A Love Letter To My Friend

My dear foxy,

It has been more than two months since we spoke, and I will tell you what happened in this letter. And as you know, I may be repeating myself, I may be drifting off again into thinking about love or the world, but you know I love you, and I couldn’t express my feelings any other way.

You know that I wish you happiness, even if that means being with someone capable of destroying our relationships, our friendship, though it was always more than that. I never had enough money, and when I dreamed that we would be together, I realized that I could not give you what someone else could.

I remember when we were teenagers how you dreamed about visiting the Bois de Boulogne, how you planned to live in this park-forest, how you dreamed about archery, about horses and adventures, but you were forced to stay home in Detroit, watching dreams die.

Several days ago, I was lying with my wife in bed and asked her, what would you think if there was another woman in your place, and I stroked her, and you were stroked by another man? She answered, “I’ll love you forever, but another man may give me some comfort, some tenderness because all your tenderness and love is always addressed to her.” Once again, I was ashamed, but I can’t banish love, I can’t deport it, I can’t kill it. I have tried, I have tried, my dear, God knows I have tried.

But I was ashamed. I gave her love as much as I could, and I was loyal to her. But I can’t stop thinking about you, my dear. And I am worried about you. Every day since your last letter, I woke up in a panic. You told me a story about your friend Megan and how she was raped. The pain and suffering she went through made me cry. Every day since then I read the news. One boy with autism was raped with a stick! A young woman was raped by teenagers and her husband was burned alive! What’s wrong with the people? Every day I pray that I don’t find someone like you on the news. And that makes me a bad person. “Not her, please, not her” means that someone else will be abused. And they are people, many of them may be very good people! How can I think like that? That’s why I’m happy a little because you have found a new man who can protect you, at least he can try.

A week ago I was walking in the park, autumn leaves fell so slowly, they seems to be don’t want to die fast under the people’s shoes. I went into a cafe, there was almost no one, and I heard the waitresses talking. One complained to the other that she had quarreled with her husband so that he broke the dishes, and her son called her grandmother and asked her to come home. Violence is everywhere. In any street, any building, any window.

I need to write everything I think about. Otherwise, I can forget what I want to say. Thanksgiving day without anyone to thank. But I thank you, my dear, for your love. And I love you so much, but I struggle with my love. I don’t feel good, thoughts don’t line up, don’t link up in proper sentences. Having reached this state of nothingness, indifference itself is already indifferent to me. How long will my love grow? All thoughts turn to you, my foxy. Or should I have said, “to her”? I don’t know how far apart we are anymore. I think that distance is unthinkable in our universe.

This world dictates its own system of values. When your love grows, it faced society. A society with its rules and its reality. “Reality” is a funny word for a person, for his endless subjectivism. People have disrupted the love with a snap of their fingers. Love invades our homes with a thousand-year history and dies because of jealousy, envy and anger. But humans can’t live without love. As do I.

I whisper your name every day. Should I forget you, your name, your face? You have belonged to me since our teenagehood, and I belong to you. Love forced us to belong to each other, and love made us strangers.

But our infinite relationships cannot end. After death, there will be no us, and maybe our souls will disappear, melted somewhere, but our love will remain. It will live in our letters, maybe in the memory of our descendants. Our love can become part of history because we are the two people separated by fate.

Many “fell in love” people write something, invent something, try to break into the world of another person as despots, kings or queens, masters of the Universe. It’s not right, but I know most people do this. And they call it love. If so, then I obviously do not have this kind of feeling for you, or should I have to say, “for her”?

My love is not a mystery. Though I can’t call it an open book, it’s not a mystery for sure. But your love is hiding in shadows, crawling, trying to scream, and that’s why it hurts me so much, but it’s not your fault.

The holiday. I try to pretend that I’m happy. Laws, ethical rules, and holidays are made up by the people. Those people still can’t find a way how to punish the rapist. Those people who can’t accept their own mistakes and do not want to pay for them. But we both are a part of society. Why do I think that’s not true? Why doesn’t everyone consider our opinions? You said to me, “I’m silence.” Maybe, you are, maybe, but you want to scream every day, just like me.

I’m living my lonely life without you, without touching your lips or kissing your hands. It should be the other way around. It should be? Really? Who said so? I want to live alone but away from this bloody mess of hatred and anger of humanity. I am just sick of it. Injustice, cruelness, silence… You are not a silent, dear, don’t forget that! Sometimes people like you are born in this world. You’re a diamond! No! A diamond is just a gemstone without a soul. It’s a thing. And you are a human being with a soul, and your soul is shining through your eyes! I love you! And a diamond is my sorrow, and the autumn dirt is a society’s laugh. Dirt will be washed away, and a diamond will stay for me forever to remind me that a feeling of sorrow never ends.

Do you belong to me? No! I’m scared. I know that you accept my wife for long time ago, and I didn’t accept any of your lovers. And this, a new one, I can’t even say his name, but I must kill my jealousy as you have killed yours. But how do you kill jealousy if you don’t even want to hear my wife’s name? Or maybe yours is still alive? Once I asked you, “Do you want to be loved?” You answered, “Of course, and who doesn’t?” Maybe I am. Why do I need to be loved if the love causes me so much pain?

I remember you called me and I didn’t recognize your voice and you’ve said that I don’t love you. But it was a ridiculous day. I’ll remind you of this story. I lived in an apartment with Justin and his dog. You know how I love dogs, but if you remember, his dog almost ruins my life! I slept and then heard a phone ringing, and because everyone calls to my roommate, I was surprised when he said that’s for me. And his dog began to bark and tried to bite me. And your voice… It was a voice of a stranger for a moment. Your voice seemed distant; it was like a voice from the abyss. Justin smiled and tried to calm the dog down. I can’t blame myself for this. I even blame myself for sleeping with my wife because it’s kind of cheating. I feel guilt, but not for this “phone episode”. I still don’t know why I moved out of my parents’ house then, because we didn’t have that much of a fight. How long did I live with Justin and his dog? About two weeks? And you still remember that little episode with your voice.

I think my feelings become less and less important for myself and others. Sometimes I don’t want to think, to breathe, think about that I need to breathe to survive. But for what? I can’t be with you! Love eats us alive. Just think about it. Our love eats us alive! Like a time, which took our youths, passions and dreams, the love takes our minds and souls! Why do people sometimes push love and passion out of their minds? Many men still think that women are their property. You don’t belong to me, you are free as a bird of prey. Someday I’ll visit you, and I hope to see a still free woman in you. Maybe I’m a liar, maybe it’s my last letter. Who knows?

Am I writing to you or talking with myself? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just worth throwing a few stones into the water because stones will not return from the water by their own will. But the words… The words always return. And we’re always far from each other. Maybe we’re far apart in our beliefs. Confused, broken losers, that’s who we are! Life goes on and on, and our love may fade away one day. How do we fight for it? Tell me! You don’t want to face the truth. He is not your chosen one, he is not! Your last letter was so brief that I wasn’t sure who wrote it. Are you happy? Are you really happy?

What does fate want from us? Everyone sees the other side of the coin in any truth. We can’t understand the language of fate. And when you flip a coin, what does fate want from you? When a rapist saw Megan, was it fate? He saw something in her, he flip a coin and said, “That’s one!” I can’t get this out of my head, dear. My love, if that happens with you, I’ll kill the bastard! And maybe then I would have been raped in prison. And that would have been fate?

Emptiness is absence; being filled with emptiness is alienation. And I think I’m alien on this planet. You tried so hard to kill our feelings that every time your desire to see me was overwhelming, and we met so many times, our eyes screamed, but we smiled, our bodies wanted each other, but we talked, our souls wanted to fly away, but we just walked. The streets are always the same. I remember we were around our twenties, and one teenage girl around eighteen wanted to pour water on me from a water gun. And you came to her and take her gun and throw it, and she said that you’re a bitch. And you answered, “Yes, I am, don’t mess with a bitch!” I was curious are you protecting me or think that this girl was a threat to our love?

I’m lost for society because I’m different. And you too, my little foxy, you too. There are a million reasons why we can’t be together. And who named them? Who finds them? It’s all in our heads. We’ve always behaved ourselves like we’re a couple, as husband and wife. Our story is a simple story of love. A love that doesn’t want to close up the door.

I didn’t do anything to make our love real. I lived a life of non-involvement. What harm can come from inactivity? Malevich’s black square expressed more ideas and feelings than all my letters, including this one. When I’m thinking about you, I become obsessed, and my words and thoughts and ideas are swirling in my head. In the best idea or the best thought, best art there is always something more, something deep, that words can’t express it, there is always ambiguity, there are always so many interpretations, that’s why it’s best. In practice, however, one can often observe that any, for example, productions, adaptations of works leave the authors of the originals dissatisfied, whether of a play or a novel, and one often hears the following words, “They twisted my idea. That’s not what I wanted to say!” This is because single-meaningful human logic collides with polysemantic natural logic, in which, from a human point of view, there are contradictions. Dear, are you tired of my philosophy? Sometimes excessive caring is worse than moderate hatred.

You still haven’t visited your father? I know he is not a good man, and I hope you do not hide other unpleasant facts about him, but he is still your father. I hope someday you’ll find a way to forgive him. I’m on your side, though sometimes forgiveness is the worst way to make a piece with ourselves. I don’t want you to feel another pain. Your whole life is a pain. I hope your new man can bring happiness to your life. I’m not with you, because I can’t make you happy with my salary. I’m just a lazy coward! I’m a bad photographer, a lousy writer, an unsuccessful manager, and a bad husband. Just because I don’t hit women, steal, or cheat, doesn’t make me a good person. Society sees me as bad because I love you, my dear. I’m not looking for money, and I’m not looking for understanding and adoration by society. I seek to understand love. The love I feel for you. The world around us is understandable, society is materialistic, and there is no place for love. Yes, everyone can sell love because love is always looked for by someone. But is it real love? I’m not talking about prostitution. I’m talking about all the masquerades of love that are becoming frequent in the world. Everyone is pretending, and their love is a lie. Lie with a mask. A new colleague at work, a young woman, said to me a few days ago, “You are the last of a dying breed.” She said that my desire of camping and nature at this time of year is not a good idea, because it is better to lie on a beach or swim under the hot sun than to go to the forests in such rainy weather. Comfort rules the world, and money is its prophet.

Maybe you remained silent because I didn’t write to you or because you have nothing to say to me. Since when we’ve become separated? Since when we’ve become strangers? I am still waiting for an answer from myself. Maybe I’ve said something wrong. Maybe there will come a time when you can tell me more than I can in this letter. I miss you. I miss you so much! So many times you have expected me to lie. But isn’t our life a lie? You have the lightness and charm of a fog that has not yet come. It’s like a beginning of a bad poem. Do you want our love to be covered in fog? A love that vanished into the fog, isn’t it sound beautiful?

You asked me a long time ago, “Why are you writing such long letters?” What can I say? Verbosity is the soul of wit. Time doesn’t matter without you, my love. Sometimes I don’t know what you feel, and I can’t even guess. I can’t read your mind. Something has changed. Do you love him? I think you’re capable of loving someone like me. But we will feel like it was a betrayal. You will always be my little foxy, Jess.

You don’t believe in me, do you? I still can achieve something, though I’m not young and not old either. In the last letter you mentioned a bad evening once again, then I couldn’t leave my house, it was so tough. I’m tired of making excuses, we haven’t thought about this evening for many years, but I will remind you. There was 11 p.m. and my wife and I wanted to go to bed, and your phone call ruins our plans. You wanted to go for a walk with me. I wanted to walk with you too, but I couldn’t because of my wife’s jealousy. You know her, she becomes angry than I mentioned about you. She said, “It’s either me or her! You can’t have us both, Jack! If you choose her, then get the hell out of here, pack your shits and go!” I wondered what did I do because we never had sex with you! And not my wife, not my friends, even your friends, not a single soul believed us! What’s wrong with the people? But what is wrong with you too, my foxy? You were angry that I couldn’t go out with you! Why? You know that I love my wife, don’t you? For God’s sake, I was a married man and I still am! Or do you think my love must be only for you and not for anything else? If it’s so, then why we are not together? I’m still searching for an answer to that question. I don’t know who’s to blame. I explained to you several times that you can’t blame me for this. I think we can discuss what we don’t like about each other once again and decide if it’s worth changing. We must find a compromise.

A person becomes wiser, and the wiser he becomes, the destructive activity gives way to creativity. But have we become wiser? Have we become more creative? Sometimes you write as a stranger, pointing out my mistakes. I wasn’t looking for my literary reviewer in you. I was looking for love in you. All my life I’ve been looking for you! In every girl, I’ve tried to find your shapes, your character, your beliefs, even though I may still disagree with many. You’re the best girl in the world! And you have nothing to say to me. You speak very little, in bits and pieces. Your letters get short, it looks like it’s hard for you to write. Sometimes you get sarcastic, and it’s ok for you, but I can’t pretend it’s ok for me. You know there’s always a problem with something. Yes, I can’t be with you, I can’t be a whole yours, we’ve got some boundaries. You can blame me for lack of courage, but it’s not because of that. I am loyal to my wife! I love her and I love you! But you’ve always looked for abusive-provoking behavior in a man. But I am who I am, and I will only change what I want, just like you.

I understand that this is contrary to my statement about compromises, but I am confident that I have made every effort to build our relationship. Before committing an act, I always thought, “will you like it?” Therefore, I practically did not commit a single one. And it is right. Humans are different from animals because they can express their desires and feelings through words. If you deceived me and by “yes” you meant “no”, that’s not my fault. “And here you should have done so.” If you say so, then what a hell? If you need an act from me, it’s better to ask than to wait.

The past will find peace if the present is active. I realize I’m a terribly annoying person. I’m always looking at the past. What have we been through together? Why do we often argue with each other? I’m clinging to memories and constantly replay them in my head. Every breath you take, every time you lower your eyes, every moment I watched your gait, the way your hair fell on your shoulders in the breeze, everything is so precious that I can’t stop thinking about it. But my memory fails me. Something starts to distort. How am I going to write a novel? Maybe I’m in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know. Do you remember Detroit? You haven’t been there in what, seven or eight years? Wait a minute. And what about your Thanksgiving visit last year? If I don’t forget, I’ll touch on this episode later… But now tell me, why did we leave our glorious city? Yeah, yeah, I know you’re going to laugh now. Glorious city, ha-ha. But I really love it. It’s where we were born, where we spent our childhood, where our characters and beliefs were formed.

I quickly immerse myself in some kind of activity, but I do it badly, and after a while, I start doing well, but if I stop for a while, then I will start doing badly again, and I have to start over. I tried to draw your eyes. Nothing worked. When I drew them, I thought, why do I call you foxy? Your eyes are honest and open and have a different shape. And there is wisdom in your eyes. Can you argue with that? Wisdom is unshakeable only in the eyes of the wise man.

Sometimes I feel like our relationship with you has changed. I feel it in the water like Galadriel. I feel like I’m turning into you, so I stop explaining to myself all these shades of feelings. All I know is that if I turn into you completely, we will both either hate each other and keep our distance or we will become the closest friends again, despite the protests of my wife or your new man. I feel like I’m invading your life and slapping it around in my house slippers.

Life… Love… What is love? “Ou baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.” I have to put a record on, but it’s too early. But not Haddaway, of course, I want to put either Deep Purple or Dio or maybe I’ll start with the blues.

You see, we’ve figured out that love is a pain, but what is life? Everyone chooses their own life; to refer to fate or failure is to deny choice. Life is a static abstraction that time drives forward. I feel like a new philosopher who can’t explain what life is. Life is not wandering in the darkness. No. You see exactly where you’re going. You see those around you coming with you. Wandering in the darkness, we would all go in different directions. But something tells me that we going forward to fall into the abyss.

Remember autistic guy, he came up to you and asked, “Give me this CD.” You looked at him and asked, “Why?” He answered, “Because I want to look at it.” And you said, “Billy, get lost, it’s just a CD, there is nothing interested in it.” He looked at you for a while and then asked, “Why do you treat me like an animal? I’m a human being, too.” I’ll never forget this. In my childhood, before we met, I had a neighbor guy with the cerebral palsy disease. His name was Simon. Simon always was pleased to see me, and I tried to be polite, but I didn’t understand a word that he was saying. The other children mocked him, but not me. The years passed, and I tried to ignore Simon because I was ashamed. Simon felt that I didn’t understand him and tried even harder to pronounce words. One day he came to me with a paper, where he wrote, “My mother is sick, I need money, please.” And I don’t have a penny in my pocket, I was a young teenager, and I don’t want to ask my parents about it. I just said sorry to him and ran away and cried. I’ve never visited Simon since I left my home. I’ve never helped. Yes, sometimes I stood near the road and tried to understand what he wanted to say to me, nodded, showing that I understood him. Yes, I was not angry with him, but did I help him? No. And you could just give Billy your CD.

I think you and I have the same problem, we can’t squeeze the world we want to see inside of us. Are we good people? You and I are good to each other and to those who are good to us. That’s it. You always defended me in college. I appreciate it. Girls were like a disaster, they always wanted to provoke for something, maybe because of you. Yes, you’ve done a lot for Megan too. We’re all friends and good to each other and support each other. But Billy… We must be sensitive to these kinds of people.

But still, we’re kind persons. Remember I was humiliated in school. Richard Allen-Walker, fucking bastard! He just kicked me in my balls, and I fell, and some other schoolmates were laughing. And you saw this and ran to him and kicked him, but he punched you in the face, and you fell too. Todd came out and shouted, “what the fuck?!” And they began to fight, but teachers came, and you remember what’s was next. After I was already at home and watching “Natural Born Killers” and when I watched this movie I was so angry, that I really want to kick Richard’s ass! I never wanted to hurt someone with such fury and rage before that day. But I calmed myself with my parents’ booze. Do you remember my teacher, his name was George Mitchell? He said to me that I’m not capable of murder. Maybe he is right. But what would happen if I went to Richard with my rage? And what would happen if I saw the bastard raping Megan? Or you? We will never know.

If a thought breaks off somewhere, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten, it means what... Or maybe I did forget. I read the novel you recommended halfway through. And now, here are my short thoughts. First, the book presents the main character thinking too narrowly. Secondly, I found it funny to read the author allegories. If you had watched Eyes Wide Shut, you might have heard the very interesting idea that a woman can give up everything, her husband, her child for the passion of one night. But back to the book, the main character’s analysis is so “supposedly logical” that she draws one particular conclusion. But after all, everything has a flip side to the coin. Unfortunately, I never understood what the main character lives for. If I had lived for so many years, I would have decided to change the world. The constant search for truth, development, improvement, and helping society would excite me the most. And she’s already got everything. It’s just an evening read to defuse the brain, but the brain may be surprised and traumatized. Weird this main character, either she’s really stupid, or I don’t know what’s wrong with her. My foxy, just pick up a book on the history of primitive society, and then do analysis and draw parallels with modernity. And you will see and understand the problems in this novel.

But enough of that. This letter has become annoying, but I think I need to continue. As long as there is time to change your life, you need to change it because life always has time to change you. I’m thinking about you. I miss you, I miss you madly, every molecule of my body feels how far you are from me, how you are leaving me, disappearing beyond the horizon of the unknown... I love you so much that I am unable to whisper this phrase, unable to utter the sound of love, unable even to write.

Music begins where the soul dies silently. I imagine you listening to music and reading my letter while lying in your bed. The autumn air comes in through the half-opened window. But it’s not cold at all for you, it’s still warm for you, or you would close the window and crawl under the covers, just like I did. I imagine you went out of town, and I hope you got to the horses like you wanted to. You and I never went for a ride. There are a lot of things we didn’t do together. I miss you so much.

I love you, and it would hurt me if you made a mistake and the new man wasn’t as good as you thought. But I’m afraid you won’t say it to me for fear of my judgment. As much as I like Megan, and as much as I sympathize with her, I’m afraid you will listen to her, and she will advise you not to tell me about your quarrels with him, about your private life. Megan was broken long before she was raped. She had a very negative experience of betrayal, she was honest like you, but you know how life broke her. Remember, my love, by telling me every little thing, every detail of something bad or good, you let me touch your soul every time. I love you so much, my foxy! If you hide things from me, then I can say that my feelings are a lie because I don’t know who I love. I love you, and you can puff on cigarettes or drink vodka and grape juice or fuck him, and everything will be okay, but I want to know about it. Love is infinite, and love is instant. You begin to appreciate every moment when the person you love is far away. You begin to appreciate the past and realize that love is the singing of rain in sunny weather.

The union of space and time gives birth to the past. Why did we stop calling each other? Yes, yes, my wife, I do understand that marriage forces people to kill friendships. We’ve stopped talking on the phone a long ago. I don’t remember when. But I can feel you getting farther and farther away with every second. You probably waste time on relationships, endless conversations with him. And you don’t have even a second to be alone, to think about me. Although it’s my fault, two months is too long, maybe you think the letter didn’t reach me, or maybe you think I was offended by something, but you don’t want to be the first to write again. I’m sorry. How I’ve missed your disgruntled purring. I adore you, my love. You’ve given me so much. You’ve given me the most powerful feeling a man can have.

A week ago, David called me from work on my day off, and I came. And he started talking insulting crap, just like he always does. He blamed me for our friendship. Because he so wants to sleep with you, that knowing you and I haven’t slept, drives him insane. It sounds like he needed friendly permission to fuck you. But you’re my girl. I don’t even know which is stronger my love for you or his desire to sleep with you. I can’t make him forget you. I need to destroy his hope, but my threats, entreaties, please don’t work.

I remember waking up many years ago around 5 a.m. thinking about you and having decided that it was time to ask you to marry me. Neither of us was in a relationship at the time. I woke up and felt a tremendous, endless love as if love had no limit and was growing inside me. It sounded like an Alien was growing inside me, but it wasn’t. In those days, I still wanted to go with Rick and, in the old tradition of meeting girls, to take my mind off my love for you. But I woke up and decided that I didn’t need anyone but you, that I only needed to be faithful to you, and I didn’t need any other girls. Rick was busy that day, so I went with David, telling him I wasn’t going to meet any girls and we must go and buy rings. And David went alone to the bar. And some guy ran out with a gun and started shooting, but he didn’t hit, and David and I ran as fast as we could, we ran so long, that I was spitting blood afterwards. That’s why I didn’t ask you to marry me that day. Maybe I thought it was a bad sign.

