The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

I had him for so much less time than I’ve lived without him, and yet his presence is enormous, though I keep it to myself. It is as if I’ve swallowed a hot air balloon but try not to let on.

But I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside.

You get the one life. It’s awfully unfair, isn’t it?

If you keep the mechanism in order, then the contents of the correspondence, the material of the letters I mean, can go anywhere. Be anything. You can write to anyone. You can say anything you like.

My life has felt enormous, but what do I have to show for it?

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home in the world, but I’m not sure that’s unique. I’m not sure. I’m really not sure what I sat down here to say, but it’s like the whole neat thing has had a good shake and, for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what’s around the corner.

I had begun to look forward to having my life back to its old order, but now that he’s gone the quiet feels like loneliness, where it did not before. At least, if it did, I didn’t realize.

remember when you said in an email that when you find a place for yourself in the world, it feels like music,

I thought when I started to lose my sight in this way, when it actually began to slip away, I would cling to it with all my might, but that isn’t the way I feel now. Now that it’s become such a strain, I almost find myself ready to let it go. Not totally, and you know I might go back on that tomorrow, but today that is how I feel.

I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be.

I want to tell you about my experience with having read Lonesome Dove. I have read the book now three times, and I’m sure you are aware of the short television series that was made, which I have also rented from the library a few times and enjoyed very much. Years ago I read the novel for the first time, as I said, when it won the Pulitzer Prize. I used to try to always read the prize winners, and indeed, I happened to read Lonesome Dove during a stretch of my life when I felt that everyone around me was rising up to the fullness of themselves while I was withering, and I will never forget the first time reading that book. It seemed to me that the text was tapping down into some ancient, painful stream of truth, or rather, the story of the cattle drive and its narrative appendages seemed to be somehow coming out of me, rather than going in.

There is a quote from one of my friend Joan Didion’s essays. It’s from the last essay in The White Album. The quote is: “What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read. I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.