letter, dated August 14th , 2009

Dear ____________ *,

You don’t know me, not really. I don’t think that you would recognize me.

But I know you. I know who you are, and I know what you’ve done. I have been watching you now for twenty-four, nearly twenty-five years. Almost a quarter of a century I’ve known you.

I’ve been watching you for a long time.

I couldn’t see you clearly at first. In fact, I didn’t even know you were there. Every now and then I would catch something out of the corner of my eye – a shadow, I thought, or a bird lifting its wings in the distance, a startled cat slipping into the tall grass and under the fence. It’s nothing, I would think. A trick of the light.

I ignored you at first. Even when you started to come into focus – I ignored you. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but I was sure I didn’t want to see it.

It was almost like watching a picture develop. Do you remember Polaroids? I’m sure you do. It was like watching a Polaroid picture develop, only in slow motion. It’s like I was shaking the picture, and time slowed down, and parts of you were creeping out of the picture, bleeding out of the glossy paper, and spreading to the edges. You got clearer and clearer with every shake.

The first time I really saw you, was that also the first time I cut myself? I don't think so. I think hat was later. But I suspect that the first time I thought about cutting myself, I saw you. The problem is that once I saw you, and saw you clearly, and saw the truth of you, I couldn’t stop seeing you.

So I’ve been watching you ever since. I watch you idly. I don’t usually look too closely, although the reality of you – your presence that never ever leaves me – is always there, in front of me. I can’t figure out if it’s like watching a movie, or like peeking through a window, or looking at a painting, but I know it’s like something. I know that I am watching.

Actually, when I really think about it, it’s like I’m watching a movie. The old-fashioned kind, on reel-to-reel tape, images projected onto a screen against the wall. There is even a shaky countdown - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Beep, beep, beep.

And scene.

I don’t mind watching you, not really. It’s not like smelling you, or hearing you. There is a smell, and there is a sound, and I refuse to smell it or hear it. It’s a smell that I should have never known. I don’t remember the sound of your voice, but I do remember your words. Lies and bad stories. That is not part of the movie that I watch. It’s a silent movie, just the sound of the tape spinning and the projector whirling.

There is a certain slant of light. There really is. I know the slant of light. It fell across the bedroom floor. It was draped lazily across the bed. I don’t mind looking at it. If I only look at the light, it’s not even that bad. There is nothing scary about light. Light doesn’t have a smell. That smell. Light doesn’t have a sound. Light doesn’t lie.

So I have been watching you. I’ve been watching closely lately. I’ve been peering, really. And I’ve been thinking.

I thought I would write this letter to you, and give it to in person. I have decided to stop the movie, and I can only think of one way to do it. You will have to go, and so will the film. I’m tired of watching. I’ve never been much of a voyeur, and I don’t think it suits me, so I need to make it stop. The images and the scene that I am watching cannot go on forever.

Here is what I see, and this is what I will do:

I am in a bedroom. I can tell it’s mid-afternoon because of the way the light spills across the floor and the bed. Lovely golden light, with little motes floating in it. The kind of light that you could touch if you wanted to. You are there. I won’t say what you are doing, or what you look like, or what you are going to ask me to do. That is our secret. That will always be our secret.

I am so young. There is a picture of me taken sometime after this, and I look so sad. In it, I am wearing a light blue dress and a ribbon for a headband, and my eyes are sad.

I will be prepared for this, and when I step into the scene, I will have that picture with me. It’s a weapon, in a way. So are my arms. I carry my scars with me like armor. No one can hurt me, if this is what I’ve done to myself.

I don’t notice the smell. I don’t hear your voice. I don’t hear your lies. I recognize now how absurd you are, and how pathetic. You’ve draped yourself across the bed, like you’re sunlight. What a joke. Like you have some kind of power. Like you ever had any power. Like you’ve ever meant anything.

I think that I will show you the picture of me with a ribbon for a headband, and show you my arms, and I will laugh at you. I don’t think I will say anything. I don’t have a speech planned, I don’t think I will need to speak. I think you will know exactly what I intend to do.

