Sunday, June 8, 2008
Man of Letters
Many letters embark, few return, and it only redoubles my ebullience; I write more and longer epistles. Of all the addressees, I'd say my grandmother is the greatest victim. I have ceased engaging her by telephone, opting instead to inflict upon her my shameless verbiage. I fired off unblushing exposés of my anarchic readings, contemplations, and woes, sometimes bending toward confessional. She claimed to have found amusement in them, but I can only imagine the dyslogistic glances she beams at the piles of pages which stopper her mailbox. From her composure - there is about Gramma an air of artificial and haughty detachment - one is tempted to conclude that the woman is not accepting of rude, ribald, or erotic transmissions. At first blush the superficial, the straightforward, the mundane appear as her requirements.My sister is convinced that the letters, in fact, are duly appreciated, that I've touched the old woman's heart. If this be the case, she too must lament our meaningless, desultory telephony. She too must long for blood and tears, real human utterance, despite the bubble of babble she's built. I had hoped my scurrilous letters would wreak confusion and frownage, had banked my rants on this reaction. Instead, she has mistaken my mischief for love, and embraced my expulsions.
This takes the piss out of my plan. I wrote from a place of spite, not concern, not to inform, not to enlighten. In this I found fecundation. And now I thought my ardor was dead, yet something stirs in its grave - a new, more redoubtable ardor to take its place. Like as to the central revelation in Monsters Inc, I have found that I get more juice from laughs than from tears. More is to be had from love than annoyance. I thought my Grams was unreachable, but I was too paralyzed to even try.
MYW at 4:02 PM
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