Mar. 21, 2003 - 3:14 p.m.
Dear Meghan:
I am not outlining this letter ahead of time because, well, I don't feel like it. By this time, your presentation in Annapolis is over. For the record, I did make note of when you were set to speak so I was sending many good skewed-space-time-continuum thoughts your way. How did you like it? How did you like the room? How did you like you? Should I be preparing to be your speechwriter for your presentation next week at the Lincoln Monument? In any event, I am very anxious to hear your recounting of the event.
My only regret is that your presentation seems so big, and so wrought with possibilitiy, that I wish I could be slightly nearer to cheerlead in a more tangible way. Nevertheless, I hope you know that I am very, very pleased and proud of you.
It is with unbelievable surprise to learn that not only have you heard of "The Great Race", but you enjoy it as well. Perhaps, while you wait patiently for me to finish with "The Lovely Bones", we could kick around some theory about "The Great Race" - assuming there's theory to be found. Incidentally, I quite liked your thoughts on finding people you know in books and vice versa and being so far unable to find yourself. Since you know the complexities of your own person, I'm not sure if that would ever be truly possible - even if you write your autobiography. Still, I look for you in bits of text - as remarked before, some of Susie's wry commentary sounds very like you, to my eyes anyway.
The bad poetry lines are priceless - they certainly deserve to be assembled in some formal form somewhere, even if it was only Diaryland. It did put me in mind of all the wretched lines that I've come up with over the years, which was inspiration enough to cause me great internal pain and guilt. Luckily, many specific lines did not rush into my head, but some nice clunkers like "I'm gonna slit my wrists tonight/under the glare of pale, pale moonlight" did momentarily surface. On the lyric/poem level, one of my songs - "Zero to Sixty" - that I put on garageband.com just bubbled into the country charts' Top 200. Only took 2 years. Yay. Me.
Flittingly,
Vincent
what they said - what they will say