I’ve made my peace that you are far away. This is how people make peace with the inevitability of fate. There is always only one chance to reach the sun and one chance to be reborn and one life for everyone so that everyone understands that the value of life is inexplicable, immeasurable and every second spent with love… that’s life. But I lost the battle for our love and I lost it with dignity. But the ability to lose speaks not of dignity but defeat.

It was a month ago, I think, that I met Sarah. Why do many people we know move to Philly instead of New York? That question bothers me. But do you remember Sarah? The one with the red curly hair? Sarah Bernecker. Now your hair is almost the same color as hers. Anyway, she told me she broke up with Charles. I rarely saw him then, though we kept in touch. He was never close to me. But since we’d seen each other a couple of times and I was actively talking with Charles, Sarah asked me to talk to him. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I then spent all day looking for his business card with his phone number. When I called him, he was surprised but told me that they had a fight and she had left him. He started crying into the phone. I can barely stand my whining, but other men’s whining… Ou, God. I told him that I once looked down from a great height, and I was as scared as ever, but then I asked myself, “Why should I be scared because heights aren’t the devil ripping out my soul?” And I stopped being afraid. At that moment, I was completely calm and at peace. I could even fall and feel calm in flight until I crashed. That’s life. And in life, you have to feel the world around you and analyze what’s going on, what’s bothering you. And I almost wanted to tell poor Charles that she would be back and everything would be okay. But then I realized that she wasn’t coming back, likely and that it was time for him to stop being afraid of heights, afraid of being alone, afraid of falling. Suffering isn’t going to do any good. I realized that he was just annoying me with his whining. After all, who has it easy? It’s hard for everyone.

Of course, I miss you, darling, but damn me, it’s the same as the fear of heights. After all, why would I be bored if I could call and talk to you? And if something happened to you, then while I don’t know about it, I shouldn’t worry about it, because there’s nothing I can do. There is a phone number, there is your address, if I really love you and am really worried, then I have to visit you or at least call you. But if I came to you, and your new man came out, and you would say that now is about 11 p.m. and reminded me of my refusal to go out with you, that would be fair.

A few days ago, Beth called me. The wife was very angry. She said that she was sick of sharing me with my girl… friends. And Beth said she misses me and wants to meet… Be jealous. Be jealous because I only feel guilty for thinking about Beth sometimes. You left then, and the first days I almost died without you, for a natural reason, because I love you. And for Beth, I have friendly feelings. Maybe not only friendly, what should be feared. But I’d rather just sleep with her than talk to her. But the feeling of guilt does not leave me. I told her that it would be nice to meet, but now there is no time. And I felt ashamed, I hadn’t turned her down outright. I was ashamed before you and before my wife because Beth was essentially a remnant of my past, and I was suppressing my feelings for her, which, let’s note, were not strong love feelings at all.

I love you very much, my little foxy. I was talking about Beth, but actually, I was thinking about you. Thinking about you when I talked to her when I saw David when I carried my new printer when I ate cookies when I looked at the sky and saw how a bird was flying serenely, the same bird of prey that soars in search of food. I thought about you and how amazing it is that you exist. Not only you are amazing, but the fact of your existence is amazing and how completely natural it is that a bird soars. To learn to see, you first need to be blind and then to see.

I think of you when I turn on my computer, when I try to write my novel, when I sit at work, trying to ignore inappropriate jokes from colleagues when I look at your last photo and realize that it’s good that you just dyed your hair and not shaved your head. I remember your slightly narrowed eyes while smiling, I remember your hugs, I feel that you are near, I feel you. I want to touch you, see your laugh, smell your shampoo on your hair. And because you’re far away, I don’t want to do anything.

Yes, it’s an amazing time. About two and a half weeks ago, Rick and I went shopping for his clothes, and he decided to flirt with the salesgirl, having a nice chat about getting a discount on a shirt that didn’t have a button. We decided to go to another boutique. Then we came back, she specially put this shirt aside for us, which Rick had bought eventually, and when he came up to her to take a phone number, she told him that she had a boyfriend and that it would not be good to give a phone number because her boyfriend is jealous. And guess what happened? She took his cell phone and typed her number into it. Amazing!

This is going to be a long letter. I don’t know how long it will take you to read my letter, but I can’t do otherwise. But I’ll even leave out the curious incidents, maybe save them for other letters. Various uninteresting stories. The police came to work and talked to the boss. The boss didn’t say anything to anyone, and no one knows what the matter is. We asked, and he wouldn’t talk. David believes it’s not about work but about the fact that the boss and his wife are getting divorced. There’s another story I’d rather not tell. One beggar attacked me with a knife near the store. I didn’t even have time to react, but the owner of the store ran out with a baseball bat, and the beggar ran away. I wasn’t hurt, don’t worry. And of course, most importantly, I’m getting fat. I don’t want to meet with you until I flatten my belly.

You’re my princess, I want you so bad! Unfair life! We ruined it! When we were in our early twenties, I remember you confessed that you masturbated to my photo. I was shocked and impressed at the same time. Why don’t I have any nude photos of you? Ok, I was in that photo only topless. Then I need justice. Where is your topless picture? Send me at least one. I imagine the picture, I’ll be jerking off to your photo, and my wife will come in. I wonder if the police will come to me as to the boss because of the divorce?

You know, you’re like the sun, you’re all glowing, you’re so bright, it’s impossible to take my eyes off of you. And if I can’t take my eyes off of you, I could go blind. You illuminate the heavenly falcon, which dives, trying to grab your rays. If I had been asked to be someone else, I would have preferred to be that falcon.

I took over from your part of your sensitivity, a strong negative reaction to what is happening in the movies. For example, a woman died, a father was left with his son, his little son. And I no longer want to watch a movie after I’ve seen the death. It’s like something is growing in me. The pain. On the other hand, I don’t want to watch comedies. It’s uncomfortable for me right now. I can’t laugh when Megan is suffering.

Learning about the world of love comes at the expense of accepting the amazing sensitivity of human beings. If you love him, and it pains you to confess, but you confess, and then feel guilty, you will still be mine, and I will have no right to think that you are betraying me! After all, I’m a married man, and you’re a free woman! We can’t consider that we are cheating on each other! But we will be ashamed, yes. We will be ashamed in front of our other loved ones with whom we decided to be together. I’m still trying to find the answer to the question, why didn’t we choose to be together with each other? If you and I were married, would we stop being friends? Or if we were together, do you think another woman would appear in my life? More than a month ago I met a girl, twenty years old, she’s like a young Beth, she was sweet and flirted with me, and I was lonely at the time. Her name is Melanie. But somehow, I didn’t want to keep up the dialogue, and she understood everything and left. But it was not our last meeting…

Anyway, I felt sad because she was beautiful, she wouldn’t replace you or my wife, or even Beth, but her voice sounded in my head for a while afterwards, and then your voice came again, humming its love song.

Yes, everything is fine with my wife, but she distances herself, and she sees that I am brooding, flying in my own world. Sometimes I wish she would cheat on me, and I would forgive her. It would make me feel better, and now my conscience hurts because I love you. Though you know, I love my wife, too. But I’m lonely. Though loneliness is a form of freedom. If I’m lonely with everyone else, maybe I won’t feel the love I want to feel. But then you and my wife and Beth and others might also be lonely. Oh, Megan came to mind again. I don’t even know if I should have known that or not. Why do men hurt women physically? Isn’t there enough psychological pain? Look, I’m hurting you and my wife and Beth. I hurt myself, too. Every man hurts someone somehow, but why make it worse with violence? I’ll never understand it!

After all, there is love! True love simply has to suppress aggression and cruelty! Otherwise, it does not love but a lust for possessing someone. Love suppresses the sense of selfishness and wants to give bright happiness every second! But it happens that even under the glossy packaging of love hides a dark soul. And that’s not true love. True love is an addiction that suppresses willpower. It is the endless days of waiting for a miracle. And everything a lover touches loses its meaning if the beloved person is not there. And you are my sweet little foxy, a foxy that jumps from one cloud to another, you are a princess from a fairy tale, you are a female hero praised by world literature. You are not just a foxy, you are the rainbow song of the foxy who reached for the tantalizing coffee and the caramel in the den of chocolate. You are like the sandy love of water in a waking desert.

What is love? I already tried to answer this question with a line from a song. There are times when I don’t understand or can’t explain anything. How can you explain the total all-consuming dependence on another person? Dependence on my own will, on my own cry of the soul. Everything I do is pointless if you are not there. I’m tired of work, of routine, of my wife’s looks, I’m tired of thinking, of solving problems, of chasing pennies. And so I want to live and love you. Love is alive, and, like any living organism, it needs to be fed.

I love you, my foxy, and the only thing I want to do is to devote my life to loving you. The foolishness of a naive man. The platitudes, the absurdities. I want to hold you. I want to stroke your head. Just to touch you. What am I thinking about?

I don’t have time for anything! My God, I’ve remembered your phrase several hundred times that you want 48 hours in a day. The only benefit to having a catastrophic lack of time is that I have fewer seconds to get bored and go crazy without you. Wait a minute, what about this letter? I will write it today, I hope, thinking about you. I want so much to get back to summer and lie with you under a clear night sky, looking at the stars. But in the materialistic world, it’s hard to be romantic because when you look at the stars, you see their price tags.

Now I need you as much as air! But I guess I lied that I don’t love Beth. I have some feelings for her, for which I am ashamed in front of you, and I hate myself for this polygamous recklessness character! But I don’t have the same feelings for Beth that I have for you; I still have a mixture of sympathy and personal interest for her... If I jump and cheer when I see you, and my whole body is just excited, and there is endless applause in my heart, I just smile a little when I see Beth. But now I don’t want to smile, I don’t want to think about her, talk about her. Because I realized, so spontaneously and suddenly, that regardless of the difference in feelings, now there is no place in my mind for others… But it’s not quite true.

Yes, I could leave my wife. I remember you asked me not to say anything about my wife at all and not to mention her name if it doesn’t matter. Why? Was it because of that meeting you had at the store? So many years have passed, and you just said to her, “Hello.” Maybe the looks you gave each other were like Armageddon. But Jess, I love you, and I love Emily! I can’t understand how much I love her and how much I love you. I wouldn’t marry her if I didn’t love her! These feelings are tearing me apart. If it was just about sex, it would be much easier. And I’m not one of those who compare loved ones by type, which one is better. Which one is better to cook, which one shows the best feelings, which is more obedient? Fuck that shit! You are so special, my little foxy, and you and I had our moments, but there were so few of them... I love you.

For the first time, I felt real heartbreaking love when I met you. I was able to figure out how to cultivate this feeling, thanks to you. Love arises like lightning, and then it sweeps in the rain, and if a person is capable, then, as if on fertile soil, love begins to grow, like trees, branching, filling the space.

What is in me is such a strong and amazing feeling that any attempt to characterize it tries to escape definitions. I tried to dissect it and disassemble it, to decompose it, nothing came of it, it’s very difficult to perceive. Too strong, too big feeling. There is no such feeling for anyone anymore. It’s very different from my love for my wife. So when you wrote to me that you met him, I was hurt, jealousy ate me up. But I can’t love like that, it’s selfishness and possessiveness. I can’t blame you for your feelings for other men. I understand that.

Beth once told me that we were friends, so she didn’t have to pretend and squeeze a strained smile out of herself. You try to please the person you fall in love with. But who is she fooling? And who am I fooling? I had a dream about her recently. It was a quiet summer evening in the apartment. She was cleaning the house, washing the dishes, doing household chores, and I was wandering from room to room. Then I approached her. She began to take off her clothes. I came closer, she tried to kiss me. I said to her, “I’m sorry.” She said, “You know why I’m here, I cleaned up this place just for you.” Then she dragged me into the bath. And I said to her again, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She was irritated and threw something into the tub. I tried to figure out what it was, but I didn’t understand it. Then she left. And in a dream, I sat in a room and thought about you and how good I am, that, despite such temptations, I remain faithful. After all, if I had cheated in a dream, then I would feel disgusted. However, when I woke up, I realized that I had not thought about my wife at all in my sleep, as if Emily didn’t exist.

I haven’t done anything useful in my life. Life goes by very quickly, and I didn’t even notice it, I didn’t enjoy it. Why would I burden myself with many years of existence when you’re not around? No, don’t worry, I’m not talking about suicide. Just feeling of my life is meaningless without you. You’re not near, and I don’t want to plan life, set goals when you’re far away. Why do I need a goal if I will still be so morally weak without you that even if I set it, I will not achieve it, and all this time that I will spend trying to get closer to this goal will be in vain, and after that, as soon as I get tired of it, I will again fall into depression and blame everyone except myself. My reflections lead me to a dead end. I’m a complex person with complex problems and complex love.

Even good deeds seem meaningless without you. The emptiness rules inside me that control me. I am a slave to the emptiness, a slave trying to gnaw through the bars of the cage of my feelings. My brain isn’t working. I have to solve this problem. After all, most people can’t touch their love at all, they can only love secretly and suffer. You and I are lucky, my foxy, at least we know that we love each other, and it’s mutual! But most people are unhappy, they are constantly waiting for deception, but they deceive, they expect betrayal from others, and they betray, they expect evil, and they do evil things by themselves, become more and more disappointed in each other. Their lives are empty. Every day they think about where to get money to feed their families. Their children see only grief. Most of these people drink because of the lack of money. Is it society’s fault that they can’t adapt, or is it their own fault? The other day I read the news that one woman stole a cake from a disabled person in a wheelchair. In other news, one teenage girl cut a kitten with an axe. I’ve cried! Is it the world gone mad? Where will it all lead us? The world is sick. Many people in childhood were traumatized by parents, peers and others, but some became angry, and some retained human kindness and compassion.

Everything is intertwined in a person’s head, so many thoughts, so much fatigue from being, so many contradictions. A web in which the most resourceful spider would get entangled. Life goes on, constantly stumbling with its endless legs against time, and a person continues to make mistakes and continues to think narrowly and swim with the flow. In my childhood and youth, I strove for sensuality but always for conscious sensuality. Nothing has changed now. I wanted to understand and be aware of the shades of feelings. I always tried to explain to myself this or that fact of falling in love or another attraction. But despite the romantic orientation, I admired the pragmatists. They knew what they needed. The only bad thing is that people still don’t want to admit to themselves what they are and don’t want to finally build something good inside themselves. Do we have to accept ourselves for who we are? What if we’re killers? Or rapists. A bastard who raped Megan almost certainly accepted himself for who he was.

Rick slept with Claire. Don’t confuse her with my literature teacher, who I will mention in this letter. You don’t know Claire, she’s his high school love. Now I won’t be able to look at Amanda. I think soon, the entire population of Detroit will come to live in Philly… Claire is engaged and has a wedding soon. And she’ll never tell her husband about the affair. And how many more secrets and lies will grow in her future family? And now it’s also a bad seed of a secret growing in me. It’s a good thing that Amanda and I aren’t very close, or I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut.

Modernity seems to be dull. The world has lost such a thing as a culture of erudition. One person may be educated and know a lot, but it will be difficult for him or her to find topics for conversation with another polymath who learned a lot from other sources. I’m not complaining that diversity is bad. Not at all. I just understand that in the modern world people will increasingly move away from each other, and this is happening despite globalization. This is a fault of the catastrophic lack of time. It’s like drowning in an ocean of unnecessary things, trying to breathe in the necessary information. And I’m trapped, like my cultural and educational processes are stuck somewhere in the late seventies, and I don’t even know which side I’m on.

If we roughly divide all people on the planet according to a certain criterion, then the first type is striving forward, and the second is pulling themselves back. Probably, there is a third type, but besides myself, I do not know anyone else who could fit this type, type of silent equilibrium, standing still. I’m stuck in time. I wish I could break free of the shackles and just start living. Breathe deeply, do something, have fun and pleasant work, discover the world around me, swim in the ocean of information, get to know the world better. And it is precise because of my philosophy that you and I ended up on opposite sides of love.

Indeed, if I had freed myself from my addiction to my principles, I would immediately come running to you and begin to live with you. But at some point, I would just leave the house and go wherever I want. I would walk and walk, and I wouldn’t care if you were worried about me like many others. I’d just walk into the unknown. I’d walk in the rain, trying to see something kind in the faces that were hiding under the umbrellas. I would be free! Freedom is an absolute indicator, and I’d not be held back by love and obligations. It would no longer be me. It would be someone else in my shell. He would have walked and wouldn’t have thought that you feel, that you are worried. He would find a new love each time, and each time he would forget it, leaving hearts broken and souls trampled. This kind of freedom leads relationships to disaster.

I love you, and lately, I’ve been on the edge. It is not for nothing that many philosophers have said that one should beware of passionate love, but good love should be simple, and calm and not obsessive. I’m not afraid to love you so much that I can’t breathe. I’m not afraid to destroy my world with my love. I’m not afraid to enslave my freedom to finally begin to control my destiny. And let the thunder and anger and the righteous pathos of my words does not strike your mind too hard, for in my letter, I want to let you understand not how much I love you, but that there is a huge difference between freedom and love. And that it is difficult to combine these sensual notions in one person without traumatizing his soul.

And my soul is in a prison, but it holds the key. It looks like a parrot that always returns to the cage, after all, it feels good in it because it’s a familiar place where it can find food. But outside the window is the whole world. A world riddled with billions of temptations and tragedies, a world that calls every person to freedom. Any restrictions put handcuffs on the soul and take it to the punishment cell.

Would I like to drop everything and go somewhere? To Arizona, I guess. Just like that, pack up and go. And it doesn’t matter what lies ahead, what troubles and hardships I may or may not go through. While others are just having fun and do not limit themselves in feelings and cheat on their loved ones, you and I live our miserable lives, thinking about each other. But our time is passing, faster than sand can get through our fingers, faster than we could imagine. If a person had the opportunity to replace the Sun with a better star, a new model, then he would definitely do it. But it’s probably enough for you and me to suffer thinking about each other than to try to change something.

Many people live trying to accumulate more and more material wealth. You also have this in you. You like unnecessary things, you want to acquire them and admire them. Oh, how many unnecessary things I gave you. I remember the owl statue, it was almost a foot in size, you noticed it in the store, and you liked it. We took another walk afterwards, and I took you home, and then I returned to the store and bought it, and on a second day, I bring it to you. I remember that you were happy with it. I’m pretty sure the statue is gathering dust in some self-storage right now. And that’s ok, as with the case with the plush tiger, which was my height. I just wanted to make you happy, and when we walked together, went shopping, I saw what you were paying attention to, and I always remembered it. And then I gave it to you because your moment of joy echoed with happiness in my soul.

We seem to be intelligent people, but why didn’t we think much about the future? We didn’t have a definite picture, an image of how we would live, for example, at 60 years old. If I left home right now, I would know for sure that I have absolutely no idea what will happen next. After leaving the house, I would decide where I would go, north, south, west or east. Although not to the north, winter is already on the doorstep, and I really don’t want to go through Pennsylvania and New York State to Canada. But if I were to go, my soul would break free right from the first start and sing songs about the unknown and how chance may dispose of my life.

But I love you, and my choice is to stay where I am so that you can always find me. You are my world and my planet! But both of us have no sense of the future, that’s why you are almost free of my love. So have you decided to tie your life to him? I hope it’s not the case, like with… What was his name? Logan.

You slept with him on the day you met, and a month later, you broke up. I remember how I judged you. But not out of jealousy or any moral reasons. He was a stranger, it’s dangerous from a healthy point of view! I have always been against spontaneous sex contact. Although non-spontaneous never protects against the possibility of getting infected either. We’re still lucky. Remember Tony when you saw him when I was working in the photo lab before the whole industry went to hell? Anyway, Tony turned out to be bisexual, and once we talked frankly, for some reason, I told him about you, my love, and he told me that he got HIV from a girl. Yes, from a woman! And he was happy that he didn’t have time to infect his current boyfriend. Fear is a disgusting emotion. How scared I was then! Although I understood perfectly well that breathing the same air next to him or shaking his hand would not cause infection but I pulled myself away from him... I hope that Megan didn’t get sick with anything, otherwise, it will be doubly awful.

When you left, for the first time I felt the full weight of the separation of two close people. Space has separated us, and time was added to it, but still, at that point, minutes were minutes, and now minutes fly by instantly with activity, but since I often think about you, they immediately turn into hours. Paradox. Sometimes it seems that time has stopped, and if it really stopped, then I would have stopped too and would not write to you so much, and you would never receive my letter. But time goes on, and I keep writing the letter, and I’m getting older, already shaking the air with grey hair, but I keep telling you, Jess, I love you!

But such love makes the feeling control the mind. How do people not understand that lack of mind control leads them to a puppet way of life? They are controlled by what they do not control. Maybe it’s wonderful to surrender to such love, or maybe it’s the other way around.

If we were to overcome our contradictions, our complexes, our fears, and finally decide to be together, what guarantee is there that we wouldn’t realize later that we weren’t right for each other? But we are not subject to momentary desires. We raised each other as people with willpower. However, your College episode with Logan doesn’t mean that you controlled yourself that day. We looked for love in someone else all the time, but not in each other. The fear of losing our special relationships made us act recklessly. So what? Did we find someone who was perfect for us in every way? Of course not! Yes, relationships are adaptations, compromises because there are no people who are immediately ideally suited to each other. It’s all movie-literary stereotypes slipped to us by society. You were afraid because of jealousy that I would leave you for, say, Beth. And I feared the same thing about you, that there would be others like Logan, and you would cheat on me. We have strange feelings, we seem to love each other very much, but do we trust each other? If we fell deeply in love with each other, why did we have to give in to some secondary weakness and feelings? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep love and change only for the good of our love?

As long as selfishness grows in our minds, we will not achieve positive results in our relationships. Human relationships are always a compromise. And love is also a compromise. We shouldn’t crown love, otherwise, it will take the throne of consciousness and establish its own rules and laws that are incompatible with life.

I remember your father again. I, too, have a wild dislike for him. But I’d hate him if I knew that he did something terrible to you. Just thinking about Megan and about you, I remembered what you said once that you were “daddy’s piece of meat.” I can’t get this phrase out of my head. Tell me honestly, please, did your father rape you or did something like that or not? I can’t live without knowing the truth, and I need to protect you. I’m already on the edge! And I’ve said that phrase many times before. I want to get a divorce and make you a marriage proposal. I can’t leave my beloved foxy with some guy who may not be so good. But I don’t think you’re going to break up with him, you’re doing fine. People break up because, first of all, they change, and second of all, they accumulate dissatisfaction from something. I don’t think you have any reason to break up with your man.

