Diptych

Dearest Iqbal-

I was walking south on Elizabeth St, at about 7AM this morning, into the wind, and I saw walking the other way a woman about my own age, with a scarf covering mouth and nose but her eyes revealed.  I instantly recognized her.  

We had gone to Middle School together before I had moved.  She was my first real crush. Her locker was across the hall from mine-- I was 305, she was 304, the numbers alternating back and fourth down the hall-- and I'd see her everyday.  Some days I'd smile, some days I tried to look worried or busy, others I avoided eye contact to make sure she knew I had other things on my mind besides her.

I noticed that she walked home from school every day.  I did not. (Iqbal if I've told you this story before feel free to discard this letter).  I lived many miles from the school.  But one day I decided to be bold and offered to walk her home.

"Oh you live over in Masonville?"

"Yeah.  Your house is right on the way to mine.  You live on Begonia Lane, right?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, sure let's walk home."

Her name was Jillian, and we shared a really pleasant walk, never having to grope too hard for things to say.  

I took her to her mailbox, said a curt goodbye, and proceeded to walk 6 miles home arriving long after the sun had set.  

The next day I stood at my locker, facing my oversized brown coat which flowed ungracefully out of it.  The hairs on the back of my neck told me she had walked up.  Our backs were friendlily facing each other.   I held my breathe: I didn't want her to think that what happened yesterday was a big deal.  I didn't say hello or even look over at her.  She walked away.  I fled in the other direction, only to realize I'd left my locker open.  I was late for class.

Days went by.  I would occasionally wave to her or smile at her from across the gymnasium.  I looked for her everywhere and often found her.   Finally a warm weather day came.  Jillian was wearing a black cashmere (or so it seemed) turtleneck sweater.  I turned around from my locker and waved at her.  She smiled and waved back.  The late bell rang and I dashed off for class (this time remembering to slam shut 304).  

I decided that with the weather so pleasant, the friendly wave I had received, and Jillian looking so sweet today it was a perfect day to walk her home again.  My nerves were on edge but I was confident.  

The day drawing to a close, I walked to my locker.  Ahead of me I saw her outline and the black turtleneck sweater.  She turned her head to profile, then looked back, and smiled at me.

My lips formed the name. "Heather."  That was Heather.  She went to her locker.  306. 

I turned away quickly.  My heart raced.  Jillian and Heather.  They looked almost identical, and their lockers were next to one another.  I had walked home Jillian, and then been smiling at Heather.  For how long?  I turned to run, but the weather had turned bad and I wanted my coat.

  

Approaching my locker I saw the two girls.  One in a black turtleneck, the other in a purple A-line dress.  They looked nothing at all alike.

Since then, in my memory they've begun to look the same again.  I frankly don't know which one of the two I passed this morning.  

-Robert de Saint-Loup

outdate

Dearest Iqbal-

As I cryptically mentioned in my previous correspondence I have fled the Islay, following the path of General Washington's Continental Army north, up the Hudson River Valley and have bivouacked in a position of relative safety while I can wait for the AIG controversy to blow over. But just so you don't worry, unlike General Washington's army, I am remarkably well fed.

Up here in the provinces (hat tip) there's a lot of light and space and remarkably little for that light to shine on or stuff to fill the space. Might be do for some anthropological cavity searches, eh Doctor?

Oh, I forgot to tell you! I have received an official invitation to join the Brotherhood of Masons. Exciting! I'm sure you know all about the Brotherhood and their secret rituals and funny getups. I think in today's modern and secular society something as absurd and outdated as the Brotherhood is a tad refreshing. The only requirements for admission are you be a man (yes), free-born (was indeed), and believe in a higher power (but of course). The way I figure it'll be a great way to meet some new faces. And the motto, I love the motto: "It's our world, they're just living in it." Sometimes that's how I feel about you and me.