I found out years ago what you had done to yourself. At first I thought it was unfair. Now I wonder if I was me. I wonder if I stepped back into the scene, like I’m doing now, and put the gun to your head. Who’s to say I haven’t done it already, who’s to say I haven’t done it a thousand times before now?

It doesn’t matter, anyway. This time I am going to destroy the film entirely. I will show you the picture, and I will laugh, and then I will begin.

I think you will be surprised. You have probably forgotten me, but I have been watching you for nearly twenty-five years now. I am so tired of watching you.

Close your eyes now. I will close mine too, later, when I am done.

Sincerely,

_______________**

* Name illegible.
** Not signed.

I know two things, and two things only:

1. Always trust your instincts.
2. All things pass.

Sometimes I think I know more. Sometimes I trick myself into believing I know more. That’s when I make mistakes. Every bad choice I’ve ever made has been the result of ignoring these two things:

1. The stirring in my stomach.
2. The inevitable passing of all this.

Agatha Christie taught me to trust my instincts. Don’t laugh. Miss Marple solves crimes through the careful observation of personality types. She watches people, and listens, and she stores everything neatly away. She feels a tug of recognition when she meets the killer, because she’s met him many times before, and her body knows it. I don’t mean you should always trust your first impression. I just mean you should listen to what history has taught you, and look for patterns. And, for nearly thirty years I’ve alternated between happy and sad, and I’ve been adrift on the waves and tugged by the tides, and the only constant has been movement. All things pass. So we learn that:

1. Elderly detectives listen and watch and react.
2. Water is never still.

There is always the question, though, of how to apply these truths to one’s life. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I let the killer go. Sometimes I let the killer charm me. Sometimes I am the killer. Sometimes I forget that I am nothing more than an animal, cowering in the dark. Sometimes I fear I am stuck in one awful moment, hanging onto the tip of the second hand and never moving.

1. If you listen closely enough to your bones, they will always tell you the truth.
2. Everyone dies. Everything ends.

I can’t really make you know these two things. I only know them because I’ve made the mistake of ignoring them for years. And I can’t give you the examples that convinced me of their truth. I only know that I know, and I know two things:

1. Trust yourself. Listen to yourself.
2. Don’t worry. It won’t last forever.

This is all I know.

I haven’t been many places. It’s shameful – twenty-nine years old and I’ve barely left the country. I went to Disneyland, once, and I hope to see Europe soon. But I have been one place few people have visited – the North. The far, far, far north. The frigid, lifeless tundra. Up there. Way, way up there.

I’ve wanted to write about it for years now, but I’ve never known where to start. Do I start with the landscape? Do I mention the trees, how they get thinner and thinner the further you go? Do I mention the endless blinding white, the fields of snow and ice that go on forever, and how it burns the eyes until the world is all quiet and white? Do I mention the sky, the vast Northern sky? I don’t think there are words enough to describe the sky. In the summer the sky is blue without end, and the sun never rests. In the winter the sky is lit up every night. I can’t even describe it, the pink and blue and purple and red and green ghosts dancing across the sky, the elegant unfurling spirits bowing to the foxes and caribou and whales below. Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to the first time I saw the Northern Lights. I wish I could describe them for you. I wish I could describe the majesty of them, how I willingly stood outside for an hour in -40 degree weather just to watch them move. The ballet of color and the elegance of movement. There must be a word, in Gwich’in or Inuvialuit, that captures the dance perfectly.

Or, do I start with the people? The people who have lived there for thousands of years, people who have somehow contrived to live and thrive on seal’s blood and the fat of whales? People whose language consists of endless vowels and consonant sounds formed deep in the throat, long words only recently translated into a complex language of triangles and dots? I could tell you about the people who come to the North because they are running away from something. Bad marriages, debt, black eyes, and fat lips, drugs – all the sadness of the world, I’ve heard every story. There is so much sadness in the Arctic Circle, at the top of the world, you wouldn’t believe it. We all went there to escape our sadness, and found a different kind of madness. The kind you never shake. The tundra goes on forever, and there is only so fast or far you can run, up there at the top of the world.

