Wrote this around 4am last night. Just now posting.
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Letter (4)
I haven’t written in awhile. A little more than a week, but it feels like more. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because the less I write, and the longer I live, and the longer I keep myself from reading your letters, the farther I feel from you. I’m not forgetting or feeling less or truly even thinking about you less. I just feel further away, like we’re drifting in opposite directions while floating in the same river.
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And I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
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I’m in Michigan now, incase you’re wondering. The snow makes traveling hard and staying in one place is too easy. I’m in another hotel, this one nicer than the last but still nothing special. There’s a bar here, dark with too many places to sit and not enough people. I’ve spent the last four nights here drinking gin and tonics. I do a little talking, but mostly I just sit and watch and think. You know how I am, how I can talk, but I rather just listen and observe, take in, the moment.
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The people here don’t seem happy and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around why they’re not all smiles. Some are alone, but most aren’t. Shouldn’t that be reason enough to smile?
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Last night an elderly man sat on the stool next to me and began to talk, out of the blue, about how I must control my life instead of letting it control me. I don’t know what sparked the conversation. I said nothing to him. I didn’t even make eye contact, but when he started I couldn’t stop listening. He didn’t say much, and the silence between his words dragged on for minutes, but when he did speak it was impossible not to listen.
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You’re young, he told me. And I’m sure, I’m young and getting older. Everyone is, some quicker than others. You have everything before you, he said, you have nothing before you. I know you’re smiling at that, reminded of Charles Dickens.
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The best of times, the worst of times, and how a single day, a single moment, can encompass so much, can alter everything. We have everything before us, and we have nothing before us. It is the epoch of belief. It is the epoch of incredulity.
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We have everything yet we do nothing with it. We waste it, and it wastes us away.
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I don’t think Dickens was talking about love, and when he does, it rarely turns out well.
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I’ll write again soon, but as of now I’m sitting in the corner of the bar writing on a piece of paper and everyone’s starting to leave. It’s not closing time. Something’s happening, or happened, outside in the snow. Everyone’s standing to see, and for now I’m one of these people in this little corner of Michigan where strangers converge and lives blend. I suppose I should join them.
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I hope you’re still reading. You’re why I write.
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