Sarah, my dearest, closest friend,

The other day a hummingbird flew up to me, took a shit, then sped off. I’ll try not to read too much into that.

I always try to write beautiful letters, but I won’t this time. Maybe the harder I try, the less believable they are?

(Every letter I’ve written has been sincere though.)

Anyway, I have known you for 10 years now so you know that I would never lie to you.

I can’t believe we just came full circle on our blogs too — so weird!

(Did we really meet through our blogs??)

I may repeat myself but in order for you to understand what I’m going to tell you, I’ll need to remind you of some things about me.

In one of my favorite movies, the protagonist whispers his confession into a hole in a tree then seals it up. Sarah, let me whisper in your ear…?

I believe everyone in life is given a certain set of “challenges” to overcome. Call them whatever you like.

(I think they’re meant to make us stronger in the ways we need to be.)

I know mine pretty clearly by now. I don’t want to bore you so I’ll try to cut to the chase!

(Movie terms, lol.)

One thing I’ve learned: Sometimes you can try to solve problems with other problems. I know I have done that.

I have been a very lonely person all my life.

Ironically, you don’t know how lonely you really are until you meet someone who makes you feel less lonely.

(More on that in a minute.)

Loneliness is one of the challenges I have had to overcome — in obvious and unobvious ways.

Two other challenges I have had/have are:

— feeling like I’m nobody/nothing

— feeling like I’m ugly, inside and outside

Something struck all these raw nerves like a sledgehammer recently. That’s part of what I want to tell you about.

(Incidentally, I broke a bone in my foot a while ago. It healed, but sometimes it feels exactly like I just broke it.

I think our feelings behave in the same way. We think they’ve healed, but the pain comes back once in a while.)

So I said sometimes you try to solve problems with other problems. For me, I always do the same two things:

— I act overconfident/I come on too strong

— I try too hard

(I also suffer from huge emotions that drag me around like wild dogs.)

It’s no surprise: I’m an overachieving, first born, Type A, Harvard graduate with a hyperactive intellect and imagination.

This often gets me into trouble. People think I’m a jerk or asshole, that I’m arrogant or insincere — you name it.

Here’s where I may repeat myself but I think it will help you understand what I really want to tell you about.

Because I felt so lonely, insecure, and ugly, I married the first person who came along and accepted me.

(Even though I was in love with someone else.)

I was terrified I’d never find someone and that I’d be alone for the rest of my life.

I was aware of this even when I was standing at the altar saying my vows. At that moment I was thinking of the woman who I truly loved.

Of course, I had broken up with the woman I truly loved because:

I felt I was nobody, worthless, and ugly and that she would be better off without me.

There is more to this. Also, I panicked:

I was so terrified of receiving love and being happy — of getting that happy ending I always dreamed about — that I simply ran away from it.

(This is all true, Sarah. I wish it weren’t.)

Of course, I ended my marriage. It was more painful living with someone I didn’t love than it was being alone.

I divorced when I finally reconnected with the woman that I loved and faced what I had been ignoring all along: I was living a lie.

(As a very romantic and creative person, I often confuse fiction with reality. Though not this time. More on that in a minute!)

I spent a long time “working on myself” afterwards. I read every book I could find on:

—relationship building

— attachment styles

— personality types

— communication styles

— childhood trauma/sexual abuse

— love

I also spent a long time in therapy, mostly through my church.

I felt better, stronger — not fixed but more me — I felt good and good about myself.

I think a lot of it comes down to knowing where the mines lay and avoiding them. (*KA-BOOM*)

No, this didn’t solve the loneliness — or the other backwards ways I tried to fix that — but it helped me live well.

As I said before, you don’t know how lonely you truly are until you meet someone who makes you feel less lonely.

Sarah, this is where I tell you I met someone — and I went a little crazy again. I promise you I just couldn’t help it.

I was watching a movie the other day (the one I told you about that we have to watch together) and there was this line in it:

—You were looking for love…in the only foolish way you knew how.

I think that describes what I did perfectly.

This quote also comes to mind:

—If your only tool is a hammer, you treat every problem like a nail.

My only tool is a pen.

