“The last light fades and drifts across the land—the low, long land, the sunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres and wander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridor of trees; pale fires echo the night from tower top to tower… this midnight my desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dear Friend,
If you’re like me, lately you’ve been cushioned and cooped in some small corner of the world—like most of the world, as I understand it. Meaning now’s as good a time as any to be writing letters.
I don’t know if you’ll see this, or if you’ll read it. But if you do, I thought—I’d hoped—you would listen. The days have grown darker of late, my mind left to wrestle with this new isolation and silence, left to the mercy of its own devices. The voices of others have faded; the voices in my head grow to treacherous echoes. To keep them quiet, I lose myself in books and in the sky. Usually it works, except during times like tonight when my thoughts are spinning like the ceiling fan. Please don’t think of me as too unstable after reading this. I just wanted to be honest. And writing helps. Having someone to listen helps.
Hence this letter.
Just knowing that you might read this and understand…it lessens the ache, this fear of fading. I believe it’s your real friends who see you, even when you lose sight of yourself. I know life is not some giant, interactive, multi-layered puzzle box like I so often make it. But it’s been hard to find my way around since the world turned upside down.
I was standing on Main Street when it happened. When it all started catching fire. There was so much smoke in my eyes, and the parade just kept going by. Alice pointed to me and said quite emphatically, “He’s not a lost boy! He’s not.” She believed it. I’m trying to believe it too.
Life has since moved on relentlessly. Begrudgingly. People do what they can to hold on to what used to be. Connections are fraying; my perimeters are getting smaller. I thought I wanted such a little thing from life, but maybe I wanted too much. And yet, against the crushing storm of emotions at the prospect of starting all over again, there is happiness here too. Some strange freedom in all this letting go.
But what am I to do now? Drown myself in wine and art and nothing at all? I am angry a great deal, full of burning rage and passions. Some unextinguished fire of youth drives me against the ways of the world. I want so desperately to be an influential piece of the current literary scene. But literature is dying. People hardly stop to read anymore. And those who write don’t seem inspired enough. No one challenges the way we think, the way we dream. Not like they used to. I’m not saying I could be one to change the game, but dammit, if I don’t want the chance to try. A wild thought born out of being young and foolish. Still, it keeps me up at night. I must do something, screams the youth in me—even if it means screaming my words from the crests of these sorry suburban hills, then collapsing with some sense of defeated age beneath the trees. Either I must find a way to return to a past century, one better suited for my burning mind, or I must change this one. I feel there can be no in between.
But maybe this is still too much to be thinking of. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’ve been given all this time just to be and be still.
That feels impossible.
With all this room to breathe, my thoughts cannot hold still. They are much more vivid now—much more visceral. They only come to me in memories and dreams. In crises and revelations.
It’s surreal to the point that I keep expecting some doorway to open before me, revealing at last an other and hidden world. Any day now some crack in the wall will appear, some tear in the fountain, some unforeseen depth in my closet. Or the earth itself may open from beneath, swallowing me down some dark and euphoric rabbit hole (though I do a well-enough job of falling into those on my own).
As the line between them grows less defined, fiction begins to spill into reality—tipped like buckets of paint gathering in my imagination’s lawless and immeasurable space. Phantasmagoric haunts and wonders bleed through the loose confines of my dreaming and spill like shadows into the room. Trying to lock the visions away proves unsuccessful, for once one phantom is free, all fantasies burst forth, spreading to every corner, materializing in visions of grandeur and horror.
During the day such moments are generally insignificant. Conversations invoke a vision of being stuck in particular literary scenes—such that you’d find in one of Fitzgerald’s books or Chekhov’s plays or those dreadful short stories I’d on occasion read for school. Characters living in some world of fragile decadence talk in circles about everything and nothing to do with their misery. Frustrated with each other but more so themselves—they can never express what they feel in honesty.
