LETTER I

Dear Gega,

Everything seems beautiful today. For no particular reason at all. I must sound mad. As mad as all the lovers who have this annoying need to find some allegorical beauty in this world symbolic of their ‘unending love’. But honestly I do feel like reciting that e.e. cumming poem. Not that one.

‘i thank you God for most this amazing day. for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and the blue true dream of sky. and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.’

I know this was his style device but couldn’t the man start a sentence with a capital letter for decency’s sake?

Back to the beauty of the day and my madness.

Did you hear about Jamal Khashoggi? A terrible bit of business. It occurs to me that a consulate and perhaps the Papal City are the best places to commit a murder. The inviolability…police cannot enter, at least not without invitation. I saw in that movie ‘Operation Finale’ that the Vatican helped smuggle Nazis out of Germany after the Allies had won.

And I wonder if all this conjecture about climate change is real. That by 2040 we might be having front row seats to our very own geo-storms. It’s the children I worry about the most. With any luck you and I will be dead in our grave well before then. This reminds me of another poem. Nazim Hikmet this time, ‘On Living’. He remarks that people enjoy talk of the future and outcomes of wars which might last years even when they know they might be dead on the very first day of the first offensive.

The East is on an imperialistic march and possibly, quite probably our continent shall be ravaged and turned in on itself. The West has lost its sure footing in the world, it stumbles like a drunk giant. Is there anything sadder or more dangerous, my love? But why do we weep over regime change? This thing called destiny is rarely in mortal hands. Perhaps there will be a nuclear war and that will be the end of worrying.

And the current state of the country? Another referendum will surely be the death of us. We sure know how to pick them…but it was your hand that voted them in. I have a picture of your ink-stained pinky to prove it. There was so much anxiety then, do you remember? It was palpable…that tense knotting in the country’s belly. And it passed. So I’m quite sure the current schizophrenic climate will dissipate. Even that slow creeping right-wingism in the world’s politics. I just don’t know what it will leave behind. But there’s always the United States now to give us a bit of schadenfreude. They’re just like us, aren’t they…maybe even a cheaper imitation. I couldn’t even finish that Kanye West-Trump encounter. Not enough faces, not enough palms.

Why am I writing you a letter…soon to be a series of letters? Many reasons. For one, it’s a beautiful art that I’m sad has died to my generation. Even the occasional unbuttoned up e-mail is frowned upon. Emotion is frowned upon, I feel. God forbid the whole spectrum isn’t expressed in 140 characters or less. Besides, I have loved thinking with you. You colour my thoughts so variably.

Because, though you see our same sun, I wonder if the birds are chirping where you are. I write you because the world is spinning madly on, tearing at itself in these silly never-ending wars and only through our thoughts can we get back to each other. There’s a greater war and I know now what it is for. You have taught me  and shown me that. Inviolability.

Because I don’t want to check the weather where you are. I know you have to be where you are and I have to be where I am…in this crazy parallelism of our existence. But I don’t think I’m too late. I know this pain feels familiar, like the pain of unbecoming and unmaking but it’s not the same. I think this the pain of resurrection. The pain of another beautiful day after a tempest. It’s unbearable, isnt it?

P.S. I’ve just recently got acquainted with the sound of Tom Leeb. I feel your country-lover heart may fall hopelessly in love with him.

Expect more letters.