A Letter to a Latent Lover

To write without thinking is like breathing, except that writing carries with it a fear of failure. We do not associate failure with breath; it is an involuntary action, a contraction of muscles, the osmosis of life into our blood and, unbeknownst to us, our souls. So why is it that we can rely so unhindered on breathing but stumble so regularly over the blank page? Perhaps it is because when we write unconcernedly we bear something of our souls on the page? No. It isn’t that… I would like it to be. That would be poetic and literary and echo of sages and gurus and Dickinson and Keats. But I know that their words fell into form and structure, their words carefully selected, their genius a frightened insanity. Dickinson hid her poems away, never intending to let anyone read them, but instead we rape her mind and her soul, defiling her wishes because she was brave enough to put the pen to the page in the first place.

Ah! I yearn to be Dickinson or Keats or Poe or Tennyson. Let me even be Hemingway who I despise for his simplicity and brilliance. Give me their tragic genius! I ache for it like a virgin for a lover. Yes, there is sensuality in words—round and sharp and seducing in their power of thought and exposure. I long to be a verbal exhibitionist. I lust after metaphor! Give me imagery hot and sensuous and naked before me! Once Rachel was shopping for pens online and showed me one asking if I, too, thought it looked like a vibrator. Oh, the poignant truth when I responded “that’s only because stationary turns us on!”

But even this is only metaphor and I lie in bed with it, panting heavy with the aftermath of my heavy handed conceit.

I write by candlelight because deep down I believe that the flickering of the flame awakens some primal knowledge within. That and there is something romantic in candlelight. The pliability of wax, the heat of the flame, the smell of the dying wick . . . . Candlelight is sensuous. It stimulates our eyes and our fingertips and our noses, daring us to reach out and grasp its evanescent, flickering form. And we do, at least once in our lives find ourselves moth-like, drawn to the danger that wavers before us like a curling finger, beckoning us closer.

But I have digressed as one is apt to when writing freely, the proverbial pen uncapped. So I shall let wax bring me back to the written page, to the letters of paramours and the missives of kings. Perhaps it is not so far fetched to think that there is some greatness in the candle if it is the final punctuation of such secrets. It was empowered to protect the promises of prince’s and, more importantly, the whispers of women locked away in the dark by propriety or their husbands or their loving fathers. Love poems, sonnets to the bosom and the lip, ballads to the fair-skinned maiden and the dark-tressed mistress. Mythology cites Cupid, Eros, as the lords of love, but I say that it is the letter, penned by candlelight in the gloaming evening and the dawning of desire. As the day fades and darkness becomes doorkeeper, so much easier for the lovers’ thoughts to turn of each other and their idle, itching hands to take up the pen in order to belay other less Christian tasks in the lonely gloom.

I feel the wave of my words drawing back, afraid of the insinuations I let slip through my fingers and onto the page. Dare I continue my erotic musings on the nature of words, or should I hide behind greater tasks than the love affair of poet and page, writer and words, lyricist and letters? Perhaps I should write an epic, a great tale of war and tragedy, but even then I may grow hot with the sweaty, rippling bodies of the brutal warriors and their Beowulfian bragging.

Perhaps I should never let this page be seen, I think with a sideways smirk snagging the corner of my mouth. But I know I shall share for this may be one of the greatest pieces I have ever written. A dissertation on literature and language. I write for the sake of writing, a calisthenics in anticipation of more focused exercises, but because I have no fear the marathon comes easily. How could I dare to hide away something so telling. The race I set out to run was that of rambling words, but the victory I have won is of devices. I should grow heavy with medals of alliteration, allusion, imagery, metaphor, and conceit. I should be breathless from my dash across the page. I should feel weary with the weight of my words.

I say let me run again! Let me take up the torch and run to the candle and light the fire of inspiration. Or at least, let me play with puns, and mock myself in metaphors. Let me enjoy my writing.

At least while I can.

For now it is easy, the words flowing with hardly a thought onto the page. No plot, no character—a careening course through my vocabulary and stream of consciousness. Eventually I shall stumble under the knowledge that I say nothing, that these musings are the nightmare of a restless spirit so delirious with the desire to write that she cares not what greatness comes of it knowing that in the end, this is from where greatness shall spring.

Shakespeare knew the power of prose. He was master of the secret of the sonnet, of the stanza, of the scene and the soliloquy. He knew the power of other letters too, besides the S. But his greatness transcends his witty banter and weighty themes. He has something that I have not. Tennyson had his isle of Shalott, but his isolation led him to realize that his great art was only imitation of immortality and had no place in the world. Ah to be a god of words! Let me never reach Camelot if only I can die knowing that I have taken a risk and achieved such greatness as Poe or Hawthorne. Let Thoreau gag on his beans, I desire to drown in experience.

But to live in the world and work, to watch and to write . . . can anyone actually achieve such a thing anymore without being independently wealthy. I long for a patron to pay for my paper and pens. Let a lord take up my cause and I shall shower his feet with reams and roses. Give me a name to fill in the phrase “This book is dedicated to *blank* without whom I could not have written it.” Give me my Queen Elizabeth! Where is my Medici? Alas, my only patron is the page, and to it I am a slave and a poor slave at that. But I am a loyal slave. Let him beat me and starve me and I shall still return to his side. But no, to say slave is too strong a word for the page is kindly to me. It alone consoles me in the dark. It alone fills my empty bed and whispers promises to me in the night. My paramour, my consort, my husband, my soul mate.

You blank page, understand my fears, and you wait patiently for my tentative, weak, words. But you have faith in my greatness. You know that I am faithful and that, one day, I shall succumb to your power. And then, I shall lie in your arms for all eternity in the literary greatness that you have promised.

Oh, wait a little longer. I shall send you my letters soon, sealed with the wax of my dying candle.