The hours after sunlight prove more problematic. If urged in restlessness and fear, my mind will root itself in unreality, falling into something like that hazy space between waking and sleeping. Lying on my back, I watch the fan spin me into escapism. The fairy lights transport me on their golden wings to somewhere else…away from wrestling with a thousand questions and insecurities. The shadows spill out, the lights take flight, and my grip just—slips. “In self-reproach and loneliness and disillusion he came to the entrance of the labyrinth…”
I see people, glittering and poised, their skin glowing soft blue in the moonlight. A siren with long brown curls sings a song that shifts my moods like the sea. Now numb, now in rapture of everything. A black snake curls at my feet; the candles shrink. Hooded incubi lean silent in their corners. They grin their skeleton grins and wring their slender hands. Spiders scuttle from everywhere, up and down my limbs. A witch made of white light comes to cut out my heart. If this keeps up I might just give it to her. No, that’s not right. I will them to leave me be, leave me to the party in the moonlight—
Cold, bare-shouldered women press against dazzling, indifferent men. They waltz on the false spring air. Step between stars. Wander infinite ballrooms draped in patterns of silver and gold, while music blooms like flowers on the day of Creation but in melodies I will never remember. The sun is there in the night sky. She waves her golden, sunbeam tentacles and smiles. The moon plays a silver harp and laughs, but the laugh excludes me somehow and invokes a hollow sadness. Sea creatures spin through the clouds. Are they made of stars themselves? Am I just a constellation? Just the sum of otherwise unimportant stars? Do I even beat my own heart?
Stars burst in explosions of existentialism. They light up the heavens in amber and gold, then sail to earth in orbs of crimson flame. Such a beautiful display; how they devastate. They wind me up and watch me kick. These splendid specters with all their conceits. Yet each night, when the party is over, I still don’t know where I fit. When I find my feet upon the ground again, should I be thankful? Which is better, which is worse? An unfeeling reality? Possessive worlds of intoxicating beauty? Or this waltzing in between, ever graying the line between me and everything…
I know it’s dangerous—to let myself go with little care for control. But sometimes the spiral of escape, despite its ghosts and phantoms, feels like a better place to be than this reality. Somehow I still find myself before ruthless monsters or questions either way. And it’s not that I’m afraid to face them, but there’s just so many as of late. So many. Sometimes I confront them, and sometimes I opt for escape. Both tend to result in my own distress. But in the midst of such turmoil, beauty is not altogether hidden.
The waltz of waking and dreaming, of monsters and men, is a circle. And the motion continues until the circle is broken. Some days—the best days—find some quiet wonder to do so. Currently it is the absence of things that challenges me. The fountain singing for no one. The leaves dancing over empty streets instead of around people’s feet. Flowers unfolding freely beneath no worshipping eyes. Time past and time future leaving an emptiness in time present. The sun must go on rising, but the statues are all asleep. Too many vacancies. Or one would think. But in their place there is space, and maybe a chance to breathe. When I steal away to them again and watch butterfly shadows on the stones, I am reminded. This emptiness is only temporary; I can still build my sanctuaries. I will build them in the sunlight and the shadows.
For I am learning to how balance the skies. How to walk between waking and dreaming, letting them bleed into each other only just enough. It’s a dangerous game at times, toying with reality, but I’m in love with the dance. With the beautiful and the grotesque.
Though just as much as it enchants me, it frightens me also. I fear I’ll always be living life through an unreality, caught in another world’s shadow. Too busy dreaming up the lives of others and never learning to enjoy it myself. I’ve come to learn I will forever be at war with the stories inside me. We are not always in harmony. Sometimes they fight for my control. It is a strange thing to try and explain. But here is what I do know:
I am here. And even when I am alone, I am still myself. I have a pen, and I have a heart, though I often make myself forget it, for fear of doing something I’ll regret. This life is a gift, and I would do well to remember it.
So maybe I have something of a problem with disassociation, with keeping a straight line between what is real and what is not. I am still learning how to grow up. Right now I think the harder part is finding some sense of home, especially when having to find it on my own. That and finding the time to be bold—without thinking too much. But I am searching. That’s the important part. And I trust one day that searching will lead to what I’m looking for.
I trust you can find whatever it is you’re looking for too. I know certain constraints make it hard to feel like your usual self. To be terribly honest, it almost makes me want to laugh. I’ve been waiting for the day when everyone else would go mad.
But.
But… for every doubt you have, there is a chance to remind yourself who you are and who you can become. And that only happens if you continue on—
—whether through the splendid halls of some haunted castle, the golden realms of the mountain king, the woods of the west draped in blankets of snow, the silver parties of a bygone era, the deep tunnels of sea and space, or the simple beauty of your own backyard…remember to breathe. Remember to dream. And do not fear the dark. There are monsters there to face, and there are things there you can learn. We might all be mad, but there are people who will listen.
Thank you for being one of those people for me.
Yours in sadness as well as splendor,
Andrew
a literary labyrinth 