Letter 23

Dear Josephine,

This is the longest correspondence I've ever maintained. In honor of this, I have decided to write you a letter markedly less vague.

I've decided that I need to buckle down and plan my future rather than coasting through these twenties focused solely on work/apartment/family life. There is more to living than categories. I've started studying for the GREs; this is the most self-motivated/determined I've been since writing my thesis. I'm terrified of not meeting my goals. Does everything comes down to numbers?

And too, I'm terrified of the act of erasure. Tell me Josephine, did you ever learn to make construction paper (wo)men who clasp hands, who create a half-wreath of communal love/friendship? Sometimes I imagine that the violence of scissors disconnecting body from body parallels the act of removing a person from one's life. Yes, the paper congregation murmurs, thank you for our moments of joy and giving, we will retain this scar, this reminder of your absence.

The other day I thought about my father. You are right; this is a topic I conceal through silence. Two weeks ago I made a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, because I'm not wading in lukewarm water anymore, because I'm tired of battered conversations and unnecessary resentment. I believe in forgiveness -- grudges are stunted trees that darken landscapes. Still: I haven't returned his phone call, don't know what we'll say to one another through the lines.

I've been craving reading and writing literary theory again. You only have to look at my amazon.com shopping cart to see:

1. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain - Maryanne Wolf
2. Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence - Esther Perel
3. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature - Roberta S. Trites
4. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life - Adam Phillips
5. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics) - Judith Butler
6. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality - Anne Fausto-Sterling
7. Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995 (A John Hope Franklin Center Book) - Maurice O. Wallace
8. Orientalism - Edward W. Said
9. All About Love: New Visions - bell hooks
10. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory - Houston A. Baker Jr.

etc.

This past weekend I re-read papers I wrote in college. One paper was 27 pages discussing the cloaking power of the linguistic modifier "I" in relation to the creationary "self". I miss academia.

What else to tell you? This past year I meandered through cities (some real, some imaginary), practiced introspection, and felt trampled/muffled/rumpled. But now, the word is only: refreshing, refreshed, refreshment.

l.c.

Letter 21

Dear Josephine,

In that age-old phrase about bridges, I find that I've always focused on the latter clause about burning, and disregarded the former clause about crossing. Additionally, when I have approached the saying from both angles, I've applied the "crossing" to my "public" life (which I'm defining as job, school, apartment; basically the components that present myself to others) and the "burning" to my "private" life (which I'm defining as my personal thoughts, my relationships with others, etc. - the components that take longer to reveal). I realize my qualification of this statement renders supposedly different spheres of my life as contingent on two opposing actions: moving forward, and moving away. How, then, is it that my personal life tends to take leaps, and my private life tends to retreat?

Even while I pose this question, I do not find it surprising. I find safety in independence, on living for myself rather than living for myself and another. I wonder, though, if I'm losing something in maintaining that type of freedom. Funny, I've always embraced tennis as my favorite sport to watch. I wonder if it's because on that court love means zero, means having nothing, means making one's way from the bottom to a concrete "match point" -- as if "love" never meant anything other than trying to obtain a point for one's self, or for the sake of the game.

lcs

Letter 10

Dear Josephine,

My senior year of college, whenever I was depressed, I listened to Jim Croce's album Photographs and Memories. The other day I was watching television and I saw a program about his life, which showed some segments of him singing his songs. I was reminded of my former obsession with his "lover's cross". Jim sings:

"'Cause now it seems that you wanted a martyr/Just a regular guy wouldn't do/But baby I can't hang upon no lover's cross for you"

The quotation led me to thinking about my relationships, some still going strong, others now quietly on hiatus, and still others that have ended. I think in all my failed relationships (I'm using this term loosely, as it's all encompassing) there was always this misunderstanding of the other's character. And I don't mean that I misjudged a person's character or vice-versa, but that I misjudged my own understanding of that person. A frame within a frame within a frame. Simply put: I think in all relationships we are prone to eventually expect a fellow comrade to act in a specific manner, or become more aware of his/her shortcomings, and change. But we fail to realize that our attempts at making this person a "better" person, have not only isolated him/her, they've skewed our own perceptions. This causes us to try to make this comrade come to terms with his/her failings, but we in turn use these failings to justify the "faulty" decisions he/she makes. Where is the happy medium? If we are using their faults to justify other faults, how can we give others the benefit of the doubt? But that's not really it - how can we see that they are changing, or that they are reflecting on what we are saying, when are perceptions of them have stayed the same? Have we become preachers who forget to listen to the voices of their congregations? Even there, in that simile, a hierarchy emerges.

And still Jim sings:

"'Cause tables are meant for turnin'/And people are bound to change/And bridges are meant for burnin'/When the people and memories they join aren't the same"

And finally --

I've been haunted by Before Sunset since I watched it months ago. In the movie the two main characters, Jesse and Celine, share this interaction:

Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?

Celine: Because we were young and stupid.

Jesse: Do you think we still are?

Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.

Jesse: And you can screw it up, you know, misconnect.

I wonder: I constantly see emails and read articles that draw a line between my body and a stranger's, connecting me to one family tree and to another, or one country to another, or one phone network to another, placing tiny bobbing heads across a map of the united states (and beyond). Connections are painted as being innumerable. Of course I am connected (even with this medium) to those living in locations across the globe. But Celine is right - that tenuous line is so rare, that when it reverberates, one shouldn't ignore its sound.

best,

l.c.