To You~ From The Airport Hater

(Backstory: This may only be the second, but it already is one of my favourite To You letters. I fell in love with this story of the 4 Year Wait-er and The Airport Hater. Because Love's favourite hurdles had always been time and space. This is being sent out, typed out on a typewriter, all the way to London.)

To You
4 Year Wait-er,

I was sitting next to her on that flight, while her fire-brown hair fell over her face, most of which was buried inside the folds of a book. I hate talking to people on a flight, they always end up telling you more than you want to know. This girl, though, had four different boarding cards sticking out from four different places in the book.
Curiosity trumps most things (except global warming).

“Hi. I was just wondering. With your, erm system.. how do you know, where you left the book last? Which of your bookmarks actually marks the spot, and which are for decoration?”

She smiled a brilliant smile I would come to know in flashes, “Who says you have to begin only where you left off?” 

I knew then, we would spend the next two and a half hours talking. I just didn’t know it would be all about you.

If I told you that she could not tell a story straight, it would be half the truth. If I told you that I pieced her story together from mostly U2 song lyrics she narrated to me, unnerving excitement about coffee and a deep, simmering hatred for airports, it wouldn't even cover the preface. All you need to know (as you read this) is that you filled up every pause between every broken story, none of which began where they first left off.

You’re wondering by now why a strange girl you've never met is writing to you, about the woman you love.

Because she’s never going to. Her words are too full, too big and impregnated by you. Oh, and remind me to ask you, when I’m done, why you live in another country. Though she never once mentioned it explicitly. She didn't have to. She just said with a steady voice, “I hate airports. Standing at one gives you more clarity than years put together.” 

I wish now, as I write to you, that she’d told me which came first-- the surprise package of dark chocolates and Pope’s book of poetry at her work desk, a song she saw on your Facebook wall or the wedding where you met. She never stopped long enough to clarify and I kept forgetting to interrupt her.

Did you know that she spoke of you like her fondest memory and fiercest secret? It was almost like she was airing out details just to remember them right. No questions or sudden movements were allowed - the conversation threatened to go back to her uncontained love for coffee at any point.

I told her about the loves and chances I had found and lost, maybe it was then that she made it her 2.5 hour mission to convince me. Or maybe she needed to unravel you from inside of her and air you out again. And there you were, 4 year wait-er, a proof of her theory on believing, her prize and her pride.

Her fingers carelessly traced the jacket lettering of Murakami’s After Dark, as she alternatively encouraged and warned me, “Hey listen, if you've never been, just go to Vienna right now.” “Also, piece of advice: it’s easier when the person you love is in the same time-zone. Did you know that?”

I didn’t know that.

Did you know that some days her heart is strained to the point of breaking, without even losing you, but for never having you present when she needs you. Did you know that sometimes pockets of space need to be filled out by a physical presence- especially one that’s carelessly running his fingers behind your ear? Did you know her voice darkens like thunder when she talks about what 5.5 hours of time difference can do to someone? Did she tell you it can age you? That it can drive you to reading subtext on lyrics which were only meant to be fillers for the bass solo?

Loneliness was never a privilege of the truly lonely.

Did you know, 4 Year Wait-er, that she, Airport Hater, carries you around in her purse, folded neatly next to her cigarettes and mobile phone. This invisible shape of you holds her hand or becomes the cloud over her head, depending on which side of the time difference (warp) she really is on. On particularly bad days, this shape of you is so bruised and blackened with her longing that it can barely sit up at the dinner table.

“I only really like Norwegian Wood, the best”. I told her glancing at her copy of After Dark, as we got up to collect our overhead luggage.

“Maybe you need to have a boy stand in line at 6am in the morning, in the freezing London cold, just to get you a signed copy. And when he doesn’t get one, he goes to The Savoy to explain to the concierge why Murakami has to sign this particular copy. And when the concierge doesn’t oblige, he sits across you on vacation and signs it himself. Maybe you need that .”

And you know what, 4 Year wait-er, maybe I do.



Your Nameless Friend,
Seat 4F.

(Why don't you, Damn you.)

(To You is a letter writing project I started because there are not enough letters and love going around. If you have something to say with love-- for your ex girlfriend, you current husband, pizza (promise not to make it cheesy), your landlord who let you skip rent or even Ryan Gosling-- I'll write that letter for you.

The final letter will be up on my blog and a copy will be handwritten/typed on a typewriter and posted to you or to an intended recipient. Kisses on the envelope only on my discretion.
Give me a shout at: kakulgautam@gmail.com )

To You~ The girl with the red wine.

(Backstory: Because before a story, there was a story, and so on. Here's the first of the To You letter series. Like most of the requests I got, this one came with aliases and request for anonymity. Anonymous wants to tell a girl he's met 3-4 times that he likes her. "He isn't obsessed with how she looks, and he's just anonymous because he chooses to be".)

