Minekill Falls

Minekill Falls, a photo by samminski on Flickr.

Jack's letter to Gwen (Novella)

My Favorite Little Imp,

     You have so much passion for life. It is a passion I’d like to say comes from me; your mother, though beautiful and one who enjoys the “fun” of life, does not have the same burning need to live as you do, to drink in oxygen as though it were fine wine and taste all of the foods the Earth offers. You and I are eternally looking for ways to live more fully, and are ever left with disappointment by others’ apathy. You may hate me now, for losing my way but you can never deny that we are two of a kind.

     I suppose nothing I say could possibly divert your passion away from hating me, but I don’t even know if I want to. Passion of any sort, even hatred breeds art of the purest form, not tempered by human trappings. But also, your hatred cannot compete with my own self-loathing that consumes me and probably blocks my archetypal road to recovery and redemption. I lost everything of yours, my darling Daphne’s, and at the risk of sounding self-pitying, of mine the most. Not only did I lose our money and lovely homes, but I also lost the two sole loves of my life. Without you even my job does not have the same meaning it did. How can I make these students, my Tabula Rasas, believe in the same passion and need for art when I cannot even believe in myself or in my ability to make you believe I am invincible?

     Now I am just the fallen father, not infallible god who will save you from everything. This has left you troubled I know. Don’t be; nothing is as complicated as we make it. Someday I will make it up to you perhaps, but only if I first escape this Underworld I have begun to reside in.

Love Always, tout l’amour,

Dad.

excerpt from the nove, part 2.

Mother and I share a bathroom at our new lodgings, The Starling Inn. We wake every morning together and begin our separate morning rituals; brushing teeth and hair, sharing shades of organic blushes and shadows for the eyes. It is these mornings that have us communicating so much more than we ever did in our two-story penthouse.

       “Gwen, do you know how your father and I met?” She is slipping something glittery and rose-colored on her lips.

         “I do, maman, but tell me again, s’il te plait.”  I may hate him but need to hear it, these happy times. These memories keep her lively, and me believing.

         “We met at an art galleria opening, a retelling of mythology through various mediums. I opened the event, an immigrant intern at the time for the galleria itself, with an offhand joke about my name; how they were lucky I could still talk through my wooden lips. Gods, I barely knew English yet, mon Coeur.” She blots her lips on a thin napkin; it floats to the sea glass pebbled floor. “Jack approached me during the chicken tartar hors d’oeuvres, and insisted he escort me. He wanted to be the man Apollo could never be for me. I giggled of course, but was, how do you say it…? Hooked.” Mother pronounces her words with silent “h”s and beautiful vowels.

     Oh, ma belle mama. From free water nymph to maid at a seaside inn? Well, I guess at least you are near water again, more real than the Hudson ever was.

Things I Have Gained

•          The Atlantic ocean
•   =    Clarity
•         New aprons and shoes, you to work in and me to turn into new fall fashions
•         Books for my new school life.
•         The Inn cat who I call Autumn from her vibrant colors and volatile nature
•        (Maybe) mysterious Deputy Jared Larson.

A novel, perhaps.

The leaves are falling again. Daphne’s tears that fall because she knows she cannot love hi, the sun god, the way that he needs. Every year, Apollo comes and crowns himself in her boughs, and every year Daphne weeps unnoticed.

“All things gold cannot stay,” Mother whispers into my ear. We survey our new lodgings, two rooms at a bed and breakfast right on the sea. “We can polish our lives to a shine, hold them to the light, but it will leave eventually.”

         I do not respond; it sounds too much like an excuse to me. Why did he give up on us? Was the polish not working, the golden liquid more luminous than the life you made?
         You would scoff at the accommodations we have found ourselves in, at the new golden lives we are not forced to live.

          “Your mother doing labor? You, my princess, sleeping in a rented bed? No art studio, extra closet, city sounds to serenade you to sleep? How will you ever survive?”

          You talked in beautiful tones, Jack, when you were sober enough to think. A teacher and an artist, you were always foremost an orator, if such a profession still existed. I choose this hole in the wall over any cheap apartment you have stumbled into in Hell’s kitchen. Your own private Hell.