You did notice that Louisa and Lou did see each other last night...! Who are they trying to kid? Louisa says there's nothing to it, he just wears very well--longer than most guys--and he's fun. Talk about requisites for a lasting partnership!
Reality. My new definition: When I realize there isn't enough time to re-read all of your letters all the way through.
The universe. My new definition: You.
Getting back to the start of this letter, I've noticed some things about myself. Are you aware of how much more self-confidence I have? Seems like something one should acquire at camp, right? Camp Wanna-Nookie-You instills confidence! All in capital letters... underlined. But I am! Could it be I always felt lacking because I never really knew if I could love or be loved? How sad. Yet, I think it's only a void in one's life, one of many, in one that has many filled places. It's not any different than when I mentioned Vivaldi to an acquaintance, and she asked where he worked in our factory. How can it be? I wonder, that there are those of us who have no understanding of the life that surrounds us, limited to a miniscule, boring, dark-to-black world governed by ignorance, misfortune and sloth.
Which brings me to our conversation of last night? First, the subject when we were riding in the subway...on the world we own...
How is it you have such a grasp on the understandings of the workings of the world? There is no subject requiring some philosophical interpretation to which you are unable to pose some degree of sensible explanation or viewpoint. I remember, perhaps I was feeling sorry for myself, and said how really very sad a place I found the world until I met you. I will never forget your words until I close my eyes forever. You said you were going to do something for yourself, to change the world you own. I am going to, also! I refuse to ever again labor my life away as I have since leaving high school. No. I won't do it! I know what you mean. I have always wanted to be a designer. As of this moment, I'm directing all my energy and effort to accomplishing this goal. If I own my world, then this is the career I shall pursue. Do you see how readily you influence me? You have awakened so many aspects of my world! Exciting! Everything has become so exciting since I met you! Even these moments alone in this bedroom which I used to hate I now seek because I know it provides a haven where I may reflect on your words, write to you, and dream of our love.
Something else? I have printed on the outside of my wallet what you said. I'm going to embroider it on a handkerchief so I can see it done prettily. And one day, I'm going to have it tattooed on me...the palm of my hand, I think--Be as smart as you can be; be as happy as you can be; be as courageous as you can be. I'm going to think of this every day. I also think I'm going to start with the last one first.
Do you know what is verymost difficult for me to comprehend? This aloneness you speak of. How can that be? I work very hard to perceive it. I feel like a mute trying to pronounce a word. How can we be apart, yet together? How can we be separate, and one? I see exactly your reasoning, but I refuse to accept it. The plane you speak deals with a requisite separate in us each of body, mind, soul which is the foundation of the tenet that we must own something before we can give it away. If we don't have control over our own body, soul, mind how then can we offer it to another being? You say because each of us is alone unto ourselves, we are the center of a world that is uniquely our own: everything that happens in this world happens to us. When we die this world comes to an end. Right? Do I have it right? Phooey! You're lost in details! I love you completely. I would die for you. Where is my aloneness? How will you separate us when that blessed moment comes when that drop of your blood's blood extends from the end of you to the in of me, that thin, thread-like connection more powerful than a sun's disintegration; unseverable; reverberating as resolutely as the rhythm of the spheres throughout the harmony of this universe; and, thus, immortalizing Sam and Mary, these lovers, as surely as space. Such consecration is inevitable. That is the source of beatitude, and thereby I lay me.
Then, also, (that was quite a train ride!) the news about our mothers comes with no surprise or disturbance. Why should it? It's only the third affair between our families not counting the business partnership. A fourth romance might disturb my equilibrium, however! Can you imagine...our fathers gay!
My sweetest, dearest Sam, allow me to presume: that you really and truly love me as I love you, and that one day we'll be together. What will our life be together? I can't really see it because I want it to be different than anything else I've ever known, truth or fiction. I don't want it to resemble in the slightest anything I've ever seen here in my home, on television, in the movies, heard about, read about, wondered about. It has to be that way to fill the equation in my heart that reads Sam plus Mary equals Paradise Forever! I've never been to Paradise so all the days of our lives will be like opening a brand new package of life. I think of both of us sharing our brand-new discoveries about our world, about our love. No matter how tired I get ever, I'll be refreshed with the thought of you. And when we've made work, and made goals, and made love, and made babies, and made tired, and made old...we'll make more dreams.