The theme is forever, in the North, did you notice? The sky goes on forever, the snow and ice last forever, the sadness is forever. There is something so permanent, so lasting and final about the North. Something about the darkness in winter that you’ll never escape. You leave the North with a taste for plastic, neon signs, and fast food. There is too much weight there, too many years of unwritten history. You walk away craving something less than what you came for – something that ends. It’s no coincidence that the suicide rate is so high in the North.

So, I could start with the landscape, or I could talk about the people, or I could try to describe for you the inherent sadness Up There, or the futility of tundra. I could. Or I could give you specifics – why I went, and where exactly I went, and what I did, and who I met, and how I got there, and all that. I could tell you that I met some of my best friends up there, and I fell in love, and I went back, years later, even though I thought I never would. The first time I went there, I was running away from a broken heart. The second time – well, I suppose it was for the same reason. I’ve spent at least five years of my life living near the tundra, under the flayed and bloody sky. One of those years I was drunk nearly every day. My friend who killed himself, I met him Up There.

I could describe all of these things for you, but you would never really understand. I could talk about the cold, which so far I’ve hardly mentioned. You never use the word ‘minus’ in the North. From October to May, it’s twenty or forty degrees out – it’s never minus, it just is. I could mention the cabs you take everywhere (five dollars flat fee anywhere in town), or the prices (four dollars for a kiwi, fifteen dollars for a pack of tampons), the Post Office (mail isn’t delivered; you will see everyone you know at the Post Office), the buildings on stilts (it’s the permafrost, you can’t dig into the ground), utilidors (above-ground sewers; permafrost, again), the smell of muktuk hanging out the window to freeze (whale skin and blubber, a delicacy, although the worst delicacy I’ve ever smelled), and ravens the size of cats. I could describe all of these things, but something would still be missing.

Have you ever felt your eyelashes and nose hairs freeze? Have you ever seen the sun at midnight? Have you seen the sun peeking timidly over the horizon at three in the afternoon? Have you heard arctic wolves howling across a frozen river? Have you taken a cab for three blocks simply because it hurt to breathe? Can you pronounce the word Tsiigehtchic?

I could tell you so many things. There are so many things I’ve left out. There are so many things I can’t describe. I haven’t told you about the ugliness of the North, the
desperation and degradation and violence of it. I saw too many black eyes and bloody faces in the North. I saw too many filthy, sad-eyed children. I saw too many people passed out drunk in the snow, and I saw too many people walk past them and laugh.

I prefer to remember the lights though. There is no violence in the lights, just the never-ending dance of the ancestors. Sometimes I think that if I step outside in the evening – and the moment is just right – and it’s cold enough, and dark enough, and magical enough – I will see them again.

When I was a fish I was beautiful. My scales shone bright, as if they were polished. And so they were, if you looked closely. I polished my body on the smooth sides of rocks, against the hands of seaweed, in the salt of the sea. My gills were elegant, like wings. I breathed the air through waves and water, and I was graceful.

When I was a fish I was strong.

When I was a fish I shimmered. When I was a fish I rode the waves and I was weightless. When I was a fish I could never be ugly. You would never guess what I’ve become, now.

When I was a fish, I was beautiful.

***

Once upon a time there was a cat.

(Over the vast expanse of time, there have been many, many cats. But I will tell you a secret – they are all the same cat. This cat has thousands of lives, and will never ever die.)

The cat lived in a castle, in a land far away. The land was green, and the trees were full of birds that twittered and sang and chirped, and flashed like bright jewels. The hills were full of fast clever rabbits and slow silly moles. Life in the land was grand. Life in the land was majestic.

(Cats have always lived in castles. Don’t kid yourself into believing your cat spends all her time in your one-bedroom apartment. She has a home, and it is hers only. You will never be invited.)

