Dear Heartbeat, v. 4

[From the envelope…]

Dear Heartbeat,

See enclosed for a fourth

in the now by no doubt

grueling ongoing installment

of what was a simple request –

no doubt innocent – for a

single loooooooooong letter.

So there’s this story

about a lonely baby platypus,

but that a story

for a separate time,

an other space.

M---

Heartbeat,

I have a new dictionary.

The Oxford Shorter.

It is terribly intimidating.

Why in the world I need

a dictionary

with the internet

is beyond me.  Has

something to do with the

tactile, with the being able

to touch, as it were, the words –

it’s not the etymological beast

that the 20 volume set is,

it doesn’t trace the words

through their variations to their

Scottish-Cherokee roots:

shame, that.

But don’t think I’m going

to let that stop me from attempting

to read the thing.

This will be done in the service

of passing time.

I can’t be sure

what the phrase

passing time

is really supposed to mean.

It makes you want to believe

that time is stationary

and that

one is leaving it behind.

And yet, of course,

that is absolutely the ironical

last thing it feels like, as it feels

as though you’re not moving at all,

and you have to watch

a clock

to know that time is moving

in the least.  You alphabetize things,

you move something a centimeter,

you move it back,

an hour is gone.

How it went, where it went,

so many more moments of a short

life – no matter how long

you live – gone with centimeters.

Not as poetic

as the wind,

exactly.

If I were convinced that you were

going to read this, I would

at some point work on injecting

some humor, these all seem

so droll and removed from how

I am normally.

Around you.

I would at some point add

something to let you know my

cherries are still rung by you, and not make

you wade through a bunch of

pseudo-quasi-existwhereamiherealist

(as opposed to the

existwhyamiherealist stuff).

But I’m not

convinced.

You said to tell

you what I think.

You will have by now come to the quite

correct conclusion that it is so much

better when I don’t think.

Sooooooo much.

Megaton better just to go

forward, to try to pass time

without stopping to wander

around the racepoint, wondering

what time was doing exactly

while you passed it.

I mean, what does time pass –

what is it racing against?

This may be a question for either

the time-space continuum

hiding in the closet,

or for a separate and later

letter.

All this metaphor,

all this parable.

Til anon ---

M---