Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Last week I've gotten an advice from a dear friend, the best I had received so far this year and probably will stay this way. "Speak for yourself, Alex," he said. Strange enough I was reading Frederick Buechner and he told me the same.  Though he meant it a bit differently I suppose, that in speaking for myself  I am speaking about God, for God. Prophet.  Priest.  King.  If it be His will. I think I won't be speaking for a while.  I just don't know how to. If it be your will That I speak no more And my voice be still As it was before I will speak no more I shall abide until I am spoken for If it be your will Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, I saw the Monster.  The loneliest, out of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He (or was it a she?) circled me and the sheepish dog I was walking.  I asked him to leave.  I asked with a very loud voice.  He answered with his steady pace, no faster than before my request. No slower. Matter-of-fact steady. I first saw his silhouette walked out of a gully of the shadow of death, poised, nonchalant.  Ready to do what he was determined to do.  Ready to give a reason to what needs no explanation. "Where is your leash?" I asked. "I have no master," he said. No mother. No family. If there's a Creator, I've lost sight of him. Or he did me. Just let me be. I again asked him to leave.  I hated that he could hear the terror in my voice.  By now I've picked up my sheep.  Very wet feet.  He whispered to me that he wanted to meet the Monster up close, get to know him better, know him as a person, break down barrier, host...

Dear Eugene, I think I am changing. I guess a person changes all the time, slowly and gradually.  But this is not that kind. This is about leaving things behind for good, crossing over to the other side, saying goodbye. I am searching for a new way to speak.  My old way of speaking can no longer account for the new me.  Not too long ago I said to myself, There are twenty million ways to say the same thing; why not try them all in your life time?  Now I am looking for the twenty million and one way, and I have not found it yet. I wrote and threw, wrote and threw, wrote and threw.  Lately I wrote a lot to you and threw away just as much.  I am not happy with my sentences any more.  I can't find the right prepositions, how one thing relates to another.  I've tried them all: in, at, of, etc. but none of them is good enough.  None of them can fully account for what I am seeing, even if only through a glass darkly. I volunteer as a lit...

Dear Eugene, But in a morning such as this Is neither life nor death to see, Only that state which some call bliss, Grey hopeless immortality. What is there to speak about in a morning such as this, when, as it always is,  the victim is also the victimizer , the oppressed the oppressor, when with god and god's people on his side one boasted about the size of his nuclear button , when one plunge of a bus took with it four dozen made in God's image , when killing happened at your backyard ? What word would suffice to speak about anything in a morning such as this? Well, I wrote a lot to you since Dec 28.  But I scrapped them all.  Too wordy.  Too many words but not nearly enough.  I need to find a new way to speak in this new year. David speaks in poetry. Yours, Alex