To You,
The Girl With The Red Wine


Rolling your eyes every 20 minutes followed with a “..that’s what she said” joke doesn’t make you the life of every party. But darling, you wear that look so well, anyway. I could give you a real compliment, but I think you’ve had too many of those. What else can explain why you take all day to reply to a text?

We’ve met four times now- each time at a party surrounded with other people and wine. I’m not sure, which of these two lights you up the way it does, but you’re good with both. 

People are drawn to you easily, as was I but I resisted long enough.

It’s Saturday night again and you’re telling everyone how much you love company, but I can tell you’re at your best alone. You also have this way of trying to put your hair up into a bun, each time you’re bored. Stop doing that.

Speaking of, order something to eat next time you’re out. And when the table gets something, don’t only dip the nachos in the cheese sauce. The salsa feels left out, as sometimes do I.

Talking to you can be the most inclusive and the loneliest thing in the world.

I’m not going to bore you with clichés about how you should let new people in. Good call that you don’t. There are some real creeps out there. But there are also some great guys who hate you putting your hair up in a bun, drinking red wine way too fast, finishing all the nachos and cheese sauce and rolling your eyes constantly.

I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing to you.

I’m thinking about that night when we were standing outside the bar. You were telling me about that famous movie star you’ve always loved. Your voice wasn’t fluttering with infatuation, you just spoke with a quiet, determined clarity assuring me that you two would have been soul mates had he known and met you.

I’m glad he didn’t, because maybe you would have.

Maybe like me, he too would have noticed that if you stood and talked in the dark long enough, it would be clear that you were “on fire from within and the moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

Are you going to lecture me now on quoting Neruda? On how you think you’re a lone warrior against plagiarism? How monogamy died and you’re the only one who showed up at the funeral? Or tell me the long list of words you can’t stand because of the way they sound.

You cannot marry and live with words, you know. You shouldn’t. 

You should instead, stand in the dark and talk to me about the words you really hate. Explain to me again why just the sound of the word “snog” makes your skin crawl. And when I tell you that you’re dramatic, know that instead I want to just reach out and hold you, and trace the edges of moonlight on your arm.

I’m not going to hold you. So don’t be alarmed when you read this. Don’t immediately think of a joke or a sarcastic comment. I can outmatch you on both. I just can’t hold silence as softly, tightly and closely as you do. Your silences only have room for one, shutting out people right next to you. Thankfully they don’t last long. 

You break out of them quickly enough to tell me why caffeine is your drug of choice. I’m not sure you ever completed that story. Is it because coffee is a hot drink and doesn’t give you hallucinations? Damn you, do you see what you’ve left me with? 

You’re the moonlit girl who looks like she’s always mid-sentence or mid-leaving. 

Maybe you’re afraid of how you’d feel if you stayed. Maybe you think I’ll figure out how your caffeine story actually ends and ruin your big reveal at the next party.

Maybe I should tell you who I really am, but much like you darling girl, I place far too much premium on mystery.


Isn't that half the magic anyway?

Yours In Jest And Without,
Anonymous.

                                     

                                                                    (Because letters were meant to be felt on paper.                                                                           To You, will post your letter for you as well)

(To You is a letter writing project I started because there are not enough letters and love going around. If you have something to say with love-- for your ex girlfriend, you current husband, pizza (promise not to make it cheesy), your landlord who let you skip rent or even Benedict Cumberbatch-- I'll write that letter for you.
The final letter will be up on my blog and a copy will be handwritten and posted to you or to an intended recepient. Kisses on the envelope only on my discretion.
Give me a shout at: kakulgautam@gmail.com )

                                                                                                                                                                           

(

Most Art Is Havoc

Of all the things you want to be,

Don't hope to turn into poetry.
Verses bend further
than your body ever should.
Rhymes follow patterns,
Inked into permanence.
A certainty your affections
never knew.


Don't look either, little girl,
at turning into art.
Paints never learnt boundaries
A rainbow in reality was only
hysterical, psychedelic chaos.


Don't hope darling boy,
to relive your favourite scene.
The camera never saw
What the corner of your eye did.
No script has ever followed right,
Those voices in your head.


Never wrap the idea of you
Around a hollowed chestnut
Guitar either.
Those strings wear out and break,
When played recklessly
But
You only spilt blood and loved harder
Each time you were.

                                     
(“You are the main character—the protagonist—the star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years. )

                                                ((Noel on Canvas. From here)

Haunted

No eerie music foreshadowed your arrival.
It happened on a dry, dull summer evening. It must've been a Tuesday.
You walked in, wearing a tuxedo, smoking a cigarette and sinking down into my moss green, rexene covered chair. The one I usually reserve for stacking magazines and worn clothes.