We are all consumers. We consume material things and spiritual things, and we want to have an emotional response in someone. When I wrote poetry to you in my youth, nobody needed them but you. And you didn’t need it either. You had more happiness in your eyes from that owl statue than from my poems. I just splashed my enthusiastic cry of love on the paper, and it was absorbed into it like water, and the feeling is disappeared, leaving only a bare text, an insignificant set of images and feelings. But now I am screaming out of love for you in my letter. Sometimes I just want to go to nature in the company of girls, sit by the fire, play the guitar, swim in the lake, and have a good fuck with them. Just to stop thinking about you.

I miss your love, your wale gaze, your shadow trailing behind me, I’m stuck in this alley of feelings. Do you think I want to leave, to escape from it? Or, on the contrary, lie down and accept? Hell no! Love penetrated me the way a thief enters a house quite suddenly. And you know I’m ready to kiss fate’s feet for bringing such love to me.

I miss you so much, I miss you every day, I try to shut the door to my soul to concentrate on something else, but I can’t, I start thinking about you again. But our letters got shorter, and we wrote them less often. We are two people floundering in an ocean of love, and no one will save us. Just touching you gives me a thousand-year euphoria, as if I had experienced pure pleasure for millennia and knew no pain, disappointment, or loss. Or maybe our relationship ended long ago? The relationship ended, but love remained as eternal love. Love that can neither be silent nor speak.

I remember that I was surprised in the days of our youth, when you sat at home, when your father was at work, that you had time to sit and do nothing, lie on the bed, dwelling in your thoughts. You didn’t want to see anyone, and you didn’t have depression. You felt good alone. But then you still did at least something, read or watched a movie… I can’t do anything now. I can’t communicate with my wife, I can’t communicate well with colleagues at work, I don’t want to spend time with Rick and David, though they are good friends. I want to be alone with myself. But maybe such a desire for loneliness is like the desire for death? I want to live! I want to live for you! But I can’t live in constant worry about our love without doing something. Life is always some action. Life is a motion. But now, being in suffering, I don’t want to move, because movement makes the soul suffocate, it becomes short of breath. And you, my sweet dear foxy, somehow could live alone and not feel the need for love, affection, people. Yes, you couldn’t have lived your whole life like that, I guess, but the time that you were alone and yet didn’t feel lonely is amazing and admirable. I can’t feel like that.

I’m afraid I won’t see you again. I remember how you took a kitten in your hands, then you were happy in my parents’ house, and when I photographed you later, it was like you were shutting down, losing a piece of yourself. I remember our camping, when you and I made a fire, not far from the woods, and I was a little scared, you never know what jerks could drive up to us, and I didn’t have a gun. But soon, the fear passed, and we looked at the stars. Remember my film camera, I still have a printed photo of blurry stars somewhere. The shutter speed of the camera was long, and the stars were blurred, or rather, they turned into lines. But the most vivid impression was then that we saw the fog coming in. It was as if it was coming toward us, and we not only saw it but felt it. I wished you had brought your flute and I had brought my guitar, maybe we would have composed some musical masterpiece under the influence of our feelings.

You know you can always sit down near the field in a park in the summer and carelessly play the flute or guitar, and then lie down and listen to the sound of nature, and then feel the wind blowing heat at you. Heat… It is beautiful and ugly at the same time, though in your part of California I think it is not so hot in the summer. Anyway, maybe you can just get caught in the rare San Francisco summer rain and walk under it. You can wander through the forest, study insects. Or you can fly to the UK and look at Stonehenge, and then get to France and walk through the Bois de Boulogne. I don’t know why you are so attached to this forest, we have a lot of interesting forests in our country. California has the largest trees on the planet, what could be more beautiful?

If you argue like the most ardent follower of maximalism, then material goods mean absolutely nothing if you do not hold the most sublime and magnificent love in your arms if you have not tasted this love. Is it bitter or sweet, does love have the flavor of eternity or is it only an illusion? Jess, because even though I held you in my arms once, or rather twice, I have never tasted you. I don’t need the Bois de Boulogne, but with you, it would take on a new meaning, maybe it would become our place of love. If you wish we can fly to France together.

I’m repeating myself. Could it be early-stage Alzheimer’s disease? Some kind of repetition and boring, monotony. But the world is monotonous. The same thing constantly alternates, the seasons change. The movement of words in the phrase “the seasons change” speaks of the monotony of being. We all live, strive, produce something or consume something. We use words, consume fast food, get confused in an endless stream of information, we are born and freeze, trying to stop time so as not to die.

Someone wastes an endless amount of paper, saturating them with words, for example, me, feeling spiritual pain, and someone on the street can fall into the wet, cold, withered foliage and feel physical pain. But this is boring. All the boredom is in us. The monotony is inherent in nature itself. Look at what people are doing, and they are so delighted with simple truths, simple feelings, understandable love, but they are also quiet about their own betrayal of loved ones and similarly terrible things. Of course, their attitude may be a riot of emotions with possibly disastrous consequences, but the very fact that these terrible atrocities are permissible speaks of a total human imperfection. My love for you is complex, incomprehensible, unexplored and deep. And I don’t know if my marriage to Emily was regarded by you as a betrayal. Maybe I’m the same jerk who doesn’t care about the feelings of loved ones, like many others. But you can’t undo the past. Our whole life is a movement from birth to death. Imagine this line. And if you live only in the present, then you will get a part line of the past that will not play any role in your life. But this seeming part fills the entire line of being, and it turns out that this is not a line of being at all, but a scrap of it, a worthless piece of past. Sorry. It’s just that anger and resentment against myself makes me think that our past has no meaning. But it’s not.

I remember our past. You played the flute and piano and painted, and I took photographs. I remember how we spent part of the summer walking the streets and feeding stray animals. We have done good deeds, and what happened to us? Now, while working too hard, trying to help our loved ones in the pursuit of material success, the ground that is actually life and love at the same time is slipping from under our feet. Kind, compassionate love, it’s almost disappeared into everyday life and material difficulties. We have monotonous meals, sleep, schedules and sex. I don’t condone cheating, as you know, but I understand why it happens. A person gets tired of the monotony and certain standard feelings, and he or she begins to look for new experiences. And then, having committed a betrayal, a person can often feel uncomfortable and try to forget, rejecting the act as a negative past. Past. That’s why I behaved with you the way I did. I wanted our past to be valuable so that there was no desire to erase it. I have no desire to erase it, but I have a desire to relive it. To revive every moment of your look. I looked into your eyes and saw love! I saw thirst, desire, fear, admiration and tenderness. I know that every time you expected me that I would kiss you and that I would take off your jeans, and we have sex right in the kitchen. But every opportunity I’ve had, I’ve screwed up.

There are mistakes for which nature and chances are responsible. For example, floods, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and storms. And there are those for which humans are responsible. A drunk driver who hit a child or a criminal who took people hostage. Or me for not kissing you. Someone can escape punishment, and someone will pay for their mistakes all their lives. Many people try to forget the past and the evil they have committed so that it doesn’t hurt, and therefore many continue to make mistakes. Few people want to understand themselves and their problems, but most want to forget.

Many women who stay at home, who are supported by their husbands, are bored, unhappy. Others, active ladies, tired of business and routine or tired of the constant change of activities, bars, clubs, Paris (why do you care about this Bois de Boulogne?), Las Vegas, and adventures would gladly give themselves to “dirty animal.” For a change in their lives, they’re ready to pay with subsequent remorse, though they hardly feel any. And you just want to start a family. You always wanted a family, you wanted children to give them the love that you were deprived of. So you can’t go for an affair with me if you decide to be in a relationship with your current man. And I can’t cheat on Emily either.

Earlier in my life, there were so many intense moments that were akin to hurricanes, erupting volcanoes, and akin to the feeling that a person experiences when drowning. I worried, suffered, delighted and rejoiced; it was as if I were jumping off a skyscraper and, flying up to the asphalt, becoming the wind, dissolving in the city air. You and I dreamed of moving to LA, and I dreamed of gambling in the casino, investing the winnings in some business. I’ll tell you one thing about gambling later. As I remember, you wanted your own bar and your own record company. I’m always was curious, you’re mostly an artist, not a musician, and why you’ve dreamed about a record company? Anyway, as you remember, I wanted my own photo studio, shoot portfolios of future famous models, to use light and shadow on female beauty. We had nothing then, but we felt the taste of life, and what’s now?

Now I have a house, even though I haven’t paid for it completely yet, but it is, and you have a house, and we are far from each other. How do we feel now? Do you feel the taste of unfulfilled dreams and disappointments on your lips?

I almost forgot, when I went to New York, I met Ryan, he flew to Hawaii and fucked some model there, when he told me he was surprised that I didn’t know her. And I just imagine, he returned home, looked into the eyes of his wife, said that he loved her, and he remembered a model that might have been a thousand times more beautiful than his wife, but who did he deceive? He will stay with his wife, not with that model. So who did he cheat by committing adultery?

Once you told me that you were a mean girl and that you were mad about my tenderness and smile. You said that when I told you about Beth. But you know you and Beth are different. She can be mean, and as self-centered as you simply can’t. Once I felt a great pain, you were not in the city, I was lonely, and I wanted to come to Beth, but she remembered that I did not give in to her sexual flirtation, and she said something like, “I’m cooking, but you can’t come because there will be other guests tonight and there will be no place for you.” I was too emotional at that moment and offended. Although I shouldn’t have been offended because Beth wanted to be with me, and I refused her. But you also wanted to be with me, and I wanted to be with you, but we could not find a way to our love. It was as if love was stuck in the dark and calling us to find it, but we got lost.

Maybe I should admit that I’m polyamorous? I don’t know. But honestly, nobody is standing between you and me. And no one ever will. You and I are halves of something whole. But monogamy may be a system designed to consolidate power in the hands of those in power. Such a social management system is not so bad, of course, but it is not so good either. Just imagine how much adultery is happening in the world. I’m afraid to open statistics. Any person is an alloy of different sensual emotional states, and, depending on the situation, they may have changing desires, and that should always be considered. But jealousy kills love, as well as the inner ban on feeling in love with many people. In one magazine I recently found an article, “How to cheat properly”. Can you imagine it? The editor allowed it to be published! And on the Internet, I accidentally found on a forum a bunch of questions like, “My wife cheated on me, what should I do?” I just want to ask the guy, “Well, think for yourself, what you need to do. Why do you need your own brain? After all, everyone’s situation is different. Divorce or forgiveness is not all options.” But I didn’t write it because I thought that my words, as always, would be twisted. People would think that it was a call to some criminal solutions, which, of course, it wasn’t. But what about the family institution and monogamy when society itself is on the brink? If monogamy worked, people wouldn’t be cheating. On the other hand, I don’t cheat on my wife, and I will never be until I get divorced, which means that in my case monogamy works somehow.

The world is ruled by social stereotypes. When I try to argue with a stereotyped person, the sound of my voice rushes into the void, absorbed by the vacuum, forming new endless voids. Maybe sometimes I say strange, ridiculous, inappropriate things with poorly chosen words, and maybe this is not my vocation to bind thoughts and words into something worthwhile because, honestly, my words are worthless, however, a lot in the world is based on words, built on words. No matter how melancholic my stream of consciousness may be, the words will appear in whatever order they wish. Or maybe it won’t be words, but letters or sounds.

Someday death will stop our dreams and desires. After all, for all your travel adventures, for all your and my projects, we need money. Yes, money. And people do everything for the sake of these pieces of paper with a bitter name. A trivial little thing, but a pleasant shape and a pleasant color, depending on the bill. In business, there are slightly fewer words than in everyday friendly communication, and almost everything depends on how you speak and what you say. Only at the expense of the words alone, you can become a millionaire, if you want, for example, by creating such conditions for you to speak and others to do. But at the expense of words, you can get some penalty instead of the long-awaited pleasant pieces of paper. Words play a crucial role in our lives. So, I will say once again, I love you, my little foxy!

What is the world coming to? At some point, we lose our individuality. Now, society is screaming about individuality but only recognizes what is understandable to the majority. Humanity seems to be copying itself rather than aspiring to some higher purpose. Everyone should stop and think about what they want for themselves rather than follow what society expects of them. That’s why there is such a huge number of divorces. People are not able to make the right choice in love right away, or they are deceived by their partners. Even I sometimes think about divorcing Emily because I don’t want to torture her. Any marriage can be imagined as a huge self-built palace in which two lovers live, but this is the inner side of love. The outer side of love is a relationship. So, before building the palace, it was necessary to agree on the purchase of land.

Once you told me that “for a person who knows how to love, it is terrible to feel in love.” But you love me. Are you in love with him or is he more of an object of desire to you? To admit this to yourself is to bring down the truth. The inner voice will fall upon you with thunder and lightning, insane thoughts, the inner voice will scream, “you will burn in hell for this!” While millions of others build their illusory world on a foundation of lies, only a few are capable of harsh criticism of their behavior.

Returning to polyamory, I can’t give a definite answer. For example, there is a spider, which is in a rather difficult position, it neighbors with ants, and ants, as you know, are good at guarding their territory and protecting the plants near which they live. And so the spider, avoiding the ants, began to eat plant food. Evolution. But a forced evolution. If you look at how, for example, lionesses hunt wildebeest, you’ll see how a huge herd will stand aside while their relatives are torn to pieces. They could trample the entire pride with one swift movement. But they don’t. And they won’t until they are forced to evolve, just like the spider. The spider probably didn’t have enough food, so he was forced to change his diet and behavior. It’s the same with polyamory, and probably this is a forced stage of human evolution. Maybe I was not lucky, but I have not met a full-fledged monoamorous person in life who doesn’t have other elements of love. Loyalty is the eternal enemy of risk. It is the enemy of the diversity of sensations and feelings. But loyalty is wonderful!

The last century in the history of mankind was the way of striving for equality between men and women. Yes, a man and a woman are different in some of their physiological characteristics. But they are created to be one, one in the endless stream of life. And the worst thing is that people fighting for equality are constantly faced with problems of misunderstanding. And misunderstanding begins with the consent of the majority with imposed beliefs, centuries-old distinctions of responsibilities. But the opposite-sex friendship between two heterosexual people without love seems to me too strained, unrealistic. But where there is a desire to communicate, to spend time together, there is a love too. Yes, and sexual backgrounds are often present, regardless of whether we want it or not. Our internal brain structure, our physiology, pushes us to do this. And there is nothing wrong with being sexually attracted to several people at once, as well as loving them.

Another thing is to have impersonal feelings, the same strength, the same feelings for everyone. Reading a book or eating some fruit, we will feel one thing, and other books and other foods will be perceived by us differently. This is why we need to be wary of ourselves of the same attitude toward our loved ones as if replacing one with the other would mean nothing. For example, you, my wife or Beth are all different, and I have different feelings for each of you. I just chose you to be in charge, to be my supreme love, but for some reason, I married Emily. And at the same time, if Beth decides to stop communicating with me, I’ll feel something bad. I’ll feel as if I have lost an arm or a leg or part of my soul.

It is easy to distinguish a bad person from a good one, a bad person does evil, and a good person only thinks about it. As a child, although I grew up as a kind boy, I had a desire to steal a million bucks somewhere. But the older I got, the more painful I perceived theft. Then I found out how widespread theft in the field of intellectual property, I was so upset. Software, illustrations, music, books, everything was stolen mercilessly, and every year it gets worse. But the question is, is it possible to steal love? Have you and I stolen love from each other? Strange people will say that a loved one can go to someone else, and this will mean that someone stole him or her. But that’s completely insane! After all, adults have their own brains, and they can think and analyze. And if someone has seduced someone, it means that the seduced person simply allowed him-or-herself to become such. If you ever leave your new man for me, then it will be a conscious choice to return to the original strong feeling, from which you just can’t get rid of. Yes, but we break lives. Look at us how disgusting we are! Our loved ones will not be able to put up with the fact that you and I have loved each other for a long time. My marriage is already bursting at the seams! Yes, I sometimes want Emily to leave me, and I’m even willing to give her the house, even though most of my investment is there, but the main thing is that she can pay the rest of the mortgage herself. I’m not rich enough to give her everything. I mean, I can leave her the house, but I don’t want to pay a loan for her home because you and I will need money. After all, she knew about you when she said yes to me. She didn’t think our years-long relationship was nothing, did she? I have never hidden from her feelings for you. Maybe she is just pleased to know that I am more hers than yours. Naive. Such a naive young woman. She’ll find a better man.

I remembered high school again. Riley and I were in the schoolyard, I was lying on her lap, she stroked my hair. And you came up and said to me, “Jack, you’re such a jerk!” And then you ran. I jumped up, and Riley looked at me and asked, “Did she just dump you?” And she laughed. Riley can be such a bitch! By the way, I haven’t heard anything from her for a long time. Anyway, I ran after you, but you hid at school, and I didn’t see you that day. I just enjoyed sitting with Riley. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, and you and I were friends, as you remember. I wouldn’t have done that if we were a couple! Even if everyone thought we were a couple, we weren’t a couple, after all! I’m sorry if I’m reacting emotionally. I feel guilty, but I want to justify myself because we were young and didn’t understand anything about relationships and how we can stop hurting each other. So now we’re adults, and have we learned how to stop hurting each other? Luckily we’re still breathing our love and don’t suffocate from its smell of old age.

Uncertainty about your feelings is born from a lack of understanding. Lack of understanding, in turn, is born from an elementary inability to interpret your feelings correctly. And if it is impossible to explain feelings? But if you feel a strong warmth for him, your new man, then maybe this is also love.

I consider myself half-liberal, half-conservative. And my conservatism doesn’t refer to the past; it appears through the fogged glass as an indefinitely distant future. This is a future beyond the post-apocalyptic winter, the coming of which humanity will sooner or later feel, it is somewhere on the horizon of a symbiosis of logic and naked reality, which is not squeezed into the framework of decency.

So are you and I ahead of time, or are we too late? Laughing people have begun to annoy me in recent days. I again remember the time when I participated in photography contests. One of these contests was attended by the young wife of one man, who was a member of the jury. I thought they would respect the bounds of decency and specifically would not give her first place. But no! She won first place, although there were better works than mine and hers... But you and I are people outside of time. Almost no one needs your music and your illustrations, just no one needs my photographs. We are timeless, the current generation doesn’t need us. I think that millions of people more talented than us eventually quit their creative activities and take up other work. But I wanted so badly that I wasn’t the only one who got goosebumps from your illustrations and your music. By the way, you said that you are learning to play “Possum goes to Prague” on the guitar. I was shocked when I read it. If you will learn to play it clearly, then... it’ll be great! You’re already a multi-instrumentalist, you can play the piano, flute and guitar now! I am delighted and proud of you, my foxy!

It makes me want to play a little fun! Too bad I’m not a stand-up comedian. I’d be happy to make people laugh if I could. Yes, I know that you remember, I’m not a fan of comedy, I’m too serious about something, but otherwise, I’m too naive and behave like a child. You said in your last letter that you wished some wise man would find our letters and laugh at us. But the wise man will not laugh at two idiots in love with whom one can only sympathize. Only a fool like me can laugh at this. Well, since we touched on the topic of stupidity, then in your letter, the question was asked, “Jack, how would you react if I married Cillian?” You don’t need my blessings, little foxy. I may call you mine, but you don’t belong to me. We are not slaves of relationships, feelings and hostages of fate! If you will be happy, then I will be glad. But I don’t see anyone next to you, except myself, no matter how terrible it sounds and crosses out all my previous statements. You don’t know him very well. And I don’t trust many men. My friends, Rick and David, also hurt loved ones, cheated. I don’t believe in men, but I understand that somewhere there are men better than me, kinder, more caring, more loyal, braver, wiser, but I think that there are not so many of them and the chance of finding such a person is negligible. If a man fights for a lady, then the lady looks like a thing to be chosen for. I hate this kind of thinking, you know. A woman can’t belong to anyone. I don’t need a fight for our love because my love is in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, and it is always with me, and it will not betray me. I remembered Star Wars. Great philosophy. Yoda said to Anakin Skywalker, “The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.” That’s wisdom! If I’m afraid of losing you, then I’m on the dark side, and I don’t want that.

Sometimes I look at my wife and wonder if she really loves me or if I make her sick? Of course, some strange people enjoy nausea, maybe Emily feels sick, I don’t know. But sometimes, I feel like I am food for Emily. I’m like a dessert that she doesn’t want to touch because she’s sick. She’s strong like you, she’s daring like you, and maybe she’s braver than you. Maybe, I should work and develop, cultivate a love for Emily? You’ll be with another man, and I can begin to worry and suffer more and more. What can I give you or her anyway? Some thoughts and ideas that I can’t implement because of the fear of failure? Is this all I can do? And you both, or even three of you, including Beth, love a person like me? It makes me feel ashamed of how worthless I am. I’d rather be an animal. Animals don’t need words to do anything. They just do what they see fit. The more I speak and write, the less I do. The less I live, the less I get emotions, the less I feel life itself. You know, the words on the paper are not me. Paper is just a thing. I can’t express my feelings on paper as openly as possible. Sometimes it’s enough to look in the eyes and cry so that you can understand me when you’re around. I can touch you at least on the shoulder, take your hands in my hands, run my hand through your hair, mess up your hair. Maybe in others, I’m always looking for you? Yes, even on paper, I want to see at least some image of you. It’s a pity that I can’t draw. Well, I took your photo in my hands, I look at you again, what a beauty you are. But now I can call you a foxy for a reason because you dyed your hair a reddish color. However, I am a fan of your light brown hair. But I’m not judging, don’t think about it, although, why am I lying, I’m a little judging, but I still love you! If you like it, then I’m happy as long as you’re happy!

Maybe we both made up an image of who we love. You always thought that I was the perfect friend, and I always thought that you were a perfect love. But after all, if we were together, we would each start putting some kind of limits and rules. For example, I will not be able to keep an opinion about your hair to myself, you’ll criticize my T-shirts, in the end, we may have so many quarrels, who knows. Maybe we don’t know each other anymore. We may have lost ourselves on the road of life. Maybe we don’t love each other anymore, and we’re drawn to each other as lost, lost feelings, not love? Fuck it! I know what I feel! I wouldn’t have spent so much time on this letter if I wasn’t in love! You know, it’s still not enough for me to see you and exchange glances. I remembered that one day I met you by chance and you were crying, and I thought that it was either my or your father fault. And it turns out you had a fight with your friend, Tessa.

