My sweet jellybean,

I’m taking a break from my fruit which is not cooperating.

I’m not even sure I know what I’m about to say but I’m happy and grateful in the knowledge that I know you will know exactly what I mean and I know that it will be alright before I even say it.

My day so far. I slept at all the wrong times. I had traveling dreams. Planes. Trains. Walking. Running. When I woke up, I cleaned everything. I love the purity, the start and finish, the thoroughness, the focus, the satisfaction of cleaning. Now the place smells like Pledge, Fabreeze, and incense. I took a long bath. I used your gift of Goat’s Milk bath foam — as I said, it really grew on me. When I got out, red and ruddy from the hot bath, I covered myself in Aloe Vera. I have left the TV off all day. Murphy is sleeping comfortably, calmly on the couch.

I’ve been waiting for so long to be someone. I’ve been waiting to be invigorated, refreshed, renewed. That comes across passive. That’s probably not a mistake. I haven’t had a flying dream in so long.

…

Sometimes I wrap the quiet around me. I curl up entirely satisfied in solitude. And I am satisfied. Truly satisfied. At least for that moment. Not hungry. Not thirsty. Not hoping the phone will ring. Not checking email fanatically for something not quite like human contact. I put my lists away. Things I have to buy. Things I have to pay. Things I have to do. People I have to call. I put all the lists away. And I stop making lists in my head. And I turn the computer off and I sit on the couch and just listen to the quiet and I quiet my soul. And it’s stunning and lightening and fierce. But it makes me raw too.

I can breathe. I can feel innocent and pure. Not that I’m innocent. Not that I’m pure. But I live. And that’s enough to feel it. It is not sentimental. Not nostalgic. Not wanting. And sometimes, like tonight, I feel like crying. But crying without purpose. Crying without an object. And I don’t want to apologize for it — I know you wouldn’t want me to. And I don’t want to feel less manly for it, either. I know you wouldn’t make me feel that way. And it’s not sad crying either. It’s lucky to have friends and to miss them. It’s lucky to live. It’s lucky to have what I have. It’s lucky to sometimes be wanting; wanting is the seed of dreams and it is important to have dreams and ambition. It’s lucky that a plant will grow that the wind will blow that my dog will sleep and run in her dreams. It’s lucky, jellybean, that we are in the same world. It’s lucky to have lived all that I have lived and it’s lucky that I will live all that I yet will live.

This might make little sense to my eavesdroppers. I mind not at all. I know you will know. And that knowledge puts a very happy smile on my face. I want to call you but I have not had enough, just now, of my quiet, of my solitude, of this terrifying and electric space…

SS