Literature: Final Reflective Letter
Dear Marlen,
I just exhausted the past hour writing you a missive on WordPress only to have it all deleted by a wild and thoroughly accidental click of a mouse. I recanted and recalled many of our times together in such beautiful alliterations and other such rhetorical devices in a manner that could possibly have made James Joyce blush. While my correspondence was certainly no Finnegan’s Wake, it was surely a wondrous piece of literature that, as unfortunate as it is, none shall see ever again. I can scarcely recall the opening lines. It is as if the words that I affluently expressed existed in an environment that I am no longer welcome to explore. I am greatly saddened that this second more philistine approach shall be the one that will, if nothing else goes wrong, grace your inquisitive eyes. It went something like this (?):
Dear Marlen,
I don’t know what I could possibly say to you that I haven’t stated previously. You are like a brother to me in ways that can’t be depicted accurately. When I sit and write these letters over the past year at the various increments that you required them I’ve never been able to accurately articulate my thoughts in a manner that did them, or you for that matter, much justice. By calling you my brother, I am greatly understating the impact that you’ve had on my life. Even to say that I love you, and consider you a part of my family is not even close to being sufficient. You have greatly influenced my life in such a profound manner that I will never be able to articulate. The very feat of thinking of the things that you have provided me with makes my head spin. I know that you will look at this and say that I was in possession of these qualities and abilities before I met you and this statement would certainly be accurate. However, I do not believe that I ever had the capability to express these abilities and qualities prior to the moment I stumbled into your classroom this previous fall. You have this uncanny knack of opening people’s hearts and minds in ways that they never thought possible. While I was no stranger to my astounding academic acrobatics, you where the one that provided me with the stage to perform them on. For this, I could never thank you enough.
That previous paragraph is all that I am able to recreate form that moment of divine, almost ethereal, connection that I garnered in the first crafting of the letter. This was done with a serious effort, which I will certainly reward with cheesecake upon completion of this letter, but that is another matter all together. Sadly some of the previous paragraph may have been slightly out of place, and many of the passages are quite different from the small piece of the original that I can recall but this shall just have to be dealt with in stride. Who knows, maybe the words were not meant to be read. As disheartening as this previous proclamation seems, I find it to become increasingly true as time progresses.
In my advanced age and noble status I have discovered that the only certainty in life is uncertainty. I have also discovered that the only place that sustains life is the in-between. I have also discovered that though my fate is much like that of Oedipus, I too share the cool loving hand of a guide that will wander with me in this world. Who knows, perhaps some splendid travesty was just averted due to the accidental (?) erasure of my epistle to you. I feel that this more complete letter fumbles with the points that I was trying to make and the themes that I was trying to express. You’ve opened a whole world of wonderful and whimsical doors that are waiting to be explored. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, and I look forward to returning the favor at some point in my life.
With warm jubilant regards,
Andrew Charles Harkins McCleaf
