Things I write for you to read

Hello Darling,

Today I have nothing written specifically and I am not going to plan what I say. This is hard for me, but I think I like that you see merit in the words that fall immediately out of my head without any revision whatsoever. I am going to avoid using the backspace key at all and am not going to make any w rewrites .

Today has been very slow and I do not know what I am doing with my time. I have abal absolutely loved the last few days with you ! you have been so cheerful and strong and motivated feeling. It has been suh such a welcome change from the hard times we have been having as we trudge through the remainder of our time spent apart this way. Your rebal rebellious acts at the mall the other night rekindled a somewhat dormant fire that always lives inside my heart for you. You are always and have always been that free and confident woman to me, from the very first moment I met you. You have a special something that I struggle to describe well, something that lights a fire in me and makes me proud to back you up. If you imagine a silly movie where the leader gives an impassioned speech, that fervor they are building is what you inspire in me. You are the cause I believe in. You are my ideology and my passion. And for some time it has been the case where you are too tired, to beaten feeling to stand up and let your eyes and your passions shine through, but I can always see it in you. When you went awol at the mall the other night it was such a brilliant change as that passion and confidence just absolutely burst into flames around you. The change was so sudden that it was blinding and incredible to watch. The resurgence of my goddess, my queen, my perfect other. Flashing into her most certain and confident form and taking what she wanted. Shaping her world as she saw fit. It is silly… you just bought underwear and a smoothie… but this is hoow I see you.

I am inspired by you. You are incredible and amazing and fascinating and challenging and so real and I would follow you anywhere. But you dont ask that of me! You ask me to stand with you, not to follow. To choose with you, not to be led. To discuss with you, not to be told. To join and share in your life, not simply to observe and worship it. And you are perfect.

I know that today you are doing the SAT and I am so proud of you! I know that you will get a good score and will be able to choose a program that fulfills you. I am so glad that you are able to imagine a future with me, and that we will be able to work together to make that future happen. We have such similar goals and passions. I am so glad to have you in my life.

I am excited to start thinking very seriously about where we will be applying for school in the next year or two here. To talk about these places and what they will mean for us. To struggle with compromises and to make your family proud of us for working together to ensure that we are building the most stable and successful future we can.

At the same time I am excited to have you back in SD so that I can make you a more immediate part of my life. Spending time with you, making plans with you for weekends and days off. Finding time to take your family out for fun adventures with us. Reading and writing together. Talking about the world and how we fit into it. I am hesitant to suggest it, but it might be reasonable for me to simply attend temple with you in order to immerse myself in the jewish world so that I can start to learn at a rapid pace about what all of that means to you. I hesitate only because I do not want to seem too eager, nor seem like I am promising to be there every single time that you are. I want to approach learning about your beliefs in a very hands on way, but I want to be careful to work through them slowly so that I am certain I understand the responsibility I am taking on by agreeing or disagreeing with any individual part of it. I am very excited to learn with you. and from you.

I also want to be making exciting plans with you for holidays and breaks haha! I think that by the time we are nearing the next holiday, people will be comfortable enough with us that we will be able to make plans together as a unit. Even if that means we are going to Julian for spring break together rather than flying to Paris together for Christmas. I am very certain that we will be able to make real plans together like that soon, and that we will always be doing something exciting and incredible.

I’m sitting at bird rock and thinking of how I’ll be sitting with you soon. Drinking coffee and talking. Sometimes loudly, sometimes softly jsut for one another to hear. Walking hand in hand, side by side to the cliffs to watch the sun set over the Pacific. The cool breeze on our bodies as we stand together looking out on the world ahead of us. I am yours. I am a man who has dedicated himself to the woman of his dreams, and who has found himself lucky enough to be met with the same dedication. I have found myself in the most lucky and wonderful place I have ever been.

I also thought about the circumstances of our meeting the other day and I wanted to share the narrative that I had run through my head. It is somewhat silly or embarrassing to say that we met on a stupid app instead of in a dance class like your grandparents, but I had a realization. It does not matter where I had seen you, the exact same thing would have happened.

