A Letter

My fiancée goes on vacation to the Dominican, and I sit in Chapters writing away my apprehension. copyright (c) JMD, 2006

It is a most inconspicuous letter I write, as you are away from me, and I feel the urge to communicate with you, even be it a one-way sort of communication, a monologue of zero. I am at a dinner party, beneath a canopy of trees, and there are people all about me – important ones, physicists, chemists, generals, and even a psychologist. I say this letter is inconspicuous in jest, for that is exactly what it is not, as I sit here amongst so many. I am listening and conversing with them absently, even as that silver pen you gave me Christmas last scrawls these letters. General Kaufman is saying “The horse was too small, and it began to sag in the middle like a rubber band…” It is a joke of some sort, but I refuse to relate the punch line. It is vulgar. Madame Cordone has just sat down beside me, and she’s looking at me rather forcefully, as though to sweep up my attention. I don’t look up, I say “Madame Cordone, how are you this evening?” And she says what she usually says, “Splendid”, and then “…whatever are you writing?” I shake my head and tell her it is poetry. She gives a petulant humph, like a small dog’s whine crawling up and then popping out her nose. She is leaning now, trying not to make it noticeable, so that she can see a little of what I’ve got down. Something sharper and more feral escapes her nose, and she’s almost fallen off her chair onto the lawn. Her arms are flailing, she’s an ancient chicken with resurging ancestral tendencies. She regains herself, and then whimpers “That doesn’t look like poetry, it’s all one block, like prose. What are you really writing?” “It’s poetry”, I assert, “I write it like this first and then shape it later.” She has no response to that but “You should talk to the psychologist, he’s an artist like you, Dobbs, but an artist of the mind,” and she thinks she is clever on that remark. “His name is John, he’s written a book too, certainly different than the kind you write – it’s on addiction.” “Really?” I’m not interested. I miss you too much, it’s all I think about, you on that island without me, four days beyond my grasp, an invisible star only I know exists beyond the southern horizon. I believe in you, and it has been revealed to me that the constellations of the night do not rotate around the stubborn North Star, but all turn to the south, pointing and surfing around you, their bright new Venus. The North Star now bounces across the universe, homeless, an abandoned lover lost and, for the first time in an eon, without his eternal family. I hear someone sit down across from me, and Madame says “Dobbs, this is John McCourtland. John, this is the wonderful Dobbs.” I admit, I glance up briefly, if not for anything by courtesy. My moment’s glimpse reveals him to be young and bland, boring. I continue to write as he sits there, but venture politely “What brings you to the country, John?” He says “The air and the horses,” which is a typical, safe answer. Yes, he is a psychologist. “I hear you are addicted,” I say – I can be monstrous, I know. He says, “Excuse me?” And I: “Your book. On addiction, Madame says. It is my experience that any work of magnitude takes a certain keen mental and emotional addiction. In your case you are addicted to addiction.” Now it is my turn to think I’m clever, you know how I grin. Cordone snorts. James, surprising tone “Why Dobbs, it seems to me that you are the addicted one.” “Me?” “Stop writing.” “I’m afraid I cannot, I have a deadline to keep.” “Writing another book?” Madame cuts in a sharp, disbelieving, “Poetry.” To which he replies, “I did not know you were a poet.” But I am barely listening, for I remember last summer when we stayed in all weekend, the profundity of your head on my chest, and the equally cosmic relevance of our inescapable descent into laughter when you pressed on my stomach with a misplaced elbow and made me pass wind loudly. To this day I wear the embarrassment like a glass over my eye, and it sparkles whenever you are laughing, my star, my bride. John says, “You are exhibiting all of the symptoms of addiction, Master Dobbs. Disassociation, fidgeting, the hunched posture.” Remember when we got the cats, how we joyed in their smallness, their tiny sounds and tender, but confident approaches to toy and food? Two cats, one female, one male, the female invariable smarter, the big black male a terror with claws. They make the perfect pair, not full grown, and though they have changed and scuffle at times (the male needs to learn about his size) they often succumb to slumber and each other, the moment of awakening an eager and delicate ritual of mutual grooming. “Truly, your attention is elsewhere, your gaze too far through your lap and into the ground beneath you. You’re smiling.” Remember when they first had catnip? “It’s all in my book, Master Dobbs. You should come in for a few sessions, I could help you. You see, your mind is revolving around the wrong planet, its orbit is askew. I liken the falsity of addiction to a satellite gone in the opposite direction, there are certain routes which…” but you are my planet, my love, my Venus, and my wings I have found have just grown, I can fly, and I will, across the sky south, for the North Star is free and finds great pleasure in the opposing winds of his natural compass. “…Master Dobbs, then the mind begins to deteriorate, and the thoughts become like a virus, a disease really, and I have discovered the medicine to…” I love you, I love you my star, “…mindless repetition increases and there is a sudden loss of connection…” I would rather dream of you than walk reality without your gaze, your shine, your light. Come home, come home, my love, I miss you and if I should cry again it would be in front of this psychologist, and he would pronounce me mad.

“Dear Master Dobbs…are those tears?”

copyright (c) JMD, 2006