Good Faith Hunting


Dear Eugene,

Saturday it was raining quite heavily and I was sitting in my car thinking Hey, what luxury that I am not wet!  The metal box of a safety shelter makes sadness almost edifying, at the least recreational.  This sight and sound is pretty theatrical.  I should do this more often.

That's how it is, right?  The many coping mechanisms, abundant damage-control resources of the privileged.  Everywhere you turn there is a net to fall on for safe landing.  See, I was sad last minute and now I am writing and a bit less sad.  Words, how precious!  What a gift!  And--playing in the coffee shop where I was writing and waiting to pick up my daughter from work--music!  Words chirping about joy and pain and overcoming and if to no avail death.

Yup, death, we speak that too.  We are not afraid, exorcise one and all.

The first stomachache Adam had I wonder how he felt, what it was like to have no word for pain.  I think I am gonna die now! he didn't say, for though that option was readily available he hadn't the luxury to observe firsthand or learn from tradition.  The vocabulary was not there.  The story was absent.

Name that animal, my son.  And name that whatever in your stomach too.

 I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?  Whatever the answer it's a contingent eventuality and one knows that when the question is asked in bad situation and good faith.  The badder the gooder.

I think I am going to read more, Eugene.  I need to.  Great writing speaks the unspeakable for the unspeaking and I haven't been listening well lately.  I wrote too much, that I think is part of the problem.  I spoke too much.  In haste.

I picked up "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" from the bookstore yesterday.  I read it years ago and yesterday it happened to come between my fingers again.  A most timely accident.  Oprah picked it for her book club and it felt like a sick joke to me then.  Even now checking her page online seeing all the ads going around the short introduction I don't know how to feel.  I don't want to be cynical.  I trust she wasn't when she picked that.  It takes a real American dreamer to know the true American nightmare, I suppose.

The receipt I got yesterday, the name of the book on it truncated, prints "The Heart is a Lone"...

Yours, Alex

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