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Found: Some Minor Amusement, and a Letter Dated Last Michaelmas Day
I’m having one of those days where I’m more interested in organizing and filing other people’s words than creating my own. Emails—new and old—were dragged into chic-looking folder-shaped icons; letters—some typed, some neatly written, others messily scrawled—were re-read and re-sorted. (I finally found a purpose for the previously unused set of rosewood boxes that I was sent as a Boxing Day present one year.)
Given how I’m muddling through stuff right now, organization in some areas of my life would be most welcome.
During the course of this exercise, I found two letters especially worth cherishing. The first was new (arrived in my inbox during the wee hours of Tuesday morning) and short and entirely devoid of capital letters or exposition. It’s not the sort of missive I’ll remember years from now—it has to do with something ephemeral—and now that I’ve used more words to describe the message than were in the message itself, I might as well quote (most of) it:
with all your talk about purity of line, i’m more tempted to buy you a set of ebony drawing pencils (maybe a box of soft pastels and some pastel paper in warm shades?) and a book of ingres’ sketches to play with than that fountain pen. drawing pretty ladies who have abnormally long backs is much more fun than writing with a pretty pen, anyway.
Hee. (Take a good look at La Grande Odalisque if you don’t get it.) Maybe it’s the sort of reference that only I’d find amusing—my reputation for quirky, obscure, and/or often incomprehensible humor is well earned—but I got a good laugh out of it. At least, thanks to Paintbrush, these inexplicable quirks are entirely understood and indulged.
Come to think of it, Paintbrush, didn’t we have a date to see the original hanging in the Louvre? As the other letter reminded me today, I had plans to meet Paintbrush and Discourse in Paris this past Christmas Eve for holiday rites at Notre Dame (“who cares if the Mass is in French? You know the gist of the Christmas readings by now, don’t you?”). I’d expected to be studying that semester in Berlin away from my family, and I’d preemptively made those plans long before I’d gotten my visa to combat a predicted surge of homesickness—and long before my crappy health (yes, again) necessitated canceling my time in Germany.
I nearly forgot all these things—the planned visits to my godson to Bonn; the much anticipated crazy three-day weekends with Baumfrau in Amsterdam; my burning desire to visit Prague during autumn; a drunken promise to Syntax that I’d hang fly a German flag on Unity Day –until I was reminded of them today; it was almost my time in Melbourne wiped away all those ‘should haves’ and regrets. But last October, when I was dolefully staring at a pale imitation of Oktoberfest on campus—when the real kind had been so bloody close!—I was frustrated and upset, and not particularly concerned with hiding it. I imagine Discourse’s mother easily heard the agitation in my voice when I spoke to her in late September, even, because the following missive appeared in my Washington postbox around the time of the German Department’s Unity Day celebration.
Like I said, it was dated Michaelmas Day.
The most important part of the letter appears below, unedited except to change names. I may be able to transcribe the text, but I (sadly) can’t replicate the thick linen paper, the perfectly elegant penmanship that still inspires intense envy, or the indescribable comfort that came from recognizing her address on the envelope. I do think the words are more than enough, though, so I leave my own thoughts here.
Hopefully, I’ll be motivated enough to offer my own content tomorrow.
I am acutely aware of your absence, love; we all are. We’ve looked forward to having you close by since you began studying German at university last year. [Paintbrush] would argue that he’s waited even longer—that he wanted you to come to Spain since you showed aptitude for the language years ago. To have circumstances work out thus, to still have you just as far from us as ever, it’s enough to drive a person mad.
And if it seems this way for us, I imagine that things seem quite unbearable for you. To be denied an opportunity to be that close to a language and a culture you’ve studied, and to be denied the fruition of your many plans (I know too well that meeting [Discourse and Paintbrush] in Paris on Christmas Eve was not your only arrangement, just the only one of which I’m aware), to be unable to explore a continent that you ought to have properly explored long ago—it is easy to imagine a raging storm, engulfing both sides of the Atlantic.
I remain certain, however, that you will eventually make your way here. Forces may delay your arrival, but it is only a matter of time before you’ll find ways around them. And in the meantime, I’m equally certain that you will use your time in other important ways—ways that will benefit your time here. There are lessons you will learn simply by being abroad, no matter where you are. Others here will be made simpler for your time elsewhere. And some you will most likely need to relearn, but a lesson that offers nothing new upon review is one that deserves little praise.
Take heart—even the detours have value. Patience is a virtue often forgotten these days, but it will serve you well and reward you famously. You needn’t worry: Germany will still be here when your time comes; you have my word.
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