Speaking of outdated esoterica, that reminds me, my sister Lucia has decided to go to Clairvoyancy school. It started with a pseudo-religious experience she had on the subway in Baltimore wherein a woman across the car came bounding up and insisted that she knew my sister 'in a previous life.' Lucia got scared, lashed out at the woman with her over-sized purse and departed the train at the next stop. She wandered the streets of Baltimore for several hours before drifting into an academy for clairvoyants to avoid the gang related violence in the street. It was a sign! She signed up right away, putting a huge down payment on her tuition. A little facebook research later that night revealed that the person she'd known 'in a previous life' had dormed across the hall from her one semester at SUNY Geneseo. But with the down-payment already cleared out of her bank account and few other prospects, she has decided to give the Clairvoyancy thing a real (post) college try.

They started by asking her easy questions, like "Using all your faculties of Supposition and Intuition, tell me what color my hair is." Lucia aced all of those questions, leading her to think she might actually be quite good at this. She's been stumbling a bit on looking through doors and guessing people's names when their "Hi, I'm _____" stickers are obscured, but she's sticking with it. As you always say, practice makes perfect. You should write her sometimes. No doubt she'd love to hear from you.

-Robert de Saint-Loup

Portraiture

Dearest Iqbal-

Spring has sprung, and another season comes without me having heard any definitive news of how your research is going.  Along with this comes a parallel irony: for the first time in weeks it is snowing in New York. 

With each passing day I assume your opus grows and becomes more multiform and magnificent.  After all, every day you are blessed with 18 hours of waking experience 'in country' as they say.  That must equal at least a page or two of prose per diem.  You aren't like Virgil, only writing 3 lines a day; no, I think when you get home you'll need several surplus suitcases to fill with your easily thousands of pages of single typed manuscript.

An idea: instead of just writing about Zanzibar and letting your opus speak of a single, independent place only in the context of itself, you should walk home (of course taking a boat/plane to cross water masses), and as you travel home you keep writing your social anthropology so that the reader not only gets to know Zanzibar as an island but it's relationship with other places.  Anyone can describe a place, but any place is next to another place, which is next to another place, which ultimately is where I am.  To imagine the slow, barely perceptible gradations, the gentlest differentiation of customs, of handshakes, of smiles, of sex, to feel the change in language not between Swahili and Afrikaans and Chewa, but between Swahili at this longitude and Swahili at that longitude, now that is something! Give it a thought, Iqbal!

Speaking of social anthropology, I'm currently reading Mary Ann Evans (who was actually a man).  It's a pretty good, spacious, democratic 19th century novel.  It's funny because the narrator is always pointing out hypocrisies and ironies and the many foibles of her characters, and it's quite funny, but the characters never seem to notice just how funny they are.  It's like a fish not knowing what water is: they are so subsumed by irony and gentle absurdity that they can't even see it.  Luckily we aren't like that!

-Robert de Saint-Loup

P.S.  Enclosed is a re-production of a painting of Mary Ann Evans in rather unconvincing drag.

Dearest Iqbal-

Apparently the high in Zanzibar will be 90 degrees fahrenheit today.  Sounds lovely.  In the new world it's been drizzling all day.  Rain can be nice as long as you don't have to fight against it, as long as you are sedentary and in league with the vague depression it demands.  Of course, by depression I mean no connotation of sadness, only lethargy and maybe a down-comforted anhedonia.  But I am at work, and have to abandon the islay tonight (if only briefly).  

How do you find the women in Zanzibar?  I understand that you're there for research which is an inherently impersonal enterprise, but you too are a man.  Do you feel an alienation from the people because you are there to study them?  I imagine when you go out socially and you tell them that your relationship with their culture is objective study it must put a damper on conversation.  That which they are so steeped in they are unaware of, you are chewing on.  Are you always looking for clues in your social outings?  Little hints or subtleties of interaction that while not being directly applicable to your grand work may elucidate, indirectly, some more concrete element?

I suppose cross cultural (even academic) dating is no more alienating than the objectification and analysis that goes on within a culture.