I listen to the blues, The Jeff Healey Band, 1990, Hell to Pay. I planned that Thanksgiving day for so long, I need to write a letter… I want to isolate myself from everyone and cry against the wall, next to the bricks, shrink into a molecule, and then get up, take a sledgehammer and hit myself. Love brings so much suffering that it’s even difficult to tell the difference between suffering and death. Pieces of skin and meat remain from a person. You can then chew on your own bones. Maybe I need a drink? It’s all the same weakness. When will it end? I listen to the blues, thinking about you, because you’re somewhere far away and you’ve been silent for two months, or rather it’s me who’s been silent, I haven’t answered your last letter. You know, you’re closer than I am to our dream. San Francisco is not far from LA. I wish you had come and yelled at me, yelled at me because I ruined our dreams! The worst thing is to see you in the window, run out, and then understand that I was imagining it. Soon I’ll learn to hate this fall rain. Forgive me for everything. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you know in this my “forgive me” there is more emptiness than apologies. I can’t completely feel guilty. The blues sound like it’s the last time. It’s hard. A man can only survive with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a guitar in the other, although he still needs both hands to play.

In our race with you, two racers participate, pain and sorrow, and they alternately win each other. So who cares who crosses the finish line first? I become inattentive, trivial and confused. I want to take myself by the scruff of my neck and pull so that I fall and hit my head. Sorry, but without you, life has become painful.

Life is like a growing tree of pain, which you and I, dear, diligently water. And it grows thanks to our care. Maybe someday, one of us will be able to cut down a tree, but the stump remains, a stump that cannot be uprooted during life. The stump is an obstacle to a dream, an obstacle to love, part of pain and suffering.

I look at life and see people in it. I see some believers for whom faith is an empty sound. They do not think about heaven and hell, they think about how to deceive their neighbor, and they envy, betray, cheat, accept the principles of violence and terror, and often they do not repent of their deeds and do not ask for forgiveness from God. You know that I’m not religious, but I believe that if someone lives according to the principles of a book, then he must follow the rules that are written in it. And people just don’t! Many of them! Then what is the point of faith for them? I live by the principles of honor and justice, the principle of loving your neighbor and the principle of treating others as you would like to be treated. And throughout my life, I see that principles don’t work, because people say that they adhere to the same, but they don’t follow these rules themselves. If you can’t live up to something, then either find something you can and give up your beliefs or try harder, put your life in order and be someone to look up to. The personality is built around the core of beliefs. I would call such a core an obelisk of beliefs because the principles should have sharp corners and not be streamlined like cylindrical shapes. Sharp corners make a person serious. Therefore, I cannot accept monoamory as the only true social love value of humanity.

Thinking about this, I suddenly remembered my childhood nightmare about how I was flying. I walked through the meadow, and I had no mood, sensations or feelings. I felt absolutely nothing. But from this, the reality of what was happening did not disappear at all. The meadow turned into a hill with various trees. And suddenly, the wind blew. It became inexplicably scary. All my senses tensed, and I felt lifted off the ground. The first thing I felt was an absolute shock. I can’t even think about it, but after a few seconds, I started to flounder and felt and saw that I was flying even higher. And the thought that came to me after the shock, “how can I land?” I flew higher and higher. The higher I was the more fear I felt. It was so scary that I began to accept the imminent death. My life did not flash before my eyes… Then I felt a second shock, I flew in a gust of wind and quite quickly speed up. But when I reached a certain high point, the gust of wind began to weaken, and I began to fall. I was falling very smoothly because more and more streams of wind picked me up, and I kept flying. I realized that I was light and became even more scared. And then I woke up. I remembered this because I want to wake up in a polyamorous world where there is no longer any remorse for loving someone. After all, this is love! But I woke up in our world, where there is no place for that.

I constantly feel that life without you loses its meaning, that no one can replace you. And although every woman is unique, you are you. You are the eternal memory of the winter-blooming garden. You are the joy of a carefree playing foxy. You are the suffering of a stone on a shallow river.

And maybe the wind that carried me in my sleep will reach you, driving the clouds, and will bring with it the smell of flowers with my fear. And I will smell the fire that I will light in a forest somewhere near the border with Canada, traveling alone. And we will sit in different parts of the country, remembering each other and realizing that we’ll never see each other again.

You know, fatigue swallows me, sucks me into the seething silence. Maybe I got to the middle of the letter, maybe I sowed suffering in it. Maybe even I come here to sow the seeds of suffering into the fertile soil in the souls of those closest to me. It’s too hard to write. The lines intertwine. I write, and words are like a bone in the throat, empty, stupid, hopeless. There is nothing. This is where the meaning lies, it lies in the fact that there is absolutely nothing beautiful when you are not around.

Megan popped into my head again. I talk a lot; I constantly blame myself for this. I feel redundant. It’s like I’ve passed over your friend’s suffering. I understand that it’s not my job to comfort her because comforting your beloved’s friend is only nurturing additional suffering. But it hurts me a lot that this happened to her, and it hurts because I couldn’t do anything. Yes, I understand that I have to get rid of this hero complex because everyone can’t be saved. And now there may be thousands of girls being raped, and I’m sitting here writing a letter. What will I do?

The wind opened its arms, the girl embraced it but soon realized that she was embracing the air...

Our problem is that we began to drift apart just when we finally confessed our feelings. And this is my fault. I admit. When you tried to become my lover, I began to distance myself, thinking that would destroy our relationship. There would be more jealousy, more fear of losing each other. More precisely, the fear of losing each other was already strong, but it would be transformed into another form. And the jealousy… Oh, that’s why Riley laughed, because she saw your jealousy. What would it be like if we were together? We have an addiction to each other, a love that is too crazy, uncontrollable. This love can quickly lead to disaster. You and I are just children who play adults. I remembered how you told me that you were leaving the city, that the city was suffocating you, and that I was the only reason you were staying. And you asked me to drop everything and come with you. I was scared and asked what if I couldn’t get a job in another city? And then you said that you’d support me until I find a job. I freaked out and almost cried because such nobility and self-sacrifice, such a level of love, could not be found in real life. A young woman is ready to take care of her boyfriend. I admire your dedication! But I am a man, and I’ll not accept financial support from any girl in the world because I’ve got the brain and hands to take care of myself. But you left me alone, and what can the fact that you left me alone tell us about our love? It can tell us that I’m a coward and you’re just a girl with ambitions. That’s it. I can’t smell love in that example. Can you?

I can’t get under another person’s skin to understand how this person feels in a particular city. For me, a city is just a city, regardless of the ecology and criminal activity, I am not suffocating psychologically in it. Somewhere it will be more comfortable for me, somewhere less pleasant, but you can always adapt. So I’ll never understand your feelings of suffocation because of the city. And you’ll never understand why I didn’t want to leave everything. Although you will understand if I tell you. I have already partially explained, but I will add. Apart from a little fear, I’d be very unhappy if I wouldn’t find a job fast, and I would feel that I owe you all the time. This would lead to the fact that I would be less resistant to some of your eccentric ideas. As you always liked to do, you liked to ask me to enter some abandoned houses or arrange night walks into the port or forest, when not a damn thing is visible, and our flashlights could only attract dangers. You and I, foxy, lived in Detroit, after all! Maybe it was worth indulging your desires more often, I would have been beaten half to death, and you would be raped, and we would be left alone in Detroit? Oh, I’m sorry what I’m saying. I would never want this to happen!

I am drawn to you on some extraterrestrial level. What is it? Divine intervention, fate, destiny? Jessica Campbell, you are the ideal woman on this planet! Can you hear me? Ideal! Ideal for me! I love you! You have always had an idealistic romanticism and a passion for adventure. I have never met anyone morally stronger than you in this world! Not only women but also men! As all this does not sound trite, but once again I want to say that you are the only beautiful and clever girl I’ve ever met! Everyone, of course, has flaws. But a person without flaws is not a person but a fictional character. For me, your flaws are contradictory. After all, such courage, for example, cannot but arouse admiration and respect! You’re a dream that came true in a real person! I should drop everything and fly to you. I need to stop being afraid, hiding my feelings from myself, hiding inside my consciousness. Many people constantly tell me that I should forget you, but to forget you means to die. A princess like you cannot be left in the past. You will ascend to the throne of love and become a queen someday. Or maybe this has already happened?

I put on Deep Purple, Who do we think we are album. Music is a medicine that soothes or, on the contrary, gives energy and strength to live on. Music makes a person merge in spiritual unity with the sounds so that one can fall with the sand of time into eternity, filling it, leaving its mark on history. I seem to dissolve in sound, floating on the waves of the sea of ​​music. At such moments, I feel complete and self-sufficient, independent, strong and courageous! I need love and people a little less. I no longer need money, goals, recognition by society and everything else. Listening to the music, I understand how I love life in which I may already have nothing to hold on to, but music and songs, they fill me with happiness!

Well, now I need to tell you what I am ashamed of. About a month ago, Rick persuaded me to try gambling in an online casino. Poverty and passion coupled with stupidity sometimes lead a person along the path of destroying his own life. A weak person, of course. And I turned out to be a weak person. I have lost almost 2000 USD, and you know that for me it’s not so small amount of money! I could buy some gifts for you, or for my wife, I could visit you in San Francisco. I could have pleased myself with new speakers or a camera. But I screwed up this money, just as ridiculous as I screwed up our relationship! Sorry for the too harsh comparison.

I need to move more, otherwise, I will soon become fatter. You know, sometimes I want to walk to you to come fit and thin. How many months such a journey will take? I can’t even imagine.

I touched on the topic of a disabled man earlier. I remembered again this news about a stolen cake from a wheelchair disabled man. If I suddenly lost the ability to walk, and you came to look after me, it would be so painful that I would try to do everything to make you leave. Although to be objective, I should have accepted your concern, because you would have taken it normally, and even if I rejected you, forced you to leave, it would be more painful than living with a disabled person.

Sometimes it seems to me that several individuals live in you and me at once, with different moods and different beliefs. And they change like the seasons, but they don’t coincide with each other. Right now, I’m filled with feelings that were as if they were born and raised by you. You are the mother and father of my feelings. And it’s hard to describe them, they seem to be saturated colors as if they were abstractions that amaze the eye not in their image but by the process of creation. As if feelings are a person who is arranging a performance here and now. And every brushstroke has a meaning, a content that I feel, although I can’t describe it properly. You’re a woman of action, and the action is more important than a result, so that’s how you feel. For you, the process has always been more important, you were involved in any creative process with joy, and then, when it was over, you thought that you had created some kind of crap. You felt as if you had lost a child, you felt as if something had been cut out from your soul.

All these feelings, all that love, they seem to live as if they are eternal. But death awaits us all. Death is a truth that should not be forgotten. Death is always there for our feelings. When I talk about death, I’m not talking about the image of the Grim Reaper, I’m not talking about corpses. I’m talking about the death of love within the person himself. It’s just that the more I talk about love, the more alive and distinct it becomes, and I don’t know how it affects you. Maybe you are suffering, and for you, it is like asphyxiation, and you are suffocating from my confessions, the endless mumbling of my feelings and our past. Maybe your love is working hard because of me, or maybe it’s dying, screaming and crying furiously.

Out of despair, from the extreme of your feelings, you simply chose the road that no one walked. Only sorcerers, discoverers and wandering heroes are capable of such a brave act. And you are one of them. You and I chose blindness, and we thought we would be happy. Voluntary blindness carried many advantages because a blind person does not see good and bad. He looks into the darkness, and only his sensibility of other organs helps to understand the processes of the environment. But then time passed, and a painful insight came. And our insight makes us run away from reality. And we chose this escape from reality along the path which I want to think that no one ran, but many, maybe millions of people ran, living the same days as we do.

Still, time will not be able to appreciate our sacrifices, suffering, and our love. After all, time just moves, it is not endowed with its own consciousness and is not going to think, it has no inner calm, and it does not want to freeze, freeze its ego, stop our self for several years to allow us to stop running along our paths and return to each other!

I’m going to start writing my fantasy novel someday, although you know that my language skills are rather mediocre. I want to release the dragon of love from my soul so that it can fly. But someone will want to kill it. Every more or less significant hero wants to kill a dragon. The point is the same as some men want to sleep with some models, and some women want to marry some men, regardless of love. In the novel, more precisely in the series of novels, there will be a place for heroes and villains, I just want to make it an adult with all the contradictions, aggression and cruelty that we see in the world. A good person is not always good, and a bad person can be worse than we think. That’s the reality. I would like that in my future books there be more actions than words. That sounded weird, but you get my point.

I’ve heard so much in the coffee shops the last few days. The talks of the strangers. “I said I only had a boyfriend because I wanted to be cool.” “I always plan my sex with strangers.” “Look, my nails are dirty, how did it happen?!” Young people, new generation. I guess we were just as weird, but no. You know that I don’t like cafes and bars, but I force myself to go to them, ordering almost nothing, because I want to listen to life. After all, all these fragments of dialogue make you think about how people live. I just want to understand whether these strangers are happy with their lives. You and I have a roof over our heads, you and I have the opportunity to communicate and understand each other, and I can come to you at any moment, and we will walk around the city where I’ve never been. And someone at this minute may be dying somewhere in Africa. Do you have any idea what’s going on there? There they can force children to kill their parents, forming new soldiers, robbers and marauders. And I’m sitting here, getting fat, and I can afford to lose 2000 bucks in an online casino! How many children could I feed? What a shame!

My parents often told me that the classics in visual art are above all. They said that the avant-garde died as an art. But reality reflects the opposite. Of course, it’s worth noting that under the avant-garde they could mean mainly abstract expressionism, but also cubism, suprematism and surrealism. From time to time, I see mentioned arts return to our days, so I would not talk about the death of the avant-garde at all.

I’ve become too old to care much about art history or philosophy. I don’t even want to do photography. What do I even know about life? Some people are introverted bastards who need blood to feel like they’re alive! Some people like the sounds, the crowd and the cities.

It’s the city, our hometown. The city is to blame for all your problems. But the city is only a human idea of math. The whole world consists of numbers, maybe even the soul has its own binary code. What looks like chaos to us can be a very orderly phenomenon. But what about the city? Blaming Detroit for decay is like blaming an asteroid for the death of the dinosaurs. You would think that the asteroid is to blame, after all… But your dislike for Detroit will die when your father dies. The city has created such conditions for a person’s life when he can think about what is bad for him and not try to survive. When the economy is in decline, and there is no work, and the world seems to be sinking into depression, you feel that there is no hope, but that’s not a problem as long as you have a roof over your head and have food. And if you don’t have that, you don’t think about death, you just looking for food for yourself and where is to hide. Hunger prevents a person from thinking about choking, suicide, and more. Hunger makes a person look for food. Hunger makes a person want to live.

The trees planted in the city are the slaves of the place. Pigeons that die under the wheels of cars are slaves to the city’s affection. I often noticed an interesting feature, if you approach the pigeons abruptly, then many will take off, but one will certainly remain as if it does not concern it. So I understand the feeling you had in Detroit. You are like a lonely bird that doesn’t want to do what others did. You didn’t want to live the bird life. You didn’t want to fly where it was unpleasant for you, so you flew away to where other slave trees grow, and other pigeons die.

I’m trying to remember something besides our great moment with fog and stars. So we were together, we went to high school and college together, we spent time together, but as if we were apart. Maybe that’s why I can’t get our hug out of my head. Why didn’t we kiss? Jess, why didn’t we? I remember looking at the sky, and there a star was falling, a couple of satellites flew by. We then sat with our heads up for a long time to see the shooting star again or to find some other moving objects besides airplanes and satellites. And that’s when we had our heads down, and we hugged each other because we saw the coming of the fog. Just the dry weather suddenly changed to moisture. We couldn’t fall asleep then, we sat around the fire afterwards and told each other something, and then, when the fire began to burn down, you dragged me to the forest to gather more branches. What a night! We had one flashlight, and the battery was running low. At that time, I still told you that you don’t need to laugh and talk so loudly because you never know what animals or people we will attract to us. Yes, I was afraid for your life and that I wouldn’t be able to protect you! And then I began to tell you that I am annoyed by thriller and horror films, where people constantly shine their flashlights, showing their location to enemies. If you walk quietly in the dark, your eyes can adapt. I tell you that, and some spider seemed to run over your leg, you take it off with a scream and threw it into the dark, and we both rushed from there to our makeshift camp. It was scary but cool. No one bit us, no one robbed us, no animals attacked us. It sounds like luck, but I’d love to repeat that day every day until the day I die!

You took with you my happiness, my memories. I hope you’ve found a better man than me. I hope that you will be happy with him. I hope that your problems with him simply disappear, and you again learn to breathe deeply.

The planet is alive! It can erupt volcanoes, it can change the poles, it can use the energy of the sun for whatever it wants! The planet adapts to the circumstances in which man has immersed it. Constant cataclysms are sole because we bite into the bowels of the Earth and spoil the atmosphere. And the Earth doesn’t give a shit whether the planet is minus 300 or plus 200 F. Some organisms will still survive, but which ones, the planet doesn’t care about at all. Right now, the planet is only annoyed by humans on whom it is taking its revenge. It doesn’t deliberately take revenge, it is a reaction of an ordinary living organism to external aggression. If the trainer is constantly lashing a trained tiger, then sooner or later, the animal may attack the trainer. The tiger may bite his arm or his head off, depending on his luck.

Maybe your restraint is born because you have stopped loving me as a man but began to love me as a friend? What kind of love is that? A stripped-down copy of true love. Yes, I don’t look like a macho man, I am just an enthusiastic old boy with whom it was easy for you sometimes, and sometimes it was difficult. Maybe that’s why I don’t evoke a lot of feelings and emotions now? And that’s why you can’t write a long letter. But it’s very hard to lose love, and it’s very easy to lose a friend. I don’t want to lose you either as a friend or a loved one. Let such a strange hope live in me. And I don’t want you to stop thinking of me as a man with whom you would be ready to spend your whole life and as a friend to whom you can entrust all your deepest secrets and desires.

Something inside me has become stale. I want to fall in love with someone else. No, I want to fall in love with you again, but differently, in a new way. Sometimes you seemed like a sensual girl, and sometimes you seemed like a cold, indifferent person. Sorry. I always needed you, the real you, without a mask that you wear for society. Probably now, when I feel strange, your letters, seemingly detached, give me more than it was then. Now I see the truth.

Time has become a lesson for me, and life has become a teacher. I don’t advise myself to be rude to the teacher, otherwise, expulsion will follow. And unfortunately, I won’t be able to skip the lesson either. Perhaps I don’t understand what you and I have become. Maybe I’m not the person to whom you should tell and explain something. Maybe I’ve never been able to read by the eyes, to understand at a glance, to understand from half a word. Maybe I am empty. And you’re doing so well that you’ve forgotten how you greedily gulped for air in nature. You’ve forgotten how good it feels to lay in a field and think about nothing. You’ve forgotten how the stars came down to you from the sky and disappeared in an invisible kiss. A person is given everything to be happy in every moment of life. I am so tired of negativity and aggression that I want more kindness and joy. Maybe I’m lazy and can’t be happy? Or maybe happiness is a constant work on myself and my mind?

An insecure person is always betrayed by words. Perhaps, maybe, probably, these are my frequent words. Words and lots of questions. You have a good quality, you doubt a lot less than me and you’re more confident in many things than me. What am I sure of? With you and me, nothing is moving anywhere, we seem to rearrange the furniture in the room for decades. But the furniture, apart from wear and tear, doesn’t change, it remains the same as it was. Maybe this is what our love is like? Here again, “maybe”.

I’m not going to lie to you that everything will work out and everything will be fine in the future. I don’t think so. A man is born alone, and he dies alone. Everything depends on you. Friends are nothing more than stars that fall from the sky and disappear, like those stars that tried to kiss you. And even while they are in the sky, friends don’t shine on us but shine on their own. Still, it’s hard to find real friends. After all, it only takes one misstep, a misstep, and you’ve lost friends, even if they swear they’ve forgiven you. And also literally one lie, and everyone will immediately stop trusting a person, even if a person was honest with them before and will be honest after. In an idealistic world, in friendship, one must be blameless and not make mistakes. But we are in a real world, and we are people, and no matter how many mistakes we or others make, neither of us will be able to forgive the other.

I kept looking for a sign to take responsibility for your life, to make a proposal to you, but the sign was inside me, it was a love that pulsed and tormented me every second! And now, in this second, you would call me, and I would run to you. I would not hesitate, I would drop everything. But would I make it? Unlikely. Somewhere in the middle of the way, I would think about betraying Emily, betraying Beth, betraying even that Beth-like young coquette, Melanie. The happiness of one is the pain of the other.

Love, from my point of view, is unselfish admiration for any of a person’s qualities that don’t require anything in return. I don’t have to ask you to love me back. But lovers often don’t understand each other. If I tell you, for example, to imagine a house, I’m guessing what image will pop up in your mind. And what if I meant a yurt, yes, it’s more like a tent objectively, but for some, it’s a house. I’m talking about the fact that communication is important, and it’s important to make a detailed description of something so that the loved one doesn’t speculate but represents everything quite accurately.

By the way, I remembered that you dedicated poems to me and so didn’t let me read them. Now, after so many years, can I get them? I don’t understand why you were shy about, afraid of? Whatever they were, they would be dear to me! However, I understand that the fear of getting judged in poetry was painful for you. Based on the same example about a house, if I tell you to imagine a brick, then you imagine it, for example, in the hands of a builder, and someone else can imagine it in the hands of a murderer. The brick may already be part of the finished beautiful house, or it may be inside the old dilapidated building.

