Thursday, Jul. 26, 2012 - 9:31 p.m.

You ask why I don't smile a lot, the answer is that I cannot kiss you. You ask why I sigh from time to time - I sigh because everything in this world of ours is finite, including my time with you. Why am I never really happy with you? I will never be truly happy until I can hold you in my arms. Assuming that such a thing never happens, we will remain like China and Taiwan - together, but apart, speaking the same language yet not really saying the same things.

You're right - I'm not really a happy person - but then, who is? We always want something more and if we ever stop wanting, we begin to realise that something is not right.

I'm not happy because I want to do something with my life - but I lack the tools; I'm not happy with my life because in my mind's eye I have 1000 ideas, but each of those ideas is far away.

But just because I'm not a happy person, does not mean that I cannot be happy.

You, for instance, make me happy. Your peace. Your eyes. Your hair. The way you look at children and animals. The way your face looks when you step out of the shower.

I don't have anything to offer, except....

But that's not true. I can't offer anything because I have no one to negotiate with, so I am negotiating with myself.

The way that the sea turns the ship - tosses it back and forth - those are my thoughts - that's why any thinking human being cannot be happy forever; I keep on coming back to the same thing: how to be good?

It seem to me that most human beings answer that question by saying: we are good by not being bad - by not touching evil. But is that all there is? Is that what we teach our children? Don't steal, don't murder, don't covet what belongs to other people? Is good just the absence of evil?

You are a hard person to know - I feel like I am slowly getting to know about you, but it's only the bare surface.

Why do you paint in that manner?
Why do you smile in a way that suggests you are smiling at something which only you know?
What do you want out of life? A quiet few years? Children? A million different experiences?
What are the questions that keep you up at night?
What are you afraid of?
What do you want that you don't already have?

The last page - time for final thoughts, since this is probably the last letter I will write in what is perhaps the first and last holiday we take together.

I think you are special - I think you already know that. You are also particular in a way that I cannot really define. I wish I could cover your body with a thousand kisses and spend a night discovering what was underneath each one. I wish I could spend a day with you and a bottle of wine on a beach, getting to know Katarina.

But the sun, the moon and the stars will continue to do what they do, and the world will move along, and maybe in a few months you will have forgotten these words - that is what makes my heart sigh.

A.

�

previous - next

