a brief letter to a friend
written inside a card, with a black and white landscape, and the
following caption:
"do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"
--marcel marceau
the mime said it best. perhaps it is useless, then, to write inside this card in an attempt to explain something that is better understood when left unsaid. but I don't know if I'm ready to accept that on faith quite yet. so on to the attempt to say what doesn't (or shouldn't) need saying.
wait. this first about my motives. maybe I want to say it, or to write it, because it's so fragile. vivid right now, yes, but fragile nonetheless. so maybe I am writing it for future reference. but that's what frustrates me (and, odds are, you, too). trying to capture something that always seems to elude me. the best I can do, it seems, is to be able to bear witness to it; to know I am in the moment. it is an intrinsic, wholly indescribable (as far as language will allow) essence. and here's the hitch: I don't know if I want to capture it. I always find myself (however futile the struggle is) trying (and wholeheartedly at that). but inevitably it is an attempt that ends (and, I feel now, rightfully so) in failure. coming close is maybe the more approachable (if you'll pardon the word choice) goal.so maybe I'll spend my life as an asymptote. always coming closer to my limit (pure and complete expression?), but never quite arriving.
there were times when I thought, ignorantly (blissfully), that I had done it. that I had accomplished my unattainable goal. but that was naïve. the reason I thought that I had done it, I think, was a result of mistaken identity. I only 'captured' what I had, I know now, after the original and consuming sense of it had passed. so, when I think about it now, I wonder if what I had really 'captured' had even really been what I originally set out searching for. there was certainly something there before me on the page; but it was not what I had intended it to be. I think it would've been worrisome, in retrospect, had I actually done what I set out to do. in fact, I am rather comforted by the impossibility of attaining such expression with language, of an experience I deem so influential, so beautiful to me as to inspire me to write about it. if I could actually capture with a set of 26 letters and several punctuation marks an essence that profound, that moving, then I would have to question my judgment ofthe impact of such an event on me.
so maybe this is just an attempt to remind me one day when (god forbid) "the original and consuming sense has departed," of the magic I bore witness to for a moment, an hour, a night. I pray that I am given such an opportunity to again feel such euphoria in my life. but I guess I don't want to be left wondering how it really felt some day, although (because?) it will inevitably happen anyway.
I think the futile struggles are the most heroic, though. that is why I will always try, even though my ceiling restricts me from attaining any distinction above failure. but I think the glimpse of success, even from beneath, like the sight of the light sky from just under the surface of the water, is enough to drive me indefinitely, and forever passionately.
