A Letter Never Sent

B

Somewhere in

New York

United States of America

Continent of North America

The Earth

The Solar System

THE MIND OF GOD.

A balcony in

Knob Hill

San Francisco, California

June 25, 2013 

B

So I am officially off my writing game. The words must’ve caught the first bus for the bay. Or the hills. Or...somewhere I am not. None of this is helpful for my finalfinalfinal deadline for the books, let alone a handwritten letter to you (which I promised myself I would write at least one of, here on the balcony of this really quite magnificent hotel in Knob Hill). 

To be fair: all my energies are focused on music. 

Specifically: not screwing up the first-and-only symphonic recording of “West Side Story” EVER. 

I don’t quite know how that piece of information escaped me, but it did, and here we are: there’s no backing out now. 

It's funny, I am no stranger to the ebb and the flow (I am possibly the doyenne of both The Ebb as well as The Flow) but something about these last few weeks feels very different. I can't put my finger on it exactly but it has everything to do with seismic change, a true turning over of cells. What that means precisely, I don't know. But change is in the air. Nothing to do but breathe in, open my arms and leap. I might be wrong, but I might also be Wright. […See what I did there…?]

Also to be fair: it is summer. And I have many a festive intention. In fact, I wrote a little Manifesto on the red-eye. Then? Well then I dug my heels in, John Proctor, I dug my heels in deep. I shall be the very last of the Mohicans holding onto summer--gaze set. 

Here are some highlights: 

- I will make room for small adventures

- I will say yes to camp fires

    and road trips

- I will always say yes to the park

- I will always have Popsicles in the freezer

     ...and watermelon in the fridge 

- I will stop worrying about things I can't control

    …because I will turn 30…

- I will chase and tickle my nieces

     and sing them to sleep 

     and escort them to the county fair.

- There will be many a photo-booth

- And the eating of raspberries off the tips of my fingers, out of the carton 

    …And not sharing the watermelon

- I shall sit on rooftops and balconies and fire escapes

- I shall swim in rivers and lakes and both American oceans.

- I shall bring magic and romance and spontaneity into my own life. 

*

Well. My my my. Guess who has finally mastered the use of the espresso machine (!!) in my hotel room? Why me. The best part of this development, however, is not the double espresso that I can now enjoy each morning while sitting on the patio overlooking the bay with my score (and 10,000 markings and mental reminders to use less vibrato), or listening to the bells from the church across the road, or trying (and failing) to write. 

No. OH NO. The best part is that while I make said double espresso, I get to recite aloud (for myself and sure, sometimes the housekeeping staff) in my somewhat laughable Italian accent, the molto-lame-o slogan embedded on the side of the machine:

For Music ~ Puccini

For Art ~ Bernini 

For Espresso ~ Pasquini

Yet, isn’t that the most ridiculously charming thing you have ever heard? …Perhaps in the whole of your life? 

In other news, do you know what goes nicely with espresso? Bernstein. 

*

I hope you are well. You’ve gone awfully quiet these last few weeks, which of course I understand. You should. You deserve a moment (or five) to look inward and make adjustments. I would never have wanted to have been robbed of my silent contemplative treks through Siberia all those years ago. Figuring out who the heck I was going to be next. Not on paper, mind you, but within. As well as without. 

Yet, Gogol said 

“Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.” 

He is right of course. That white-hot, phantasmagoric mind was so very correct. Nickolai Gogol is my kind of genius. 

So, Dear B, wherever you are, I hope you are everything you need to be right at this moment; and that those 'flashes of radiant joy' are not kept from you. 

Always,

A