DEAR FRIEND

Dear friend,                                                                        LETTER V

I cannot say I have ever been cold in my life before, not in the snow or in the icy waters. But today I have been very cold, and it is strange. I realize you have never been cold in your life, Brother, so it will be hard for you to imagine what it is like to be cold. I guess it is like when someone you love goes away forever; much like freezing that moment in time when you know you are fully alone.

Yes, that is what it is being cold.

I fell asleep beneath the bench in the park. I was waiting for George. He is always here, always, but not today. I do not worry whether he will return or not—I know he will. But it is still hard now being so cold. The matriarch’s leaves are falling in the wind and rippling the water in the river. I have seen her lose entire limbs when one tree in her forest sickens and dies. I have seen her lose all of her leaves when she mourns for her forest. And now she is cold for my sake. How I want to be warm for hers.

Your Brother

DEAR FRIEND

Dear friend,                                                                        LETTER IV

I have been thinking lately, if only the world were not so big. If only the world were not so big I could take everyone with me all the time. I take you, Brother, in my heart.

Your Brother

DEAR FRIEND

Dear friend,                                                                        LETTER III

I sat next to George on the park bench. George is an old man. But you would like him anyhow. He has a heart very much unlike men. I am living out here in what some would call the wilderness. I live away from most men, though I see them daily. The wilderness is lonely that way, I suppose. When it rains, I like the wilderness very much. I like the trees and their sagging leaves of rainwater; and the way the sun makes a rainbow when it breaks through the clouds. There is one tree in particular that I love. She sits to my right and George to my left on the bench. She is the matriarch of the woods. And she and all the trees have kept me safe all these years because they keep my feet off the ground where the less docile creatures slither searching for a meal. Even the most formidable creature in the sea has the courtesy to announce his intentions to hunt; whereas here, creatures befriend you in order to eat you. In the sea, a beast will be your friend when he is your friend and your enemy when he is your enemy; here, most everyone is my friend and my enemy at the same time.

George has tried to get me to understand why things are the way they are: “Because people are lost,” he says.

Once I asked him, “All of them?”

And he said to me, “Even the ones who are found.”

“I am lost?” I asked.

He said, “Where are you?”

“The wilderness,” I answered, “sitting to your right on a bench that really has no right being here.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“How will you get home?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said; “the same way you will, I suppose.” He laughed like he hadn’t ever before. And then we sat so quietly watching the sun set that we could hear the leaves on the floor shift on the backs of bugs.

Sometimes, out by the bench, the sun will rise and the sun will set and everything will happen all around me; and I am a witness of life. Then when it rains, Heaven and Earth open above me and the rain strikes my face and steams down my cheeks and tastes just like the sea. For every centimeter we fill the sea higher with our tears, Brother, God fills it a meter. And I count them all out here; and I watch them rise in that river to my toes and to my ankles. And I am a witness, counting the tears—I know every one—until the day the river swells up over my head—and I start swimming.

Your Brother

 

DEAR FRIEND

Dear friend,                                                                        LETTER II

It has been a hard day. I am not very sure why, as it was a similar day in many respects to many other days. Tears are so different than I remember them. They stream from my eyes and down my face and they taste just like the sea. I have noticed how everyone has been making more tears for the sea. I imagine it must be twice as full as when last I saw it!

It is strange to me how everything in the world is gated off, except for the sea. There are homes, cities, forests, countries—all of these things gated—one person from another, gated. And they protect the gates, Brother! They love the gates! But me, I love the sea. An infinite sea of tears is not considered very desirable by most people, but there is no place freer that I can think of. For I imagine going from place to place by sea, seeing faces I have never seen before, and knowing them not by the line by which they are gated, but by the gentleness of their eyes. You have seen this, Brother. You are one of few that would understand. For I have seen you create a ripple that created another ripple and another, until a tidal wave swept toward every shore. Things work that way here, too, but everyone puts up their gates anyway and tries to keep the floods away. I am surrounded by gates, Brother. I cannot get in or out, but the water, the water still flows in and out, and it floods, and there is drought, too.

Your Brother

DEAR FRIEND

Dear friend,                                                                        LETTER I

I have forgotten many things since I last saw you. Sometimes, when things are hard, it is easy to forget. I couldn’t explain it better than that. But you were never one for the explanation of things. You were one for the heart. You once said to me, “If the heart can’t speak for a man, what will? Certainly a man cannot speak enough words to overcome his heart.” And that is why I am writing to you.

Your Brother