit of a head. You know my thoughts. You know about the unwritten stories that I have yet to write and those unsummoned words that I have yet to conjure. I am an open casket to you. You could be my perfect lover but then again, you are the cosmos. And one basic law of nature is that I can never fuck the cosmos. Even fuck it in a good way. Somehow I could never get that through my thick head.
I am an open casket to you Universe.
But to the Other, I am not.
And that has always been my strength and my downfall. I am hidden {yet aren't all your children are?}.
I have always been asked questions about anything that would give them a clue or even a subtle hint about who I really am. I always try to avoid these questions by answering them with some off handed remark or an answer that would at least satisfy their curiosity at some level and yet not reveal anything at all. Call me a cock tease, Universe, but that's the way I was built, I guess {or did you make me that way?}. I guess that's the way I learn to cope with things. That's how I survived. You taught me that, didn't you? I have lived most of my adult life without having to depend on anybody and I take pride on this despite of. I am my own island like you are your own Universe. Like Grandpa Whitman said, "I celebrate myself." You taught me how to celebrate myself. And I thank you for that.
And I have been celebrating myself throughout my adult life. Until you gave me a proposition - a proposition that I couldn't resist - that I can celebrate myself with another. I knew what agreeing with your proposition entailed. After all, you didn't make me stupid. I acquiesced. Here I am. Writing this second letter to you.
One thing that I have realized though, that it is hard to celebrate oneself with another when you have learned to do it all alone for a long time. You didn't tell me that part {then again, why should you}. Why am I sad Ms./Mr./Mrs./ {whatever} Universe? Because I have come to the conclusion that nobody outside of my body can really know me except You. And that fucking hurts. That realization hit my psychic groin like a ton of psychic bricks. The funny thing is that I realized, a long time ago, that I can never fully know somebody because of what the corporeal and the non corporeal entailed. Long ago I realized that I can only have glimpses of the Other in front of me because that's what I can only do. I am contingent. Bound by space, time and the circumstances of my own body. I just never thought it applied vice-versa. Then it hit me. To the Other, I too, am an Other.
And the joke's on me.
You have always been the good teacher. Granted, that I did not necessarily approve of your methods but who am I to question the cosmos? Still I appreciate the education. And I am thanking you for it {probably the reason why I'm writing this}.
You taught me that Living is never easy. Living alone is hard. But I learned that living with the Other is difficult. Glimpses, Universe. Glimpses. These contingent meanings that flood me from all over is what you taught me to desire. So I celebrate{d} the glimpses. I did not settle {and still refuse to settle or think of it as such} for them because those in fact were the only way I understand and appreciate and even love the Other and for the Other to understand and appreciate and love me. It is not is not easy to celebrate these glimpses, especially when you know that they are all you can celebrate and all you can desire. But I celebrate them still even at the risk of me not being celebrated at all by the Other.
You taught me another important lesson though. The lesson of hope.
I can always hope that the glimpses would turn to minute revelations. I can always hope that these elusive glimpses of me and of the Other will become mysteries unfolding. I can always hope that these glimpses will explode to become a cosmos within. Minute revelations are after all, a universe in itself.
Again I ask myself why I write this to you, Universe. I still don't know. If I knew the answer then I probably wouldn't be writing this in the first place. This may not make sense to anybody who reads this but I know it makes sense to you. And to me.
I can only hope right now Ms./Mr./Mrs./ {whatever} Universe. By far, that's the most important lesson you have taught me. Not love, but hope. Because there can never be love without hope. So resolute is that hope that a universe unfolds within a glimpse.
I remain your child,
rufusOmar Bartleby
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