Letter from RGB to CLC sent to father’s house in Del Mar CA, return address 1400 SE 34th Ave, Portland.

19feb03, Las Vegas NV

Dear Kate,

Forgive me for not writing you as promised last year, but the point of your birthday as a time to write was to choose something clear and neutral: something well-defined but arbitrary that would lessen your fear and lessen my chances to do something rash or speak impulsively. “It is a characteristic of wisdom,” as Thoreau once wrote, “not to do desperate things.”

I was surprised when Elinor mentioned you were in town, but pleased to hear that you seemed well. I don’t make much of Elinor’s insights into your character, but I have quite literally slept better since hearing that, making me realize how much free-floating anxiety I was carrying around you for all these years. As I was telling a friend earlier this month, you are in ways the last unresolved strand around Marcus’ death, the one variable I have not been able to balance. At an intellectual level I don’t understand what happened, at a limbic level I have not been able to process your scent spiritually* and the meds have partially arrested the mid-level stuff. Although clearly I needed them just to stay alive I believe that drug use (even anti-depressants) in some sense “freezes” emotional and other development, so some aspects of my coping and processing have been delayed until I am completely weaned of their effects. You must do what you need to, of course, and I have honored that, but just an FYI: I am glad of news and that you are well. Perhaps you could find it some year on my birthday to send news of your own, perhaps with a picture and news of your family.

I miss you, as I’ve said, and not always as one would think. Aristotle was right in the Nichomachean Ethics when he asserted that friends are dearer when one is happy. It is the good things I would share which pang me most sharply: a book or song, some craft or fabric. I understand so much more now some of the things you said of color, as this week in Las Vegas I am bathed by shining lights. I think you would cream over the Franklin-Covey organizing system and wish I could share small business tips and insights with you.

Was it worth gaining our brief sexual time time together, worth losing your friendship? At the time I thought it was, and I still might if we were now friends, but life is funny that way, so today I am not so sure.

I think today of Gary Snyder’s poem “Seaman’s Ditty” and a song from Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, “Born, Never Asked.”

Happy birthday, Catherine Lynne, wherever you may be. – Rory