But at the same time there's the advantage of geography!  Romances that occur on extended trips are always the most intense because you know it won't be long until you have to say adieu and that pre-ordained pain guarantees suffering, and suffering is a synonym of Passion.  Maybe you should even look for someone on the far side of a language barrier.  Just think, you'll always have Zanzibar....

I eagerly away your reply.

-Robert de Saint-Loup

Dearest Iqbal-

Something needs to be addressed from the previous letter I wrote. 

Luke quotes Christ as saying "Are not five sparros sold for two pennies?"  Suggesting that 2.5 sparrows can be had for a penny.  That's absurd!  Is Luke suggesting that Christ thought you could buy half a sparrow?  Sparrows are chosen in this anecdote because they are small and essentially indivisible.  

And then Matthew further complicates things: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?"  I don't know, you tell me!  If they are, then the price of 2 sparrows is one penny, which is not the same price that Luke quotes.  Now if they can't keep the price of sparrows straight, maybe they're wrong about other stuff?  Maybe Matthew meant that Christ said: "Some of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father" or Luke: "God lost count of the hairs on your head."  

Now you're an intellectual; please help!

-Robert de Saint-Loup

Argumentum

Dearest Iqbal-

Every time I get back the automated response from you I re-read it, searching through those uniform and consistent sentences for a tone, a double meaning, a hint that I may have missed in the past or that has evolved over the time you have spent out of country.

Think of the changes that will have become manifest since you were last here.  Nothing has truly changed.  My middle name is still the same, and the color of the sun is pretty consistent, and 4 is still NBC, but changes that have been occurring over our lifetimes have become distinctly manifest, and that is usually the moment that matters.

In this sense we miss the boat.  We mistake a hundred million grains of sand for a dune.  Is it better to say 'that's a dune' or to say 'I cannot even fathom what it is'?  It reminds me of Borges' 'Argumentum  Ornithologicum':

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds.  The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw.  Was the number of birds definite or indefinite?  The problem involves the existence of God.  If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw.  If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted.  In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds.  I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc.  That integer-- not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc-- is inconceivable.  Ergo, God Exists.

Now of course there is a slight glibness to Borges (detectable in the the title and the unecessary "ergo").  Speaking from experience I can tell you that librarians (even blind ones) have a sense of humor.  But isn't he quite right? 

It reminds me of The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter 12.  Luke quotes Christ as saying: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one them is forgotten by God.  Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered."  (Conveniently mirrored in Matthew 10:22: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father").  

Those two quotes go hand-in-hand with the Borges piece, no?  Birds are an ideal vehicle for ontological discussion.  First: they often travel in flocks, which happily blur the line between independent creatures (each of which is numbered) and a collective identity being guided by a divine or all-powerful force.  Second: they fly!  Nothing reminds us of the rules we must follow than seeing them broken ('I am tied to the earth like a silent slave').  In fact, I'd say that we can't recognize something as a rule unless we see it broken.  No? 

Hope all is well!

-Robert de Saint Loup

Iqbal!

It's been too long. My pencil broke, snapped right in half, so I couldn't write rough drafts that I would later type into an email for you.  

Last night I had a dream about a black rabbit.  It was super friendly, came right over, was social, and ate watermelon out of my hand.  Isn't that odd?  Rabbits are generally not very social, nor are they known for liking watermelon.

Last night I was walking home from seeing a movie (The Reader--- nahhhh).  I was on the phone and was standing on a street corner waiting for a light to change.  Next to me was a cute girl in a beret.  I smiled at her.  She smiled back.  We both looked away.  Then we both looked back and smiled again. I knew what I had to do.  

I hung up the phone and said 'hi.'  We chatted for a second in the street, then I asked her for coffee, right then. She looked at her watch and said 'why not?'  Coffee was lovely, we exchanged numbers, I saw her to the train and was quite happy with myself.  I should so this more often, just being outgoing and social.*

I might enclose a poem I wrote in the next letter I send.  I hope to get a response from you soon!

-Robert de Saint Loup

*Everything in the second paragraph of that story didn't happen.