Dear Mary Angel,

I wish I had taken your advice. Took a step back and gave my pending marriage a long, and frank assessment. I do love her, but....

We have so little in common. I love to write; essay, poetry stories, while she writes little more than lists. Nor can I share them with her-- she doesn't see in them anything more than a waste of time. I am a creative person: music, art, writing, cooking, thinking, and she is analytical, with a fine regard for cold, hard facts. She doesn't know what's going on in the world, and couldn't care less. She can't  hold an intelligent, let alone insightful, conversation Primarily because she hasn't a foundation upon which to draw: classics, Shakespeare, historical references, the turn of a phrase; all of which are needed for depth and nuance. If you were to say, "he has an Oedipus complex," she wouldn't understand. These are all within our shared understanding, a sort of group-gestalt. I can't talk to her without explaining.

Neither does she understand the need we all have to hold on to things. I have had to sell everything of value she doesn't see a need for. These last seven years have been hard. Our president has hurt me every bit as much as any life-altering event could, barring my encroaching blindness (it's taken me thirty minutes to write this much). I've gone from a thirty-thousand dollar a year position at a television station to working at Wal Mart and waiting tables at the local Cracker Barrel-- at half the yearly income. As a result I've had to make difficult choices; where we live? how much food do we buy? am I meat eater or vegetarian? do I go to the dentist? All this while she complains incessantly, and wails about the "niggers," and g-ddamn this, and f--k that. I abhor her use of those appellations, the latter two.

All that to say this: last night she all but said she wants a divorce. I'm going blind, and she wants a divorce. It's almost as if now that she has gotten everything useful out of me, it is time to cast me aside... but she says she can't talk to me.

I depend on her. I have known and loved her for twenty-eight years. Of course I depend on her. I don't know what I'd do without her. Do I need her... yes. But do I need her?


With much love,

E

Dear Mary Angel

I can trace all my misfortune to one point... one moment in time. If I'd have done this, all would be different. If I'd have done that, I would be right where I am. But that one point, immutable as God Himself, isn't going anywhere; that is the choice I made, for better or worse, so any change I make for the better has to be made from a standpoint of correction. All those decisions, from that point onward, have been a course correction; a very long and arduous course correction.

It was the Summer of 1987. And it was a girl. I allowed myself to be snared by the obvious rather that the subtle; the brick rather that the glove. It could be the glove might not have fit as perfectly as I'd like to believe, but the brick has been a disaster, one that has had a decades-reaching grasp.

There's no going back; we both know this. But I believe this is the fulcrum upon which all my poetry depends. None of it would exist were it not for that moment in time. It has been an extraordinary gift

I know what I need to do. Not just need as in a course correction, but rather, what I feel led to do-- or feel led to desire. I finally know (or so I believe) what I want to be when I grown up... I wish to study the Bible. I wish to know it. I wish to soak it in. I want to point my intellect at Him, Jesus Christ. And I don't believe my love of poetry is in any way inconsistent with that desire; given the nature of my poetry.

I am going blind; not next month, or maybe next year, but it will come. How is that for poetic?

With Love,


E