Thursday, Feb. 06, 2003 - 8:44 p.m.

I'm writing this just a few minutes after we've spoken, and struggling to reach for something. If I reach within me I only find a complete emptiness: where there should be a heart, and consequently emotion. Anger, jealousy, desire, passion - these are all foreign objects to me.

I hope the same fate does not befall you. If I had to speculate, I would say that you as well have thrown away the greatest expectations? Is that the truth? Unfortunately, with regard to you I really don't have the slightest idea. My version of the truth is that I decided months ago that it would be an easier way to live if I just sort of passed away. It's almost as if I smashed all of my mirrors because I could not bear to look at the reflection.

But we cannot smash the most accurate mirror, can we? The mind - the mind never lies. The mind sends you messages in the seconds before you fall asleep, the mind reminds you of failures through all the livelong day so that you come to see the sea of sleep as a respite. Sleep as a sea? Maybe you would agree with me about that if I said that to dream is to float.

I want to write about you, about London, about my time there - but I hardly know where to begin. My thoughts are replete with sores and wounds where there should be strength and confidence - it is as though I grow greyer by the day. And because youth fades so quickly, when I write, but especially in cases like this, to you, I would only ever offer up that which is true, real and beautiful.

Yet even in this case it would be less than you deserve. For if I am not able to really communicate any thing - if there are no new ideas and only novel combinations of these words I play with artfully - wouldn't silence be preferable? Isn't it almost always?

Do you agree that silence does not indicate the absence of thought? In my case it usually indicates the contrary. Silence is golden....sometimes I think it is sprinkled with a precious metal the like of which we never see elsewhere, except in the case of the most gilded and beautiful of words.

I praise silence to the skies and yet here I am writing to you...

Let me speak to you about stars and valor. Do you ever yearn to, as a poet suggested, '...slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God?' I'm sure that we have spoken about belief, atheism and all that is in between. And if I recall correctly, according to you there is a power, though it is faceless, that makes sense of all our actions. Did I speak? Did I whisper (my voice will only ever be a whisper) to you about my belief that soon after departing this too-grey heath we disintegrate into ether? Into ether - a word for the material that the stars are made of.

I don't think that you or I will travel to the outer reaches of space during our lifetime. But we will eventually find a home among the stars, you and I. We will return from whence we came. We will find the best home - a resting place. Where will the eye find you among the stars? What will your home be? Will you be constant, like the Northern Star? As beauteous as Andromeda? Breathtaking? Will you be at home among whiteness - say, the lily white of a star that has just gone supernova? Or will you rest amongst the blackness of deep space, a blackness which science says indicates nothing more than the absence of light and life? Despite the difficulties, I have wanted to explore space and strange new worlds for as long as I can remember, and this led me to believe that there are secrets hidden in every pore of the solar system. Indeed - sometimes I believe that the only reason we perceive space as being black is that we know so little about it.

Perhaps it is best that I do not traverse the stars. For there might come a day when my ship glided through the farthest reaches of the known galaxy, only for me to find your face written on the surface of some lonely planet. And then I might be inconsolable - truly, even if your face being amongst the stars wasn't a sign that you had left this life - I would be rendered wordless. It is not often that I am able to gaze at a face as tranquil and free of doubt as yours.

You probably believe that I am investing your face with qualities it does not possess. So then we shall agree to disagree? But one thing I am certain of - amidst all the noise about necessary wars, nuclear weapons and freedom, I can still recognise valour and bravery.

Valour and bravery were hit last Saturday when the seven astronauts on board the space shuttle Columbia were lost. While it burned in the atmosphere the ideals of valour and fearlessness were hit. For what were those seven doing? They were not explorers, they were improvers. They were willing to risk their lives for the sake of their fellow human beings, and what was their recompense for taking this risk? Seven lives burnt into the morning sunlight.

Thomas Hardy was right after all. Happiness is only momentary and our lives are destined to be drowned in sorrow. I only hope that yours does not follow such rules.

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