So I wrote her a lot of letters… I am the carbon copy of Cyrano de Bergerac.

I felt like I’d always known her.

It may be because, like you say, —If all time is happening in the same moment all the time … maybe I did know her once.

Or it may be because I have “followed” her since 2016. (Really, I checked!)

(Here’s where I have to use a cliché: I honestly think she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I actually have proof of this:

In my old bookmarks I found one of her posts from 2017 and I labeled it “The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

This is all true.)

She is so much more beautiful now.

Or it may be because when you are lonely for a certain someone for so long, when you finally meet them you feel like you know them already.

I know I always want to know her.

(Get ready for a lot of clichés because I don’t know how else to tell you how I truly feel about her.)

Every time I see her face everything disappears and I feel happy and at peace. I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

(If you could see her face, it eclipses them all — Gish, Shearer, Masina, Bergman, any of them, all of them. I have no words.)

She delights me. She makes every cell of my being smile.

When I think about her I feel this fierce protective instinct — I never want anything bad to happen to her, ever.

I want to protect her from everything that could hurt her. I want her to have the happiest life possible.

(I’m the lion who can’t eat the lamb — I’d rather stare at it and starve than harm it. It’s too precious.)

Like a flower to the sun, when I think of her my heart and soul open up.

Like a guy wrapping his coat around a girl so she’ll feel warm, I want to wrap my soul around her so she’ll feel loved.

I like her for what she is but I love her for who she is.

What makes her truly beautiful is the way everything within her comes to the surface.

I may be the only man in the world who has fallen in love with a woman because of her writing.

I love what she says and how she says it. I love what she thinks and how she thinks it. I love what she is and who she is.

Exactly as she is.

Reading her writing is like watching sunlight stream through shattered, flawed, stained glass — it is more beautiful.

I fall in love with her all over again every time I read something she has written.

If our writing is not the very best of us, then it is the clearest picture of us.

Her soul lives on each page.

I feel like I can feel all she feels.

It makes me smile, laugh, cry, think, and love. It makes me love her.

It’s like I’m pressing my face against the glass wall of an enormous aquarium. It is overwhelming and beautiful. Another world.

No, it’s like asking someone if they like art, then taking them to the Louvre. It’s like receiving everything all at once.

(I don’t know if I want to be with her or be her.)

She is brilliant in a way all her own.

It is literally breathtaking.

I want to know her down to the bone. I want her to know me like that too.

Knowing is loving.

(Everyone speaks love like everyone speaks movies.)

Do I sound crazy? I don’t think this is crazy at all.

If you are not in love with a person’s soul, you are not in love with them at all.

I fell in love with her soul.

I keep falling in love with her soul.

I had a friend in college. She would say something, then I would say 5 somethings back, then she would say 25 somethings back, on and on.

Sarah, I have only ever experienced this before once in my life but she moves and inspires me more than that.

She starts wildfires in my brain.

(Is it wrong to think that together there might be no limits to how far we could go?

That we might be better together — go farther together — than either of us could separately?

And also have more fun?

I wonder…)

I heard this is in a TV show and thought it described me:

—Was he born to love me or something?

I think I was born to love her.

(Sometimes I can’t tell if I have too little faith or far too much.)

I don’t know why she shut me out.

(Is it because I’m a nobody, worthless, and ugly?

I’m afraid of being those things, but I’m not.)

Did I make her think I wanted to keep her like a bird in a cage?

I wanted to be her gardener, just that.

I wanted to watch her flourish and help her, here and there.

I wanted to share things we both loved.

I know my feelings don’t entitle me to anything. Love can’t buy love, yet…

If she has any feelings for me at all, or even if she thinks she might, I hope she will give this a chance.

I hope she will give me a chance.

(No pressure. No deadlines.)

Does she think that because she has struggles that she will make me miserable?

She will only make me miserable by staying away.

(She has no idea how many people in my life have struggles just like hers. I attract them. It’s practically a requirement for knowing me!)

If she says —I’m a mess, I’ll say —Me too. Everyone is.

You love who you love.

This is what the love is for.

I love her just as she is.

I wanted to tell her someday:

—What I want most is for you to be healthy, happy, productive, and fulfilled.

