I told myself that I wasn’t going to reply to your letter, I’d been trying to quit from my curiosity about you cold turkey, but I’m still finding it hard to accept I’ll never know you and you’ll never know me. After only little over a month of seeing you once a week this is what I’ve been reduced too, turned upside down and shaken by the ankles until I’m so dizzy I can’t stand up straight. Well at least that’s what your reply made me feel like.
It strikes me as somewhat odd that you feel unable to stand up for yourself over your pending marriage, then again it doesn’t seeing as no matter what you believe, what others accept you as is still top priority. I see your point, there’s not just you in the boat, but it doesn’t mean that you forever have to be that way. Demoting yourself to my world, my life wouldn’t make you happy completely, the only way for you to be happy is for you to live on the edge of both lives and take the best from both as and when you chose, not totally impossible but still a feet of mighty complex even for such a headstrong and persistent soul as yourself.
You know, I could analyse this all I wanted too but it still wouldn’t take away the uneasy feeling of the hollow you managed to mark me with. In just a small space of time you battered me with your instance and whilst you made me re-coil and fear your open words, you also showed me that even if you were one in a million, someone somewhere could care just ever so slightly for the recipient to find a little more of their lost ways. You reminded me what it’s like to feel the blood pumping through my veins at the thought of sculpting such a unique physical being, carving out the features with a lone stick of charcoal on a ridged white paper. It made such a huge and refreshing difference from landscape and material object, and weather you knew it or not, you offered me more as a muse than I did to you.
Artistically and creatively Taylor Hanson you showed me in a handful of meetings by the way you spoke and the way you carried yourself on such topics, that despite the restraints of the real world upon you when it came to what you wanted to stand for- you could still have the inner intellect to understand the subject at hand. It takes people years to achieve that in most cases so that on it’s own showed me a slice of your mind. Yes you scared me, made me fear that you were taking a chance on me only to try and pull me out of my shell, out of this life, I even thought you’d look down on me for being this way, so on my own, and so me. But what scared me even more is that you didn’t do any of that, and you cared, even though I didn’t want it you did care.
So, that brings me to the purpose of this reply I’d been trying to put off writing. Enclosed you’ll find a photo of yourself and attached to that you’ll find a charcoal replica. I took this picture with your camera before I left that Sunday morning, using up the last picture on the film for you. My intention was to capture your sleeping form, reproduce it as a mini project for myself and then give it too you that following Saturday with your pictures, just to show you how much you’d got under my artistic skin that whole weekend when I helped you and you silently, helped me. I was going to keep this, I wanted just something to look at in my memory box too so I could remember a short-lived, but faithful muse.
But now I can’t because just like you, the questions are forming and they are too much. The biggest of them all being, why can you only be the real you ,to me? I’m slowly believing the way you were with me was the real you, but hesitation and your own fear has made you a casualty of society.
Take this picture as the last reminder of me because I cannot hold it any longer without wishing you’d inspire me once again.
Maybe now you’ll see this is the only way I became attached to you. Maybe.
Season
It had taken two weeks of scrutinizing debate since the arrival of Taylor’s reply to write him again and send off the last prominent part of him I had been able to call mine. It was fast approaching Christmas and I had no doubt that perhaps he was so caught up in the whirling dervish of festivities and wedding planners, that the chances of him waiting on me to see if I dared reply was slim. My letter contained my words of open honesty, for once not quick to put up all barriers or give away partial words or inconsistent means. They say it’s easier that way than ever doing it to a face. It was the most open I’d felt in years, the most vulnerable and raw feeling of self-inflicted loneliness I’d felt since Derek, my one and only chance, failed me miserably. Except this time I knew, my love for Taylor was fast becoming unbearable because as stubborn as I am- he fuels a dormant creative fire inside of me.
On my way back from Williams paint store I felt as if the letter that was in my bag ready to make it’s way through this great lands postal system, was burning a hole in the fabric of my shoulder bag. Realizing I was not totally out of the way of their luxurious rented home I came to the conclusion that dropping it through his letterbox on my way towards the university was perhaps not a totally ludicrous thought. So I, for once acted on some spur of the moment thought and decided to head down Carter drive, letter in hand, head held high.
It didn’t surprise me to see Christmas decorations hanging around the door frame, nor did it surprise me there were 5 cars in the drive way, 3 SUV’s 2 estates- someone must be throwing a shin dig of sorts. But it didn’t deter me to walk right up and drop the letter through the box, in fact it felt kind of good to know despite the way I felt about the abrupt start and end of our ‘so-called’ friendship, I wasn’t so put out that I couldn’t do a little thing like approach his house. Just as I stepped up on the two step porch, reaching out a little to push the small gold box flap open to deposit the letter, the front door opened and a barrel of hot air hit me straight in the face. I take it now is one of those times when you start questioning your seemingly harmless spur of the moment thought.
’Oh thank god, please tell me that’s the corsage picture proof?’
She was pretty, tall, leggy, almond eyed- pretty. And with one sentence I knew who she was. Realizing I was going nowhere I just nodded my head and hoped that Taylor’s name and address on the front would find it’s way to him, rather that some over eager bride-to-be.
’You people seem to think we pay for nothing, two weeks wait and were not even getting married in church, don’t expect a tip for courier delivery,’
With that, the letter was snatched from my hands and the door was shut as quickly as it opened. It felt almost a little too surreal, a little too unbelievable to just walk up, put the thing through the letterbox and let it lie. Of course I had to be put in a fearful position that would leave me to walk down the drive shaking in my Timberlands.
As I walked down Carter Drive, headed towards the university library, I realized how much that two sentence, one-sided conversation backed up Taylor’s insistence he wasn’t ready for marriage. Maybe she was his sole purpose for wanting a different life socially, maybe just from that I can grasp why friendship between us would have been distorted.
But it doesn’t stop the fact that I’m finally accepting that even in just a small capacity, I want him to be my friend. I should have given him more of a chance, years ago I shouldn’t have totally shut myself up. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, or so they say. Perhaps this is why I haven’t tried it, because no one was willing to give back what they’d undoubtedly take from me?
Regardless, Mr.Muse was nice while he lasted and as someone used to say once many moons ago-
”One memory can last for a lifetime and bring a smile every time it is replayed,”