We’re living a lie; I don’t want it to be that way. We can’t talk, or caress. We don’t love … Oh, we say “I love you”, a convention – like a greeting; but it seems so empty, just words, without meaning. Said to give assurance, without conviction. As if pretending to the world, and ourselves, will make it all go away. The distance, the knowledge that brings contempt. The withholding of true affection our only gratification and expression of power. Our phone call tonight profoundly disturbed me. Caught in a vortex we can’t escape, neither with the will to reach out for the other - we are sucked down in the abyss of indifference, lost of living. Pain would be preferable to that awful death that robs us of feeling. And yet, I do not wish that pain upon you. Forfeiting life, rather than causing pain. True love? Or foolishness. Written May 30, 1989 while on a work trip to St. Louis.
