The Correspondent Virginia Evans Quotes

I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.

I didn't know it was happiness at the time, because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self doubt.

knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid,

Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.

I know you know this, but I want to repeat that when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them. It doesn’t help a bit to hear that when you’re young, but later it will.

we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic.

Grief shared, I think, can produce two outcomes. Either you bind yourselves together and hold on for dear life, or you let go and up goes a wall too high to be crossed.

I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about.

The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it?

How cruel life is only this long. Now that I see clearly, I’d like more time.

I wonder, was I always lonely? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home in the world, but I’m not sure that’s unique.

We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die.

Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read. I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.

You get the one life. It’s awfully unfair, isn’t it?

Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?

with age I have learned my feelings and my experience are, sadly, not unique. Terrible things happen. We make choices. Time cannot be rewound. The good that comes out of the bad can be unbearable.

when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them.

Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like—What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside me. It’s gotten a bit softer over time

But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside.

And yes, I will go into the year as you said: boldly, unapologetically, head up and not taking bullshit from anyone with a penis. You seem a worthy person to offer such advice.

What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace…. Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time. Joan Didion, “On the Morning After the Sixties,” The White Album

am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.

Someone I loved very much said once to me there is no parallel universe; there is no ‘what could have been if only.’ How I wish there was.

You are a wonderful, interesting woman, full of love and kindness, but you are so damn stubborn and determined you know exactly what is right in every situation.

Perhaps if you have children, they will remember you; if you have grandchildren, they, God allowing, may also retain a few fragments of memory including you, but their children will not. They may keep some old photos in a book on a shelf, and perhaps two or three times in a lifetime may turn the page and find your face

it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold

Now that I’m dying it seems much simpler than it ever did before. Living

Imagine all that you have said to another, all the commentary you have exchanged with friends over drinks, over the phone with colleagues and distant relatives, all the prattle sent quickly, mindlessly over e-mail, messages typed into your cellular phone, and really, the sum of this interpersonal communication is the substance of your life, relationships being, as we know by now in our old ages, the meat of our lives;

I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about. I wish someone would have thought to say to me, earlier on, 'Sybil, over and over again serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.' Of course I didn't say anything of the sort to my own children, and I probably never would.

An e-mail can in no way replace a written letter. It does concern me that one day all the advancement of technology will do away with the post

we always trying to get back to the happier times? I think that is what it feels like, with Gill. I’ve spent my life trying to get back to having him even though I know I cannot.

all this time, of course, but the fact is that I got every moment of you there was.

I had a bad feeling in my bowels and I realized it’s because after a quarter-century drought, at the age of seventy-seven, I find myself courted by two men at the same time!

Gilbert has never left me, and the circumstances of his death have never for one day diminished, and as I age it feels so strange that the majority of people with whom I come in contact don’t have the slightest inkling that he ever lived. I had him for so much less time than I’ve lived without him, and yet his presence is enormous, though I keep it to myself.

I guess I was considered somewhat odd. I wasn’t a cheerful, frivolous little girl interested in dolls and drawing. I was serious and rather grave. Watchful, wary. I was a skeptic. I didn’t have many friends. I read a great deal. I was reading all the time.

It was agonizing because it felt so true to the experiences of my own life

It appears the matter is not one of policy, but of your caprice.

I look in the mirror and how can it be? I am an old woman. What has my life been

here is a secret: my letters have been far more meaningful to me than anything I did with the law. The letters are the mainstay of my life

I have missed you all this time

we are thirty in our hearts

there are complexities of human life that cannot be boiled down to black and white.

I'm not sure I've ever felt at home in the world, but I'm not sure that's unique

perhaps you are asking how the grief wears over time partly from a place of kindness and partly, on the other hand, from a place of self-preservation, and understandably so, wondering what you should expect in your own situation of hell.

what is left of you, nearly erased, in fewer than three generations, and your life, the life you see from the inside, right now, as monumental, will be reduced to the blood in their veins and perhaps, if you are lucky, a distant namesake,

I supposed there is this one part of it, which is, Gilbert has never left me, and the circumstances of his death have never for one day diminished, and as I age it feels so strange that the majority of people with whom I come in contact don't have the slightest inkling that he ever lived.

I had one of those stopovers when the children were young, just before Gilbert died, and Daan and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness and exhaustion

What I have made for myself is personal

In any case, I wish I could say after all this time it's easier, but it's not easier

was quiet and watchful. I remember always finding it odd the way people had of speaking around and around a thing rather than directly to the thing

Did I ever tell you that when I was about nine years old my parents gave me a short letter that had been written by my birth mother when she handed me off?

I thought I would need someone to find me bearable

I guess there’s no bottom to a person

Of course you are bored. The mind was not created for idleness. Golf

You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts

He said he wants to take me shooting (imagine) and to his golf club for “the best crab cakes I’ve ever had”—in TEXAS—and I told him that was downright offensive. Anyway

If you do find anything, Harry, please refrain from sending me an e-mail with long strings of characters in blue I’m meant to click.

