Letters to girlfriends, and this applies particularly to those written but never sent, should be, simply have to be, sealed in a lead box, buried and never exhumed.
I found the bones of one I'd written years ago. My ears reddened, my face tingled, my heart over-revved. Did I really write that? Tell me no... Did I actually expect someone to be moved by that? Surely to God, I can't have... Years of full body immersion in great prose, heart-rending literature, and what became of it all? A line as precious as this : "Dream of me, Freud would approve". To think I stuck such a slice of over-ripe bumptiousness, sub-prime greeting card sentiment and expected someone to have a heart twanging, angels playing harps, seismic tremor. The horror, the absolute horror...
Fortunately, I never stuck a stamp on the envelope and posted it; the embarrassment remains with me alone, or did, you're privy now, but twenty years on, I'm expecting understanding and an amnesty for witlessness.
I don't know what would have happened if I had sent it. Probably endlessly dissected, by the recipient, and then her closest friends, all sat in her student bedroom passing it around, pondering, perhaps shaking their heads, or just laughing them off. Sliced at endlessly the way someone would shave away prosciutto, flake after flake, all the time wondering just what the hell was Archimedes on about.
I was in my early twenties, I did n't know any better, I really did n't. And today, I'd send flowers, or cook, or do something, anything but self-referential gushing nonsense.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
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