When you asked me the question, “why do you love me?” I told you that you are smart and beautiful, and my heart leaps at the sight of you. Now I would like to expand on my answer. I love you for your genuine sincerity, for that bright part of your soul that can be shaded, giving it liveliness and naturalness. I love your intelligence, your non-standard approach to understanding the world. I love your inner confusion, your desire to make independent decisions. I love your passion, courage, and even certain immorality and insolence. You are a pragmatist and a romantic at the same time, you are a wonderful girl striving for justice, and for that, I love you too! Yes, that’s how I see you, but is it you? This is a reference to the comparison with the brick concept, as you understand. You can touch and feel the brick and understand its structure, it’s hard, it’s red, it’s heavy. And if you put a brick in a bag and show everyone the bag, will anyone guess that there is a brick inside? Simply put, I made up my own Jessica. And I’ve already talked about this, haven’t I? Repetition is the mother of Alzheimer’s disease. But I’ll continue. Jess in my head is not Jess in reality. Imagine yourself a textured shell, dense to the touch, but plastic, that is, when compressed, it gives in to some deformation. The physical shell of Jessica is one thing, but only you can understand your inner world most fully, and no one person will understand you better. Imagine the house again. You fill the house with one content, and I fill it with another. Therefore, any attempt to explain something to me with the help of emotional expression is doomed to my subjective perception. I can understand this so superficially that you will call me insensitive.

So when we accuse each other of misunderstanding, we need to ask ourselves the question, what efforts have we made to be understood as crystal clear as possible? You and I have been swimming against the tide all our lives, and I hope that your man will swim in the same direction as you.

In general, remembering your letters, one gets the impression that you are an alien who thinks in other forms of perception of earthly reality. Therefore, your alien form of understanding life is paramount for you. But I think you can guess that the content of life does not change from the form, however, you are a stubborn alien, and you need such a form of life, which, of course, does not exist on planet Earth.

What have I achieved by my age? I don’t make as much money as I need to; my home is still not mine completely. The pursuit of financial well-being is illusory. I want to leave. Just go away and find a house in a forest, where there is no one but nature. And this is not an unfounded statement. I would like to learn more triviality than the one that lives inside me. I would like to enjoy material values, but all these newfangled devices and gadgets don’t evoke any emotions at all. Some red oak evokes emotions. I want to touch it. I want to sit under it and listen to the wind swaying its leaves. And so sit under it until old age. And let old age bring grey hair, a slouch, a languid look and what is so often confused with wisdom, fatigue. I’m so tired.

I walked along the street, and the trees stood almost leafless. I could smell through the cold rain the dying late autumn. You could walk with your eyes closed, stepping into puddles, and nothing, just the sound of cars and rain. I just have to go, I don’t care where! There is no need for me to stop. If I stop, I will stand looking at a tree. That’s how you can become a tree yourself. Which of us controls our destiny? We? God? A fate? A chance? Wanting to find the answer is like wanting to see a dolphin’s fin instead of a shark. But this is often a shark. When old age comes, resentment over missed opportunities will burst into bright flames, and you and I, my foxy, will indulge in grief.

Talk to me, don’t be silent, call and talk. I’m tired of my powerlessness and inability to change something. I have nothing, and I understand it perfectly, I have nothing but my love. But it’s as if someone inside me, like a hungry rat, wants to get in and eat my love. But what’s left of love is a bone that the dog hid in my soul. Someday the dog will die, but a bone will remain.

You are a fox, and I am a wolf. I may not be the alpha male, but I’m still a wolf. You and I will survive, we will break through the nebula of strange feelings, and we will find some sense of life. However, it’s foolish to look for the meaning of life because having found it at the end of your life, believe me, you’ll still admit to yourself that you were wrong. You need to live because life is great, and you should not change this world because a person who wants to live for his own good carries less harm than a person who wants to change this world.

I remembered Aaron, do you remember him? This is the guy who committed suicide, you and I didn’t know him personally, but we saw him several times. He was a tall brunette with short hair and a weird smile. So, I remembered that he committed suicide because of a girl. He hunged himself. They found him already dead. Love is such a strong feeling that it makes you breathless. However, true love can’t force a person to take such a step. After all, this means that he will no longer see his beloved again. And how can you say goodbye to life without knowing what will happen to the person you love? I immediately think of our story, about my love. The moment I fell in love with you. That was the day when I saw you and talked to you. I was elated. Then I didn’t sleep for a couple of nights. I could not sleep. I thought about you and bathed in my mind with my love. There was such a man, and he loved his wife very much. One day she died, and yet he continued to communicate with her in his mind. The physical nature of his wife no longer mattered to his love. And what about me? I blazed with the fire of love, flared up and burned very brightly. You gave me so many experiences, so many shades of feelings and emotions that it’s hard for me not only to describe them but even try to list them! If I knew for sure that you would not reciprocate, how would I feel? Would I want to die? Not at all! I would have love, but heartbreaking and non-reciprocal because reciprocity is a miracle and a rare thing. I would like to live for you. I would like to be ready to do everything for you! But most importantly, I would like to live and breathe my own love! Aaron made his cruel choice, and he will not see who his beloved would become after so many years. If I remembered her name, I would find out where she is, I would like to see how she lives, and then I would find Aaron’s grave and tell him what is happening. It’s so naive, but it would be the right thing to do.

Our love was like a fire. It burned and sparkled with a yellow-orange flame and quickly burned out, leaving coals that smoldered and then something happened again as if fate threw wood into our bonfire, and we again blazed with the brightest flames on the planet!

I remembered how in high school, I had some possessive feelings for you. I wanted to show off about you, and at the same time, I wanted to hide you. I was afraid that someone could steal such a treasure! The most striking and most curious thing in this story is that you did not consider yourself a treasure, and you were almost always annoyed by my comparisons.

Remembering those moments, I can say that I forgot about Jessica that was suffocating in Detroit, and remembered Jessica who loves to laugh. Open up to the world, and don’t be afraid that the world will throw you. You can tell me to fuck off with my advice. And I know you can, dear. But that’s why I love you!

Foxy, did I tell my childish theory of the universe? It says “the world around comes from the principle of random balance.” Unfortunately, the human brain is unable, and I emphasize, it will never be able to understand this random equilibrium. There will always be something unfair, dishonest, irrational for a person. Why do some stars live so long while others so less? An unanswered question. Imagine a person who was brought into the forest and said, “There are some animals and some plants, and you have to kill a few at your discretion and save others.” One girl will save everyone; one man will destroy all flora and fauna within a radius of several miles. This is the nature of a person, and it cannot be changed because a person does not know where the most optimal balance of his harmony with the planet is.

A person’s feelings are always mixed, always eclectic. The higher the level of intelligence, the more confusion, contradictions, claims to oneself. I have never offered you perfect knowledge. I just appreciated the certain freedom of our love.

Most people cheat and still deny free love. Because if love as a feeling becomes free, then the family institution can begin to collapse. Some people’s statements that true love is not jealous are contrary to the basic nature of human relationships, i.e., commercial relationships. Possessive love requires possession. Requires a woman to want her man to be a macho prince-hunter. It’s just a social dream. The prince is a handsome, wealthy, promising, kind defender, domineering but ready to yield to his beloved. Any woman is initially guided by her life success. And at the level of almost genetics, she subconsciously has a desire to possess. And the man is oriented towards success. A man is forced to possess those things and qualities that a woman seems to be successful. They may not carry the function of success; they may only look successful. For example, a guy can take a cool car from a friend, get a prestigious job, borrow money or a loan, and go to a club. Guaranteed that he will be able to pick up a woman. After some time, the illusion of success will collapse, and the woman will leave, but the fact remains. Now let’s see what a man needs. A man needs sex and a focus on success. Fucking with everyone is great but laborious, so a man is forced to turn to methods of attracting girls that correspond to his status. Let me give you an interesting example. In the 90s, I saw many couples in which the girl was impeccably dressed and beautiful, and the man was unkempt in old boots and a shabby jacket. How is this possible? At the time, these guys represented “success.” They were independent, strong, aggressive, and had leadership qualities. The girls of that time were less pragmatic, with the remnants of a hippie or patriotic upbringing. Now everything has changed, and you will not find such a couple anywhere. If I see a pretty girl, there is often a man corresponding to her level next to her.

Suddenly I remembered how one night you slept over at my place. You woke up, and you went to the shower, and then I gave you my clean T-shirt. Then I didn’t wash it after you for several days, inhaling the smell of your body.

I know, I feel bad without you, but with you next to me it hurts because I’m a married man! I can’t take you to my house and kiss you. The longer you’re not around, the stronger the feelings. You left, flew out, you took the sun with you, and now wherever I go it rains all the time. Though, you know I love rain. And there’s no need to lie, this summer was warm and pleasant. If you cry when you read my letter, then there is love in you, if you smoke again, then you have mixed feelings, and if you curse me and your wasted time, that means everything. Unfortunately, life will then lose all meaning for me, except for one thing, I want to become a long-liver and try to live more than 100 years.

I’m going to turn the record over. I’m not done with Deep Purple yet. Music is the individual language of humanity. Music can’t explain anything or express anything. But each person can understand and feel the melody differently. Music turned me on, and now I write by inertia, automatically, I have no sense of proportion. You see, I love you so much that I need such a feeling because without it a part of my personality would be erased! I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you, and I can’t love anyone more, even half as much as you. I just can’t. Don’t you think I’ve tried? Oh, how many times have I’ve tried…

I often say unpleasant things that almost everyone agrees with. In this world, I’m not going to change people. I’m not going to teach you how to live and what to do next. Let each of us remain with his opinion about what we have done and what we have not done for the prosperity of our love. But sometimes, love is a lie, bound by the chains of truth.

And yet, I am a boy who loves to spend his life playing PC games, excitement, camping, hiking and entertainment. You know, zoos and circuses, especially circuses, are such a terrible way of entertainment. Forcing animals to do some tricks can be compared to the slavery of African Americans who have worked on plantations and elsewhere for centuries. I don’t understand how one can walk and watch animal abuse and also pay for it? If someone wants to see animals, then there are national wildlife sanctuaries and parks. You know that I’ve always been like that, I’ve hated the circus since I was a kid. And you know I’m not a vegan. I accept killing an animal for food, although I partially support vegans. Perhaps in this letter, I will touch upon this topic later.

I think you and I started our frustration back in college through my fault. Do you remember how I fell in love with a literature teacher. Claire Sherman was her name. We were lucky then that neither she nor I was suspected of something. I can imagine what would happen now, when teachers are beginning to be accused of all sins, seduction, ethics violations, etc. She and I had crossed only one border, we walked together and talked since we were both adults, but even in this case, I still don’t understand whose side the law is on. She was young. What was our age difference? About 4 years old. A young teacher is considered an adult, and an adult youth is considered as a child who can be seduced, manipulated, etc. What a strange world! Claire was not at all shy about calling me an ignoramus, and she said that I needed to read more. She laughed at my desire to become a writer and said that it would be better if I continued to do photography. How I wanted her! You know, I wanted her so much that I couldn’t find a place for myself. Maybe I wanted to punish her with sex for not believing in me. Although having voluntary sex is not a punishment. Then you understood everything, and then you started dating Braxton. Well, he was handsome, what can I say. If he wasn’t such an asshole, I would approve of your choice. And then you and I began to communicate less often because I was talking about Claire, and you are about Braxton, and we both didn’t want to listen to each other. I guess we were not alone in this. I don’t know, but it seems like someone twisted my brain in a meat grinder and then put it back in my head.

It’s hard to realize that a person can be married and still be terribly lonely. Was Claire a betrayal of our love? Was the Riley incident a betrayal? And other incidents as well. Were they a betrayal of our love? If we were together, then yes, but we weren’t. You just had to say sometime, “fuck me, just take and fuck me, and then let’s be together, whatever happens.” Wait a minute, I should have been the one to suggest that to you. And then everything would change.

Speaking of the topic of sex, I’d like to say that the obstacles I’ve made up, the holding back of my desire, have undoubtedly led to a disaster of my inner world. Everyone does nothing but be guided by sex, while sometimes you just want to sit next to your naked partner, then get up and step back, look at her, enjoy the moment, and… get dressed, leaving the woman unsatisfied, angry and irritated. This approach can undoubtedly destroy a relationship.

Internal mental pain and tenderness arise differently in women at different moments, and they are intertwined, and a woman wants to find a way to receive and realize her tenderness, and she wants to drown, soothe, remove her pain.

Therefore, people despair of finding satisfaction and after forty or fifty are already looking for at least someone to brighten up their loneliness. Those who maintained long family relationships are worked on themselves, adjusted their characters to their loved ones. Or they were neutral about any strange or unpleasant actions of their partners. This is human mimicry for the sake of being with someone.

But true love exists. But there is one thing that people refuse to acknowledge. There is no equal strength of mutual love. It just doesn’t exist. Right now, my dear foxy, one of us definitely loves the other more. Maybe it’s me since I’m writing a long letter and suffer while you soar on the wings of new love, or maybe it’s you, and you cry there every day and wait for me to become brave and take you from the world of constant languid, boring and superficial love that makes you sick. One person always, I emphasize, always loves another much more. Women most often give up under the pressure of persistent men, see protection and prosperity in them, and believe in a happy future. Other women, programmed with compassion from a young age, unconditionally move towards love for the disabled person, suicidal romantics, drinking musicians and sometimes broken criminals, maniacs and villains. Or men, those same macho giants, supposedly indifferent, eternally idle, sooner or later fall into dependence on the love of some simple, kind girl. Of course, this is all very rudely far-fetched, I understand, and there are millions of other, interesting cases, but the point is, in a relationship, someone always loves a little less and dominates, and the other loves a little more and concedes. That’s why we’re not together, because we probably have the love closest to balance, and we both don’t want to dominate or obey, and this is the conflict. If birth and death are rather quick phenomena, then love is a completely different phenomenon. Sometimes it’s long, slow and complex. In love, there is a plot, development of action, culmination and denouement. If love is reciprocated, then an enthusiastic cry of joy can eventually be replaced by devastation, the loss of love, its final stage the denouement. This is why true love is often lonely. It belongs to one person who experiences it inside himself, even if he lives with his beloved. However, there is our version of love, and such a version applies to other people too, I have no doubt. Let’s call it true love. It also has a similar structure, but it comes in waves. As soon as it comes to a denouement, to the death of feelings, something in you and me, my foxy, wakes up and makes us return to the beginning and the next round of love burning. A person who cannot forget, can’t bury past love, keeps coming back to it for decades, and suffers greatly and delights in his own feelings. Such a person experiences true love.

I want to express myself not in words but again in images, in light and shadow, or something else. It’s strange to hear this from myself, just the letters have turned into a set of symbols, but I don’t want to fill them with meaning. It’s been a long, long time since I felt this way.

I’m not afraid of contradictions of meanings, paradoxes or confusion of thinking; rather the act of writing suddenly became unpleasant to me. Could it be that I was interrupted listening to Deep Purple, and now the record has stopped playing, and I am writing without tearing off anymore? It’s like I’m stuck in a moment before a kiss, the kiss of a dream that never came true, I almost touch your lips with mine, and at this moment we freeze. A moment... A frozen moment, but not happened, as if a photograph implying a continuation. A moment it is always the revenge of the life to the time, which moves when it doesn’t need to, and stops at the wrong... moment. One moment, I need to put on Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick.

And time began to run again. It started ringing with its gears. But my thoughts became even more confused as if I had poured the berries of absurdity into a basket of high-quality and useful thoughts. It’s like I’m moving in a fantastic flying car through the air, dreaming to put my feet back on the stone-paved sidewalk. Love can’t be bought, it doesn’t lie on supermarket shelves, and the burning eyes of a girl giving a blowjob for a new car are not because of love. Though maybe it’s because of her love for her own. But I’m talking about the love that can’t be bought.

I’m tired of these locust characters jumping in front of my dilated eyes. I’m tired of words. Everyone is talking about actions. But in essence, what is an act? Action at a certain moment is the best way. And inaction at a certain moment isn’t it an act? But it is not what worries me now, I’m worried about apathy. Once again, I feel alone. I am no longer alone. I just feel alone. It’s just like that. I don’t want to lie to you or myself. Life is crumpled. It is an abandoned rag used to wash the dirty floor of paradoxes and surprises. The birth of love is surprising, but the same surprise is its death. Paradox.

And now Thanksgiving day. The world is changing, but the holidays remain. At the beginning of the letter I thanked you for your love, and it sounded strange, I guess. Your last letter, the one I received two months ago, was filled with rationality and restraint. You seemed to have verified every word, every sentence. You were afraid to say something inaccurate. You become like a French regular park, where everything is symmetrical, balanced and flawless, and I remain the same mixed forest, with randomly and chaotically growing trees. But I still love you and thank you for everything. Your flawless letter says that everything is all right with you. You are still more made for this world, and I am more made for another. What kind of world am I talking about? The afterlife, where Osiris rules, hell or paradise, the world beyond, maybe a parallel world. I don’t know for what world I was made for, for what world I belong for, but not for this, where it’s so hard to find harmony. Where it’s so hard to act consistently and say the right words. I don’t know how. Or maybe I don’t want to learn.

When you were wrong, I didn’t take your side. Was it betrayal or nobility, honor or detachment? I don’t know, but I know myself, and I can’t do it any other way. You then ran home to me after school and said that seller didn’t give you your change in the store, we went to deal with it. They didn’t have cameras, and the manager began to suspect that the saleswoman might have cheated you. It turns out that you didn’t put change in your wallet, but in your purse! How ashamed I was. It would be better for me to always be with you and buy everything for you by myself, but I couldn’t be with you all the time. And even after you were wrong, you still hinted that I should have protected you better. How could that be? Do you want to live in a world filled with lies and indulgence of mistakes or in a world where there is truth? I try to imagine myself as a father and consider that at that moment you were my daughter, and I want to understand what my attitude would be like. The father almost always protects his daughter better than his wife, not everyone is so, probably, and I’m not saying that the husband will not defend his wife, no. I mean that the husband protects his wife seriously and the daughter fiercely and insanely. And so my daughter screwed up, and almost certainly in front of her daddy, she will be ashamed and conscientious, but in front of her husband, she will be completely different. That is why it’s easier to forgive a daughter than you on that day because it’s like you blamed me for that situation afterwards. And in the future, it is even more so. I remember how I took it upon myself to constantly remind you about everything you need to do at school and college. I began to learn to cook, and you came to me often to spend less time with your father. When you began to live alone, you told me that I took over the functions of big brother and helped you in everything and now it is damn hard for you to be alone. It’s just that mistakes because of your stress, passion for creativity, your hard life began to grow. I remember that case with a forgotten change in the store was not an isolated one.

But now you don’t need me anymore. But I really want to be your big brother for at least one more day, help you with something, prepare food, pay bills, bring you new strings for your guitar, or new brushes and paints, at least I want to do to make you feel good. And all I do is remind you of something unpleasant. But this is life. I love you, and I don’t reproach. I just don’t want to be reproached for the fact that I support the truth. If you are wrong, then be morally strong and admit that you’ve made a mistake.

I still wonder if I married Emily and dream of dating you, but if I married you, would I dream of dating Emily? I would write letters to her or not? I don’t think I would write letters to Emily, no matter how awful it sounds. Maybe I will fall in love with Beth? I don’t know. I just want to date you, be with you. I want to rip off your blouse, your T-shirt, your top, what are you wearing right now at home, a robe? Hardly, I’ve never seen you in a robe. Maybe it was mentioned somewhere in the psychology book, maybe I just have a man’s desire to have a beauty with whom I never had sex? But I haven’t slept with Beth either, and I’m less drawn to her. There are so many questions in one letter, and most of them are addressed to me.

I think I said that I am annoyed by smiling and laughing people. I really don’t. Sometimes I like people smiling and laughing. I just know from myself, when I smile and laugh with Rick or David and then cast a glance at someone, I’ll get a nasty look back, even from a guy or girl, even from old people. Because I guess they think I’m laughing at them, or they just don’t like it because it’s loud, and they’re used to holding back that feeling in public, whether it’s on the street, in a cafe or a bar. I understand them perfectly. When I am alone in the bar or in the crowd sometimes it also seems to me that someone is laughing at me, throwing malicious glances. But this is nonsense! If I walked with a braided beard and a wide-brimmed hat, tight pants and staff, maybe then I would get such a reaction. But I’m just a tall man with a little stubble in a coat, and I can’t evoke such a reaction. By the way, speaking of the hats. I mentioned Melanie at the beginning of the letter, and so, about a week later, we met again by chance. It was a warm day, and I decided to take a walk with her. Suddenly she said to me, “Maybe you should take off your beanie, ’cause not a single man is wearing it, and I feel uncomfortable.” I told her that it was time for her to stop paying attention to how and with whom she looked like. Then I looked at my watch and said I had to go. And I go. But I don’t think this is our last meeting with her.

I wonder what fate awaits Melanie? Will she be happy, or will life crush her with its dirty boots? Today I got up at 4 a.m. and locked myself in my home office room to write you a letter. Fortunately, the thoughts are flying in streams. When I got up, I looked up at the night sky, and it was covered with clouds. I went out and checked my mailbox; I had letters in it, and again the offer to buy a star. I wrote above that when you look at the stars, you see their price tags. This is not a figurative expression. You can actually buy a star! If I understand it correctly, you become the owner of the star. Or maybe you can only call it by someone’s name. But it feels like you’ll own the rights to the star, and you can do whatever you want with it. What if they start selling planets? As far as I understand, our Galaxy will soon be sold out.

Talking about stars, I’ve remembered your Patrick, he wants to be a rock star. How long have you lived with him? A month and a half, if I’m not mistaken. Then he just disappeared. How angry you were, you called me early in the morning, and we talked all day. The most amazing thing is that David covered me at work. He later said that he tried to call me and understood everything at once. The next day at work, he went on a long tirade about how my “relationship” with you was sick, immoral and that I should have slept with you for a long time, and he should help me in this. But you know David. By the way, no matter how he gets to Beth, she ignores him. I am proud of her. Anyway, he said at work that I was sick. Although he certainly didn’t describe it mildly. And then later the colleagues asked me if my stomach hurt and that I should see a doctor. But I started talking about Patrick. You called and said that he packed his things and left. And then you couldn’t find him. No note, no call, no letter. It’s very interesting because since then we haven’t heard anything about him. What if he has gone missing? Maybe he wanted to take a break from the relationship and then come back? But I was glad! You know me! I consider you my girl, and I don’t want to share you with anyone. Oh no, I’m having possessive thoughts again. Music has such an effect on me, I’m beginning to get inspired and become one who wants to take all his women and not give them to anyone. But I can’t make you happy by myself. So, let your new man do my job. And I hope he doesn’t run away like Patrick. Although, am I lying to myself? I guess if I look inside myself, then I want the Cillian to run away too. By the way, is he Irish or is it just a name? I’m just wondering, you didn’t describe his appearance and didn’t send a photo with him, and I was curious, what kind of man wants to be with my foxy?

