teenybooks » letters

love letters.

mh — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:43:07 +0000

It’s strange reading your blog lately – you seem to be in such a different world, such a different state of mind than me. It’s kind of a nostalgic, vacationing vibe, like there’s infinite time to think about that tiny leaf on the end of a fern frond – no, not the littlest one at the end (all proud because of its important location) but the fifth one in on the left, ignored for no good reason by everyone else throughout history. But it’s not your writing – everything seems different, skewed, changing, because I have few consistent relationships with people.

I adore and cherish each long letter I recieve. Somehow they always seem a labor of love. Every one of them. From one of my oldest and dearest friends, I thought it was too great not to reflect on it a bit…as he so eloquently called out my navel gazing.

futreme.org

mh — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:42:16 +0000

I’m kind of in love with the concept of FutureMe.org, an internet time capsule of sorts where you send a letter to yourself at a pre-decided time in the future, the clock automatically set to one year. I read through a bunch of the letters on the site, some ranging from one liners like “I’m sitting here drinking a beer, life is good.” to the more reflective letters, people wandering where they’ll be in the future, people talking about where they are now, people warning themselves against certain courses of actions.

A friend and I were having a conversation recently of the not so original variety, musing on what we’d tell our past selves. I’m a bit more intrigued by what we’d tell our future self and what that older and hopefully wiser self would think of that advice.

I suppose I would tell my future self to take advantage of this opportunity, this time in my life that’s so open to possibility. Yes, its frightening and yes it’ll take a lot of work, but now might be one of the last times in my life where I can literally go any way I choose. I have fewer responsibilities than I’ve ever had in the past and I can reinvent myself, whether that means considering a big move or just choosing a new career path. Matter of fact maybe I’ll go write that letter now…

futureme.org

More Bolano

mh — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:55:59 +0000

Still wading through The Savage Detectives tonight. My favorite part of reading is coming a passage that you love so wholly it becomes impossible not to want to share it with everyone:

And then comes the funny part…they just stood there and asked me whether I wrote love letters. Everything, boys, I told them, setting the file on the floor and filling my glass with Los Suicidas mezcal again, letters from mothers to their children, letters from children to their fathers, letters from women to their husbands in prison, and letters from lovers, of course, which are the best, either because they’re so innocent or so steamy, everything mixed together as it is at the druggist’s counter and sometimes the writer adds something of his own devising.

(also reading Happiness as my little excursion beachy summer time read.)

Dear James, I could kiss you

mh — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Dear James who mans the front desk at the St. Christopher Hostel from time to time.

Giving me a room that I can stay in without checking out every morning and rechecking into a different room every night, has provided me with a raison d’être. You made me momentarily forget what a suck-fest this place is, while putting me in a room with a majority of people who are close to my own age and seem genuinely interesting. When you said, I’ve got a bed on the 3rd floor for the next four days I didn’t respond not because I’d been drinking…like you so quickly assumed…but because I was seriously thinking of leaning across the counter and placing one big kiss on that lovely face of yours. I’m not sure what you magically did at the computer screen that made it possible for me not to change rooms every night, that the girl at the front desk couldn’t do the day before but whatever it was, and despite the three spanish brothers/friends who talk all night like little girls, I’m grateful.

Cheers,

ps: Todays goal, ear plugs and one of those nifty face masks.

Love Letters: Robert Browning to Elizabeth Browning

mh — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:10:00 +0000

You will only expect a few words, what will those be?

When the heart is full it may run over, but the real fullness stays within.

You asked me yesterday “if I should repent?”

Yes, my own Ba, I could with all the past were to do over again, that in it I might somewhat more, never so little more, conform in the outward homage, to the inward feeling, What I have professed, (for I have performed nothing) seems to fall short of what my first love required even, and when I think of this moment’s love…I could repent, as I say.

Words can never tell you, however, form them, transform them anyway, how perfectly dear you are to me, perfectly dear to my heart and soul.

I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence, you have been entirely perfect to me, I would not change one word, one look.

My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it, for which I trust to God who procured it for me, and doubtless can preserve it.

Enough now, my dearest, dearest, own Ba!

You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another.
I am all gratitude, and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.

God bless you prays your very own R.

Love Letters: Napoleon to Josephine

mh — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:08:00 +0000

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil.
Sweet incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart!
Are you angry?
Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? …
My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!
You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.
Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.

Bonaparte

Love Letters: Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer (Excerpt)

mh — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:05:00 +0000

Fräulein Felice!

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday—for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?…

Viva la Difference

mh — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:55:00 +0000

A letter I found from an old friend, who taught me a lot about living and gave me words to live by. Dated September 10, 1999.

“My mother died this summer, and the months leading up to her passing and the months since have been times of great introspection and soul searching. I think you will be pleased to know, Marcia, I have decided I kind of like the person my mother taught me to be—-the kind of person who in today’s world is a little different—different because I wear a smile and am happy most of the time; I speak to people; I look at the positive side of things rather than the negative; I think of other people and encourage them and notice them and make them feel special; I show care and compassion and respect to all; I don’t make fun of other people; I don’t gossip; I don’t backstab and I’m not mean-spirited, boorish, sullen, secretive, flippant, rude, spiteful, vindictive nor two faced; I don’t hold grudges I’m enthusiastic; I show my inner happiness; I like to have fun. If thats being different, viva la difference!”

Everything We Never Knew (another letter)

mh — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:02:00 +0000

I was thinking of the whole planetarium experience, and how you asked me if seeing all that, the size of the universe, made me feel small. It put me in awe really, it amazed me, but I think it affected you a bit differently than it did me. I’m always feeling the weight of space and the weight of time pressing down on me. I’m not sure when it came about, but suddenly there it was, this information that kept me up at nights and gave me bouts of anxiety while I tried to sleep. I’ve felt that way so often its no longer surprising.

I wonder if other beings in other worlds have the same search for meaning.

What I wanted to say was, what makes me feel the way that you felt in that instance is knowledge. For me to feel that exact feeling and in that exact way is to be confronted with all the things in front of me that I have yet to learn. To stand in a library and see all the amazing books I might never have the time to read, it frightens me and fills me with the same optimism that you described. I suddenly feel both limited and limitless all at once, and usually filled with a new desire to read more, to learn more on every subject to ingest as much as I can, till I can no longer ingest. I’m more afraid of dying without knowing, than I am afraid of dying, to be frank (and I’m fairly afraid of death). I’m afraid that I can live my life and not know so much, to never have read the words of Nietzsche, right now makes me immediately sad. Infinitely sad. to know that there is still time, lightens the load. We all have the capacity to learn so much, to experience so much, to move beyond ourselves into something higher, to experience enlightenment (whatever your definition maybe), to be interested and passionate about things (ideas, art, people).

My startlingly large universe is filled with pages that I’ve never read. Yours is filled with supernovas that you’ll never glimpse.

An Open Letter to a Good Friend

mh — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:38:00 +0000

I wrote this to an old friend late last night and decided to post it.

I’ve quit my job to pursue something bigger than myself, my destiny if there is such a thing. I’m writing to you as you are one of the many inspirations that moved me to make the decision. You always remind me, however accidental, to be a fool for love, in all its myriad and complex forms, to be a fool for passion, even blinding and all consuming, and to be a fool for life, while I’m still young enough to believe in the infinite possibilities it might hold.

wish me luck,
m