i
I write this letter, but I won't send it. You will never know of its existence. You will never read it. Never feel the words. Never finger the paper. Or chew on it. Bite pieces from it and leave it scarred and mutilated. Drop it in your document files and forget about it for the rest of your lives until you pick it up again and read it. And you will remember the letter. And you'll remember who sent it. And you'll think back of that time with a melancholic fondness. But not with this letter, because I won't send it.
I won't send it. It would take you too long to appreciate it and you'll discard the contents of the letter too easily. You will only appreciate it because I wrote it so long ago, but you will laugh at what it says. For all you care I could write blank pages. Beautiful white pages. Sheet after sheet. Nicely aligned in your document files. Saying nothing. Dated white pages and a name. My name. Curiously written on the white with a deep black pen. Smelling of honey and wine.
This is the reason I won't send this letter. You ask me to write to you and I comply. I beg you to talk to me while you scold at what I say. I give you my life on a white paper platter and you search it to find a mistake. I correct my mistakes and you refuse to see them corrected. I fumble for my pen, but you kick it out of reach. You see, I had to write this letter. Only by writing this letter can I help myself. Only by writing this letter can the expressions of the beggar be seen. Reflected in the eyes of the people who stand around and watch and all wait for the other to act, because they don't know how to take the first step.
I give the beggar my letter. The beggar smells of wine. He feels the words and fingers the paper. Taking a bite out of the paper and chewing on it. He cannot read the letter. He is blind. It doesn't matter because the letter is empty. The paper has become a stained white and my name falls off it and on the ground where it scurries and buries itself in the earth. I stare at the ground and flowers grow out of it. Big, long stem lilies. They smell of honey. The beggar screams and drops the letter. His hands are burnt. The letter has turned black. I pick it up, but the paper dissolves in my hands. The ashes rain on the lilies which turns them black. My name is spelled out in white on the black of the flowers. I feel embarrassed. My hands grow cold. I have to walk away.
It's gone now. All of it is gone. The flowers, the beggar, the people, my name and the letter. It's all gone. I don't know where to, they wouldn't tell me, but I know the beggar can see now and he wears a lily on his coat. My name always liked books. Perhaps if you will look in a bookshop in a few years time you will see it on the cover of one. Somewhere half-hidden from the eye. The only spot the neonlight can't reach. That's where you will probably find my name. And you will remember me and think back of the time with a melancholic fondness. When the beggar was still blind and the pages a virgin white. If you find my name, open your document file and put it on the end of this letter. This letter I will never send.
ii
I'm not being turned on. My heart is outlined in black across my chest. I have to admit that I believe I miss you. It is strange now. I cannot imagine or think and all I do is just that. I stopped making sense a long time ago, but now more than ever I do. No more semi-poetic nonsense or semi-cynic remarks or semi-witty retorts. I know myself well. You think you know me and have me all figured out, but I don't do the dance anymore. I have a nosebleed. It's the weather. You know, just another one of my faults. I don't know now what I used to know back when. No longer on the edge. No longer the razor. Once the god, now the servant. Savant, Idiot.
I realise you do not understand what I am talking about. I feel like Michael Jackson, only unreal. This letter that I am writing you is a dedication to my desire for you. It keeps to the style of the feeling and it is as clear. I lost my sunglasses the other day, but I still feel sort of artistic, although it will never be the same. I think this is what I'm trying to say. My writing indicates the intonation, like the changing of one chord into the other. My melody is like a Northern Song, only different. Just as you are me, only opposite. A perfect photo negative of each other. It looks unreal because it is. Find the link. Press the button. Go on with the show and take a pee during the commercial break. Show yourself naked to me. Or someone else who loves you as much as I. Or whom you love as much as I. Or whom I love as much as you. It's my trademark, you should know by now that questioning it is no use.
I'm still not being turned on. It's getting tiresome now, without the old routine to relieve us from the monotony. I was afraid of it once, but I can't see why now. We will always keep on going on. It's in your blood. You want old and dirt and down and gutter and gone and strange, but only if it's new and clean and elevated and high and here and dull. It has become so predictable it's not funny anymore. Only you are still laughing at your own jokes. The doorman still nods as we pass him by, although I stopped tipping him long ago. The stairs are still as creaky and now you have to pause halfway up to catch your breath. It is inevitable. We cannot keep up any longer. The forest is beige and green and brown and dark and we lost our guide at the entrance. The maze has shrunk and we look over it to find the route towards the exit, but there isn't one. Only the entrance. Your knowledge of cascades is admirable. As is my knowledge of you. Our interests are still the same.
It took me some time to see that you didn't even try. I now know the reasons for my feelings and now I can look for the reasons of your feelings. It brings me closer to you. I hope you can see it coming too.
iii
I don't know how to start this letter. I tried to think of a brilliant opening line, but there isn't one. It just starts. As all letters start at one point & finish at another one, this one will also finish. Again; there is no brilliant line to end it. It will just finish. That is all there is to it. If you feel disappointed already then please stop reading this. I am not about to make you feel any happier than you already are. I am here to vent my feelings. If you have no wish to hear what I say then please stop reading this letter. It is clearly not meant for you. I'm wondering what is meant for you now.
I know it's useless trying to reflect on your life, as your life is like this letter. It didn't have a brilliant start & it will not have a brilliant ending and whatever is in your life is not making you feel any happier. There was a time I thought I could make things brilliant. I could write brilliant opening lines & finish every letter perfectly. Now I know this is not the case. In particular not for you. I also once thought I could make your life brilliant, if only just one sentence. Maybe I have made one brilliant sentence in your life, but it looks odd within the rest of it & I don't like the sentence anymore. I want you to erase it & forget about it. Don't copy it down on a piece of paper & don't use my words when you speak to someone else. I have copyrighted them all.
