Even when it is the fault of my own over-crowded schedule, my self-imposed flustering from location to location, stopping for harried meals and half-distracted conversations, grabbing shelter in an archway from the downpour, it pains me when the gears of our conversation slip off track. Every excited thought of mine, some part of it is for you. Or rather, my ability to become invested in some idea, some item, some moment, is now entangled with the desire to share with you that which matters to me. Part of my enjoyment is in the refraction of that pleasure in those I hold dear. Not to have you here at hand is to walk with a limp along autumn gardens.

Of course there are others, friends, collaborators, lovers, and my attachment to you does not sever those ties, but you are the precise you to you me. Even as other strings thicken, draw taut, they are of a different color, a different texture. Strips of brown leather, lines of black silken thread, bright red yarn that will fray but not break. There are infinite ways, for everyone and for you. You and I, too, we shift, the transmography of time and place and character does not cease, nor would I have it so. But they do ache, my arms, from holding up a telephone wire across the Atlantic, and the heavy watch-chain on my shoulders.