Letter (8)

Letter (8)

The last time I wrote you letter I had to stop halfway through.

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It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even a letter. It was forced and meaningless. I wasn’t sure where I was or where I was going. Now I at least know where I am, for now.

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I was trying so hard to reach you that I was moving backwards, to somewhere I could never escape from. Somewhere between North and South Dakota, maybe, somewhere that’s real but really isn’t, somewhere you slip between the cracks and sink deeper and deeper into nothing.

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I didn’t want to go there, not alone, so I stopped writing and stopped thinking for awhile. This was a few weeks ago, I think. Time blends. Reality blurs. Time repeats itself. I didn’t think that was possible but now I’m almost sure it is. The past exists to be repeated. Even those things you believe will never happen again.

Those moments, or moment, that seem incapable of replication.

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I’m in South Dakota now, in a town that does exist. It’s not one of those cracks in the world. There’s nothing special here. I don’t have anything grand to share. I don’t do anything special or meet anyone worth mentioning or see anything that’s worth staring at. Well, one thing, but we’re not there yet.

What happens in the world, it doesn’t seem to happen around me.

 But there’s something here. The air is crisp in this part of the world. Crisp and clear and you can see forever. You can smell the sky, the night, and in the night, the stars. I breathe deeply, the cold air into my lungs, and breathe out, and suddenly I can’t see forever. Suddenly I’m lost deep within a frosted cloud of my own creation, and just as suddenly, it’s gone.

Or maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe the cloud isn’t that big. Maybe I’m just lost in other ways. Maybe the cloud just looks bigger at night—nights like tonight—when the air is so crisp and the sky is so dark and the stars, the stars, the stars are endless.

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I’ve been camping near a mountain’s summit, a bit below where the wind isn’t as strong. At night I climb to the summit with my sleeping bag and lay beneath the stars. There aren’t lights here. It’s a lot different from back home. There’s more stars, more everything.

I think I’m becoming part of the sky, and I think I’m okay with that.

I’d take you a picture but chances are you’d never see it, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be the same. There are some things you must see or experience, some things that pictures and even words fail to describe.

I’d tell you about the stars, I would, but it wouldn’t make a difference.