these are the letters we don't send. the ones that say, talk to me. talk to me. what virginia woolf called the close contact of a naked mind. why don't we talk about words anymore? why don't we talk about what's important anymore? merleau-ponty said we move through language the way a fish swims through water. we swim through language, just under the surface of the words, almost but never drowning. i want to talk about -- the slipperiness of words. the way they leap out of your hands, like fish. the way we move through them, or barely move through them. the way we are compelled towards them. i thought you might have been able to understand -- that's such a terrible word nowadays, understand -- to see, perhaps -- what words meant. what it meant to be able to play with language -- to return to words slowly, tentatively, humbly, even -- but always with great delight. the words are to me, perhaps, what music might be to you -- something as easy as breath, as necessary as laughter. why don't we talk anymore? (which is all to hide the more mundane but depressingly frequent plea: you're too intense. (life more convincing vibrating like a knife?) you take things too seriously. -- perhaps; but at least i don't take myself as seriously as many do. i would rather take things seriously. like max beerbohm said: i try to avoid the base idolatry of taking myself seriously. alright. i'm not trying to -- steamroll? force? pressure? you. and it doesn't fucking matter anyway, does it? (of course it does. there is nothing you can take from me than i would more willingly give -- except my life, except my life, except my life. you would think that indicative of something -- passion? intensity? depth? i think it's indicative of a somewhat perverse delight in misquotation. new criterion: someone who enjoys misquoting hamlet.) and so.) and so? i've lost track of the parentheses. i suppose i ought to start writing poems seriously again; some good should come out of this. (-- see, i believe in the having loved and lost thing... -- well i don't; i don't take comfort in the loss. -- but it's not about taking comfort in the loss; it's about taking comfort in the love, and accepting the loss as part of that.) whatever.