To the editor:
I’ve been meaning to write a letter to a friend of mine for almost a year. I’ve been continually writing reminders to myself to write her, but it just hasn’t happened. I regret that.
I have thought about what I’d write in the letter many times. I was going to write about what’s been happening in my life since I last saw her. I was going to write about the few “big” moments that have occurred and then all the little things. All those little things that don’t seem to be very important, but which nonetheless make up the majority of life. I don’t think I can write that letter anymore and I regret that. I regret that more than anything. The little things of my life seem very small to me right now, very irrelevant.
I consider myself a writer. That is what I do and will do until I die. For two weeks now I have been wondering if anything I have ever written or will ever write is in the least bit relevant.
After Tuesday, for about four days, I wished for one thing: Monday. I wanted nothing more than to go back to Monday; to go back to my normal routine; to go back to the repetition and the habits I had been cultivating for years. I don’t want Monday anymore, at least not that Monday.
I’ve been reminding myself of little things everyday since then. They seem quite trite and cliche, but they help. Life can’t stop and when it does, it is death. Time can’t go backwards, only forwards. Little things like that.
I wrote this sometime on Tuesday morning:
A Lady
I once visited her.
She looked up, stood tall,
arm upraised to a cloudless sky.
Today,
I saw her again,
and she seemed so small,
all alone in the water.
I read the novel Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, a couple months ago and there is a phrase in it I can’t stop thinking about. It is used in order to get people up and running again after the occurrence of a timequake.
“You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do.”
I think this is a good saying. A very relevant saying. I think that we have been sick, but now we are well again or, at least, on the verge of getting well again. I think we have work to do and that part of that work is to make sure we never get sick again. And as with any illnesses, the road to a cure lies within us as much as it does outside of us. Yet, I fear we will forget this or that we won’t even realize it in the first place. We must change ourselves as much as we must change the world. I fear that if we don’t, then before long we’re going to be sick again. We are going to be right back where we started. I fear that, like it was on that Monday I wanted back so badly, it will not be a question of could this ever happen, but will be, once again, simply a question of when.
Damien Howell
English Major