Feel Sound- Trois lettres al femme

Feel Sound
Sometimes I miss my friends.
Outside Ram Jhool I passed a happy family walking down the road, yapping unitelligibly in some foreign tongue. The two children munched on fried popcorn and melting ice cream cones while the father marched staunchly ahead of the pack, carrying all their luggage. Under his arm was a painted leather bag.
I recognized the bag at once. They sell them in two or three highly visible stalls by the bridge. Vast smart racks of glistening leather painted in Rajasthani themes- they strike a dazzling portrait. I noticed them right away, and retained the memory as I myself have been looking for a leather tote for months. However these bags struck me as 'too feminine', and I passed them on. Maybe this man bought one for his wife. I don't know. But he had one, and I noticed, and I made the connection.
And as I looked at the bag under his arm as he passed I noticed also that now- on its own- it seemed somehow cheapened. Only when present in amongst its friends did it seem to glimmer, and now, set apart, the lines in the material seemed to deepen and the colors dull remorsefully.
Some purchases you have to dig for through mountains of tarnished rubble and scrap, and when they come away with you they shine. And others only truly glow when they're in the company of friends.
Coming up the bridge I had to cross paths with the leather stalls again and the remaining painted bags gleamed proudly. I stopped to pass my finger across one of them, only then noticing that this stall also sold clothes and jewelry. One shirt stood out at me. It was a very soft red fabric emblazoned across the chest with highly ornate gold devangari script. "Real Leather!" touted the merchant, noticing my idling finger on the leather bag. But my eyes remained on the shirt. "What does this say?" I asked him. He took the shirt down and examined it casually. "This shirt is saying: Feel Sound." he said, and smiled, "I sell you for great cheap price."


Letter to a Girl
If I added up all the little details of existance one might begin to feel the weight of them as a whole. A large chunk of my world, like the moon when it wrenched its way from the earth. And that moon, that immense weight comprised of many shiny small things might lend an impression on you. Might rest against your conscience as you read them in part and in whole, like the moon pulling gracefully at the unsuspecting tide, therefore to possibly, and hopefully, sway you.
Sitting on the edge of your bed before you left for parts unknown. The morning toast that's both brittle crisp and buttery soft. Staring at my shoes in the dusty dirt of a place you've never been but I wish you could be. A farting old dog asleep on a relative's couch. The white trails of a long-gone jet across a pouting crimson sky.
Have you married yet? Do you not answer my phone calls because you don't want to talke me? Do you still smoke more than a midwest factory, and drink enough coffee-mate to put Columbia out of business?
A car pulls over to give me a ride and the light wind blows lighter than it should. Pools of indigo light sloshing through a dirty windowpane. Sententious inessential sentences of some poet you loved, rotting from within in a shell of good intention. Do you still like that poet? Do you still almost cry after finishing one of her poems?
I almost cried after that last cigarette. When simmering tittilation gave way to ugly regret. The violin across a children's playground. That phone call I'd like to make.


Letter to another Girl
Hello again. I'm sorry about the cake. Time tends to slip through my fingers some time and good intentions with it. Like sand through a sieve. One could either look at time as a passage of hours or a rush of experience. I choose the latter. But then again I have to, else where am I?
After we finish suffering for all our illusions we wake up and find all our lifetimes have been led and all our friends have been met, labled and lost. So we choose to go back to those places where it didn't hurt so bad. Stay in the rooms where we remember it being nice. Re-heat the meals we seem to recall once liking and surrounding ourselves with faces that are easy on the eyes.
I suppose once I wanted to be with you and let it all go, but for the sake of general edifictaion I'll tell you right now that I'm OK that one never worked out. All old ties loosen, and I haven't the energy to try to harness any long frayed ends and relations. Best to let it all go.
Jack will be mad and Bill will be drunk and I will be shameful and boring and waiting for the thrill of watching the endless passage of moons return. This haphazard dream universe spins like boats along the equator to distant countries without decent plumbing, and as the man says, this too shall pass.
Tell the General I say hello. And pass on my words about the cake. Hope you are well. More than well. But then again what do I know?


Letter to The Girl
You're right, you know. You were right. You are right. And you do know.
I wanted to escape. Escape to a myth. Escape to a land across the side that sits outside of time. With all the cosmic significance I thought timelessness entailed. To soak up a sacred atmosphere. Not because I was lost, not ONLY that I mean. Or to search for something I would not find at home. But because, I felt drawn to a place where I could take steps onto terra igcognito. Steps outside my self.
And so when I asked the holy man if such wonders were true, if there were men who could work such miracles, sages who could see farther than any man and gurus who could work wonders, could answer the questions that have plagued the ages- he sat quiet. I thought I saw a smile cast its crimson wing across his cheek. And he asked me why?
Why would I even bother understanding the cosmic, when I had yet to even understand myself?
I thought you should know you were right. You were right, and I hate you.
But not really. Hell I don't know anything any more.
But you knew all along. You knew then and you know now. And you were, and remain to be, in the right.