The following is a documentation of correspondence between myself and my good friend Iqbal, who is currently out of the country. To begin at the beginning is advisable, but unnecessary, as the nature of our conversation is, by all accounts, deeply universal and fundamentally relatable.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Dearest Iqbal-

I hope you passed a pleasant Thanksgiving in Tanzania/Zanzibar. It must be strange recognizing that a holiday is passing but not living in a nation where it is celebrated. You must by hyperaware of the rituals and traditions going on far away; rituals and traditions which culturally you should be a part of. Instead you are apart. As you sit down to dinner in Zanzibar, and the people around you act as if it's an ordinary day (which of course it is), can you imagine what they should be doing? What they might give thanks for?

Robert de Saint-Loup

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Dearest Iqbal-

Your silence has led me to make decisions for us that you my not approve, but I think I'll do it anyway.  Until you respond, I'm going to publicly post these letters on a blog.  You don't mind, do you?

I suppose you'd laugh at me; call me a po-mo hipster or whatever.  My jeans aren't that skinny and you know it.  I think I'm doing it more for me than for you.  Every time I email you,  gmail tells me my message has been sent.  Sent off into the ether (the 'series of tubes' that is the internet according to FORMER Sen Ted Stevens).  But you don't write back, and that's cool, and all.  I've never held it against you, but sometimes it's nice to see in a solid form that at least I'm real!  Hence the blog that this letter will be posted to right after I send it to you.

I watched No Country for Old Men again last night.  Only the second time I've seen it.  I think it's quite good.  Do you?  That's pretty un-po-mo for you!  Despite the love and adoration that Javier Bardem got for his performance, the best really is Tommy Lee Jones.  He's really understated and elegant, good at playing a character who knows just enough to realize how small he is (I think that's an interesting theme in the movie: how self-aware are these characters and how might they act differently if they were more self-aware).  More than that, it makes me think about what self-awareness is.  Some people fixate on identity as the key to self-awareness, while others think about their role in a larger structure/cosmos.  Is the proper question "Who am I?" or "Where do I fit?"

Where do we fit Iqbal?

-Robert de Saint Loup

Monday, November 24, 2008

Dearest Iqbal-

I am a bit confused about the nomenclature.  Tanzania and  Zanzibar? Tanzania or Zanzibar?  Tell me if I am correct about the following:

Tanzania, it seems, is a relatively large East African nation.  The name, shockingly, is a combination of the word Tanganyika (which is the mainland part) and Zanzibar (the island).  I don't know.  It seems sloppy.  Can that be right?  Like a child named it.

Please shed some light on this.

-Robert de Saint-Loup


automated response from Iqbal...

Thank you for your e-mail.  I am currently in Tanzania/Zanziber during research for the year and will have limited internet access.  It will take some time for me to respond.

My new cell is: +XXX (X)XXX XXX-XXX

Have a wonderful and blessed day.

Asante (thank you),

Iqbal
Dearest Iqbal-

Received your letter yesterday regarding the status of the internet in Zanzibar.  Difficult.  I remember being in India and having to play spider solitaire for hours waiting for the dial up to dial up.  

Irregardless (of whether that is a word), hear about Sen. Clinton becoming Sec. Clinton?  A consonant here and consonant there and the legacy is set!  I know you, and most of society, find her distasteful, but I love that woman. Maybe I'll devote some time to that, in a later letter.

In your absence I've been writing sestinas.  Some are good, many are not.  Maybe I'll post one or two.  I'd love some of your feedback.  Having fresh eyes, especially eyes on a different continent (never underestimate the influence of geography on the reading of texts) might be helpful.

I came across this passage in newspaper (or novel, can't remember which).  Thought it might be interesting to you:

"It has been said that silence is a strength; in a quite different sense it is a terrible strength in the hands of those who are loved.  It increases the anxiety of the one who waits.  Nothing so tempts us to approach another person as what is keeping us apart; and what barrier is so insurmountable as silence?  It has been said that silence is torture, capable of goading to madness the man who is condemned to it in a prison cell.  But what an even greater torture than that of having to keep silence it is to have the endure the silence of the person one loves!... more cruel than the silence of prisons, that kind of silence is in itself a prison."

In your absences my therapy sessions (with two different therapists now, good grief!) have begun to read like pages out of the Gossip Girl novels.  Play-by-Play of silly games.  I enjoy Dr. Petra.  Technically he's just a psychiatrist, a fancy drug pusher.  But we're becoming close.  We think and express ourselves in the same way. Maybe that's bad.  Maybe part of therapy should be challenging the way I think and express myself and being so comfortable with him might be dangerous (or at the least, not productive).

I do hope you are receiving my correspondence.  Hope the weather in Zanzibar is well.

Robert de Saint-Loup