Sometimes you want to scream, and sometimes you want to be silent. But scream and silence are two brothers who can’t communicate. Now I want to scream! I don’t care about the hurricane’s deadly embrace, I don’t care about the practicality that wants to cut the throat of our love with a guitar string. The sea container falls perfectly on the head of an unlucky sailor. What is it in me? What are these images? I love you! I leave my hand and heart to be eaten. I love you, and I often call you mine just because you don’t belong to me. The mysterious city of San Francisco left you drowning in the sun rays, but autumn came and brought rains with it, and the sun didn’t have time to swallow you in sun waves. I want to be shocked now to make the love frenzy go away!

Life is moving, its feet are shaky, it’s sad. It moves so noticeably, so perceptibly, breathes from all the cracks, it’s slim and angry, it likes to break the brain, twist the convolutions. I’d leave my hand for you to eat if you turned into a rat. And you would eat my forearm. And then run away. With the remaining stump, I’d start drawing your rat face on the white ceiling trying to get you back, and then the rat from the ceiling would materialize and bite off my head. And when I become headless, my body might find happiness while my mind is digested inside a giant rat. The more I think about you, the harder it is for me to breathe. How many times, huh? Exactly! I look again at your photo and understand that I want more from you than you want to give me. The time has gone. Nothing is more blinding than victory, and nothing is sobering like defeat. And I lost.

Your big crazy world is working to its fullest, dams are being built, forests are being cut, factories are being erected, and skyscrapers jutting their tops into the sky, right into the ribs of the stratosphere. They will be laughing at us. As I’ve always said, if you love a person, you perceive him very sharply, you see all his shortcomings.

We are both cowards, afraid of our love. My sincere tenderness seemed sympathetic to you or even a farce; my eyes, sparkling and in love, seemed to you oozing lust and nothing more. But it happened that the minutes of desire slipped from my eyes and fell right on your lips.

Don’t chase ghosts. Breathe freely. Where are you running? Or who do you want to catch up with? Neither will bring satisfaction. Do you think you’ve found your man? No, my dear, you are alone without me. And I’m alone without you. Man is born alone and dies alone. Suddenly I wanted to become a cameraman, shoot wildlife. What would you advise? Hmm. You already play the guitar. You already know how to draw a great painting. You can try writing a novel. But you can’t write a novel on the run, and you’re either running away from someone or you’re running after someone. So who are you running after? Do you think your Irishman needs you? If he is Irish, of course. Do you need me or not? I stopped running and screaming, though a few minutes ago I screamed and hugged the hurricane inside my soul, now I have stopped. Changing cities, you may not notice how life will end.

But I’d love to go somewhere myself. Maybe to San Francisco. Now... The ass didn’t get off the chair. Is it a weakness or fatness? I love you. Maybe you think that my love is too small, too petite? Probably that’s true. Because great love is capable of great deeds. Thanksgiving Day. And I can’t get my ass off to just go to you, or rather fly, buy a ticket and... Note that the ass rises perfectly to replace the record. Maybe I love music more than you? I’d hate to think so.

Once I just idolized you, but shortly before your departure, for a moment I breathed easily, I thought that I want your happiness, but I’m not able to give it to you. Then everything changed on the day of departure, I wanted to hug you, I wanted to. Why grind the bones of the past, turning the past into dust? But I still say, if I hugged you then, I would say goodbye forever, because you would disappear for me, and I couldn’t imagine such a thing, not to mention I couldn’t deal with it.

Everything is very complicated. When you believed in my feelings, a complex of pride and resentment immediately formed in my head because I suffered. But I understand, you also suffered, you can’t just take and get out of your mind the moment when Riley strokes my head, how Naomi massages my shoulders, how Rose constantly asks for help with lessons, invites me to visit her. You went to high school with me, and school is a girl hell.

But now we have grown old, I had a belly, my eyes became dull and sad, I began to chase the ghost of lost love and missed opportunities. We never got that tattoo… Do you remember the one with the dragon? The two of us wanted to get it, but I chickened. I thought what if I changed my mind and didn’t like dragons years later. No, I love dragons as much as before. I regret it now. Or maybe I’d regret getting one. Although, you know, the desire to brand us is still strong. If we had the same tattoos, I’d think that you are mine. Mine... How I hate myself for thinking that. We’re not slaves to each other. Wait a minute, though. We are slaves to our love.

Once you told me that I am your miracle, and I am your hope for a bright future. I’d like to believe that I am still your hope. But do my letters give you hope, do they make it easier for you to breathe? I just want you to be mine! Hell, yes, only mine! Your new man, what will he give you? Just a new last name, nothing more. I gave Emily my last name, and what else did I give her? She lived with a man who loved another woman, with a man who thinks about that woman hair, which was fading in the sun. How could Emily feel about it? How to live with a man who on Thanksgiving Day sat in his room office and doesn’t come out, doesn’t call anyone, doesn’t wish something good to loved ones, but writes a letter to a woman whom he loves so much that he is ready to betray everything else? What is it like to be in Emily’s place? I will never pay her back for her kindness and understanding. But then again, she knew what she was getting into. I told her before the wedding, “Darling, you should know that Jess will never leave my head, but you should also know that I will never cheat on you with anyone, including her!” Yes, an example of decency and honesty, what can I say!

When will the series of mental pain, apathy, torment and suffering end? I am too sensitive and too conscientious, it torments me. You are the same. You are content with a small part of me in the distance because you don’t need more, and you think that small part of you will brighten up my lonely nights, wrapped in the scent of pine and lemon, with my plea to the stars not to wrap myself in clouds blankets? No, a small part of you is suffocating me and tearing me apart. I like a blind old man, a shepherd who has heard the sound of a horn signaling that someone is asking for help. I can hardly walk, but I am still watching the herd, and I was once a warrior, but I didn’t hold a sword in my hands for a long time, so I can’t come to the aid of the one who calls.

I believe in life. But I don’t believe in moments like you coming to me ten years later and saying you were wrong about a lot of things. No. You have too much pride in such actions. You write to me, and that’s worth a lot. Though we should forget each other and go our separate ways. Do I want this? Of course, I don’t. I want to possess you completely! Besides, the thought that we haven’t had sex even once depresses and disappoints me, shades my love. I want you, my foxy, to be completely in love with me, but you remain a wayward girl!

You think a lot about yourself. That’s why, by the way, you consider yourself insignificant, because you love yourself very much. You’re like a queen who let me, a simple soldier, love you. Think about it, because of the other girls, you didn’t believe in my love, but you let me love you! Our relationship has always been bottom-up. I looked from below, and you were above, although you always pretended that the opposite was true. We both often pretended to be indifferent, but our behavior didn’t fool the others. The people around us thought we were a couple, which we were supposed to be.

Sooner or later, death will take me by surprise. But I’m not going to talk to it. I’ll just refuse to die. I don’t want to die unexpectedly, though many people do. Time is merciless to us, it turns our souls inside out. And old age will sneak upon us. Over time, the roof will begin to leak, and the dust that has settled on the furniture will turn into mold, and my face will no longer be reflected in the mirror. I will forget my own name, the past will hide in the basements of memory, my face will stretch out, I will look like a prisoner of war from World War II. Grey-haired, lonely old age. I’ll put out the candle so that I can calmly watch the dancing rain as I sit by the cracked window. Slippers will warm my feet, the memory of you will warm my mind, and I will be able to get up from the chair to go out into the yard for the last time in my life and feel the cold and raindrops on my face. And then I’ll just whisper, “Jess, I love you!”

And while I whisper to the rain, you’ll stand on the Golden Gate Bridge and look down. The waves will ruthlessly whip the coast. You’ll look, and suddenly you’ll feel yourself falling. But it’ll be me who falls. And from somewhere a white heron will appear and tell you that this is not your way. You’ll walk away from the raging death, from the thin line separating reality from infinity and fly up. You will fly while I fall. And when you emerge beyond the clouds, you flare up from the sunlight and burn alone.

And I will fall into the void. And emptiness will swallow me. You can completely pull out all the insides from a person and leave only the skin, and he will not be empty because he will be filled with air. And you can saturate every human blood cell with emptiness, and you can drink emptiness, suck emptiness out of the air, become emptiness. It’s disgusting to live like that.

I was tired of standing on my head, opening my mouth and waiting for the emptiness to crawl out of me, to spill out and mix with the air again. When the emptiness comes out from me, and it is replaced by activity that gives my body a human appearance and my mind human thoughts for a while, then I find myself back in the office, as with a wave of a magic wand, the emptiness turns into an ethereal structure, and it fills my lungs again. I know you have about the same, and I know when it comes out. But the emptiness is part of you, part of my love.

I want to get away anywhere, somewhere. Away from my memories, from the rain and the sun, away from desires, away... Turn off the music, the light, close the curtains, just wait for the evening, plunge into the darkness, total darkness. I can already feel its volume, its texture, breath, I feel the moisture, as when the fog was formed, but now it is the moisture from the breath of darkness. The air seems to be compressed in the lungs, hardens, it becomes difficult to breathe. Closing my eyes, I lean forward, searching for something in the darkness, and I try to breathe. Now I’m touching the wall, it’s cold, I feel the wall, and in my lungs something is stuck. It’s getting cold. I feel the steam coming out of my mouth in the darkness but it is very weak, and I begin to suffocate. The darkness is filled with something. Me? No, the darkness avoids the air and it is filled... filled with my touch. I can feel it resisting the air, I run my hand over it and feel how I stroking the darkness, and it echoes in me with a past. The darkness itself is full of memories. And it can grab me by the throat with my hand if I let it. It’s even harder to breathe, I start coughing, I fall to the floor. I fall into the darkness, I’m flying somewhere, I... I’m still here with you, my little foxy.

When you left Detroit, I threw a vintage little plane in your bag, my childhood toy, have you kept it? No, I don’t want you to give it back to me in any way. I’m just wondering, do you still have it? I just want to bring you back with a piece of my childhood! Love and carelessness, what could be more beautiful? While we change the hands on the clock, time keeps going by. Many people promise us life after death, but I know one thing, that after life the death awaits us. And I want love to penetrate the molecules of the soul and by some miracle find eternal life. But it seems that I have brought back my childhood because I have the same boyish awe in front of you that I had when I saw you as a teenager. You have always been an unattainable girl like the one who walks on the edge of the Universe, and you came to the Earth with the wind and stayed as the mist.

The guys were always afraid of you. They felt a certain fear. This fear crept into their souls. This fear did not allow them to feel full. This fear made them see you not as a woman but as a threat. And perhaps it was your courage and willpower that made me feel the same fear, and that is why we are not together now. You said that you are a relic of the past, but we are both are. We’re not progressive enough for modernity and not conservative enough for traditionalists. Trapped outside of time, dropped out of reality, we are not relics of the past, but we are unnecessary people chewed up by society with unnecessary values.

If we talk about chewing, then you asked me to chew you the idea of ​​my story. Although I am in favor of the fact that a work can and should be perceived in different ways, and this will be its value, I will try to explain briefly.

This story plot that you saw in the work is the life that you strive for, but it is not you. The true image of the character, if I reveal it, will be unpleasant to you, and you will search for some parallels within yourself and be offended, which will be natural. The character has a contradiction between logic and the sensual-emotional world, which creates a gap in perception. A trivial paradox between incomprehensible feelings and awareness of a reality that’s what my story is. The paradox of behavior is when you need and want to do one thing but do something completely different. It’s not you, but it’s almost every person on the planet at some point in time. I think you got the story right. The tragedy of the character happens precisely because the character doesn’t think about the consequences and acts emotionally, but when he begins to act judiciously, this further worsens his situation. Just compare with us. In love, we were guided by logic and holding back our feelings, but still, it led to a certain tragedy.

How many more words do I need to say, words woven into sentences, sentences that will carry at least some meaning, understandable at least to you? True love is always hidden from people in the shadow of art. But I am not modern enough to create masterpieces, to create something valuable, something recognized. You and I have our love, and only we need it. Maybe someday someone will find my letter and use the paper for a campfire.

I decided about a week ago to go up the stairs to my office at work. As I climbed, I thought about climbing because I was moving up, keeping my feet on the stairs. I was going higher and higher, and the city became more and more like a toy. With age, they say, everything begins to be seen in a different light, and a person begins to appreciate what was in the past. This is not true. A person begins to understand that he allowed himself to make too many mistakes, allowed himself to be morally and spiritually robbed, depriving himself of hope and dreams. Think about it, do you want to relive some moments or change something in the past? Yes, billions and almost the entire population of the planet will definitely prefer to change something. So with age comes apathy and unwillingness to fight for something. When something does not work out for a long time, then even the most courageous and persistent people can lose heart. Will we blame others for not being able to achieve more? Will we envy our peers who could arrange their lives better than us? If we are talking about material goods, then you and I would not care much about them. But your desire to achieve perfection in drawing and music is affected your harmony with yourself.

We just got older. Maybe once you and I carried within us a charge of revolution, a charge of protest against the stupidity of the world, but now... Now we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. We are either late or too early. Perhaps I should have had more faith in us and in our love. But I chose doubt as to my faith. Thrown into the soil, a doubt grew and has now borne fruit.

Oh, there’s the Thanksgiving Day parade. People love the holidays, the sounds, the vanity. Not all of them. We don’t love it anymore. The music stopped. I don’t turn the record over. Is it rain or something? I’m not interested. I’m not interested in parades, fireworks, events, holidays. I’m only interested in you, in talking to you. But our voices no longer sing in unison, don’t merge with each other, don’t confront the crowd. Our singing is now ignored. We are two lonely voices talking to ourselves.

My mind keeps generating words, thoughts and images. Aren’t you tired of them? Do they have any value? “I think, therefore I am.” That’s what Descartes said, yes. But we are only products of society. All our thoughts are trivial, and all our feelings are similar. Our reality sometimes seems like an illusion. Is that an existence? We drag out a miserable existence on the body of a macroorganism called society, which seeks in every way to suppress individuality. But are we parasitizing on society, or is it parasitizing on us?

I won’t sleep tonight because I need to finish this letter, though I think I’ll finish it before dusk… I don’t want to be a preacher and teacher or mentor. I don’t want to try to impose my point of view on you, my foxy. It feels so good to write what I am thinking without shyness, without analyzing how it will be perceived by you. The truth of life and my thoughts become as tangible as if you can touch my truth, grab it and not let go. I’ve already written a bunch of all sorts of platitudes, wished you happiness with your man. Or didn’t I? Then I do. When someone tells me that an author has his own style of photography, I go through my memories and find someone who had a similar style but was a lesser-known photographer. In this world, my love, everything is ruled by chance. Thoughts, ideas and images are repeated by many, and this cannot be changed. We are products of society. We seem to be floundering in the ocean of the crowd, and our personalities are trying to get out on land and show that we’re individual and we’re not with the crowd. But on land, the hurricane of time sweeps them away, and bright voices of those who had something new to say stop hearing from ashore. It is all about understanding. Society recognizes only what it knows and understands. Yes, you and I consume the world’s popular culture, and we like it. And what we love we consider genius. But how many of the equally brilliant, more complex cultural products have turned out to be buried by eternity in its dungeons? Time has imprisoned unrecognized geniuses, and their voices are no longer heard. Is that why we need recognition by society? We want that, no doubt, but why? Do you remember how I wrote, “If I suddenly become understood by everyone, then I will immediately become empty”? But even if we take society out of the equation and take only us, what do we get in total? You were even interested in my interpretation of my story, the character’s behavior and his thoughts. And I just wanted you to think for yourself and draw your own conclusions. And there is only one conclusion, the only person who can understand me is myself.

Recently I was walking down the street and saw a homeless man lying on the sidewalk. He was clenching the money tightly in his fist, and it was clear that something was wrong with him, maybe a stroke, maybe something else. I wondered why no one robbed him. I walked by, thinking, “This is none of my business, he is a stranger, he is not a dog that is never to blame for anything. There is always something that man can do wrong.” I felt ashamed of my own thoughts and excuses, and I turned around and saw that people were approaching him. A woman stopped, followed by a young couple. I went over too. Someone called 911. And I decided to leave. But that’s not the only case. I have had worse, as you know.

When the Black Hunter and I once escorted a blind man home, I was unhappy. By the way, I haven’t seen Blake for a long time. Anyway, you’d already left Detroit by then, and Black Hunter and I used to spend time together before he got completely distant. But back to the story. Blake and I were walking down the street, along the road, and a man in black glasses called us. He asked us to move him across the road. I didn’t like him right away. When we got him across the street, he asked us to bring him home. He offered to lead him one way, but I decided that Blake and I would lead him another way. I was displeased and annoyed. He asked us, “What’s your name, guys?” I answered, “Different.” Then he asked if we were local? I answered evasively, “Not really.” And his question, “Where do you work?” was greeted by my cold answer, “In various places.” He decided to introduce himself and tell us about his life. His name was Marcus. He lost half of his family in a car accident and now lives with his mother and daughter. He can barely walk, barely see, barely hear. Passing through the courtyards, I asked him, “It must be noisy here at night?” He replied that sometimes he heard shooting at night. I quipped, “I can already feel the hot lead in my back.” When we brought him home, his mother came out, a lively woman with a dog. She thanked us, and I shouted, “Wish you live happily ever after.” Marcus was left alone. And he so wanted companionship. He just wanted to sit and talk with us. Just talk. But he had a mother and a daughter! And now, when time has passed, I probably would have talked to him, although I still don’t like him, he is some kind of unpleasant person. But I could not tell him about our love.

By the way, I remember when one homeless fell, and I went over to help him up, I was pleased to do it! He even refused help at first. But then he held out his hand. I liked that man, and now I would even give him money because I like him! I don’t know how it works. Is it a normal or bad human attitude? I understand that you can start judging me, but, girl, remember Kenneth, you mentioned him several letters ago. Several letters ago, can I write like that? Anyway, he stole cars! How could you even date him? And you still had such good feelings for him. But he’s not Robin Hood, my foxy! He steals from the people like you and me. He steals from young families who have just bought a new car. I don’t approve of your choice, it’s good that you broke up with him, and it’s good that he was never rude to you! Although, maybe you were hiding something from me. What if you were afraid that I’d get a gun and come to him and blow his brain out? I don’t know. When you’ve told me about Megan, I was on the edge, but I restrained myself. But if it were you...

My curtains are closed now, I don’t want to see what’s outside the window. Don’t want anymore. It’s a little dark in the room. I see the future in subdued light, it loses its shape, shadows dance and jumps on top of each other, creating and intensifying dark spots. I don’t want to imagine it, I don’t want to think of it, I don’t want anything. I’m not the same guy I used to be, and I don’t even remember who I was. I feel as if the ship of love is shipwrecked during a storm. It hit the coastal rocks, and everyone who was on the ship couldn’t survive. I feel lonely. I swallow loneliness like whiskey and feel nothing. I want to feel the bitterness. I want a fresh croissant. Jess, will you make me a fresh croissant? Cook it for me now, I want to taste the dough on my lips. I laugh so often inside myself that the laughter has already become hysterical. Are we lying to each other, foxy? Are we lying to each other? Who else are we lying to? Life, time, fate? Love? Are we cheating on our love, Jess? I want to cry. Who are you, Jess? I invaded and ruined your life, or did you drop a nuclear bomb on mine? What will I do without you, Jess? Jessica, rip up my letter, burn it and forget it, write me goodbye, and we’ll end this once and for all! I can’t live without you! I can’t breathe! I don’t want to. I can’t and I won’t…

I did get distracted for a few minutes because tears came to my eyes, and I couldn’t write. I went to the window and looked at the drops. It started raining after all. I watched the drops, how they hit the last leaves of the trees, how they pierced the road like bullets. I watched how the drunken life of rock dances on every molecule of water, how birds ran like samurai during an enemy attack. It’s beautiful! I opened the window and poked my head out into the rain, and felt my hair start to get wet, and then a small cold drop slid down the edge of my ear, like a midge.

Remembering Blake Hunt, I remembered another story with him. It was summer, it was the next year when you were not in the city, and maybe I have already told this story, but I doubt it. I haven’t talked to you for a while then. We hadn’t called and hadn’t corresponded. It was a sunny summer day, we walked, and we saw a bird, a hawk, which hid in the corner of the house, a bird’s wings were wounded. The hawk shook his head but made no sound. I went up to him and held out my hand to see if he would peck me or not, he opened his beak, but for some reason, he didn’t peck. I took him in my arms. I was shocked because the bird behaved like a tame bird! The Black Hunter then had to stop by the college. And I was officially on vacation. Blake had a meeting with a young teacher for some project for the next year. Anyway, in our glorious college, I tried to find help. I was recommended to call Wildlife Refuge. We ran to the payphone to call and see if they could help with this reserve. I was pretty sure I could find a bird rescue organization or a vet closer, but I was told where to go, so that’s where we called. When we brought the bird, we were told that, unfortunately, the bird had terrible injuries and not only the wings, the hawk will die, but they would make sure the bird doesn’t suffer. It was the last day of his life, the last time a hawk flew high above our heads. It was the last day of searching for food. I promised the hawk that it…he would survive. When I carried him, I told him that everything would be fine. I truly believed that. I lied to the bird! Albeit not deliberately, but I deceived the hawk! And it will stay with me for life. What if your love for me is now like that hawk? It is injured, but still alive. Your love may bleed… but I don’t know. And I truly believe that love will get well. What if not? What if everything is already lost? What if this is the end?

I’m such a bore. I keep digging into the past, traveling along the night road with broken streetlights at great speed. It’s like I’m driving in the dark to where shadows mingle with ghosts and show me the distorted episodes of my life. Maybe there is a boring thing in me because I have nothing to say to you. I could write “I love you” and end it there. It would have turned out very succinctly, neatly, it would have required less paper and less time, and most importantly, all my thoughts would have been perfectly expressed in this phrase.

It seems like we have a lot to remember, but we don’t. Our love in our eyes was natural. Our desire for freedom and spirituality was at the same time paradoxical but could be understood. How long will we stand together? Year? Six months? A month? I don’t know. I’d like to try to live my whole life with you, my little foxy. Your and my vivid memories are often associated not with us but with other people. For you and me, our letters have become some ritual. It’s as if we do it like ancient priests who must fulfill their role in the community so that they are not be overthrown and killed. You wrote to me, but did you want to be heard me? And did you want me to keep answering? Your “write, please, write” looks like a prayer, not a request.