Oh! How I hate this pen and paper! How it disturbs me to think of that togetherness--pen and paper--of these inanimate articles which revel in what we're denied! I could complain about that...then, I thought people are happy when they get what they want. But, if a person got everything he wanted, how then does anything he gets have a value? It doesn't mean anything, it's just any old thing he wanted and got. Then, I think of you crashing into my life on a dark, wet, lonely night of my world. If I were to say I didn't yearn to meet someone, I'd also have to say I'm not human. Do you know how close we came to not coming close? I think of that, and I think of all the time daydreaming and phantasizing about the needed and wanted person in my life. They make jokes about young women being hotter, but how those middle aged women show their appreciation! Well, between not getting everything I want, and waiting so long for you, you can be sure there is an abundance of gratitude in my heart for whatever powers saw to us. But, would you like to hear something interesting? I would love you just as much if I met you the day I was born. Okay, you're right-- destiny. I don't know if I like that. You mean this feeling that comes over me when I think of you is supposed to be here? It makes me feel cheated! Like I have no choice! Now I can see from where stem Man's bursting determinations to be free and to enjoy the right to make his own choices. ...In all except matters of love? I refuse to be concerned about any of this. Really what does it matter except that we love each other? And that's another way our love has affected me. You are to me everything. From that point I suddenly realize that everything I held dear and important before you, I now hold even more so! Those matters of little concern are even less. It must take the illumination of intense heat to see all more clearly. It seems everything is put into perspective. It seems values become more intense. I see how precious are those moments with you, and I'm reviled by any moment that's merely cast aside. I feel how joyladen are my doings with you, and I'm perturbed by aimless groping. I see how tenuous are the threads of tomorrow, and I'm markedly cautious to weave assumptions. That all of this should convey how tenderly I hold thoughts of you deep in my bosom; how fervently I invoke all concurrent forces to work possible my being always there with you; how guardedly I shield with my total being from any quencher our comburent love. I do all these things because of what you do for me. I'm inspired to achieve. I'm inspired to encourage. I'm inspired to love. I find nothing harmful in my thoughts when they are filled with you. I consider only the well-being of all about me. I encourage only harmony. So, from where in any love does come the wrong, the illicit, the bane? Only from strangers to its bloom. Love is love. In itself, by itself it is pure, unqualified by degree. It cannot be contaminated, ever. It is, or it is not. It cannot be diluted. It burns always in its purest form no matter the source or direction: patriot to country, mother to child, lover to love. Only in having you to love do I realize capacity. The size of the vessel into which flows this em
otion and the intensity with which it burns is beyond measure inasmuch as it's devoid of volition. Once started how is it to be stopped? How more than a syzygistic tide are we caught up in it, cast stranded to the shore or plummeted to the piscary, flung to the foam or sown with the sand; completely, uncontrollably given to it, desiring no less. Yet, there is more. The least response from you opens sluice gates to yet seven more seas. Enough! Enough! When I think of how unknown all this was to me before the moments I've known you! No! More! More! I want more, more ambrosia d'amour! What gluttony! But, I can't help it! I want to make up for all the time before you that I missed; and I want to give you all I could've if we'd been given just a moment more... Oh! Darling! Do I make sense? Can you understand the intense, immense feeling I have for you? I want you to because I want you to explain it to me. How can I say what is when I never thought it to be possible? To be so consumed? With another being? Another earthly being? I don't understand it, not its origination, or its manifestation. How could something so enormous, so fulfilling, so omnipotent be within me, be within my capacity and me not ever have a hint to know that it was all inside? People, at various times, for various reasons, would say to me in an all-knowing, all omniscient way, --Oh! Wait until you fall in love then you'll know! How little they knew! Either that--that they were steeped in ignorance on this matter--or, we have a love that comes once in a millennium, if that. That's what I chose to believe. Yes, our is the true love of lovers. I have to believe that. How as consumed as I am with you am I ever to know of any other? That's just an impossible consideration.