You never asked me any questions, those first few days. To be honest, I was always looking over my shoulder to check if you were still around. I remember that evening after work when I had to rush out on a first date. There you were, sitting on the armchair, flicking cigarette ash onto my floor and refusing to look away as I pulled my t-shirt off my head and slipped into a sexier dress.

You didn't ask me any questions when I came home later either. But I could feel you staring at me in the darkness, while I lay on my bed with my back to the chair, obsessively refreshing my text messages.

I also got used to you being around fairly easily. It's like you'd never left. I don't remember when it was, but I stopped replaying that scene of you storming out of our apartment and slamming the door. I forgot the burn from the pit of fire in my stomach that night. I forgot that I carried nausea with me like a purse, for months to come. It was deliciously romantic how watching you sitting on that chair, I forgot things I once thought I would never unlearn.


“Would you like some water?”


Those may have been the first words I spoke, breaking the silence. So oddly formal, to you, who had once known every crevice of every turn of every emotion I ever had. But it was a hot summer day and I know better than anyone else how much smoking parched your throat. That was also the first night I left a glass of water by the side of my bed.


You would think come winter and a new, handsome, wonderful man in my life that I would ask you to leave. I don't know why I never did.

You could've offered to split the rent if you were staying. Refusing to pick a fight and determined to move on I just decided to simply ignore and forget you.

But how does one forget someone who takes over an armchair and fills a corner of your room with cigarette smoke?

I learnt how to change inside the bathroom, except on days when I wanted to remind you what you were missing. I'm almost certain that I saw pain flash across your face when I put on your favorite red dress to go out for dinner with him. Then again, it could've been the dim lighting in my room throwing shadows on your face and tux.

I never let him come over of course. Refusing to answer to myself who I was hiding from whom. However, happiness is more difficult to conceal, given away by stark, simple facts of staying out late, needing less sleep and constantly smiling to oneself. Love shines through, like a hickey on the neck of a boy who has just gotten laid.

“ I didn't want to say anything earlier to you, but I think I need to clarify. It's not that I don't still love you. It's just that he makes me happy. Not happier. It's different.
He's different.
Listen, I really wish you'd say something instead of just sitting there, judging me and making a mess on the floor. There's just so many times I'll sweep the ash up. Ok?"

"Look, he's sweet and kind and I don't want to be consumed whole again. 
Maybe there's nothing more of me left to hurt. Anyway, I don't want to get sucked into this black hole of a discussion again. We were epic and special. Everydays are not lived out in epic and special. That's not how life works.

Plus, I really don't think he will hurt me.”


If there's one thing I've learnt in life, is to never make a wish out loud. There's a reason you keep it in your heart and release it only when swathed inside a soft breath while blowing out candles.
A wish come true can break you, in more ways than one that never did.


I was curled on my bed, sobbing. It must've been a Tuesday night.
I was a heaving mess of tears and muffled wails. Maybe that's why I didn't register the moment when you left the chair, lay down and wrapped yourself around me. I just felt your spiced musk on the skin of my arms. Your you-ness rocked me close until I fell asleep against your chest, wondering if I had single handedly discovered time travel or if you were holding me again.


“I hope your suit's not too wrinkled. I can get it dry-cleaned for you”.

Or something awkward to the effect, the next morning. I don't remember my own mumbles, just a heady feeling of wearing your smell on me again.
I must've broken up with him the next day. Or maybe he broke up with me. It was all a blur. I just knew I had to stay away from my apartment and you, so I crashed at my friends' house for a few days. Mourning and longing had spilt into each other, so often and so violently in my life that it took all I had to not come undone. My friend kept telling me how strong I was- to survive these losses. To forget you and him.
If only she would stop pinning bravery medals to my chest she'd notice that those were blood stains on my shirt and not an interesting motif. And suddenly, that morning when my skin started to smell of me again, I knew it was time to go back. It must've been a Tuesday.


Theres a strange charm and disobedience to what my memory remembers and forgets. The next few months, for instance-  I can only recall sighs and sinking into you and not caring about wrinkling your tuxedo anymore. I remember asking you questions, feeling your breath on my neck and faintly convincing myself that maybe it was ok to be consumed again.


A few people repeated the unkind things my own friends have said about me. I haven't met them for months and yes, missed a few birthdays and baby showers, yes. But what do they know of epic and special? I know I could have worked harder and stayed longer hours at my job, maybe that would've bagged me one of the two promotions I missed.
But I always needed to rush back to my room when the smell of you started to fade.



People always underestimate the power of musky smells.
of skin on skin.
and unfinished business.

(Art credit: Herbert List's amazing collection of photographs. See here)