Love Letters from the Gutter

The Pink Collection #5 - L'hôtel Dieu

Dear Button,

if this is the hotel of God then I pray I never have to book in. All I've seen here are people with busted or missing body parts; or those wired to machines; or emaciated, bristled old men shuffling around with saline drips; or bodies parked up in wheelchairs with their brains on pause, and their only vaguely communicable thought coming by way of a long string of spittle hanging out their gobs... and they're the healthy ones. Even now, someone with the complexion of a litre of piss has just stumbled out the hepto-gastro unit and is giving off more light than the moon. It's scary. Death and disease are scary. 

Well already that's another romantic letter fucked! Instead of showing you some wonderful hidden part of me which you missed I've gone and highlighted a selfish, cynical part of me that you saw and didn't like. And I know there were many things in me like that. I even started noticing them myself... hating the parts of me I understood were pushing you away. Things which I'd maybe once even prided myself on then became a drowning weight that I wanted rid off. So sure, I could change these letters, rip this one up and start again, edit myself good, but what's the point? The truth will always come out eventually. I could spend every waking minute of every day regulating my actions and giving you what I think you want, but I can do nothing about scratching my arse and sniffing my fingers in my sleep. Human nature cannot be hidden, so why even try? Do that and you'll only end up living in fear of yourself – I know it. Still, if I seriously thought it'd change the course of water I'd probably do it. I'm as selfish as most when it comes to my own happiness. These letters probably prove that, that I want something even if it doesn't want me... Even if it gives itself to me out of pity.  Fuck, Button, did I really come all the way here to tell you this? If so I must be seriously out my mind, or intent on pushing you off towards Australia! Instead of leaving you expensive pieces of lace and words which should only be whispered into ears, I write about the sick and dying, piss and arseholes... What a fucked-up way to try and woo the dove.

Note to Strangers #1: The wind can change. Never be afraid to start again.


My Dearest Button, something incredible has happened: the wind has changed and I'm starting again. Oh I miss you! I miss you so fucking 'insanelyonly'!!!

XXXxxxXXXxxxXXXxxxXXX

I don't know if you ever visited this place (God's hotel) or not, though you may have as it is on the tourist trail and a hospital unlike anything you'd ever find in London. But just incase you've never passed through I will tell you that certain parts of this place are over 500 years old, that the main facade of the building runs along the west bank of the river Rhone, and at night (when all lit up) it kinda resembles something between Harrods, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. Where I am now, in the dark of the cloisters which surround the huge inner court, I am suddenly overwhelmed by the beauty of silence. What only twenty minutes ago had looked and smelled like some unhealthy place of the damned now smells of cool marble stairs and chiseled and engraved stone. It smells of history and solitude and peace. It smells of old forest and woodlice. It smells of a place your heels may clip along any day soon. It smells of tomorrow. Button, in this monastic recluse, alone in the low hours of the night, I can smell the future – and it doesn't smell too bad. I don't know what that future will hold, or if you will be a part of it, but I hope you are and I hope we can share the beauty in my eyes together. Those are the things I can give you, the invisible things,  the things that perfect 20/20 vision is blind to. Ican give you that, and in exchange you can give me all the things which you have that I am missing - and I'm missing a lot. I'm missing a person like You.

Button, I think that life is about being complete, that we start off as nothing much and must somehow fill our void with enough understanding and wholeness so as to make death acceptable and welcome. I think we lose our fear of unknown things when we are completely satisfied with the known... that we must only hang on desperately to life when we have not fulfilled all there is to fulfill. But if we manage to do that, have it all and find some kind of inner peace, then death becomes welcoming, a place to rest eternal with everything we have. It's not without reason why death from a broken heart is a real phenomenon. It's because these great things in life complete us as people. They allow us the greatest spoil of all: peace in our time. Button, you gave me that peace. Your arms made me scared of death but not fear it. So I hope this smell of tomorrow is You... That you're finally coming to get me back.

My Darling. I had a universe of words to tell you – a million great things in a thousand different ways – but with just a few I think I've said what I wanted to say and so will leave it at that. It is strange though, not even an hour ago I was so sure that you'd never read these words, and now here I am, writing away with a furious passion, convinced that you'll find them... that somehow you just must.

The night is down and my soul is laid bare again. Button, when you find this note please please PLEASE leave me a reply in the cloisters. You should write it on yellow paper, neatly fold it, and place it in the angle of one of the low arches. I will not try to catch you at the game but will return as ever each day in the hope of finding that you've been and gone. If you're gone and want me to follow leave details for a rendez-vous, but if you're gone, never to return again, leave me nothing but a kiss.

X marks the spot...

Yours until forever may,

I FLY

       Enola Gray. X