In March of 1997 a friend and I were discussing how we both felt that the art of letter writing was being surpassed by the ease and speed of computers, now prevalent in so many homes. We found, too, that we enjoyed talking to each other without using words like 'cool' and abbreviations like 'ppl' (people). Somewhere in the midst of our conversation the idea of a progressive letter was brought up and it intriqued us both to think that we might just be able to pull it off. The letter would start with one line added by one person and then sent to the other, where that person would add a line, and then send it back to the other person.
It wasn't long before we realized that one line was not enough to say what we wanted to so we agreed to put no bounderies or restrictions on the letter at all. The dates you see indicate when each person wrote that particular portion and the initial is that of the writer.
I hope you will take interest in it and continue along with us to see where it leads.
Dearest Friend,
I came to view the world through different eyes today.(3-10-97d) A friend and I made a promise to each other and, as is (or should be) so with all commitments, this simple vow, while changing nothing, changes all.(3-11-97g) That vow being a letter to be added onto, one sentence at a time, until time on this earth shall no longer exist for one...a letter of dreams, of hopes, of loves and losses.(3-12-97d) And, as is the case with many such vows, this too has been, as the Bard said, more honored in the breech than it the keeping.
For, no sooner had we begun, when one of us broke the vow. Broken not for any good reason. Broken only for those causes that most often effect the breakdown in human communication: ignorance, indolence, a lack of caring for those we call friend.
The hallmark of friendship, though, is not acceptance under the best of circumstances, but forgiveness under the worst.
I look at what I have written and see that I am not only tardy in response, but prolix, as well. Still, I look at the concept of what we started, and find it sound. And, more than most things in my life, would like to see our letter continued. Continued, perhaps, with fewer requirements and restrictions than we had originally sought to impose. Perhaps, by allowing each other more tolerance than we had originally contemplated, my co-author and I will find more in this letter and in the shared experience of writing it than we had once anticipated. (18 mar 97 g)
In this world there are so few constants. I find that tolerance and the willingness to bend when the tides of change have reached our doors, is truly a difficult task but one that will bring grace and beauty into our lives so that we may enjoy the benefits that surround us. So to this end I accept, and even more I am grateful for, the chance to express more clearly what can not be said in a single sentence.
To say that there are no boundaries or restrictions only frees me to tell of such things that I am willing to share and in return I receive the friendship that only comes with time, understanding. knowing and listening to your life as it unfolds. So I thank you for this gift ... this gift of you.(27 mar 97 d)
We are, in ways we've just begun to realize, much alike. To each other, we are not gifts, but complements; we help in some small way to fill a void in each other's life.
Each person is captive in a prison of his or her own making. The walls of one jail are constructed of remembrance and fear; those of the other of avarice, indolence and arrogance. The heights of the walls are different; the dimensions of the cells differ. Yet, we, as the rest of our kind, find ourselves constrained. We cannot say what we feel, we cannot do what we wish, we cannot be as we are, cannot travel as we would, cannot do what we might like.
Each of us, each person, you, me--we all seek reprieve, parole, pardon, release. Perhaps this letter shall be like a file in a cake, passed between us until one of us manages to escape. (6 apr 97 g)
Render to me a slice of this cake so that I might search for this file that will chip away at such a haunting place in which I live today.
To be pardoned from this self-imprisonment is a much greater task than an opening of a mental window or door, or a simple line of text that might enlighten us as we travel through these walls, but a tearing down of old walls that no longer hold the key to our freedom and only serve to close us off from the truth of our lives. My, what a task it will be and, oh, what a journey we have ahead of us in removing these bricks that hold us in...each containing a memory...some joy and many hardships.
Ridding ourselves of these bricks does not require that we forget the events that put them there in the beginning but to lay to rest such dreams that cannot be, but warm our hearts at the notion that such wonderful times did exist and shaped us into what we are today.
So to this I might add the following lines: We need not stop dreaming. We need not stop loving. We need not stop living. We do, however, need to put each dream in its rightful place so that it does not form one more brick to to be added to another that will build a prison for us to lock ourselves in once more. (22 apr 97 d)
It may be of some interest to you that I went to the park today. To pass some time. To think. To feed the pigeons, those feathered rats. I sat upon a bench, built more for endurance than comfort, and reflected upon what you had written me. Each dream to its rightful place: the easiest of impossible tasks! All we know is what we perceive. All we perceive is what we dream. Which dreams show us truth? Which falsehood? How can we know?
As I sat there, dispensing grain to my newly gained throng of avian admirers, a child approached my bench. The youth had a familiar look and even bore me, I fancied, no slight resemblance. An unknown and impossible sibling of my parents' dotage? The child seemed to radiate a warm and gladdening luminescence. "Do I know you?" I asked the youngster. Fixing bright eyes upon me, the child responded, "Old fool! I am you before you had forgotten there was a future." The child turned, and scampered away, leaving me to my thoughts.
Not every dream becomes a brick. Not every brick, a prison wall. (5 may 97 g)
I sat for some time after this young lad left me with the thought of what I had forgotten. I watched his shadow bounce along with him and it swept me into a deep realization that we cannot predict the future, we cannot alter the past. I thought about how his shadow would grow long in the waning day as the sun would set on the horizon. His shadow would grow...yes his shadow would grow. The boy would feel no different...the bounce would still be in his step, the brightness still in his eyes, and the innocence of his youth would still be there.
It became so clear to me that no matter how late in the day, or how much I had been through, I will always be able to call upon the excitement I would feel at the thought of another tomorrow.
I came to know the shadow as living. I came to know the boy as life. (28 May 97 d)
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