Strawberry Letter 35

Hello my love,

I return, a little worse for the wear, from the past to let you know that time traveling is not all that it's cracked up to be. After receiving your last letter I found myself consumed with waiting for your return. I looked around every corner, studied every face. None of them were you. A friend imparted that old nugget of wisdom "If you keep looking, it's not going to happen". My spine spikes at that idea. Sure, I've found lost baubles and such weeks after ceasing a focused attempt (in an overstuffed drawer, behind a heavy couch, in a jacket pocket) but the things that really matter have only been found when I put my mind to it, retrace my steps and realize how fucked I am without what I'm looking for. Like losing my house keys I just can't get anywhere without you. This search, my love, is how I came to find that I had traveled all the way back to 1994.
Like Alice chasing the white rabbit I thought I saw you one night, that familiar scent of pine needles and honey stung me like a swarm of bees, and I took flight after the source. He looked like you from behind, your shape, a faint puff of breath, that sweet smell that I remember when I washed your hair, kissing your neck as the freshwater filled my senses with such an aroma! The shape of the small hairs just six inches from your shoulder moving in the drops the way that moss dances on a submerged rock with the flow of the river. I heard a crunch of twigs underfoot and came to. I was outside of a house, a bright light illuminating the yard full of teens, drinking and laughing. I thought I would feel older than them but catching my style of dress in a window's reflection I realized that I had Quantum Leaped into a scene I had so often experienced at 16 or 17. The wind shifted and I caught the scent again coming up behind me. My heart swelled to think that it would be you to quell my disorientation but as I turned I sputtered at the sight of someone who was most certainly from my present. Someone who has become a master of time travel himself, skipping across years and memories to reside in small moments of joy that had nothing to do with the here and now. I felt a little violated that he had brought me to a time and place that was of some comfort to me but just enough pain to make me turn and run. I'd had enough confrontations with the objects of my affection at these parties to make me know what this fellow wanted from me and it wasn't what I wanted to bring back to 2008. I had been on your trail (so close!) and getting stuck in this slip of time was only going to knock me further and further away from you. I could see words coming from his mouth in my direction and so I pulled a pair of headphones (94 style) from the pocket of my windbreaker and hit play on the Walkman they were attached to. A familiar bouncing beat wrapped in devastating longing filled my ears and the words racing towards me popped like bubbles on my fingertips. I turned and ran, turning onto a long dark road lit only by the yellow stripes that ran down its middle. The song moved faster in my head and I matched the beat to your heart and aimed my thoughts on the notion that I had not lost you in 1994 but knew that I could only find you in 2008. I watched the fresh paint on the road slowly fade and crack with each step as I shot forward in time, the young man from 08 that I left in the lurch back in 94 whizzed by around 07 where he seemed content in resting. I felt bad leaving him there but I knew that if I was going to find you I had to get back to the here and now. The air rose in temperature and the thick lines that had once run under my shoes had crackled into faint reminders of themselves. I had made it back. As I caught my breath I hoped that I would smell your scent again moving on the air. Sadly, I only caught the smell of rain.
Wanna hear something odd? It turns out that the song I played on the Walkman had been from 2008. Even weirder? It was made by someone that I knew in 1994. I listen to it now and can't believe how much that song moves my calender back 14 years. Like it has taken its own journey through time to remind me of the things I left behind and of the span of that time that stands ahead of me just waiting to be reached into. I play that song everyday now, sometimes just for a moment, I like to think that you slipped that tape in when I wasn't looking while I actually lived in 94 and that you've been there with me every step of the way. Maybe you needed to go back for something yourself, a memory that had shifted and fallen back behind some heavy boxes, and it was indeed you that I had caught on the wind. The tape in my player was your postcard saying that you missed me. Well my love, I'm sending you back a paper kiss from 2008. I wish you were here, where you belong.

Strawberry Letter 33

As I woke up this morning through a lucidity that was the silky red of a cup of pomegranate tea I was reminded of the fact that you weren't lying next to me. I was also reminded of my sweet imagination lulling me to sleep with the make-believe that seemed so real of your beautiful arm around me. The warm sensation of your chest against my back and your light breath slowly blowing like a metal brush on a cymbal around my ear.
From your last short letter I culled some optimism that you may be making a visit soon. Even my close friends thought good of your notion. I hoped you were finally ready for things to happen the way we'd both once dreamt that they could. Yet this morning's rising left me with a hollow feeling in my gut and a crack in my heart. I've begun to feel lately that I'm like the ancient giant squid. Floating around deep in the cold recesses of the ocean, patient for your appearance. Should you come swimming by please don't mistake my arm's reach for an attack. I've merely got ten arms to hold you and I don't plan on letting you go, just return the embrace as a sign for "Yes."

