Creative Response: Zach Welman

Author's Note:

This response is inspired by Virginia Woolf and the eavesdropping we did in Trafalgar Square. It's sort of told in an epistolary form (sort of...) and I'm not sure I knew what I was doing with it. Plot-wise it might kind of suck, so just let me know how that is, where it should go, if it should have more at the beginning, etc. I tried to link up the speaker's observations to his situation with the woman he will be writing letters to, but if that does not work, i.e. if you guys don't see that happening and have no clue what I'm talking about in those particular places and even start wondering how it connects to small bit of "actual plot" at the end, just let me know because I'm interested in seeing which direction I can take this if I can take it at all.

I'm not super proud of this piece, but I'm sure there's something in there that works, maybe certain descriptions, thoughts, something...just let me know because I'm not sure there is really even enough here character-wise to comment on/ get attached to. It isn't exactly a normal short story like we've been reading in class so I guess keep that in mind and let me know if I should abandon any weird form type things that I'm trying unsuccessfully to do or not.

Enjoy.

***

Two Letters

            So in a sleep the sweat steamed plastic dis-adhered from my face and the doors swept open and out I drifted; I was on the hunt for some stationery, on which this letter I am now composing you shall be hand writ. Dear Katherine, it is not often I lose myself in a city, but due to the hum of the train, which I imagined was your voice serenading me to sleep along your side as we squished into your aqua blue double-sized hammock hanging from that perfect tree on that very un-London day in May back home, I managed to awake and just get off that very stop—me, spontaneous! I jaunted up the steps and to my astonishment met eye to eye with the Admiral on his throne above all smack dab in the center of all London. My eyes were his eyes, my ears all the ears of the great crowd around me. All letter writing (apologies) was forgotten. (This place—It makes me want to affect a Victorian outlook on everything.)

            The National Portrait Gallery: How I entered there, I am not sure, but it was a sublime place (you really should go). I tell you what, it may have been that long conversation of ours we had the night before, and your prodding me about when exactly am I going to get around to writing you a letter because hey you’re bored there at the lake and it would be nice—whatever the reason, my mind was in a million and one pieces scattered throughout the whole of London on this day. In a certain sense, it was a blessing, as I became the sort of eavesdropper to rival you and your loose-tongued friends. The narrow halls and winding walls of the gallery were filled over with people on this day, all going to see this or that famous person, this or that artist, actor, royal. And yet I alone came for them, the masses—they were my Bill Shakespeare, my Will and Harry and Kate, my Kings and Queens.

            My brain swept the gallery floor, by three friends enthralled: “She was… She had to fight like mad.” “…She was killing people too—” “She had to—” “Or else others would kill her, yeah…” “Right… and… our great golden age was then, really…”

            I assumed, due to the portraits around me, of kings and queens and aristocrats through a period of 100 or so years, that they must have been speaking about Elizabeth I. Who else? Did you know she was supposedly a “virgin queen?” I don’t believe it. So many of the men who hung on the walls around her were friends or confidants of hers…what woman, even one so strong, so truly fit to rule if her portrait is true to her essence as it seems to me, could resist the shackles of love, which bind any and all of us if we happen upon them (and be sure that we do happen upon them), making a slave out of knaves who in folly dare to cross a mighty pond to escape its clutches (Love comes for us all)—who among us escapes or suffers love unscathed? Elizabeth must have had some tender feelings stirring in that manly stomach of hers, for what passionate lengthy rule could be sustained by uncaring, by indifference? What drives a human to kill or have others killed but love? Why not wed and save yourself from having to face rough seas and rough ships if not for the love of another?

            As I tread airily to another room, I see two gallery guards in black uniform at their changing. The white one says, “…ready now?” The black one taps his toes, chuckles without turning as the other places a hand on his shoulder, says, “…time already?” “My turn, John.” “Time for a cup of tea…” says John as he gets up, patting the older, fairer skinned guard on the arm, going to what I hope for him is tea (I wonder about such a job…). What is a friendship between two but a shared pot of tea around a corner table during your work break?

            I turn from them to another couple: two young girls of maybe seven, with the cutest little posh accents. The one in pink (there must be one in pink), questions: “Where are the adults?” The one in blue, hair whipping back, head already along into the next room, reaches back a hand and says, “Somewhere there, but let’s go here and…” Adventures and leaps of faith make the fastest of friends; one always needs a hand to grasp so as to not fall flat on their face in life, I find.

            Though Paris gets the respect, London is certainly a city for love! The couples are forever matching here. And they are not shy about their displays of affection, their joy of finding themselves in the other whose hand they tightly hold for fear it may not be there again when they look. PDA in the tube, on the streets, in the park, in boats, in the Eye—I find it lovely, really. You may not…I could change your mind. You only have to take a leap across the pond to try. And it’s really the youngest ones who do it, of course. The heat is there, the blood so close to the skin, the light in the tunnel appearing so far off, the bells in the chapel unheard, at least distant, ignored. What is life in London without a half of yourself? Am I truly in London when my mind is in America?  

            A quick stop in the café because I require sustenance. So much listening and admiring such interesting people one works up a mighty hunger of another kind. I get coffee and a croissant. A girl roundabout our age and her mother and sister are just gathering their handbags and rubbish for the bin and moving along near me and I have no phone here to check while I munch and sip. “How old is he? How old are you?” “Ha…skin so smooth as a baby’s bottom…” “…why’d you even say that?” “…as a baby’s bottom…” “How old is he?” “…That’s why I’m more mature than you…” A family’s love is something else entirely, like a silent snowfall in deep winter: the entire world, all meaning and significance are there in the snowflakes, individual as they fall but amassing as they spatter the splayed old whiteness already all adrift in my yard, such that an entire dictionary couldn’t carry the volume of speech necessary to adequately draw back out those individuals flakes of meaning from that vast moment. All one can do is look on in wonder, knowing not how each snowflake, though so different from the others bonds with them all as one in that one place and one time, forever.

            The last words I remember overhearing as I left the portrait gallery and turned toward the square were yours on the phone from the night before: “I just feel so old…so heavy that my bones are creaking from all the pressure. I don’t know what to do. The two of us here don’t have enough…I mean my parents…my parents…they…this is your fault and I hate that I don’t hate you for it.” And I hated my stupid blank stare on the other line; my hollow voice was like a drop off the longest cliff there ever was—————in that moment, I wanted to take the next flight to you and her, Katherine.

            And yes, I did wind down the Strand to pick up some fine flowery Bloomsbury-quality stationery on which to write my two letters of necessity. One is for you; the other is for your parents. I am mailing both to you. You either take the leap, mailing them theirs on your way out, or you keep it and throw my letter to you in the fire. Because the ensnaring vines of love have worked their way into both of your lives, my Katherine, I am afraid you will regret both choices.