Letters to the Beloved, #1

My heartbeat is irregular. It leaps, falls, gets up and leaps again at the thought of me writing you. My hands tremble and create an avalanche of fallen teapots in an historical imagery. My ears are so focused I swear I could hear you breathe even though I have no idea where you are. Every thought of anything else other than you is murdered brutally. You’re looking at me as if I’m insane. You resemble the lady of the only film that I’ve ever seen. Or was she in a photograph? No, I have always said photos mean nothing to me. But the dearest memory I carry of you is of my eyes succumbingly staring into yours as a photographer gazing into his lens. And I realize that I’m happy I don’t like taking pictures as you can never rely on them as you can rely on your own eyes. A girl today explained to me the notion of realism in art and how it can never be achieved, how the painter’s attempt to visualize what he sees is always imperfect and how the photographer is only able to capture just the smallest part of reality. Well, in fact a photo’s goal should never be to approach the truth. Or so do I believe. If that was the aim of the inventor of the camera we wouldn’t just see happy pictures, those images that reflect our prosperity and the grace of having posterity; instead, the camera would show us a well-balanced compilation of moments spent together, the sunny but also the windy and rainy days, including the face of adversity – the mouth of the tiger, perhaps even the stomach of its child. But it’s not that which still makes me hesitate when looking at photographs, not knowing whether to truly enjoy visual pleasure or cast it away as if it were a paper tiger. It’s just that this image of you, this photo the little artist in my head took of you in your moment of shining brightness – no, not true! It was a very well-balanced day! – surpasses everything I have ever seen before. I can’t even seem to remember the moment. I woke up this morning with my roommate’s music on. A second later I realized it was my music, but played through his sound-system. He was playing an album I lent him, one of the greatest albums ever. It’s called ‘Disintegration’ and one of the first songs (I think it’s the second one; have you ever realized the magic of the number 2? It’s so magical that if it hadn’t existed, I probably wouldn’t even be thinking of you right now) is called ‘Pictures of You’. It’s the one thing that makes me question my indifference towards pictures. I’m thinking now that perhaps I can’t remember the moment because there was no moment in the picture, it was just you.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

(A Line-Storm Song – Robert Frost)

I apologize for my scrambled mind.

À plus, bonne nuit, mon coeur.