Strawberry Letter 31

(photo from Matthew Porterfield's HAMILTON)
Dearest,

You've never had the pleasure of doing so but I was recently noticing that my bedroom is a wonderful place to wake up. Perhaps I've always taken it for granted, my mornings are usually a time when I grudgingly awake just to jump in the shower and speed off to work, but just today things caught me by surprise. For starters, the light is just perfect. A five dollar purchase of some thin red curtains has turned the sunlight to honey. You realize that it's morning without having to be blasted awake with a forced recognition. This creates a nice cobble stone pathway from dreams to lucidity that's just long enough to carry a lemon tinged dream or two into reality with you. The walls alongside my bed feature a few posters of Pedro Almodovar films that carry his signature mixed colors and textured lettering, opening your eyes to this kaleidoscope works well with the painting on the back of your eyelids, filled as they are with a map of the cosmos that glows and sparkles with the power of REM. Lately the temperature of the morning has been just right. If you catch a chill the cat will probably wrap your feet in his fur and purr to a slight massage.
Without you here I'm been sleeping diagonally: head North-East, feet South-West. With you I'd be sure to give you pick of your favorite side and latitudinal preference. I imagine that with you on my side waking up every morning would take on an even greater pleasure. I'd welcome the slight change in temperature and scent of your shampoo on the pillowcase. The beating of your heart and the wisps of your breath a lovely mix to the chirps of birds outside who, though they can fly, will never be lucky enough to experience what I would every day. Though I'm sure branches and leaves would feel like cotton candy with you there at eight o'clock every morning.

Strawberry Letter 29

Dearest,

Some amputees deal with an ailment known as "phantom limb". They're so used to living with all of their parts that when one is taken away from them they continue to operate and act as if the piece was never gone, until they try to use the limb and find nothing. It can cause great shock and dispair and often delays the recovery of the patient as they continually have a hard time getting used to the absence over and over again.
I suppose I've been used to you being gone for some time now, that I live each day assuming that you are there with me. I feel just like everyone else and go about my daily tasks. Then I reach for you beside me at night and find nothing were I expected to feel your warm and familiar body. I think I'm over the initial shock of this occurance but hate to think that I'll ever fully recover to the notion of your absence. That I'm different from all of the others that have full use of all their parts, some of whom take it for granted. I could seek out a prosthetic but know that my body would reject something that didn't have you coursing through it. I'll continue to nurse this wound and hope that you're keeping yourself on ice until the time is just right for reattachment.

Love,
Me

Strawberry Letter 27

Hello my love,

I thought about you this weekend on a sky like mushroom soup. I reminded a pair I know that umbrellas work better for two if you link arms. It's the only way that you can keep pace in the rain. I wondered where such a golden nugget of knowledge had come from. I finally settled on the paper pink notion that you had given me that tip long ago as a way of keeping your smile in my thoughts on rainy days. It's like how I keep your favorite drink around for a nip and your brand of smokes hidden in my cupboard. It seems silly but I just want you to know that a vanilla sight comes to mind every time I open a drawer looking for a hammer and see those cigarettes with the cellophane keeping them fresh until you come over, wet like a cat in the drink with no umbrella, and find that in your panic to outrun the heavens you dropped your last two sticks in a quickly racing mini stream. Though we both know you should quit, you really needed one especially after all that is bursting from your head to tell me. And I'll listen with a sweet ear while I turn the heat up just a notch to dry out your shoes by the vent. I'm clueless as to how many cigarettes are in a pack but I look forward to stretching out their lifetime across those days that may seem insignificant as they go by but are expensive to cash in later when they're gone.
I sat through a late show of the film AMELIE wishing that I could turn to you at all the right moments and appreciate that I had found you like the heroine finds her nerdy hero after years of not knowing he was always there. I wish that the theater had invested in those fancy seats where the arms come up so that I could lay in the nook of your arm as our faces flickered romantic reflections like a a slide show spun forward to catastrophic speeds. Your heart sounds like a projector sprocket running and it lulls me to calm. I imagine the film being shown from your gigantic eyes. In Cinemascope, of course.
I continue to look for you in the faces I see everyday and wish that you would hurry up and figure things out already so that I could wind these clocks again. Their blue faces would light up like a lightning bolt caught in gooey molasses and quietly tick away our time together again. Until that day I just continue to tell time by the warm sun and fall asleep in the night when the waiting for you turns me to a million drops of water cascading down to clean the slate and start over anew.

Until the next drop,
Keith

Strawberry Letter 25

Dearest,

I hope this reaches you in time, I have so much to tell you.
I thought I saw you tonight in a sea of bobbing pink heads. The music wafting away swayed the landscape into a unique design. To be honest, I picked up your faint aroma at first. Like the sun burning through an orange grove already a day lost in its own fire, it shocked my senses just in time to calm them. Just when I thought we would be reunited there was a clash of cymbal and a flash of the strings. It wasn't you but one of the many sent here in your place to confuse and strengthen me. It's not fair. I'm tired of flexing this muscle.
I remember your eyes that day that we separated, the iris was an island that I'd have to be lost in a storm to find. Why its been this long I'll never know, or someday I will and that's when you'll come back. Bright as a light and with that protective layer like you never left, I promise never to doubt myself or why you were there. The piece you took is yours. I've never taken my eyes of the piece I took from you. Perhaps I thought I could burn a new you out of it if I just held my gaze. LIke a diamond from the coal you'd be there.
I'm not sure if this will get to you this time but I'll keep trying like I do. Your last note was nice but full of questions that smelled like licorice. I couldn't help but turn them into a list like groceries and keep it with me always. Years we've been apart but this apricot abscence is serving my heart full with fondness.

Take care.
Keith