Dear Dave,

The city by the sea has been shadowed by a fresh cold this January. If you wade through the waves carelessly, the liquid feels icy and unforgiving as it bites into the flesh. And strange creatures swirl where you tread in mournful discord, sticking to your soles and weighing you down.

It is an unexpected chill, so we were not prepared. My chest of winter clothing lies high on a cupboard atop many other suitcases of my life. And the last ladder in the house has crumbled into a hundred matchsticks without a matchbox to ignite the fire. The suitcase is rarely opened. And so it lies there, populated by mothballs, a few fraying sweaters. Leaf through the countless folds, and you will find lingering still, an unspoken hope of warmth.

I try valiantly to stamp out the frost that has found its way into my bones. I enclose my love in slabs of soft wool and buffer it only seemingly against the onslaught of imagined snow. I drive through busy, yet to me inert, streets without knowledge and with a thousand horns blaring in my mind. The lights are on till late at night but they are not enough to show me the way. I hope I remembered to leave one on in the corridor so that I don't trip over the threshold.

Are words enough to communicate? Can voices replace the familiarity of touch? If I send out little paper boats on a stormy sea will they reach safely at distant shores? I keep my fingers crossed. I keep my eyes closed. I keep my mind open. My heart is no longer my own to command - it opens and shuts like a flower trying to find its own spring.

But spring seems so far away and I wonder if the waiting will actually withstand the hollow turn of the clock's hand. I stand still. There are longitudes of separation. And latitudes of procrastination. I do not move. I yearn to lift a finger. Point it in a new direction. Touch the contours of new life. Take a break from the serialisation of life as I have come to know it. Could you perhaps, show me how? I do not think I can do this one alone.

We live in such a small world yet distances are immeasurable. Does anyone really know how to build bridges over pain and geographical boundaries? Or over worlds of imperfection? Or from here to tomorrow and tomorrow to the day after? And from the day after to a new life?

When I first went to college I wanted to come back the next day. All the bombast and thrill of new encounters was dulled by the realisation of weakening old ones. My father died my first term. I felt like an island with no trees and no boat home. Not even a paper one that would fight valiantly against the wind and the impending devastation of encroaching waves.

Death humiliates us tremendously. It leaves no choice for those left behind. Like the distance of terrain it forces us into our own fences. We remember unsaid words. We recall open-ended promises. We try to block the simple truth of no contact with memories of better days. We are hugely unsuccessful at such human endeavours.

The promise of death sometimes seems so far away that we choose to live recklessly. We scoff the real for that which is nearby. We yearn to touch that which is immediate. To grasp at some evidence of our own flesh breathing. We do not do that for a fear of mortality. We do that because we fear ourselves. And we fear the promise of life in all its complexities.

If you look into the waters at the city by the sea, it will offer no clear answers to such esoteric questions. The water is murky and polluted, it speaks only in hushed tones. But if you listen carefully to the conference of sea-shells gathered from another sea, they will whisper life's fragrant mysteries to you. If you care to listen. If you wish to understand. If you dare to believe. They will speak to you of the eyes that can look into your soul. They will speak to you of the eyes that you want to look into. And they will gather water from those eyes for you to drink.

Taste that water with closed eyes. It has seen in you that which you cannot see.

Regards,
Fifi