The Edge Of A Useless Evidence.

Garret,

Was that some sort of good-bye? Or were you merely worn-out by the senseless effort of a night spent in meaningless interaction? I was a little disconcerted by the sighing note at the end of your letter. I don't want to lose you or your calm and measured words. I told you that I am greedy. To examine your life is one thing, but to articulate it is something else altogether. Sing out your high hopes to me, my friend, and spit out your black despair. You help me to remember that life is worth living. I had hoped that I might do the same for you.

I've spent enough time in dark and smoky places avoiding the glazed glances that glared at me with wordless hunger. I've optimistically sought out the stories of the people around me, pulling their words out of them with my eager attention. I've spun my own stories loudly and cheerfully filling the space around me with my gestures and my sense of self. I've sulked and sunk stubbornly into a sullen silence. I've picked fights and made foolish decisions. I've tried to feel alive while others around me tried to erase the traces of their recent lives.

All the things that mean something to me waver on the edge of what is said; all the things that meant something to me ebb toward the edge of a useless evidence. I always stare at people and wonder what they have to do with me, what they have to do with themselves. And I am always watching for that nugget of honesty that they have been waiting all night to hand someone. And I roll it around gratefully in my palm wondering if they were enriched or diminished by this gift; but suspecting that they have remained irrevocably the same.

When I am alone, I give my helpless, hopeful self to the sun-drenched blue sky above me marked by the soaring passage of birds, to the silently rising trees around me, to the delicate, shifting passage of the wind. I look into the face of nature with a bold happiness. But I know that it is only another human face which can look back and show me that I am also here, shrugged onto this earth like the pebbles on the path and yet complex and purposeful. And if I sometimes confront other people with despair, it is because we are complex enough to lie and to fear and to hide. But I know that it is possible to look into someone else's eyes and see something both sharp and yielding, the desire to understand and to be understood. And I know that it is possible to write and to be read.

Fernando