Let me tell you what I do when the joy of your love fills me inside to overwhelming. First, I sigh, so long and low I near expire for lack of air, and would were it not for the tears that race down my face drawn by so sad and mournful sound as my lonely call to thee; then, I catch myself and take a breath as deep as I can and say again and again until I near pass out again: I love you, Sam! I love you, Sam! And when I'm unable to say it at all at all, I know it's true so I smile in happiness, and write and write and write in all manners and styles and ways: Scopia. Sam Scopia. Mrs. Sam Scopia... Oh! My love! Don't misunderstand! For some the formality of name changing, and rings is the culmination! Ah! How sad! For me, I write Mrs. Sam Scopia because it is the only visible reality I have at this moment, in this room, that what I have known of you yesterday is known to me; that what we have today I have; and only in knowing and having you do I possess the promise of eternity. I might just as well write One--Sam and Mary are One. We are. We always will be. And seeing the reality of this brings joy and joy and joy more into my heart. If this little does so much, how will there be room ever anywhere when our hearts kiss, our souls embrace, our ecstasy One? I can't bear to think of you and I and the term "unrestrained passion." To whom do I implore for the capacity to understand what that really means? By what point of reference am I to comprehend how disinfinitesmal are the bounds of such ecstasy? By what brilliance of mind do I satisfactorily rationalize the shivering anxiety worrying the curtains of heartbeats to that incendiant moment? Oh! Lord! What will it be like? Not just the feelings and sensations brought to me by this miracle; and not just those transports that are thrust through me from you and your feelings and sensations; but the total circumscription that derives from both of us creating an entirely new energy field with the embodiment of our love in a dimensionality conceivable not even to us until our animated bale from our wound of a life slips to the perpetual soundless suspiration where everything is possible. I'm excited just by the thought of you. Tell me how to dream of the more of you? How can I convey to you the trembling, the desire, the nervousness the thought of us excites in me? The physical changes in my body tease me to near oblivion: I swell, I moisten, I heat, I harden, I limpen, I tense, I strain, I tighten, I release, I burst, I die. When will it be us that do to us all these?
And how do I respond to your letters? How supremely special you make me feel by your special alphabet, your alphabet your words, your words your pages, your pages your love. And by your love your specialness. Your giving, thoughtful, generous hand is before me almost to the exclusion of all else. I have read them so often I can declaim them from any word, any paragraph, any page. I am mesmerized by them in all my doings: polishing nails, riding the subway, working, bathing, reading, and all else, too! I see only your words. We must find a moment, in a sunny, flower-filled field, perhaps; joined by whispered breezes, Nature's chirps and calls and cries; clouds bunting the sky's expanse; and thou--you--thou voice in concert with this universe caressing those thoughts to the only perfection you and I will ever know: our love. Oh! My most precious heart, if nothing else is ever to be mine of yours, let granted be this wish.
Are you writing to me now, I wonder. No, I know. You are. Can I match your thoughts? Only if you can conceive as great a love for me as I possess for you.
My most precious Sweet, dream of me as I dream of you; want me as passionately as I want you; love me with all the fervor and adoration and completeness as I do you. Until I embrace you warm and tightly in my arms; until our first kiss fills the so long a long vacant while; I am irrevocably, completely, absolutely yours.
