Perfume.
Coming back to you. Half of my life’s work so far has been written in the vein of tragedy and when I have tried to write comedy. People laugh. They come to the theatre and they have a good time.
They pay good money to have a swell time but the thing is I am always thinking of putting in a love story. Every play has to have a love story. If it does not then I know it will be a failure and then I would have failed too. It is like flirting with disaster. Walking, dancing on glass. I have not written about you to you enough in this letter. You my future wife are adored and admired by an eternal romantic. A ghost story, my Eve, a haunting postcard, a joyful sonnet in the hands of a scholar or poet discovering it for the first time, my future wife and I am the one with all of this restless and frustrated energy. You are my poetry, the end of the history of violence, my familiar catalyst and my connection to reality.
What is reality anyway? All I can spell out is its unholy demise, ‘dismays and rainbows’. You can say that you love a woman and that she is perfect for you but what happens to all that sincerity when she gives birth. It blossoms, it flowers into something else and a tenderness opens in the floodgates of a man’s heart. How do you know that you are with the right woman? You are sensitive towards her when you are the insensitive brute amongst men. You just know that you care about her and love her in a jaded breakthrough, triumphant way. You leave your cynicism behind and reform. You are happy with your newfound hope and happily leave all despair and the costumes that people wore and did not wear, the people who let you down and disappointed you behind. You discover you are no longer restricted by writing.
Now you are also a family man and the expectation of that leaves a spell on you. I am writing to you about all of this because I think that you know me best. I do not know what you will make of it but know that it is written sincerely and with tenderness. History concentrates too much on heroes and not enough on the family man. There is so much focus on hell, madness and despair. There is so much war. Good men have died and I am certain that they have gone to heaven’s gates, knocked and were let in but I cannot understand is why we have sent these good men to war in the first place if the only reason was for them to lose their lives. All I know is that you have never injured me. Men injure men a great deal. Men insult men but the relationship between a man and a woman who are going to be husband and wife it is a little bit different.
Sometimes it is a bit depressing in my room and then I think of you and the sun comes out. Sometimes when it rains and the London streets are filled with mud all I can think of is the lotus flower. I hope I do not sound pompous or arrogant when I say these words. It is a gift. Writing is a gift and I am a gift to this world. When I write there is also detachment and I rather like using this as a shield when people (fools) want to make an engagement with me and ask me silly questions. Gobbledegook. These geese. Why do they not read more, these illiterates I ask myself instead of interrupting me from my work? It is not in the reading, it is in the meditating on what you are reading. It is concentrating on not feeling superior but they will not listen to me when I talk to them like this, which is a bit depressing. They have what is called ‘the ego’ and there is nothing that I can do for them.
One fellow was telling me about how he fell in love with a duchess who was older than he was. It sounded interesting but only, if only he had got around to writing down some of it. I listened to him. I know how important it is for any playwright just to be given an ear. He just spoke on and on and on and would not stop. Dramatic. It sounded good though. There were parts that sounded phenomenal. I guffawed along with the rest of his entourage. I would even say he went as far to impress me. Yes, I would say that in all honesty. I love meeting knew artists. Pity he did not get a head start on writing it. All this must bore you. What keeps you busy these days (besides thinking of me in my drafty room in London)? When it rains, I think of your tears. When I look at the River Thames, I think of you. A bouquet of baby’s breath, white lilies and roses in your hands.
When I see horses and carriages, I think of us finally being married in a church. Having said those vows and then I will put forth all the matters of my domestic life, I put it in your hands against the backdrop of Stratford-upon-Avon. I do not know how you feel about that word ‘ego’. Do you think that I have it within me not to be associated with that word? They call me an artist but I do not know what that word really means. They laugh and I think there is a part of their soul that is laughing at me. All artists are insecure. Anchors will snap. The solidity of the blue sky disappears with every sunset. I remember the long days and the even longer nights when loneliness, fear, vulnerability and negativity brushes up against my mental faculties killing me. Stopping me dead in my tracks. You are beautiful and I do not think I say it often enough.
A woman needs to hear it all the time from her beloved. I know that sometimes you feel you lose me to London. You lose me to the world of artists but most importantly, you have my heart. For whom am I keeping this self-preservation? For no one. For no one. I want to give you everything-everything. There will never be any real love in my life beside you. You, God, and that is it for me. I am lonelier than ever. In London, all those beautiful men and women can surround you but they are all too arrogant for words. They are shallow. You would not believe how mean-spirited some of them are. How highly they think of themselves but just try to have a conversation with one of them. Words will be coming out of their mouth with no rhyme or reason. London folk think they are brilliant. They do not really care about me very much then, I think to myself except when they want something to amuse themselves with.