I was there, sitting and bored out of my mind with my work. The same project that I had been doing for the last two years, day in and day out. Sitting in the dark and counting colored dots. Then one day while procrastinating, starting blankly across and over my work, I laid eyes on the most incredible creature I had ever seen in my life. I was entranced and something inside me was fixated on you. You hadn’t even noticed me yet, and I was reminded of a poem by Sandburg, Dream Girl. This girl in front of me, smiling and vibrant and to me the most perfect dream I had ever had. The words of poems often fail me, but you brought those words back to me immediately and I knew that you were special, that you were the reason poetry is written about love. That you are the reason ideas like perfection exist. I looked over my work again and back to you and I had such a strong need to know you. So I did the only thing I could and and told you the words that you had made me recall. I told you that you were beautiful and I fumbled to give you the words to this poem.

You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.

And then I waited, with nerves that you could not believe, to see what you thought of this silly boy why saw you and needed to tell you a poem. Who saw something in you that he had never seen in anyone else. And you smiled at me, and the words I had given you. And I was filled with such joy.

We immediately got along, each finding in the other a kindred spirit. Another mind in this world that shared the same passions and the same experiences. Another person who was easy to be with. A person around whom it was easy to be ourselves, and comfortable. And to softly, so naturally, so easily we talked.

We talked and talked and talked about everything. All the time. My days were filled with thoughts and the things that I wanted to share with you, and every morning and night we would talk until we were exhausted.

We shared so much of our selves there in those first conversations, neither realizing why it was so easy to talk to one another. Neither realizing the full significance of the joy and happiness that the other brought into our lives. But, as time went on we knew that we needed more than just those conversations. And we met to sit together at brick and bell, and that was the first time you hit me with that feeling of absolute clarity and lucidity. I’ve described it to you so many times, walking through the door and seeing you there again. Busy talking, but your eyes meeting mine and that smile creeping onto your face as you didn’t even break the pace of your conversation. Eyes just for me. Looking straight into me and recognizing me. Calm and cool and happy and bright. I could feel you like part of me was calling out to some part of you. And so I smiled back, not disturbing your conversation, just my eyes and a tight excited smile. Eyes only for you. That moment of such intense connection shared only between us in silence. That was the first time I felt like I could look into your eyes and you could read every thought in my mind.

The meeting off a boy and a girl, so alike and so complementary to eachother. No matter the time or place, nor the circumstance this story would not have changed. These are the facts of what happened, what was bound to happen. In a dance class, in a library, by correspondence, or online. In a bar, in a classroom, at a party, at church, or in the park. While shopping or eating lunch or in the hospital. It would not matter where I had first seen you. My eyes would have found you and my heart would have suddenly known what it was I had been waiting for my whole life. My mind would have wandered to that Sandburg. My legs would have carried me to you, needing to tell you the words. And all that would follow.

And here I am now, sitting in a coffee shop writing, not about the existential spirituality I normally write when I am feeling alone and watching the sky change from blue to red, but about the story of my life. The story of us.

I am so happy to be the author of such a beautiful story with you. Writing the lines of a unique adventure together. The drama of a special and perfect romance all our own. The delicate and coordinated verse of a life lived in careful dancing harmony with another. Together we are writing the story of our future, a story we will one day recount to our children and grand children. Telling them about our lives so many years before they were ever born. Teaching them about the struggles we overcame and the meaning we found in our exploration. Teaching them about the lessons we learned and smiling wryly as they ignore us haha! We are living the story we will tell together one day! And that is so unbelievably cool!

The sun is nearly down now and the coffee shop will be closing in twenty minutes. I should probably try to wrap up what I am writing here so that I don’t have to cut myself off short.

I love you Daniella. The words are hardly enough to convey the meaning, but they are what I have available. I love you. I will always love you, and I will always be inspired and passionate about supporting you and making your life as amazing as it can possibly be. I know that you want the same for me, and that is incredible. We are so strong together. A little team.

