Are you wearing 1)pajamas? I do not mean tobegin this letter by getting personal. I was just wondering if you people leavethe house anymore-something that seems to be increasingly unnecessary thesedays, a hundred years ago.
Are you six-feet-six? Are you fly-fishingon Mars? Are you talking on a cell phone? We are, usually.
As lovers leaving lovers say, By the timeyou read this, I'll be gone. Or possibly I won't. Given the way life is beingprolonged these days, I - with my pig's liver, 2)titanium hips and knees,artificialheart, transplanted kidney and reconstructed DNA - could write thisletter in my century and pick it up in yours.
I write you in the dead of winter from asummer village by the Atlantic Ocean. The last of the houseflies beats its bodyagainst the window, through which I watch the 3)tremors of a 4)berry bush andthe shorn stoic trees. Afternoon lowers on evening; the sky is the color of5)unpolished silver. A Cole Porter song, In the Still of the Night, goesthrough my head. I do not know why.
We are generally content, generally atpeace,generally optimistic, and with good reason. We are generally rich; more peoplehave homes of their own. We are generally healthy, thanks largely to remarkableadvances in medicine. People who died of certain diseases even 30 years ago areroutinely saved today.
In short, we are generally OK in spite ofnotable low spots and areas of significant concern. Our movies are mostlysilly. Our books? Mostly small. The quality of our cultural criticism isgenerally so low that one cannot tell how good or bad any artist is, but inliterature, at least, it is highly unlikely that any writer touted as aheavyweight in our era will make it to the ring in yours. Movies that once werejudged by normal artistic criteria are now valued by the amount of money theymake over a weekend. For your horrified amusement, see if you can dig up aprint of something called 6)Screamor The Blair Witch Project.
We enlarge and expand. We have recentlyfound out that the entire universe is expanding more than we had 7)initiallybelieved. We build, invent and discover at a pace that is 8)dizzying for us,perhaps turtle footed for you.
I wonder how far you have progressed. Iwonder if you have figured out how to make the best use of the past. I see youlooking back at us. You see us looking out at you. Because we can imagine oneanother, we constitute each other's dreams.
Outside, the air is cold and deep. Themoon hangs in a fingernail of light. The clouds conspire and retreat to revealyour stars and ours. Come. Walk with me in the 9)chill still of the night.