The cat took his tea every day at noon, just after his morning nap, and just before his afternoon nap. The cat’s tea consisted of one pot of Earl Grey, mostly milk and some sugar to taste. When he asked for it – and he often did - his tea included a small dry biscuit and a large grey mouse, not quite dead and not quite alive.

The cat yawned, and stretched luxuriously. He arched his back and flexed his claws. The mouse watched blearily with small black eyes as the cat opened his jaws and tore into its fat belly.

The cat enjoyed his tea.

(It’s not a pretty story, I know. The fish story was so sweet. You only get pretty once. Look your cat in the eye and tell me she isn’t a killer.)

The cat was engaged to marry the moon. Long the province of werewolves and unicorns, the moon was a valuable bride. When the cat had finally claimed her as his own, he sat tall and haughty on his cat-throne in his cat-palace and licked his paws in that cat-way. Nighttime was the cat’s time, and the moon was a boon and a prize to own.

When the cat stalked his land in the night, the moon watched him with one wide staring eye. The moon sighed down at him and her breath pulled the ocean up and down, back and forth. The fish glinted as they were tossed from wave to wave.

(I suppose the story of the moon and the cat has been done before. What is it meant to illustrate, really? The tides, the eternal relationship between animal and moon, strange sexual rites of the Druidic cults, who knows. It’s all stories, isn’t it? The story of your cat is the story of my cat is the story of the world is the story of creation is the story of the King of Cats is the story of the cat and the moon, who were engaged to be married. Don’t believe in fairy tales, but don’t ignore them either. Read them for the sex and the gore, but also read for the unwritten, secret words beneath them – read them for the truth.)

The cat stretched his long limbs in the sun. He had found a perfect spot, in the tall green grass. He closed his eyes and purred. He was waiting for nighttime, for the careful eye of his lover, the moon. He would sleep until she opened her eye and the fur bristled on his back.

(You didn’t expect the cat’s story to end, did you? The cat and the moon have been living this story through countless nighttimes now. A cat’s story is a cat chasing a mouse – round and round and round, tail and nose and whiskers and paws. There is no end to it, a circle of tails and whiskers and hisses. A thousand lives, once upon a time. There is no moral to this story. Only the nighttime. )

***

There is, however, a moral to this story: a princess will always break your heart. Girls who wear pink taffeta cannot be trusted. Right now, there is a girl gazing in a mirror, with blonde hair (like spun straw, of course) and wide innocent eyes (like a field of bluebells, obviously), wearing a shiny pink dress (Don’t you dare touch it! Your hands are filthy!) and glass slippers so clear (don’t make her mad, she will hurt you), with forest animals all around her (shitting on the floor, screeching like mad), smiling like a doll (vacuous and empty) at herself, and herself only.

When you meet her, you will love her. You will love her like a thunderstorm, like a heart attack, like a virus – love in the feverish moment of meeting. She will smile her wide white smile and turn her bright eye towards you, until you are a fish on a hook, dangling. She will consume you and devour you and you will love her. She is unattainable, like a cat, like the moon.

Girls who wear crinoline ought never to be trusted. They are so sweet and so kind. They hide their blood-stained hands behind their backs - out, damn spot!

You will love her, when you meet her, like a fever, like a poem. She is pretty (like a thread on a loom) and kind (like her dead mother). She will kiss you (like a snake, tongue lolling); she will offer you an apple (you will take it, tongue lolling). You will bite (always knowing) and she will laugh (a lilting giggle). You will love it (and you will die in the end, quite willingly).

Never trust girls who wear tiaras. Jewels and beauty and charm and charisma are never free.

***

When I was a fish, I was beautiful.

I was everything a fish should be.

I was a fairy tale swimmer, so graceful and quiet and free.

When I was a fish I leapt across rivers, teased my lovers in waterfalls.

I was beautiful; goddess of the ocean, of the sea.

I never wanted to be a girl, or a doll,

Or a cat purring from bird-ripe tree to tree.

When I was a fish I was beautiful.

I was everything a fish ought to be.