I will always pick you love. When the world makes me choose, there is never going to be a doubt in my mind. I always choose you.

Little kisses on my face
Each do make my squishy heart race
The one I love, she is so cute.
Eats no meat and instead loves fruit.
She likes the whiskers on my face
And so I leave them, all in place.
And when it rains, to my Daniella,
I’d give the very last umbrella.
And walking still, all soaking wet,
I’ll be by her side, on that you can bet.
Morning, noon, or in evening chill
A single look from her may thrill.
We walk and talk and sit and dream,
Della and I are a strong little team.
Even though in a far foreign land
My lover knows well that she has my hand.
To give me love, support, and hope,
Is perhaps a cliche trope.
But I care not for what is hip,
For in her presence my world does slip,
Away and then we’re all that’s left.
No more stress, nor fear, nor weight to heft.
Her eyes, smile, rosy cheeks with dimple,
With her i see how life is simple.
Adventure is each day with her,
And of my choice I’m rightly sure.
For in her heart i can see love like mine,
In the lonely dark, brightly it does shine.
It keeps me warm when I am sad,
And helps me when I get bad.
It keeps me focused on a real plan,
It makes me into a better man.
I’ll say it loud, and ill say it clear,
Plainly now for the world to hear.
I love Daniella above all the rest.
My feelings will survive any test.
And so will she, of that she and I.
We will love each-other till the day we die.
Working hard to make a life,
A husband I, and her a wife.
She with design, and I on rabies,
Saving pennies to pay for babies.
All together at family events,
We will have to build a giant tent.
To house us all, her fam and mine,
And inside share song, dinner, and wine.
In the grass puppies and kittens play,
And little ones learn the Jewish way.
Still we walk and talk and sit and dream,
Stronger each day this growing team.
Bit by bit each passing year,
We give this world just a little more cheer.
Together we both can see,
A brighter future for humanity.
And when I’m low and out of place,
She plants a kiss upon my face.
I take her hand and my blood does cool,
And for my temper I feel a fool.
We laugh and sing, we music make,
Each song in me a fire wakes.
For she I would give everything,
My name, my pride, my shiny things.
And yet she asks for little else
than to also love me well.
And so I write these silly words
To say the things she’s already heard.
Still I say them in each new way,
Knowing I’ll say them every day.
Because there is no way I may contain,
The depth of love in this limited refrain.
These sounds and thoughts they don’t mean much,
Compared to the volumes in my lovers touch.
A look, a smile, a quiet sigh,
My words won’t match them, but still I’ll try.

For I love you, and You love I.

This was a few years ago now, and my friends and I and a few of our dads were on an off road trip through Death Valley. We had been driving for days out into the most remote parts of the desert. Our jeeps and truck were loaded to the brim with fuel, water, and spare tires. We hadn’t seen pavement in at least a hundred miles. The last town we came across was a place called Ballarat. The population was one man and four dogs. We bought sodas from his store by the can, they were $5 a piece, $10 if you wanted a cold one.

We left Ballarat in the late afternoon and headed deeper into death valley’s more remote Canyon regions. We made camp on a ridge overlooking the valley and for the first time I realized that it was winter. It had been obscenely hot for most of the trip save the early mornings, but this evening the wind was cold and sharp and bit straight through my clothes. We ate some hotdogs cooked over an open fire and made jokes and went to sleep for the night.

The next day we decided to head up a canyon which led to the abandoned Barker Ranch. On the way we blew a tire and stopped for a few hours to make sandwiches and explore an abandoned mine. Someone had left a bucket of old roofing tar torches that we spent almost an hour trying to light, unsuccessfully.  The mine and its dark mysteries remained untouched.

Eventually we started back up the canyon, tire now repaired. And a few hours later we came to the Barker Ranch.

