A Letter

Estrela bela,

Natal feliz, Estrela. I hope this season is finding you well. You are greatly missed on the back streets of Porto. Maddy and I have taken up Alvaros old flat, along with Diego. Diego is adjusting to Portugal alright, I think he wishes he had chosen an internship in Colombia. Hes freezing his south american bagana off, but enjoying the hospital here. Maddy is still at his bank and is dating someone new, you will be very proud to know that they have been together for three entire weeks! Yesterday we all went into the fountain in the park you love so much, except for Diego who said we were out of our heads. Maddy called him a cadela and dragged him under the water. It was 6C. As for me, I am slowly working towards normalcy. I tried dating awhile back, but Im just not ready. I recently purchased a small building to create a gallery with the money I made from my exhibit. I have my first featured artist there starting in January. Looks like my art degree really will help me make my way in the world. I regret to inform you that I passed up several offers on the artwork of yours I displayed there, but I couldnt bring myself to part with yours or Alvaros work. I think once I have made a bit more, I could have reproductions made and sold in my new gallery shop, sending you the earnings? I feel the earnings from Alvaros art should go to finding a cure for SIDA/VIH, I have seen quite a bit of research on stem cell surgery possibly curing it. I have a small amount of resentment about a cure, and yet? Hope.

There is a poet I love, Fernando Pessoa, who once wrote:

"To feel today what one felt yesterday isnt to feel at all - its to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be todays living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost."

It doesnt make the same sense to me in English as it does in Portuguese, but it means something of this. There is no excuse to live in the past. To remain feeling the same things you felt yesterday is to remain in yesterday and never move forward. For that pain to grow? For it to swell inside you and then subdue itself in the recesses of your mind is to truly move on, to live in today. We cannot hold onto things in the same way we held them yesterday, we must let them change. Grow or shrink, it makes no difference, but we must allow them to change and, in that, change us. I am learning this more and more as time passes. Diego said the other day that he "does not imagine real beauty to exist in the things, people that make our heads turn, but rather in the things that we dont realize are beautiful until we know them so well that we are very suddenly surprised to find them stunning." I believe that is true. Going from engaged to single, I feel that all the things I once saw as beautiful are nothing but superficial art. And you know how I hate that so. Sometimes I wonder how often we pass the things by that seep with pure beauty because we cannot make sense of it in a modern way. You can be sure that any popular idea must have some stupidity laced in it.

At first, after the engagement, I felt it necessary to stand up straight. To not speak of the event or even of B. Eventually I degraded into a spout of slurs against her, with the assistance of friends and alcohol, like any good self-respecting portuguese boy. And then I quieted myself, I should have known better than that. I recognized my own faults in the matter, saw my own hand at play in the game. I was holding too much to the idea that it was only my concept of right and wrong that mattered. I was grasping at maintaining my appearance in the world of friends and, though I am sorry to admit, wealth. "Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.” Jose Saramago. I should have known better than that. I think you are the only person who could understand these things about me, comprehend what I am enduring.

I think of you often. I wish you could be here to mull these things over with, as we did before. But I know you are seeking your own path. You do not know this, but how different you are than you were. And, each day, you grow more so towards whoever it is you are meant to be. It is so beautiful to behold. I imagine this is how angels grow into their light. Your wings are stretched across continents, Estrela. I think you dont realize your affect on others, the way you weave yourself ever so carefully into other peoples lives is like the most beautiful art. You tie yourself to others, loving them wholeheartedly. Even from afar. How jealous I am of this capacity you have. To love unconditionally is a gift rarely given, and even more rarely recognized. I hope you know how proud we are of you in all your endeavors. Your seeking heart will surely not go unanswered. If there was ever a creature to make me believe in a God, it would be you.

“In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die.” Jose Saramago. And so, live unreservedly, Estrela sua. We all miss you terribly and love you lawlessly.

Yours,

Topher

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together, there is something you must always remember: You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart, I'll always be with you.” A A Milne, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

I miss you too.