I despise the notion of Texas with every atom in my being, a hot, barren wasteland of tumbleweed and people carrying guns and wearing cowboy boots,

I will go into the year as you said: boldly, unapologetically, head up and not taking bullshit from anyone with a penis.

Terrible accidents happen all the time to many, many people. The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it? And it persists.

What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning.

Golf, drinking, staying in one’s pajamas until late in the morning, stretching oneself to find ways in which to pass the days is the way we were meant to spend our vacation weeks, not decades of our lives.

I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.

It is beyond my comprehension the lengths to which children will go in the name of cruelty, and I know you know this, but I want to repeat that when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them.

Did you read the book Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro? I am haunted by it. How

who I was doing my best to be. But I have to tell you something There were times I hated you, but it was always I I have hated myself, and that was what it was You loved me

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words

I think neither of us was able to shepherd them in those first crucial months

I blamed you

run on the unrealistic hopes of gullible schmucks desperate for family.

Outlander.

will be what is left of you

Now that that part of my life is over

We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious

he was well liked because he only ever said the things people wanted to hear. He taught me that

There is a quote from one of my friend Joan Didion’s essays. It’s from the last essay in The White Album. The quote is: “What I have made for myself is personal

he was finding confidence behind the veil of ink on the page, as many people do. He

That amazement one feels at this stage of life—a sort of astonishment that is also confusion, which leads to a sort of worry, or a sort of fear,

The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to the happier times?

When you rush you pen things you didn’t mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means

Second postscript: I am watching this Donald Trump for the presidency in disbelief. The thing has legs

Postscript: A good punch line is a good punch line regardless if delivered by a man or a woman. You sound like an old fool with comments like that one.

are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die.

There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, ‘oh, this is only a season.’ You know what I am referring to, don’t you? I mean how if someone is in difficulty they’ll say ‘it’s only a season.’ Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season—a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!)—and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are, by definition, four seasons that repeat in measured pattern year after year. As there is no such rhythm in the human life, I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die. One turn of the seasons per person, unless it’s cut short, like it was for Gill, and like it was for Quintana Roo. I suppose, on this schedule, we’d say your John had made it to fall. My mother died in her summer.

The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to the happier times? I think that is what it feels like, with Gill. I’ve spent my life trying to get back to having him even though I know I cannot.

I am finding I have nowhere to put all of this. I’m sorry, but do you know what I mean? It’s like I’ve come home from the grocery store overburdened with bags, but the cupboards, the refrigerator, the pantry, the countertop are all already full. A mother and father? But I had a mother and father. Siblings? I have a sibling. It feels a betrayal to even acknowledge you exist! No vacancy. No room at the inn. We’re all full up, and yet the thing I always thought was so small now seems as enormous as a galaxy, this thing I have felt my whole life, and that is, a sense of something missing, this curiosity of why my mother let me go. I haven’t the tools for it

But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch

You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic. I miss you. Back in late April, and Theodore will accompany me for a visit. You’re the only person left who writes, and I’m grateful.

I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years.

Honestly, it was like my mother was the makeup of his skeletal system, she died and the bones POOF disappeared, and the rest of him, the meat, the organs, the skin, slopped to a pile. He was this way for about a year until he remarried (new bones, new skeleton).

There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, ‘oh, this is only a season.’ You know what I am referring to, don’t you? I mean how if someone is in difficulty they’ll say ‘it’s only a season.’ Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season—a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!)—and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are, by definition, four seasons that repeat in measured pattern year after year. As there is no such rhythm in the human life, I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one

When I look back at my life as a mother I have a pervasive sense of failure, and yet look at you. Your life is full and good, and so is your brother’s. Fiona, I am sorry I’ve kept you at an arm’s length, teaching you not to need me. I am sorry I was bitter that you visited Rosalie and punished you for it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I am going blind. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending

believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.

You get the one life. It’s awfully unfair

as a new box of the good Smythson letter writing paper

I have found it to be absolutely astounding

You said it feels like giving up

serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.

was I always lonely? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home in the world, but I’m not sure that’s unique.

She wanted to know with whom I exchange correspondence

looked

I was learning what vastness is found in the hearts of men.

I know you know this, but I want to repeat that when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them.

He’d built houses or buildings and things for so many people

Grief shared

It has always been my nature to see things in black and white

are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious

I could write to anyone. I could take the time to think through what I wanted to say

we are thirty in our hearts,

I’ve spent my life trying to get back to having him even though I know I cannot.

take great care with my selections now, knowing my years of reading are coming to an end.

to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way

Dezi said something to me. He said there are complexities of human life that cannot be boiled down to black and white.

of State of Wonder

To say what people want to hear

The appeal for someone like me (us) to find

Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like - What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside of me

simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world,

I've spent my life trying to get back to having him even though I know I cannot.