It was an old southwest style building, cute in an abandoned kind of way. Old native American looking curtains still hung in the windows, slowly rotting and turning to dust. The main house was connected to a side house by a large patio which was covered in a natural wood pergola. We on loaded our gear onto the patio just as it started to snow.

Several people set up a tent inside the old side house and others including myself ventured into the main building. The inside was incredibly well preserved.

The dry desert air.

There was a lovely kitchen nook where we sat and drank cocoa and laughed as we ate our dinners. The house had wood burning stoves throughout, and seeing as it was freezing and pounding snow outside we lit them and hoped to God the house wouldn’t burn down around us.

I had started feeling sick during the drive and soon realized that I had actually fallen ill and was about to be bedridden for a very uncomfortable night. I took the first bed I found in the big bedroom and set myself up to weather out the night.

The stove warmed the room very well and melted snow dripped through from the roof. The night passed slowly and uncomfortably as the wind shook the walls and the fire sputtered as snow fall down the chimney.

The next day the world was white, and we had oatmeal and coffee to warm ourselves. We read passages of helter skelter that had been left there by others before us. And one of my friends crawled into the cabinet where the FBI had found Charlie Manson when they raided the ranch decades earlier.

He had lived there for some years, the Barkers vanished of course when he moved in. The Manson family made that remote place their home. They dropped acid and planned a string of murders in LA.

It was just a normal bed though, cold and damp and uncomfortable in the winter. But once it belonged to Charlie Manson, cult leader, psychopath, serial killer.

Make me wish for life sublime,

Whisper softly that you are mine.

Soft lips draw a trembling line,

Our frantic hearts beat in time,

Fingers touching, sneaking, tracing down your spine,

Eyes glinting – drinking – in them lust yet shines,

With panted breath and moaning whine,

Burning, bucking, our love a burning shrine,

Flesh and sinew pressing, writhing, divine,

My body complete when we entwine,

This soul and your own, perfectly combine,

Screaming – wild – frantic – our passion does incline,

Crashing, shaking, panting, our love a piercing shine,

Whisper softly that you are mine.

Whisper softly that you are mine.

I have no idea what to write to you today. I am sitting here alone and half a world away from you. There is nothing I can say and nothing I can do to change that. It’s dumb that the world works that way. I can’t understand why people live this way. If I wanted to visit you, I can’t even do that. Is there any reason at all in the world that, that should be the case?

Who could possibly think to themselves, “Let’s we, a third party, restrict the freedom of one person to be near another person simply because we feel like that’s the way it should be.”

I am so tired today. I slept so poorly and I was not able to get to bed until three in the morning when we said goodnight. I woke up several times to your messages, and my exhaustion filled me with guilt for not being able to answer. Guilt and disappointment because talking to you is the absolute best part of my day.

I feel disgusting. Living in a tent is fun an exciting at night when everything is cool breezes and candles, but by daytime that magic is gone. I did not go straight to the lab to use the locker room showers. Instead I knew that I badly needed to go get my medicine because I am not doing well today and I missed last nights dose after running out. I only had a half dose the night before.

I got up and tried my best to get cleaned up enough to go out into town. I was very embarrassed to be washing my hair in the hose spigot, and to be pulling clean clothes out of my truck while the construction workers and neighbors watched me with mixed looks of curiosity and resentment. I felt very alone and very small.

I am used to presenting myself very well to people, as a scientist I am immediately treated as an intellectual. I am used to that meaning plenty of people wont talk to me for a number of silly reasons, but I am completely unused to the feeling of being the focus of so much public shame. It did not help me to start my day well.

I know you are out tonight having a good time with everyone and that makes me happy, but at the same time it makes me very sad to be alone. It is not reasonable to make you responsible for my happiness obviously, but I am sorely missing your company today. I am ready for this separation to be over.

All of my fears and insecurities are sneaking out and spoiling everything I touch today. I am so angry at myself for feeling some of the things I feel. Sometimes I wonder if I am too nice to the people around me in the world. Or not nice particularly, but too empathetic. It is so easy to worry about the feelings of others at the expense of myself. Can you still be a good person while being emotionally selfish? You are much better at all of this than I am I think.

