28 May 2009
[Mr.X],
So I’ve started smoking again – full flavors rather than lights this time. In my usual fashion, I am revoking my ‘guarantee’ I made last fall – not to smoke another one until I see the first set of autumn leaves change color. I am weak, I know, but once the warmth of spring begins influencing the morning air I wake up to – I am drawn out to the deck, which of course means the pressing desire to destroy 85 millimeters of tobacco. The short, detrimental length that I am destined to keep traversing.
Stepping onto the little wooden landing off of my bedroom always commences with the crunching of paint chips. I am sure you’ll remember this via your sarcastic comments about the beauty of my porch. Standing in a pool of dead-blue flakes has begun to have its own appeal. Each day I walk out, the grainy wood that was once clad with cobalt paint shows itself more naked. I escaped to the northern part of America to become more naked, and as I’ve witnessed the stripping of my deck, I’ve realized that I am fully clothed. The slow progression of the weather undressing my malnourished, under-varnished porch sits in contrast to the layers of cover I add each day. The departure was meant to grant me the possibility of being bare in isolation, but I realized that without a prying finger to chip the layers of paint away – I’m about as bare as the wood under a fresh coat of varnish. The hidden nature of my existence is kept within the boundaries that I consistently put back up.
There is incentive to the up-keep of one’s external layers as nakedness implies suffering: no protection from the unrelenting weather. Decaying wood is beautiful though – it fits in better with the trees only a few feet from the railing. The trees fight all winter long to stay alive; to make it until Mother Nature provides her protective spring-coat. A long winter leaves for a deserving forest. It is the six-month long period of stark suffering that makes the protection warranted. Our dead wooden structures often get the privilege of a defensive-coat at the first sign of pain – numbing the permanently numb.
In solitude, I only have the environmental-peel of my thoughts to remove layers. Emerson had the ability to rectify his suffering by baring himself in unison with nature – I worry that to give into the silent suffering with no human to share in the beauty of my nudity, I will only find death in life.
Somehow through all the bullshit metaphor that my mind finds by hearing the ‘crunch’s and ‘scrape’s of the deck – I know I made a mistake in leaving you guys. The shared solitude of a friendship is the way I need to be undressed. It’s a sad form of life to live – the lone existence of someone who appreciates beauty but lacks any true output for rising emotions. Most of the American creatures don’t allow a finger get close enough to peel any paint, but I, on the other hand, want to see myself stripped to the core. The rewards of a human bond provide further coats to peel off until you can be comfortable in your nudity.
Even in this letter, I hide my thoughts in the complexity of the symbols I’ve found cathartic. It’s just so damn quiet here, and the moment I walk outside to find myself in the vicinity of people – I shut myself off. Overwhelmed with the cultural criticisms that pushed me out of the city. Now I long for some communication, for someone to share in the vicissitudes of the days. I had that in our experiences – we kept each other honest, forced each other to love and appreciate being naked. We would earn our happy times through journeys into the depths of ourselves by daily reminders that we are caught up in ugly egos that need peeled away.
I’m like a fucking scared kid – scared of losing all of his friends or something. So I’m writing to ask if we can get back to doing some human things, shared things. Perhaps things you have continued to find and have since I left, but that I have lost. Where do you find yourself? Have you sought out anything new since the last time we met? Do you find yourself eager to continue on the rocky road to self-realization?
If you have the space at your place (or perhaps [Mr.Y] has some extra room), I want to come back and rekindle the valuable interactions we were spoiled with. Remember when [Mr.Y] got caught in that unbearable conversation with some local, laboring drunkard? It was the night you climbed up the side of a building just to see if you could get high enough to see the trees. Anyway, after the tirade about the man’s money problems, he told [Mr.Y] that he didn’t know how to see another person for what he really is. We yammered on about how drunk that guy was and how little sense he made, but I think we all learned that we were too caught up in our own pursuits to see the importance of our shared pursuits – the ones that every human shares by virtue of birth.
Once I hear back from you – I’m willing to start looking for a job immediately. Let me know where you are in life now, and whether you’d want to start back on the trail we began on a while back, but now we can get back to walking it with some of the clarity of suffered minds.
Yours,
[Mr.Z]
P.S. I did hear an interesting thought come from a guy I work with at the bar. He asked, “Y’ever think about what the land’d look like if there were no buildings?”
“Of course,” I said [this is how I’ve come to treat people – they ask a real questions and I say ‘of course’]
Standing under streaks of shadow cast down from the lights above the bar – breathing in deep as he glanced around at stretches of street he said, “I see it as the same any way. Buildings, trees, what-fucking-ever, it’s all the same. All gets here, ya know? All starts the same way”
I’m not sure what he was really saying, but, there’s a lot there.