.. reaching out in correspondenceis really one of the original forms of civility in the world,the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see.

Just as a summer afternoon is gorgeous from inside air-conditioning

I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.

The Emperor of All Maladies.

It is beyond my comprehension the lengths to which children will go in the name of cruelty

Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like—What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside me. It’s gotten a bit softer over time, but it’s never gone. I walk around the house or dig in the garden or wander the grocery store or sit at my desk and there’s a screaming inside my head like an air horn that warns of war.

And we are both caught in the wretched web of aging, aren't we, but I hope this last stretch of time we both have, I hope it is full for you. This is also, I suppose, what I hope for myself.

Real hell for this woman. I can still picture her. Elizabeth Franklin was her name, teensy little thing sitting up on the stand and holding up her handbag, which had been chewed by rats at night.

didn’t have many friends. I read a great deal. I was reading all the time. I remember that. And I wrote a great many letters as a child. Writing letters was easier for me than speaking; it still is.

too. To say what people want to hear, not necessarily the truth, because most people tell you they want to hear the truth, but they do not, and if you tell the truth it will come back to bite you like a snake finding its own tail to swallow. I remember how he would say this to my brother and me and I didn’t like the way it sounded because my mother taught the opposite, that if we do not say the truth we have nothing. We are nothing.

Did I? And laid him on his side on the dock. There were two moles on his back and I must have stared at them because I see his tan, wet back, the two moles. Did I scream for help? Who got him out of the lake? Was it me? In my memory, it’s all silence. It has been a long time since I returned to that. It’s been years. It’s possible it’s been decades. What do you remember? Suddenly I am hungry for these memories. Write me and tell me what you remember.

But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years. I had one of those stopovers when the children were young, just before Gilbert died, and Daan and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness

I write slowly. A letter might take me an hour or more. I do not rush. I think through each sentence. My hand does not get tired. You mustn’t rush. When you rush you pen things you didn’t mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means, to think of the right word. Sometimes I write a draft and mark it up, then write a clean copy to send. I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning. You’re most welcome to write me back if you’d like, but my suggestion would be to think of someone who is far away, someone you don’t see frequently or speak to often on the phone but dearly wish you could, and write to them instead. I wish you the very best.

We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die. One turn of the

The first letter I ever wrote was in 1948 to P. L. Travers regarding her book Mary Poppins. I loved this book and read it numerous times. I loved that Mary Poppins conducted her own life, and the lives of the children Jane and Michael, in such a controlled, even military, manner. This appealed to me terribly, that level of strict control—it seemed very safe. But also, somehow, there was such a great deal of creativity, adventure, color, surprise! And there was something about—Mary Poppins wasn’t their mother, and you knew (even as a child) she couldn’t rightly stay there forever, but as a child I imagined this lovely secret, that Mary Poppins was my real mother and that one day she would float down into my yard on the handle of an umbrella and declare I was her daughter, and she would explain the whole reason for having farmed me out, and then she would settle, and take me back and mind me with that perfect combination of wonder and predictability, though I knew obviously the book was a work of fiction and she would not, and also, didn’t I know, Colt, that as much as I wanted this, I also didn’t want it. I knew the moment she settled in to become

I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic.

Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like - What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside of me I walk around the house or dig in the garden, or wander the grocery store, or sit at my desk and there’s a screaming inside my head. Like an air horn that warns of war

do not live in India and I am not Indian. I have lived here in California with my wife and two children for three years. I moved to the US from Syria when my home was destroyed. I have an advanced degree in engineering, but I work at the moment in customer service for Kindred out of necessity because my degree is not enough to prove me in this country.

I have found it to be absolutely as-tounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about. I wish someone would have thought to say to me, earlier on, 'Sybil, over and over again serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.' Of course I didn't say anything of the sort to my own children, and I probably never would.

What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read. I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.

cannot quite manage to move past the fact that you, my best friend, the person I held dearest to myself, would betray me by hosting my own daughter, who, as you very well know, I see once a year if I am lucky, and keep it from me. How humiliating, that you and she should see fit to need to conduct clandestine meetings. How wonderful it must be for you to have such a strong bond with Fiona, such an intimate, confiding relationship. I cannot imagine such a pleasure, but it sounds WONDERFUL. I just relish the thought of her cozying up in your den telling you all the ways in which I have failed her as a

You are a remarkable woman. Solid as a mountain. Intelli-gent. I loved your intelligence first, that smart brightness in your eyes, the look you had when I met you - like you were ready, whatever was coming, you were ready. With you I felt formid-able. You say what you mean. You are well able for the hard things, much more than I am. Your career was astounding. It makes me proud. You still occupy a large space in me. I felt honored those years we were together that you entrusted me with your stones, and I still keep them. I want you to know that, even though it's not what I'm writing for. I want you to know I keep your stones as sate as ever.