I’m sorry if I hurt you. Especially on a holiday. Our glorious Thanksgiving Day. I should have gone to my parents or at least called, but I don’t want to be distracted from the letter. You are unlikely to call your father. Well, right, he hurt you too much, and his wife’s death does not justify him. I’m sorry that you grew up without a mother, but I believe that you will become a great mother yourself! You have all the qualities for this. I feel hungry, and this is not a spiritual hunger for love, it’s physical hunger. It’s time for a snack.

I remember when we were teenagers, it was a day off when you went somewhere, and I called you home six times within a couple of hours, your father was furious. For the 7th time, he either stopped picking up the phone or cut off the phone. I came to your house, waiting for you nearby. It turns out you had spent all day picking out a birthday present for me, but you couldn’t find anything. I told you then that we can choose a gift for me together because often surprises only in the movies can be pleasant. In real life, people give each other absolutely unnecessary things. I said back then that the best gift for me is your happiness.

Love is a polygon, and during life, it changes its position, and a new facet of feeling appears before a person. And I just wanted love, your love. No, not even love. I was only hoped to be meaningful to you. But there were glances, completely unobtrusive dialogues and silence. Silence and emptiness. No, fullness. The fullness of the feelings. It’s all over now.

A few months ago, when you were alone, you wrote… Wait a minute, I’ll find it now. Where is this letter? Ah, here it is. “I don’t want anything because I don’t. And when I reach this “peace” in my heart, I will simply dissolve or disappear... or die. I don’t want to die; I want to live, to feel, to love.” How alike we are. But now you have a new man, and maybe he took up enough space in your heart for you to forget me.

I think there’s something you’re not telling me about your father. I remember that he beat you. Sorry about mentioning it. Probably, I deliberately did it now and I was being a jerk. I know what I want. I want to hate your father. So I guess on a subconscious level, I want to know what else he did awful. After losing his wife, he failed to love his daughter because you, my foxy, was a reminder that he didn’t keep his beloved from dying. But no one can’t keep a loved one from cancer! Maybe someone can, but it’s a very bad disease. You had to take care of your father, and receive his reproaches and grunts and beatings in childhood. But when we met, he didn’t beat you anymore... I can’t, it tears me apart. I want to hate him a lot, but I don’t know how. It’s just because I was not in your skin. I don’t know what it was like for you. I can’t feel all your suffering. I remember all your stories about him, about how you were lying at home alone and you were scared, and your father was drinking in a bar. Your heart was pounding. You were afraid that he wouldn’t return or return angry. You couldn’t sleep. But his grief at the loss of his wife was tearing him apart. But I don’t want to make excuses for him. If you and I had a daughter and you died, I would devote my whole life to raising my daughter and making her happy.

I want to send you a CD with a letter, a pretty nice studio album by Jethro Tull. 1989, Rock Island. It’s just not so heavy. It’s very interesting, although not as progressive as their early albums. If you listen to it from beginning to end, you could feel the life in yourself. In the “Armageddon” movie there is a moment when one character talks to a psychiatrist and tells him that it drives him crazy when someone says that Jethro Tull is just a man in a band. And the psychiatrist asks him, “Who’s Jethro Tull?”

When you promised to show me your diaries, you just said that the time will come and you will let me read them. So the time has come or not?

How I don’t want to go to work after the holidays. We used to dream that we would have our own business, that since you and I are reliable friends, we will be able to become reliable business partners. Where did it all go? But before, I was smarter because I studied the world, and now I am dumb because I began to create my own. And it’s very hard to sell your own world. That’s why we have to work for someone else.

I remember, after you left me when I was still doing photography more diligently than now, I did some research. I ordered ads in the newspapers, created and printed flyers put them up in different places. I wanted to take pictures of girls in their underwear. Free of charge, to fill up the girls’ portfolio and mine. As luck would have it at that period, all the girls I knew were out of town at the time. And as you remember, I spent a lot of time, some girls called me, clarified the details, some thought that I would pay them money, others called and thought that I might represent some clothing brand and they, being non-professional models, wanted to sign a contract. I told them then that it does not work like that, and they wondered, but how does it work? I ended up just giving out advice for free or hearing frustration. Then I realized that I wasn’t such a successful manager. Then I understood that all our dreams were like the dreams of callers who wanted to squeeze out the most money by trying to put in little effort.

But now that I’ve let myself lose almost 2,000 bucks at an online casino, when I’m not making any damn money, remembering my dreams, of which you and I had thousands of great projects, is rather painful. Rick is currently renovating his house, and what do you think, because he wants to save money, he calls me and David to help him. I will soon become a professional handyman.

About two or two and a half weeks ago, if I’m not mistaken, I was sitting in a bar, and a man of my age sat next to me, I didn’t look at him until he spoke. He said he was from Russia. And that his grandmother, who lived in distant eastern Siberia, died.

And he decided to tell me his story. I will retell it to you on his behalf. “Imagine the USSR in 1944. Spring, village, field. Little girls in torn dresses looking for food in the field. One girl pulls a potato out of the mud. The potato is frozen and has already begun to rot from one edge, but the girl exclaims joyfully, “I found it!” The rest of the girls ran up to her, and they began to divide the dirty potato to eat. Greedily biting with their small teeth into the rotten pieces of potato, which they picked with their frostbitten fingers, the little girls restlessly look around. The field is state-owned, and the girls are breaking the law by stealing from the state. After the meal, the girls continue to look for food. They need to collect food for their families. Of course, they could not eat this potato, but hunger is stronger than reason.

Imagine another picture, an 8-year-old girl is walking with buckets for water. And the water is behind the hillock, which must be overcome. It’s spring, here and there ice remained on a black field, but the girl nevertheless overcomes the hillock and descends to the small river. She collects water in buckets and rises back, but falls and water spills, and she has to go down to the river again. So the girl dragged buckets of water. The buckets are not full, but it’s still hard for her. Her feet are tied with rags. Rags are her shoes. Her head is wrapped in a scarf. The girl is walking, and her hands go numb from the weight or the cold, the girl cannot understand why, but she continues to walk. Finally, she gets home. And at this time at home, the stove is heated to keep the children warm. They heat the stove with the roof of their own house because the state has forbidden cutting wood. In the winter, the family cut down some branches, and because of that, the axe was taken away from the family. It was forbidden to cut trees, but now there is nothing to cut with.

And even earlier, in 1942, when the little girl was 6 years old, her grandmother fastened the girl to her on a pin so that the girl would not run away to play and taught her to knit. The mittens were sent to the front. The state required people to give a certain amount of food. When a cow died in the family, the chickens disappeared; the girl’s mother collected all the supplies of potatoes, including rotten ones, and went to the market to sell. With the proceeds, she bought eggs which she gave to the state.”

I have memorized these stories, and I cursed my sensitivity and emotionality. I bought him a drink, and I left the bar. I turned the corner and wiped away the tears, remembering my grandmother, who was very sick before her death. But I don’t want to tell you about my grandma now, it’s too painful, and you already know the story. Forgive me for remembering this on a holiday, but so far I can’t stop myself thinking about this.

By the way, I told this Russian, when he asked whether I was married or not, for some reason I lied, saying that my wife was far away and I often write long letters to her. Always long letters. He told me that there was a French mathematician Pascal, who lived in the 17th century, who once wrote: “This letter came out longer only because I did not have time to write shorter.” Words of wisdom, but I’ve always thought it was said by Mark Twain.

I mentioned earlier about the homeless, and I remembered another story about the old man who began to choke in front of my eyes last winter. He unbuttoned his jacket and tried to find something. I think I forgot to tell you this story in my previous letters. He was not homeless. This old man fell. Heart attack, maybe. I don’t know. He fell into this dirty and hard snow. He fell because the sun should rise and because new life should appear in the morning. He fell because fate had it so. I ran up to him. His wrinkled face froze as he tried to say something. Small puddles formed nearby. I thought to give him artificial respiration, but then his hand moved, his face began to change, and he reached for something. I helped him and took out a pill, and he put it under his tongue. Someone has already called 911. The ambulance arrived pretty quickly, and the old man was taken away.

But that’s enough. I have to turn the record over, I have to stop sitting in silence and indulge in sorrowful memories of someone’s near-death. I need to indulge in sorrowful memories of love. You and I are two different trees, when my buds swell, you are already blooming. Surrendering to our love, we need to remember that a feeling can change its mind and not stay with us forever. I wonder if we were husband and wife, then our family relationship would begin with the phrase, “I love you”, and would end with the frequent repetition of the question, “Do you love me?”

Love distinguishes a lonely pastel artist from a shocking color artist. A shocking artist often tries to create something extremely bright and vulgar, when a lonely pastel artist is content with pale tones and smooth transitions. What I am saying now is that I have used too brightly emotional phrases in my writing and often pathos, and all of that do not characterize me positively. But that don’t characterize me negatively either.

You and I have too much in common. Even our denial that we have a lot in common is one of the elements of similarity.

I don’t want to speculate about your future pain over disappointment with your new man, but remember all our previous experiences, not everything is as smooth in a relationship as we thought it would be. Let everything be fine with you, be happy with him and be satisfied, enjoy every moment, but if the relationship comes to an end, don’t be disappointed in life once again, just accept the fact of that end. There is always a lot of disappointment and suffering in life. A college teacher once asked us, “What is the essence of love?” Nobody could answer correctly from his point of view, and then he said that the essence of love is in conflict and asked, “How is the love conflict between Romeo and Juliet expressed?” Again no one could find the answer to the question, and then he answered himself, “The essence of the conflict is in the struggle. Romeo drank poison for love. And Juliet stabbed herself. Each of them tried to prove that he loved the other more, stronger.” I hate to realize it, but we have a similar situation. Each of us throughout our life tried to show the other that he loves more. I not only love you but also admire you! However, admiring a person and not following his example means being a slave to your dreams. After all, I really didn’t take an example from your courage, which I idolized.

I should divorce my wife so as not to torment her. Do you know why people are afraid of divorce? Because they have their heads in the clouds, they believe in miracles and that everything will change for the better. It’s just fear multiplied by self-doubt. The fear of being alone, the fear of starting a new relationship and again being disappointed, being betrayed. Even if you marry your Irishman, I’m pretty sure you’ll divorce, so keep this letter, let it gather dust along with the other letters. Years from now, you will find the letter, reread it, and you will understand that I was right. You know me, and I’m the one you’re looking for. And because even though people are alike, little details make them unique, leading to the destruction of the idealistic image.

I have built a palace of loneliness for myself, and I am calmly sitting on a throne. And I can judge love only by our experience with you, by what I feel, by the experience of past feelings and the experience of other people whom I know personally. And all I have learned is that strong love remains forever. I have already compared it to fire and embers, I don’t want to repeat myself, but strong love does not pass from anyone, and most people don’t live with whom they love very much. That’s why society has health issues.

I remember when I was 24 years old. My mother had a girl colleague at work, she was 25. Her mother like your mother died of cancer. The poor girl was left completely alone in her house. My mother wanted me to marry her. The girl, in my opinion, was in such a position, when she frankly did not care who to marry, in the end, the grief from the loss of her mother and the realization of loneliness do their job. Her mother was a single parent, father left the family. Anyway, that girl knows my mother, and she saw me. I thought, “What the hell? What’s going on? Why is everyone getting into my life?” I asked my mother, “Mom, what are we going to do with her? Ok, I’ll fix her house. And what’s next? We’ll have a baby, and we will live happily ever after?” That girl was beautiful and nice, but I didn’t want to be with her. I just didn’t want to. I looked at her and thought, “Did anyone ask her, what does she want? Did anyone ask her how she wanted to live, who she wanted to date? Why do people, when another person is in grief, always want to fix that none of their business?” It is clear why they want to help. But why do they believe these solutions are the right ones? I thought to myself, looking into the eyes of this girl, “I’m sorry, but you’re not Jess, and you will never be.”

I’ll tell you another sad story, which I have saved for this letter. Just about two months ago, I saw a dead dog on the road. Someone had run it over and just left it for dead. I got out of the car and picked up the animal’s dead body, and carried it to the side of the road. Then I got in the car and drove to work, holding back my anger and tears. I thought about the phrase “die like a dog”. Dogs often die quite horribly, and often when comparing animals and humans, the comparisons are not in favor of the animals. And is this the modern level of humanism? The value of life has a terrible double standard. We almost equate some creatures with humans, others we allow to kill. At the same time, it is technically impossible for humanity to grant equal rights to different living beings. The life of a stray dog ​​is not equal to a pet dog. It’s all so unfair! But there is no solution! If society gives full rights to dogs, cats and parrots, everyone else will demand to be included in the list of their animals. From every corner will appear the lovers of snakes and crocodiles, spiders and others. You know there is nothing wrong with these kinds of animals, but we simply will not be able to respect the rights of all earthly beings equally. Some living beings are human enemies, for example, many insects, some animals are food. And yes, while I partly agree with vegans, I don’t see the possibility of an honest and fair distinction. Even spiders have a heart. I don’t know the position of vegans about cockroaches. A lioness kills an antelope for food, and a cockroach enters a person’s dwelling also for food. It turns out that the lioness does not interfere with people, but the cockroach interferes, and because of this, it can be killed. As far as I know, vegans rely on animal sentiment and avoidance of suffering. It turns out that if dogs didn’t feel anything at all, then from an ethical point of view of vegans, that kind of dog can be killed? But exactly the asshole who hit the dog and drove on probably didn’t feel anything.

Honestly, I didn’t want to write about it back then, and I don’t want to write about it now, that’s why I don’t want to continue this topic anymore. Yesterday I was in a good mood, I saw two girls, strangers, they walked and enjoyed the cool weather and small cold rain. I saw them laughing, and I smiled too, but they weren’t paying attention to me. And then I remembered how you looked at me with such passion and love, and I seemed to drown in this memory, and tears came to my eyes. It’s in our human psychology to destroy and re-create. Do you think I’ll ever be able to kill our love?

Why have I never wanted to achieve something, for example, in music? Even if my aural skills are not very good, I could have tried better. Music is like a seed planted in a cloud, and it was able to take root in it, and now, having reached into space, it begins to grow roots to the ground.

I remembered how you and I argued about the painting Umberto Boccioni Elasticity, and then my father came home, and he asked what was going on, why are we talking so loudly? And I told him that we were just arguing about the greatest work of futurism, and you didn’t agree that it is a superb picture. And my father said, “You need to distinguish between personal life and art. You can hate each other’s opinions, you can even fight over something, yes, but it shouldn’t affect your relationship in any way.”

I happen to meet a lot of people. I’ll never forget how one day when I was seven years old, an Italian man came to our little house and he patted himself on the leg and laughed, then he handed me some kind of notebook, I just wanted to take it, and he pulled it back and patted his leg again. He spoke only Italian, and my parents hardly understood him. I don’t know what he meant, but when I looked at my mother and father, they too were holding back their irritation. Maybe the Italian thought I was a monkey or a dog that should grovel in front of him. But animals are above that. He was a customer important to my parents. But I still haven’t asked them what he said, and did they understand what he meant?

Friends sometimes tell me that I act strangely, not to mention that I think strangely. I can already feel how soon they will start calling me an alien. And the problem with the alien is that he is a stranger on this planet and will never be able to achieve recognition. But I believe that greatness is not about gaining recognition today, but greatness is about gaining recognition over time. And that’s very hard for the average earthling to gain, not to mention me.

I haven’t written poetry for a long time. But I don’t want to either. Poems are often pompous emotional, and they lack a little poise, balance with this world, a harmony. Don’t get me wrong, I do love poetry, but I’m sick of pretending! I want to gaze into your eyes, put a piece of transparent and cold clarity into the pupils and cleanse your world of feigned joy. Are you happy? Where, in what place, because of what? Because of him? Your new man? You’re laughing, you’re laughing with every part of your body, but inside? What’s inside? Is that a mask? It’s a mask after all! You’re a child, it’s your defensive reaction to being a child. You’re still the same young girl, a naive teenager who believes in miracles. The memory is being chopped. And shavings of memories are flying left and right, then thrown away somewhere. I try to push my feelings out and replace them with something. I’m so lost in the crumbs of the past that even I can’t count how many letters I’ve sent this year. How can I count what I can’t remember?

Sometimes, it happens, you feel a pulsation in the veins, you feel it for a few minutes. Is this blood pressure? Or maybe it’s petty insanity, or... No, it can’t be anything. Because of love, you can only destroy your brain, split it into atoms, turn nuclei into dust and scatter this dust in the wind.

After all, Jess, you’re an artist, and I have to send you photos or even paint some pictures by myself. But if you ask me to draw, I am unlikely to be able to do something complex, just simple. But simple forms are a sign of completeness, a sign of logical thinking, and complex forms are a sign of artistry, but a real artist, an innovator brings something new to the content. Complex feelings in a complex form is a language accessible to the elect, i.e. to those outside the society of mass consumers. This is why our love is so complex and is often questioned even by us. Sometimes we begin to characterize the qualities of our love as inappropriate and bad. This can be compared to the controversy over a painting by Umberto Boccioni. Our love is like both a painting of Elasticity and an argument about it. This is why tears often come to my eyes when I think of us. Tears are like sand, and they crumble and disappear over time.

I picture you driving across the bridge towards the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. You see how the world is moving, but you seem to have stopped. And I so want the world to notice you, to help your movement. But our love seemed to have stopped too. It’s like a frozen bird in flight, destined to get stuck in the air. The bird can’t fall, but it can’t fly either. Your feelings are like this bird stopped in flight. For the bird, the air and free space around it became a prison. You so wanted me to start time again for you to keep going, moving, so you could fly again, but I’m stuck with you. It’s like I’m on the bridge with you looking at the water, and there’s a traffic jam on the Golden Gate Bridge. The clock went off. And you get out of the car, and you walk to the edge of the bridge, and you want to jump. And not because of the desire to die, but because you want to feel the flight again, because you’re a bird trapped in a human body.

Sometimes I think I can feel your calm breathing, like the monotonous sounds of rain. I recently took a walk in the rain. People love the comfort and don’t like the rain. Those who love the rain actually love it from a warm, cozy room, watching it from a safe distance. For the same reason, adult children often get along better with their parents than when the children were young. An adult son or daughter lives a separate life and can be watched from a distance, freeing up parents’ personal space. They are no longer as annoying as the rain if you walk under the rain without an umbrella. I walked in the downpour and rejoiced until I was completely wet and cold. When you feel uncomfortable, cold and wet, then you stop being happy, you stop loving rain and you remember how you love the comfort. And it’s like our relationship with you, Jess. It is good for us to communicate in this way, not physically, but far from each other. We love each other from a distance very much, because it is comfortable. We love each other until we get wet in the rain. Though, you know I like rain.

Appearance is the beauty of form. Do you think we’re still attracted to each other? I have a little fat belly. You have red hair as if you specifically wanted to pin me up with this, to show me that yes, here you are, my foxy. Your photo says to me, “You called me a little foxy all my life, now I’ve become a real foxy! Enjoy it!” The more beautiful a person is, the less happy he or she is because there is always more attention to such a person. Yes, such a person can achieve more than others, but this does not mean that he or she will be happy. I want you with your red hair and this serious smile! You are beautiful to me, and you will always remain so. But I need some exercise. Fitness is a man’s life’s work, even if he doesn’t do it professionally. I suddenly remembered my birthday when I turned twenty. You and I then agreed to choose a gift for me together. And I told you: “Let’s go look for a hat. I want to buy a hat, a wizard hat, and give it to someone. ” In the end, what did we do? We bought T-shirts and no hats! I wanted to give a hat to someone on the street. Why do we never do what we want to do? Even though something is irrational and stupid, we have always refused to do something like that. This is the problem of our love, it’s restrained, rational, and it never goes beyond. Like that bird frozen in flight, this is what our love is.

Something makes me want to drink again, but only words and meanings are stronger than alcohol, and the percentage of alcohol volume is so great that it burns my throat. And you, the bird that set in motion and flew to the ocean of whiskey. Another rhyme, “set in motion, flew to the ocean.” But the ocean turned to whiskey. I imagine what it would be. Millions of people would live next to the ocean, and millions would die there because of an uncontrolled desire to drink. And also because of the vapors! Alcoholic vapors would intoxicate people, people would... Listen, clouds could have formed, and alcoholic rains would have fallen all over the planet, people would have started walking only in hermetically sealed protective suits. I wonder how the plants would have evolved? Would they die or adapt like in that spider story? On my way to work recently, I saw a hippie guy who was voting on the road, an old-fashioned hitchhiker. I didn’t stop, but I wanted to. I thought that life and courage were so strong in him that he could easily take my life. But I felt not only fear but also respect. If some of our friends and acquaintances visited Europe, saw medieval castles, then they returned the same persons as they were. It was as if they had not absorbed that life, had not soaked up the atmosphere of the time. Maybe they shouldn’t have, but it always seems to me that you change when you learn more about the world. However, this is precisely where the illusion lies. When a person travels in comfort, he just gets some new impressions, and he has a reason to tell something about it. But when you walk along the road, in the rain, and then sit in the car with a stranger, and drive most of the time just to a point randomly chosen by you, then you definitely feel the life that flows through your veins, pulsates in your head.

Suddenly I remembered an incident from my childhood, how I fell steeply when I was climbing an abandoned building. I was lucky that I didn’t break anything. My friends and I were jumping inside this dilapidated building. It was winter. I slipped on something and started to fall, and my jacket caught on something several times. Anyway, I fell for a long time, like Alice falling down a rabbit hole. I don’t remember the height, but I remember how three of my friends looked at me and asked with a puzzled look, “Are you all right?” Maybe I hit my head then, and that’s why I have such a strange manner of talking with jumping from topic to topic? Or maybe I really do have the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

When the stars fall, they fall at your feet, Jess. You are so insanely beautiful, and you have so much energy of love that you illuminate the whole world with bright light. You turned from a bird to a woman again, but you were able to fly above the clouds, and you could fly in an endless stream of rarefied air, in an endless struggle with feelings within yourself. And the people below are engaged in stomping on the spot, constantly, raising dust around those who want to illuminate their way in the darkness. But the more they stomp, the more dust and darkness, and the less light there is. It becomes difficult for you to shine for them, to give kindness and to guide them.

