July 2006

Dear Anneline, I am writing to you from my seat of power, here in the sun-scolded courtyard of Somerset House. Before me is a fountain, and children run between the jets of water, with mother's in chase.
The fountain pushes cool air toward me, and I confess to finding happiness right here.

There are beautiful women all about me. I am ignoring the conversation of my Lyonaise companion who, lost in the intricacy of her own deliberations on the rituals of love and lust, cannot see that my eyes are fixed on the figure of a black haired girl, passing silently behind the fountain in a white summer dress and plain brown vest.
In this image she is everything any man or god or artist ever wanted, and she reminds me of you.

I have the same pretentious moleskin notebook in which I wrote abandoned letters to you. I now devote a page to a sketch of her form, but having the familiar talent from way back then, I create a malproprtioned monster cowering behind a waterfall.

God I loved you, in a way that no one should believe. I rarely believe it myself, choosing "infatuation" as a subtitle, just as you wish. But it was love, of sorts, though I never wanted you at all, and never liked the word.
It struck me down so forcefully, when my brother had lost his mind and my friend had lost his heart to his Rebecca. What did the striking and the breaking, if not love? I do not want you to think it was good, or that I long for it, or you. It was a joke, a cruel one at that, but your impression is a deep one I have learnt the shape of very well.

So every time I see that beauty, I see your beauty too. And I can smile now, because you were right about so much. There were others after, and there was a getting by. And the correspondence dried up, and you got married, and essentially so too did I...

I see you sitting in Geneva, near the water fountain you told me so many dull facts about, with your orange peel in your lap, flicking orange seeds at your Alpine man. I see you in a wedding dress, though I know it has been hanging up for quite some time. But then, you'll always be twenty, and I'll always be sixteen, when I sit before these fountains and watch these girls pass by.