There is an articulation of life one hears again and again. People will say, 'oh, this is only a season'. You know what I am referring to, don't you? I mean how if someone is in difficulty they'll say 'it's only a season'. Or if someone is having a new baby and in the sleepless nights, an older woman will comfort with this idea that the expanse of time is a season - a winter, I suppose? (rather, a hurricane season!) - and the season will change eventually to something sunnier. I take issue with this. There are, by definition, four seasons that repeat in human life, I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die. One turn of the seasons per person, unless it's cut short (...). But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what i'm getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years. I had one of those stopovers when the children were young, just before Gilbert died, and Daan and I were happy, even though I didn't know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self-doubt. But Gilbert's death was a swift ejection back out to the loneliest bitter stretch of road, and that is the bone crunching grief. I'm not saying I did not come in from the wind a few more times in my life; I have. (...) The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren't we always trying to get back to the happier times?

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro?

As there is no such rhythm in the human life, I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die.

Dear Dr. Jameson, It’s in the last week or so I am suddenly finding it much more difficult to see.

If all of this amounts to you as nothing more than drivel, then you might also consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see. The WRITTEN WORD, Mr. Watts. The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It's all the same.

If all of this amounts to you as nothing more than drivel, then you might also consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see. The WRITTEN WORD, Mr. Watts. The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It's all the same.

I know you think of me as your mother only

Not nostalgia

the muck of advertisements blinking away)

guess there’s no bottom to a person

If you have suffered the death of a child

when someone(s) treats you poorly

Dynasty of Sight.

People will say

extremely

It smelled cold this morning

I would be simply asleep

Imagine

I’ve taken your personality

Dear Ms. Van Antwerp, I am writing in response to your two letters (dated August 10 and August 25) in which you requested permission to audit a literature course in the University of Maryland College Park College of English, undergraduate. I regret to inform you that I am unable to extend this permission. Courses at the University of Maryland are reserved exclusively for students enrolled at the college, and we have made changes to certain regulations, including the loophole that was employed to allow your audit of many courses in the past. Sincerely, Melissa Genet Dean of the English Department Professor of Poetry/Poetry Workshop Undergraduate and Graduate University of Maryland, College Park

years,

when you find a place for yourself in the world,

caprice.

When you rush you pen things you didn't mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means, to think of the right word. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.

You would think I’d have it down to memory by now

My birthday is August 10,

The stretches on the high

Terrible accidents happen all the time to many

I loved your intelligence first, that smart brightness in your eyes, the look you had when I met you--like you were ready, whatever was coming, you were ready. With you I felt formidable. (p. 112)

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.

Gilbert has never left me

Imagine all that you have said to another

And yet

The mind was not created for idleness. Golf

The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun

I remember when you said in an email that when you find a place for yourself in the world

think of someone who is far away

I am home. The landscape soars

He doesn't talk to me much. From his letters I'd assumed he would be more talkative. But either these past months have killed off something in him or all along he was finding confidence behind the veil of ink on a page, as many people do.

when you find a place for yourself in the world, it feels like music, and I

someone(s) treats you poorly

Honestly, it was like my mother was the makeup of his skeletal system, she died and the bones POOF disappeared, and the rest of him, the meat, the organs, the skin, slopped to a pile.

yes, I will go into the year as you said: boldly, unapologetically, head up and not taking bullshit from anyone with a penis. You seem a worthy person to offer such advice.

have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about.

At seventy-eight years old I have no intention of ever remarrying and I assure you I will conduct my life as I see fit, and if that means I pass some of my days with one man and other days with someone else, that is my choice to make. If it troubles you, then I suggest you reverse and go find somewhere else to park yourself.

What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This

And I was angry

Furthermore

I’d press on every once in a while.)

I remember when you said in an email that when you find a place for yourself in the world, it feels like music.

Now, of course, I always welcome your thoughts on every matter, but in this case, I beg you to tread thoughtfully because I fear I'm so perplexed by the matter that anything you say might make tracks I'd be unable to erase.

Grief shared, I think, can produce two outcomes. Either you bind

They all came filing out of the room chattering away and carrying little styrofoam cups of coffee and nobody noticed me. (This is the trouble with being only five foot one inch

Hello Basam,You were very helpful on the phone. Typically speaking with customer service agents somewhere over in India is EXCRUCIATING.

we are both caught in the wretched web of aging

You are a remarkable woman. Solid as a mountain. Intelligent. I loved your intelligence first

What happened on 29 May 1941 brings me both grief and shame, although with age I have learned my feelings and my experience are, sadly, not unique. Terrible things happen. We make choices. Time cannot be rewound. The good that comes out of the bad can be unbearable.