Letter: September 5

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

I know you think you don't know me. But you do. You... did. For a very short amount of time, about a day. Twenty hours to be exact. We spent the day together, doing whatever we wanted to do. It was about a week before your incident. I am going to write to you. I am going to reconstruct things I remember about who you were. You have to forgive me when I skip around. I'm struggling to put it down.

It was an oddly misplaced phenomenon to view your being, stately and groomed as it always is, in McDonald's. Like that sculpture of a Grecian hero I saw in the Uffizi, and what it would have looked like if I were to place it in the center of Wal-Mart. A tropical fish in a trout farm. Amusingly, and brazenly, clashing like some surrealist figure... And the moment you spoke your voice made a conflict with everything surrounding you. So, even, that I had to bite back mirth.

Is it possible that I was only yards away from you? I don't think it's likely. Surely you would not be at Paddington Station in the late part of May. That would be something unconditionally lucky (on my part). I must have crossed paths with so many important, authoritative people that day but you're the only one I was concerned about. I've only seen you once. And despite what people tell me, once is not enough to last me a lifetime. Once is enough to drive me mad. Well, regardless of whether or not you were home that day in Paddington Station, I wasn't able to see much beside the pidgeons and some kind of love letter from Crete written in blue pen stuck to the bottom of my shoe. (Maybe someday I'll find out who wrote the letter. It was unsigned, addressed to "Beowulf", and says that "the weather is unclement in Crete this week". Why does that sound encoded? London is filled with mysteries. Including the toilets.) Well, yes. Pidgeons and a piece of paper stuck to my Merrills. What am I to do?

They say you're a cold kind of guy. I don't think so. I think you just know what you want and what you like and you probably don't bother with the rest. You could, but you don't. That's what I like about you. Your mind works in complicated intrevals and thought is oriented around soul. You want to know why I know that? So do I. It's driving me nuts.

Mr. IB, I know everything about you. I know how you think and why you think it. I can erad your actions moments beofre they even happen. My mind is tied to yours at the core like a correspondance system. Somehow I can never doubt what you're saying to me. And when you tell a fib or a lie about something, to sidestep a complicated subject, or to conceal some component of your life, I know it immediately. I may not know the truth behind your mild fabrications, but I do know that there is something brilliant lurking behind your eyes. There is something precious which you must not let out.

As I was saying, some people claim that you are cold. Distant and difficult to reach. I claim that you are startlingly warm. Like pulling a favorite sweater out of the dryer and feeling it bless your skin with its freshness. Something familiar and embracing. How could you be cold? You are no colder than a brick baking in the sun. You are not colder than a herald angel's voice. No more distant than a heart to beating. I feel every contour of yor thought processes as though I could run my fingertips over them. And, although on my part this is somewhat difficult to admit to you who are sitting reading and utter unremembering victim to my observations of you, I must imagine what sensations I could conjure if I were to run my fingertips over your physical form and be as equally so involved with this area of observation as I am with your mind. I would feel your palms and the work your hands have done. But I cannot.

So often you are incomplete to me, just as my own incomplete letters to you will never be signed with my name.

Do you ever wonder what my palms feel like too?