It is hot and sweaty out, but there are heavy gray clouds in the sky. It has felt very ominous and stressful since late last evening. I sat on my little bluff and watched the dark thick storm clouds roll in. Flashes of electric blue lightning splitting the dark, but no thunder ever followed them. It seemed to mirror the uncertainty of my life at the moment. Outside, alone, all my possessions exposed, me exposed, waiting for the rain to come and ruin things. I spent the night worrying about rain. I spent the morning worrying about rain. I am still worried about rain. I think that I am worried about more than rain.

It is still so hard to have you apart from me in a dangerous place. I am glad that Sophie has my information now just in case, but I am still stuck here wringing my hands and worrying. There is nothing that can stop that, and it just adds a constant low hum of anxiety to life. Like every time I start to relax I suddenly hear that hum, and I have to do everything I can to avoid thinking about something bad happening. I know there is nothing you can do about that. I know there is nothing I can do about it. But, it does not mean that the fear is not real.

I don’t really know where I am going with this. I think I just need to talk about how I’m feeling and have you listen a little bit. I love you so very much, and you are always such a supportive and constructive partner. I’m still processing all the things we have talked about the last few days obviously. We had a few fairly intense conversations with each other. You told Sophie about me and how serious we are. I told my brother. I have a lot going through my head right now.

I know you don’t need me weighing you down with all this while you are so busy with school and life over there. I don’t want this to weigh on you at all.

Except you know what, that’s not true or fair really. I think that is the kind of self deprecating behavior I need to work on. We are a really very serious couple and it is absolutely reasonable to expect my difficulty to weigh on you. It is silly to think that you should let my stresses and anxieties roll over you but never touch you. That would be a completely lopsided and supportive relationship.

I know you are going to feel something reading this, and that is okay. It is selfish and self destructive to think otherwise. I would simultaneously be playing a victim card and seeking all of my approval through you, and that is really not a healthy thing for either of us.

I know things will get better, and I know that I have some stuff to work on. I just miss having you here to lean on sometimes for that little bit of encouragement to get me through a hard day.

I am very lucky to have someone in my life as caring and thoughtful as you are Daniella. Thank you for listening to all of my troubles today. I love you.

Marry me, marry me,
Live a life beside me.
When I should be so very free,
And give my heart so wildly.
To one with whom I share a soul,
A heart, a mind, and all.
With your love i am made whole,
And to my knee I fall.

I’m in love I’m in love,

Moon and stars and sky above.

 

Her hidden heart my own has found,

My fiery fears her love has drowned.

 

In singing voice and joyous mind,

To her my soul I would bind.

 

Not days nor weeks nor future tells,

My heart is filled with chapel bells.

 

And, if she, I doth take,

Let me hear her, too, that promise make.

 

For there is strength within our bond.

Our love was destined all along.

 

I am made for she, and she for I,

I’ll love her truly till the day I die.

Dream Girl – Sandburg

You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.

Occupied by grief and the slow oppressive passage of time, I wait. My eyes open and there is sun streaming into the stillness of my room. I lie there quietly, there is no reason to move yet.

Somehow I am in the shower, was it will or memory that brought me here? The water is comforting and my heart sings that ancient and wordless duet. Standing here is too much. My spirit questions why I ever left my bed. The water lingers on me, it’s warm embrace gone and now only the hollow cold is left. The water is punishing me like a jilted lover.

My closet is a view into madness, I do my best.

Stepping through my door the hot sun surrounds me but does not seem to touch my skin. Have I neglected my garden, or has it always been so dull?

Long hours and repeated motions.
I do what is expected of me.

Finally. Gentle sleep. Here there are my own. My own, all of these. Lie with me and speak gentle unto my soul. It is shattered in a thousand places, and fragile, but I would gladly be scattered into the wind for just a single touch.