(no subject)
birthdays always get me down. the following is an excerpt from a letter my poet friend wrote to me. i asked him why he thought i was so prone to tears, why seemingly trivial things could elicit such a profound emotional response, he wrote:
You are no dull person, no person of average
sentiments and thoughts. Beauty touches you in ways
rare to the common person. You see beauty in the
strangest places, in the most unlikely people. It
takes a hold of you till you want to leap from a cliff
into the ocean out of sheer joy, or shout into the
night from the mere exhileration of existence (many
people don't exist). Beauty makes you wild and
restless, but it also alienates you.
You are a profound and remarkable person, Jamie, and
you possess a deep soul. You collect things that most
people are unwilling or too weak to even glimpse. You
carry those things with you in your soul. They can be
insights about a certain person or life in general;
they can be the desire to feel the texture of a memory
coupled with the realization that memory has no
texture; or the news of an injustice done to a
stranger can form a silent teardrop in your soul; the
looks on all those who pass you daily without noticing
you at all or noticing too little of you also weighs
on you. The list is endless and each item on it
infinite because of your unique way of seeing things.
But your crying is, for now, an overflowing of all
you've been collecting --- beauty along with those
things that are not so beautiful. It means that you
are a profound person, and that you are becoming.
it is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever written to me.