You’re like a queen riding in a chariot, the wind blows your hair, and you’ll proudly look towards the horizon and the challenges of life. You will forever be in history, and they will remember you as the one who was kissed by the stars, the one that could fly. You are young miss tenderness, and I don’t want you to become someone’s Mrs. The forest fairies envy your femininity, and all magicians consider you the most important sorceress in the universe. So strive, strive beyond the horizon of your own consciousness! Look within yourself, and don’t be shy about your feelings, your emotions. Shout to the whole stereotypical society that you are Jess, you’re a queen of pure love, and you always will be! You’re the girl who’s not afraid of sadness! You will be the eternal queen of love, and someday you will be called the foremother of love. The one that has always been, the one that always lives. Jess, you are the woman to whom eternity cedes its throne!

It is the fate of a married man to admire a love of his youth, remembering it, and feeling like one of the stars that fell at your feet. But now, my light is not as bright as before. You don’t want to mix feelings and reason, but they always live in symbiosis. Many people, though, live in paradoxical opposition, and people are tormented, unable to resist their own madness. You know, if we called each other and talked a little every day, I wouldn’t be able to work normally. I’d be distracted by thinking about you. Even now it’s hard for me to concentrate and discard memories and reflections, but if we talked every day... If math is the singing of numbers, then love is the singing of the soul.

I wonder if you and I left college, would you just leave and get a job right away, start implementing our ideas, would we be together? We’ll never know the answer to this question.

My feelings for you are sometimes stable, sometimes like an earthquake, but they are calm only when I know that you are happy, that you can sleep peacefully, that your man is kind and caring. I love you, Jess! I love you so much! And this feeling will last forever! And it’s great! It’s wonderful to love and surrender to love. You love me, and that’s great too! I’m happy, even though I know we’ll probably never be together. I hope that he can take care of your future, and he takes you to this damned Bois de Boulogne as you’ve always dreamed of. I hope that you will have children, and they will live in our new country, where there will be no such ideological confrontation between Republicans and Democrats. I hope that your dreams will come true. You are capable of magic! And your magic is real!

I so wanted to see another letter from you in these two months. I held myself back so much because I wanted to write to you. Once I even started dialing your number, I wanted to know how you were doing but I didn’t. I tried to contact you mentally, but telekinesis is clearly not my strong point. My inexhaustible love made me believe in miracles, and I wanted to say again that I love you madly, Jess. And in this silence, I feel the pain, it’s like torture, like having your finger cut off and then having it regenerated to be cut off again. No matter how you calm down love, no matter how you think it has become stable, it will surely present a new surprise, demonstrating its madness, restlessness and rebelliousness. It’s all because of suffering. A person’s suffering is formed when he is separated from his love. And we are separated by miles... We’re a book of love. But how can a book feel when it has been cut in two? Despite our differences, we are one book, one story, one destiny, one love.

I’m always with you. No matter where you’re or who you’re with, whether you leave or not. I’m constantly looking for your image in the crowd, in the store, in the window, at work, at home. I expect you to appear suddenly. But I’m also afraid that I will see your ghost, and it will frighten me because I will think that you are dead. But true love shouldn’t hold back ghosts or images. It should be able to let go and wish for happiness. And my love is learning to do this. I am learning with it. You’ve been around so often, so many years by my side, but we weren’t together.

I hope your Cillian knows about me and he is not jealous. Jealousy is hurting a man’s soul. Look at my soul, is there any light left in it? Jealousy destroys me for sure. I can imagine the expression on Cillian’s face if he suddenly finds this letter and reads it. If you, Cillian, are reading this, then look at me! At my words, you must know, Jess is the princess of my heart! She’s mine, you hear me, mine!

I have only one problem in life now, no purpose. I’ve been distracting myself for years with many things, including work, but I’ve been thinking of you every day. Love can’t be uprooted, cut out, drowned out, cooled down, squeezed so that it bursts, explodes, evaporates, shuts up at last! It is impossible to muffle and stifle true love. In such cases, there are only two options left, to go to war or to drink. But this is the approach of people who can’t cope with the awareness of feelings, can’t reconcile with love, which cannot be defeated. Love always wins!

I guess I should have written less because so much emotion, repetition, already many times chewed up feelings can take a long time. And you need time, you still have to play “Possum goes to Prague”. I may not be an annoying person for you, but I am annoying, and I understand that. And it would seem that a life lived in communication with a loved one is a worthy life. But life is not measured by dialogues alone, for life is full of events, actions, goals and achievements. I really want you to get what you want, what you are striving for. And for that you need time.

I understand that sooner or later, we will die. And looking at Emily I always think if she dies tomorrow, what can I do to make her happy today? How much love can I give in a few hours before the end? I can talk to her about a Frenchman who is wearing a UK flag T-shirt and hates the UK himself. Is it a good topic for a dying person? I think that freedom of speech will slowly disappear. The human rights, for which so many have fought so hard, will no longer be respected. We live in a world where society has begun to alienate itself from politics and culture. The world is running too fast now. If you run at such a speed, then you may not notice how someone will run-up to the cliff, and then others running after him will surely push this person, the symbol of progress, right into the abyss of obscurity and disappearance. And various institutions of society will fall after him. Many adults or elderly people are distressed at the sight of young people and what they gravitate towards. You know that I can’t stand the moralistic-puritanical aspirations of some people to preserve someone ideology and develop the world in its image. But all these pseudo-decadent activities of modern youth are developing so differently that it is difficult to see a certain core of their ideology. Because there is no core. Hippies at least had simple and understandable ideas of freedom, love and community. Now, while someone is studying contemporary youth movements, new ones will appear, completely destroying or driving into the underground what is now popular. But if I were a moralist, I would say that breaking tradition leads to the marauding of progress.

Sometimes I really want an act, an act of the size of a house, an act that men do, an act that I expect from you. You just had to come to me, just come back here for me. Or maybe you just shouldn’t have left.

Last year you confessed to me that you came to Detroit for Thanksgiving, and you stayed at a hotel. You didn’t go to your father. You just went to your mother’s grave. Why didn’t you ask me to be with you? I was also in Detroit then, at my parents’ house. Then you called me and said amazing words, you said, “I love you not just as a friend, but as... you”. But then you still added something strange about the fact that I am not an ideal man, and that is good. Who am I to you? A disabled man to look after? Or a foolish knight who is bad with a sword and even worse in the saddle?

You’re tired of making excuses, and I’m tired of pretending, of thinking that winter will change to spring, and I’ll be one step closer to you. Life without you is meaningless, filled with boring things, uninteresting recreation and talking. For many people, love helps not to live but to survive. I survive at the expense of our love.

You’re a woman who leads this world by hand like a small child. And maybe you’re leading me, maybe you’re leading the planet, and then it will definitely go out of orbit and pull behind you. But how the hand of the planet fits into your little gentle hand, I can’t even imagine.

Love is concessions, compromises. You need to allow your loved one to do what he wants. And in return, he must allow something to you. Any relationship can be built perfectly. It all depends on the person. You can have an ideal relationship with Cillian. But in this case, it’s not just up to you, it’s up to him. People rarely know how to communicate properly. But the pain always persists, even when two loved ones have agreed. Emily knows I’m writing a letter. Emily knows that I love you. She had been warned about this in advance. We made rules, but her pain only gets worse. And it hurts me too. Sometimes I want her to say, “I don’t love you at all.” That would make me feel better. I would love her anyway, in my own way, as much as I can love Emily.

I don’t even know if you said now that you want to marry me and that I should divorce Emily, would I do it? I have already said in the letter what I would, I think. But if you look closely and be objective, would I break my own word, my own vow to be with her in sickness and health until death do us part? We must be responsible for our actions towards each other. What would Emily feel if I do this? She already tolerates my love for you, tolerates my absence, my lonely walks and separation. How much more pain do I have to bring the unfortunate girl?

I miss the rain again, the cold rain. Just a few days ago, I was completely wet, and I’ve already missed it. And you and I are like two drops of water. Two water drops falling from the sky. Two drops contain both spirituality. After all, they were in heaven, and they didn’t waste time and moved strictly towards their goal. They have one goal, to wet the hapless passerby, streets, buildings, traffic lights, banners and cars. To make someone wet, to stick H2O molecules into some object. This is how they live, these two drops, in the eternal cycle of life.

I can no longer fall in love with someone the way I once fell in love with you. My feelings for Emily or Beth are in a small garden, they bloom sluggishly. I water these flower feelings occasionally. The soil there is relatively dry, and perhaps the love plants are uncomfortable here, but they live. They live their little lives and bloom somehow. It just so happened that I met you and was surprised. I didn’t know I was capable of such a feeling, but it was born, formed and filled the whole Universe! Love for you is the basis of my existence. Love for you is the most powerful, unquenchable, uncontrollable state beyond time and space, half-understood by reason, half felt and expressed my feelings and emotions, a state in which you seem to soar and contemplate absolute beauty, the miracle that was born on a small planet Earth. The miracle is you, Jess, my little foxy! And you are great in your equanimity and the ability to be yourself, although the world has constantly tried to bend you to the side of humility. I’ve come to terms with many things, but you haven’t! And it makes you more supreme, more magical and bolder.

After all, you could stop communicating with me, plug this bleeding wound of love and live your life. But this is love! And you and I will heal our wounds someday. I believe in it! We will! I love you, Jess!

Love is the sufficiency of little things. I mean, if we didn’t communicate, I would still love you. But we communicate, and you reciprocate, and this creates a unique connection. And that’s why I’m the one who’s been trying for all these long years to suffer a lot because of your departure. I’m sad because I’m afraid that I’ll never see you in real life once more. I’ll not look into your eyes and ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to have sex?” I like imagining our sex, I just enjoy it. It may seem silly to imagine something that will never happen, but it is even more foolish not to do it because a dream of having sex with someone who you love is always a pleasant thing.

I’m talking to you again, Jess, as if I’m alone with myself. My depth of experience is based on mindfulness and sensitivity, even on some unthinking, so that pain or joy flow into my consciousness in a stream. Get distracted and imagine water, although we’ve already imagined drops, so imagine water. Think about the sea... What am I talking about? You live near the ocean, the image of San Francisco always disappears from my head. We both lived in Detroit, next to large lakes, so it’s weird to ask you to think about water. Think about traveling then. The whole problem of travel is that while traveling, a person is distracted from contemplation, and he begins to think. What do I have tomorrow? When will I get home? What places I haven’t seen yet?

Contemplation is a necessary companion of art. A person needs time to feel and understand, and any travel makes a person fuss.

And yet I see how you just run through life, unable to stop, and you find it hard to breathe. But you can stop and catch a breath. I would love you quietly if I didn’t know that you have the potential for self-discovery, for the self-realization of your own feelings! I believe in you, you can stop running, and if you want, you can always just walk, and the trees will stop flickering, and love will take shape, it will become available for you, for your dialogue with it, it will become available for me, and we can really enjoy ourselves more fully, and not such sinusoidal bursts. Our love is not a stock market chart, and even the market doesn’t have such ups and downs. If they were, then the world economy would come to an end.

So, while you’re running across the planet in a race against time, you don’t notice how life rushes by. We should have agreed on some schedule of letters, so that, for example, if someone doesn’t write for one month, then the other will definitely call. While I am writing the letter, I can’t understand what an idiotic whim, fear on my part, why am I not calling you? I will never understand what is stopping me. Maybe the fact is that I’m afraid to hear your voice and not recognize it? Or maybe, on the contrary, I’m afraid of sinking even further into the misery of my love?

After all, if I want to always be with you, then I’m not positive about any activity without you, including literature and photography. However, for such matters, I always need solitude, but the problem is that it is hard for me to be alone and not think about you. I need you all the time! I forced myself to change my attitude towards the world, but I could not make the changes to the end, and at the moment of disaster when everything falls on me at once, I return to our love, to my feelings, to the experience of the world, to literature, cinema and music. And I begin to produce endless words again.

My life is a clump of troubles. Of course, I am offended that instead of thinking about us, you return to the memories of mistakes with others. Just like me. Yes, this letter is a little more about Emily and Beth than usual. The fact that Beth refused to meet with me is not important. I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame others because you can’t blame broken hearts for wanting to return their pain to the one who broke them. You kept telling me that the people are bad, and I’m your only hope, so we’ll learn to remember the past, and we’ll learn to talk about the present, trying to hurt each other less.

I remembered your parrot, poor bird, we both suffered when he got sick. Memory works strangely, when I remembered the hawk, I didn’t think about your parrot, but now I remembered. We shared this pain. We then lost a lot, I didn’t manage to get a job where I wanted, and you lost all hope for the future. Only ruins and ashes remained of hope. We came face to face with the abyss, we sucked the abyss into ourselves with our lips, we merged with it in the agony of destruction.

I thought about death. I imagined in detail that I had died. I imagined that you met Emily and Beth. I imagined that this is not a movie, and my death did not bring you closer at all. Only in the movies could the death of a man loved by women bring them closer together. I don’t see that such a thing is real. I imagined you growing old, and Emily and Beth stopped coming to my grave, and only you continued. You used to come to me alone. And you sat by the grave, rereading my long letters.

To say what I think of you is to say nothing. I am completely absorbed in you, thinking about you and what you do. Being ourselves is an unacceptable luxury in a relationship. Doing what you want is impossible when you truly love. It can drive you crazy. I am struggling with the feeling of total loneliness, with the feeling that your love can disappear, I am struggling with my doubt. I think that this is an illusion.

Being talented is sometimes the equivalent of being a jerk. You and I are moderately creative people, after all, we don’t run after recognition, we just want to do various things we love. Unfortunately, we have a lot of them. If we loved one thing, maybe we would have already become famous professionals. I live my life to express my love for you. But poetry or prose, photography or music is not enough. I want love to live not only inside me but also in the world. I wanted to show the world true love without any falsehood and cover. I wanted love not to hesitate in me to say, “Jess, I want to make love with you!” True love, sincere love, honest love! I wrote about such love, and I will continue to write about it.

We want to believe that we’re walking the road of good, but we’re not. You and I wanted something of our own, something only ours, which does not belong to anyone. But we were only running away from the truth, not creating it. We didn’t like our truth about ourselves. You didn’t admire my poetry, let’s be honest, but about a year ago, when I wrote you a similar letter, only shorter, you wrote to me in the spring, I think in March, “I was rereading your Christmas letter today, and I cried.”

When I first saw Bosch’s paintings, they were more pleasant to me than, for example, Da Vinci’s paintings, but the classic Bruegel is meant for me more than Bosch. I wasn’t an ardent fan of painting, so I understand why you don’t give a shit about my poetry. But I don’t say you don’t understand poetry; it will be unfair as if I said that I don’t understand anything in painting. You know something about rhyme, and I know something about composition, color and styles. And yet I admire your work! Especially your painting “The hippopotamus family ”. I don’t know a single girl who would decide to choose just such a genre for the image.

But what did you want more, to please yourself or to please people, the audience? I wanted to change human lives through art, expressing something. Photography is more of a reflection of life, while painting expresses it. I remember that you still had a desire to play in the theater. I then thought, why don’t you want to become a movie actress? And you reminded me of how you behave in front of the camera, how you shut yourself. But the actor must be able to abstract himself from the outside world. The audience in the hall is like a cameraman’s cameras, hundreds, thousands of eyes look at you and record every moment of your acting in their heads. You know, I love theater a little, but theater it’s the art of the moment that cannot be repeated. If moments in cinema and literature reproduce themselves precisely, then a performance, a play is a unique phenomenon. The past haunts the theater, while time is revealed in cinematography and it’s naked. We’ve been to several theatrical performances in our life, and you can remember how it’s amazing! We’re watching other people’s lives right in front of us, and when they’re fighting, for example, it looks so emotional and scary. Am I too emotional for this world?

Maybe it would be nice if all of you, including Emily, Beth, even Melanie, lived with me. I imagined that we’d have rules, a schedule of cleaning, washing dishes. The betrayal, the quarrels… Life is full of surprises. Would I be able to handle so much sex? But I’m a jerk who would like to see your scenes of jealousy in front of each other. But if a man is an asshole, then he’ll have a hard time dealing with so many women. So I think that you would start cheating on me, and then you would leave.

We are waiting for a sign, waiting for a miracle, even now, a small miracle that something is about to change. But we haven’t taken a single step toward a miracle ourselves. It’s as if someone is rolling up the dice of our lives, and we’re constantly falling out “not together.” And we’ve learned how to live without a miracle but haven’t learned how to love without pain. I couldn’t give you the material boon you need because someone rolls the dice, and I get “this project of yours, Jack, will fail.” You’re likely to say, “Why the hell Jack you fucked up 2,000 bucks on the online casino! I can roll the dice myself. Jack lost another 5,000 bucks, Jack lost 100,000, Jack gets his house foreclosed on, Jack gets dumped by Emily, Jack runs to me, and I reject him.” I felt sorry for Jack myself. Little foxy, I repeat, I just want to wake up and see you next to me. I don’t care about anything else!

I went to the window, pulled back the curtains once again and opened the window to air it out. A blackened autumn leaf lies on a dirty street as if it had a destiny. I was a leaf, now I’m becoming a tree. And a tree can already do some good. The tree can be cut down and used. So it is with people. People’s souls are cut down and used for someone’s purposes.

But you’re not like that, Jess, you’re able to break out of the boundaries of civilization, psychological barriers and obstacles. And I can only talk about what I feel, but I’m unable to break out. That’s why I pulled back when you wanted to kiss me, touch me, and that’s why I didn’t have sex with you when it was necessary for you.

You’re ready to go against fate and go beyond your comfort. If I slept with you when you needed it, then this sex wouldn’t save you from suffering, and maybe it wouldn’t even have brought us closer together. I know that you will always blame me for refusal, but I couldn’t otherwise. But then I looked at you, I saw your tears, and I knew it wasn’t you crying, it was your love crying.

Love is an amazing feeling that stands above religious, political, moral and ethical values. It hangs over the principles and beliefs of a person, demonstrating its superiority. Overcoming boundaries, love goes beyond any limits set by the human mind, and it has one rule, to accumulate and explode. The explosion can be both positive and negative. If it is mutual love, then the explosion can be a surge of emotions, leading to positive activities or certain acts. I call them acts of classical and non-classical romanticism. For example, a couple paints an oil painting in nature, and it is a romantic moment, I think. Or a guy asks his girlfriend to marry him during a fire in a building when quiet cries for help have heard that merge with clouds of smoke and rush to the sky. It’s bad romantic options, non-classical, and I don’t appreciate it because when someone is dying near, it’s not good to be happy. Another example, when a couple drives into their own house with a dog from a shelter. Or when two people race their bicycles in the rain and laugh as if this is their last laugh in life, it’s all romantic moments of life. There are millions of options for miracle and happiness, with a capacity of 1 petaton of TNT equivalent. But there is also a negative explosion, a destructive one when love is rejected or lost. Anger of such power spills out that it can wipe out planets and even galaxies. Imagine that you are making a half circle motion with your hand, looking at the night sky, and through your tears, you see that half of the stars have disappeared. And you understand that somewhere was exploding particles of your love, creating black holes and sucking in, absorbing the light of the stars, bursting the stars into pieces. There are also simpler, although rather difficult, negative options, withdrawal into oneself and endless suffering with elements of alcohol or drug addiction, decadent, misanthropic thinking, hostility, aggression, irritation, attempts at destructive actions, to break objects of interiors, furniture, decor, and to hurt people. All this is because of love. And you and I have experienced some of this, my foxy, but not bad ones. And hopefully, in the future, we’ll be able to feel only good explosions of love.

Love is a truly strong feeling, and yet often positive, despite the described negative options, which although often happen but do not characterize the essence of love because they represent the end of love, the fading, or even transformation into something truly bad. True love looks like a soul, eternal, pure, absolute. And a person filled with love takes the position of the one he loves. For example, I accept, Jess, your point of view on art, religion and politics, and I don’t judge you, even if I may disagree with you. After all, that is what true love is all about. Love itself is not just a feeling, it is also a complex of certain beliefs, certain attitudes and a unique worldview that always stands above everything else. With mutual love, there can be no mistakes in the feeling itself, for it is the absolute of positiveness. Kindness and understanding, caring, affection and compassion in moments of grief, and the opposite feelings in moments of joy, such as delight, admiration and happiness. All of this is a small sketch of what arises during love. And no religious, moral contradictions will break and destroy the feeling while it is there. Love is a path that turns into a stone pavement, which leads to the shore of happiness. And in front of the eyes of a man in love, the ocean of wonders opens. You and I, Jess, can always touch this miracle of love, and the first step is recognition, openness, and the ability to say, “I love you.” We took this step, although we did not dare to take it for so long. I love you, Jess! It comes out again and again. It’s like the scream of a person caught by surprise, who is gagged, and the person bites, fights back and screams, and this scream rips through space in pain.

A confession of love causes incredible, indescribable and amazing sensations, for recognition makes our love visible, tangible, natural, as if my confession to you, Jess, would allow you to see my soul. The one who confesses his love never knows how his beloved will react, but you and I, Jess, already know that the exposure of the soul is the exposure of the nerve of love, and it is like a ritual and ceremony. It was as if I put my beliefs on the altar and cried out to love, “Oh, the great goddess of love, I sacrifice everything that I believed to be with Jessica always by my side, accept these gifts and leave me with humanity and kindness.” Many religious people with their faith put love below God, which may indicate the stability of their beliefs, but this also says that their love is not all-consuming, it does not have a dominant core and it is controlled by the mind, while true love itself controls the human mind. Is this good or bad? It doesn’t matter at all, since true love may not come to everyone, but to whom it comes, a man will believe in it, and everything else will cease to matter. However, true love is always a kind, positive and creative essence, and when it leaves then it takes with it the remnants of a person’s personality, and a man falls into madness. That is why a terrible act is to give up love when you are in love.

We mustn’t give up our love, Jess. I want to be with you, I want to, but I still don’t know what is more important to me, my principles and loyalty to vows or a pure true love? Will I ever be able to put our love above my beliefs? I think my insanity will soon make me drop everything and come to you.

I remembered how you whispered to the candle as if some kind of spell. I then thought, are you involved in some occult science? And it wasn’t a prayer. You just thought of something without blowing it out. I opened the window, and the cool air tried to extinguish it, but it didn’t work. The candle kept burning. It was bright as a star, your eyes started to tear slightly, and I asked, “What happened?” And you answered that you felt happy and that it was some kind of rare feeling, unfamiliar, and you had never felt this way before. Let our love burn like this candle, let it light our way, and let it never go out. I want love to stay with us forever.

I love you, my foxy!

Truly yours,

Jack.