Your victimising behaviour is slowly getting to me. You are so fond of being the underdog. You like being a loser so much that I wonder why you ever went with me. Why you ever wanted this one brilliant sentence amidst all the rubbish that you wrote. Yes, you wrote it. I know you do not believe me when I say this to you; your victimising behaviour doesn't allow it, but I have none such scruples & say it to you as I see it. I know you don't like it, that's the whole idea. I told you I was going to vent my feelings & I asked you to stop reading. Now you feel victimised, but the proof is here that you only have yourself to blame for it. You were too fond of feeling miserable that you didn't even notice you were projecting your own shortcomings on me. I was too fond of you to see it was you who fell short. I see now that the balance is tipped and I am not the one to set it back again. I know you want to say I tipped it, but I will not allow you to. I didn't tip the balance, I merely looked on as you tipped it & I didn't lift a finger. Now it is too late and I cannot help you anymore.
I don't want to help you anymore. The rollercoaster has come to the finish & I am getting off. The ride was fun at first, I will grant you this much, but it got boring and the rattling sound of the chain as the cart got pulled up again & again was making me feel more nauseous in the stomach every time it happened. This is not your fault. I could have gotten off much sooner than I did & I could have asked you to get off as well, although I know that you wouldn't have wanted to get off. You loved the dips & the raises and every time you threw up again you could blame the designer for it, which you did. Now you are blaming me for getting off and leaving you to ride the thing alone, but it doesn't work. You believe I am stupid and blind and that your schemes & lies were waterproof. I was stupid & I was blind, but your schemes & lies were never waterproof and now that I realise this I also see you had already replaced me in the rollercoaster.
I spoke to the designer of the rollercoaster the other day. He was drunk & told me that he was drunk when he made the rollercoaster you are now in. He said the thing wasn't safe anymore. It was a kiddies ride & you have become too heavy to be able to survive another couple of rides in it. It made me laugh. If you could you would blame him for your impending death, while it will never occur to you that you could get off. I left the designer with his drinks and stepped into the music hall. There was an orchestra in there and the man who played the first violin was talented. People served me as I sat down at one of the tables to listen to the music. Just after the violin player had stopped his solo & before the rest of the orchestra started again I could hear the rollercoaster being pulled up once more in the distance.
iv
There you are. I've been looking for you for some time now, but you were always able to elude me. But not anymore. Now I have bought a net with mazes so small not even a whisper could escape me. And I have caught your whisper which led me right to you and now I have found you. I'm still not sure why you were hiding or whether you were hiding at all or just lost in the woods. I've been to those woods as well and it's altogether not difficult to lose yourself in them. I had already realised that it would not make much difference whether I would find you or not; that is not why I bought the net. You will still be the same old you. Silent, quiet, uncommunicative. But I got the net because I wanted to see you age some more. I wanted to see you decline into the state that you hate so much. It's not meant to be vindictive; we vowed we would see each other grow old and I did nothing more than make an attempt at keeping that promise. If not to me than certainly to you.
Now I have seen you, you also have seen me, but your reactions don't make clear at all what you think of my looks now. I know you once thought of me as handsome and I know that those days are long gone now, but I didn't show myself just to prove to you that you aren't the only one who grows older with wear and tear. I never tried to convince you that I wanted to stay young and look beautiful all my life. I live too consciously for that. But I must have held you in higher regard as you don't respond to me.
You are like the setting sun which moves neither faster or slower despite the cricket's beautiful song. You hold up your veil still and pretend the whole world is still in soft focus because you believe it makes you look better. I prefer to cloud myself in the morning mist which clears over the hills soon after dawn.
You are still not being responsive. Didn't you like being caught after having lived in such solitude for so long? Did you really want to hide your age so bad you preferred to live the solitary life rather than admit to the crow's feet under your eyes? I made a sketch of you which portrays you as you were before you got lost. It's a good portrait and it already shows your age as you walked into the woods. You haven't even changed all that much and I am curious to know why. You haven't grown older but you did lose your beauty like I lost mine, but I became more interesting and this is where your fault lies. You are still being silent and unresponsive and although it could have been very easy for you to become more interesting you have done nothing that even indicates an attempt at that. You might call this your one redeeming feature but I disagree with you.
That hasn't changed either. We always disagreed and now we still disagree even though we are too old to put up a fight anymore. Not that you ever put up a fight to speak of, but my point still stands. You are too old now to even argue with me. Your silence is no longer the end of an argument, but it is now the start of one and it doesn't stop anymore until you open your mouth which I know you will not and so I bicker on until either of us finds our way back to the woods again. I will make you a promise now that I will burn the net, but I will keep the whisper as proof that you can talk, no matter how insignificant it might seem to others. These things are still important to me. To me and the woods.
v
Even though I have been working for your smile since the day I first said Hi, I cannot help but feel that my attempts are feeble and your grin a sympathy for my lack of comic talent in your eyes. I thought I'd feel a failure because of this, but the smile I've conjured on the faces of so many people before you give another testimony.
I cried when I heard about the death of irony, and I sighed when I learned about the misunderstood status of satire, but I kept my head high, and merely laughed when you showed your lack of enlightenment in the fake politeness of your ways.
I have not given up, and I know that you can smile. My hunger wasted I have taken to my other strong point of self-alignment, my sense of smell and the faultless descriptions of my touch. There's other sides to me than just the production of vowels and consonants. If I cannot make you smile with what I say, I'll make you smile at the richness of the prospect and the brilliance of a thousand angels at your headboard.
Just not yet.
Maurice Dekker