Mary
CHAPTER 32
Tuesday morning
Most precious Mary mine:
PRECISIAN LOVE. Yours. You bring to me. Immaculate. All-consuming. Enigmatical. Unencompassable. Perfect. Formal. The completeness of this love imports a relation to the understanding which makes it unique, distinguishable from all other love of lovers. It has an exactness that vaporizes me completely. The need to express this to you is as much a part of its orderliness. Searching its imperspecuity is as much its mystique as its being. How I dwell, lost to the pale, on such considerations as who derives the greater divinity, the lover or the loved? I can tell you about the feelings that fill me--Oh! Yes! To overflowing and more-- because of this adoration I hold for you; and I know the superb ecstasy that's generated by the fact that you love me; yet, suppose I could measure one against the other--inconceivable as this is to me--the answer would be frivolous because the question is irrelevant: I am both lover and loved! Beneficial recipient in all aspects! How can I consider I receive more loving you, than being loved by you? No more than you receive loving me, or by being loved by me. In this case, lover and loved create the perfect sphericity of their profound affection, resilient to a shattering, as enduring as ephemera. It is neither you and I, but you and I; it is neither that I love you, or you love me, but that we love each other; it is neither its expression nor consummation, but that it is now an entity. Our entity. Entirely. Complete in it. I wear its lambency as the moon its aura, the sun its universe. Be particular, I ask myself. I respond unhesitatingly: She is so beautiful! Before I knew you, my love was beauty; beauty in all things, everything; things common and exotic; what I could see, what I could hear, what I could smell, what I could touch, what I could taste; whatever came or was searched out by this beholder. Then, was Mary. I find you the personification of all things beautiful, cunning and cuddlesome. When I'm with you, all time stops. History? What is that? There is no past for me to dwell on. Future? What is that? There is no tomorrow of which to dream or dread. Responsibilities? Obligations? Concerns? None. Though there be tons, there just are none. And I couldn't care less if there were seatides more. Don't you see? Nothing else matters. Just you. Mary--I think, recalling your touch--and my flesh melts. I would forsake everything for you. Ah! My love. They are just words it's true. Wouldn't it be wonderful I wonder if I could be given the chance to do it! Ah! I have heard of a king giving up his throne for a love, but it seemed to be an excuse to also relinquish the overfastidious, boring role of being an ineffectual figurehead. Course, only he knew that for sure. Se non e vero, e ben trovato. But, I'd be thrilled to lay it right out flat. All within my limits and powers, and those attendant to me as a human being born under the aegis of God I assign of my own free will, gladly, and without restriction for the love of my most darling, Mary. And how I know, my mos
t precious, how these words contradict my actions. They do, there's no denying that, but they do on so much a lesser plane than I would hold to be my noble aspirations. One might say it's madness, but for me it's the consideration of style, of finesse, of class. Yes, we would've plunged cold into our embroiling love, only to leave too much room for criticism, our own, each others, someone else's. There's no need. I feel so confident that you and I will have each other for the rest of our lives on earth, and throughout eternity, I have no fear of time; we should not be stampeded; precipitous, frenetic tarantellas should be left to others. You must understand there is a... a decorum to my life, as I have always lived it. Just as there is a decorum to my love for you. I must live and love to that decorum. Abandoning my friend, or, my parents, would be so improper to me it would, however minute, taint our love. I would not allow anything remotely close to happen to us. I promise you, I shall make proper provision within my limits to do what must be done in these cases. After that there is nothing by any conception that shall stand between us. I adore you, Mary, and was you to ask the same of me it would pose no threat, in fact there would be no need to ask. There should be no chance of a misunderstanding: Decorum, all other people be damned if they would even think to interfere with us; also, if I were just to think that some accidental circumstance might create the slightest downcast line to your smile I would see that we relinquish the rest of the world. We would do it. Not the slightest hesitation on my part. None, I'd hope, on yours. Can you read, too, how closely I guard your love? Can you see, too, just how easily it would be for me to love you with wild abandon? Can you see how more difficult it is to be disciplined? Really, in my heart, the more appealing is to indulge in love's aerobatics--but I must say there is an intoxicating pungency to holding back the gush of love. How does one anticipate an inconceivably exquisite moment? By amassing a lifetime of dreaming, sensation by sensation. Yes, I can dream of you forever, but I can't wait for you another breath.
A Matter of Love in da Bronx Page 35