Dear So and So

Today,

I stopped at a puddle, crossing the street, hoping I'd see your smile, or someone's smile, at least.

I was reading about God. I wasn't trusting my own voice.

And then on the eliptical machine, I heard myself pronounce:

There's a whole other plane on which to live!

Not that I knew, exactly, how to live on that plane, but I knew it demanded my silence.

Where do you turn inward? He asked.

And I was on my way to Starbucks to buy coffee, and I thought:

I have no damn idea.

Sometimes on my yoga mat, I guess...or when I'm walking to the library, hoping I can get lost in Goethe or a book on neurology.

When I was on the eliptical, sweating the worry out, I thought:

Jesus, why has it felt like time suddenly stopped being time, and instead became one big, sloppy cocktail party?

Last night, he asked me, What's it sound like, when God talks to you?

What does it feel like? I asked.

No, sound like.

Oh. Nothing. It doesn't sound like anything.

That's right. He said, because didn't you say you'd die if you heard God?

I breathed. I noticed, I was breathing, then said,

Surely, you cannot hear me and live.

Sometimes, when I was younger, I thought the ringing in my right ear was angels.

Later, I found out it was residual damage from so many years of chronic ear infections.

Once, I was so sick, the ceiling fan came down and told me to cut myself.

OK, I said to the ceiling fan.

No, God doesn't sound like anything.

But sometimes I hear symphonies, I said.

Yeah, that book I'm reading, Wittgenstein's Mistress, she hears things like that, he said.

You mean, the crazy woman? I asked.

No. She might just be the last woman on earth, not crazy.

I wanted to shout out at the gym, to the woman cleaning the treadmill,

There's a whole other plane on which to live!

But maybe I'll just write a blog about it, I thought,

And send imaginary emails in my head, like

Dear So and So

Your tree is awfully lonely. Talk to it.

Love,

God.