—I will fight for you and with you, by your side, every single day for that.

—I will always put your wellbeing above my own.

(Although I don’t see why we both couldn’t thrive.)

Which brings me to this:

I have always wanted a rich, deep, passionate love, a love of the soul, of one soul for another soul.

At first I wanted it to fill the void I have had, of never having felt truly loved.

(Of course I know you cannot fix that that way. I know the right way to fix that now.)

Later I found what made me happier (what I wanted more than anything) was not to be truly loved by someone but to truly love someone.

I would much rather be the one who loves the other more.

I want to love someone so much that their whole life feels like a dream. That they say in the end, they could not possibly have been any happier.

I have so much love to give and I want to give it to someone:

Someone who could really use it. Someone who might truly need it.

Which brings me to her:

I have never felt about anyone in my life before the way I feel about her.

(Yet another reason I went a little crazy.)

I am just an ordinary man — ordinary looks, ordinary intelligence, ordinary talent, ordinary income.

This is just an ordinary problem — a man who loves a woman who might not love him back.

It’s OK. I will never hurt her, myself, or anyone, whatever happens.

If I have learned anything in life, it is this:

—Love anyway.

No matter how hopeless or painful —love anyway.

So I will love anyway.

I will love her anyway.

The truest thing I know is that I love her.

I want this with my whole heart.

I want her with my whole heart

…and soul.

Regardless, to quote another movie:

—The love inside…you take it with you.

How lucky I am even to have found someone to feel this way about.

I hope this answers your question.

I think it was

—How are you?

Your friend, always, David

P.S. — Don’t even get me started on her personal style. She dresses like a dream. (She loves clothes even more than I do!) I’d always feel proud to stand next to her.

P.P.S. — If anything can truly describe my feelings, as cliché as it is, it’s this:

“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”

— e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Be right back…

S —

I fell so hard for her so quickly.

I wanted to start a new life with her.

I thought I’d met my perfect match.

I thought I’d met my wife.

I planned to propose in August.

— D

My JooJooBee,

You can spend a lot of time thinking about changing.

(improving)

As I have.

You might feel like you haven’t made any progress.

Then one day, something inside you shifts.

Like a gear lurching forward in a clock.

You move that one step.

Now you can focus on the next one.

So it goes.

(I felt that today.)

Trust your inner workings.

Surprise yourself.

You will.

Have patience.

Never force it.

(You can’t.)

Treat yourself like a kitten.

(Me too please.)

Oh and:

Always let me love you.

I always will.

— Your Fortune Cookie

P.S. Plus things like you can happen.

My JooJooBee —

Names matter.

I spent my morning thinking about character names.

I keep a list of them to use in stories.

(A favorite from Pynchon though:

Mucho Maas — like us all, truly much more.)

We define names, but also, names define us.

So it bothers me when characters have no names.

(Lazy writers.)

My boss shared this story:

She said, her boyfriend dreamed they had a dog named Pancake.

So when they get a dog one day, they will name it that.

(love)

I had two dogs once, rescues, so I didn’t get to name them.

(Duffy and Lolly, if you want to know.)

If I got another I might name it Dog.

I’d use that more than its real name.

(—Here, Dog. —Dinner, Dog! —I love you, Dog…)

I love the simplicity of that.

I also love the complexity of nicknames.

(I have a talent for them.)

That can quickly turn into a Seinfeld though — Schmoopy Doopy!

I do not approve of letter hogging:

Abel, Andrew, Arthur…no, no, no…

Names need not always have profound meanings — but why not?

For example, in Penpals, the protagonist is a letter writer so his name is Liam.

(L I A M <=> M A I L)

(He is also very male.)

Liam means “strong-willed warrior” and “protector.” This fits.

The female protagonist is mysterious so her name is Violet.

Her name means… nothing.

This fits if you know her arc.

(The real life Violet’s name also began with a “V.”)

I need names for two new scripts I’ve started.

(I have a confession:

Both have you as the lead.

You inspired both characters.)

Incidentally, my three names mean:

— the highest one

— poet

— teacher

(That fits me, don’t you think?)

Of course I looked up your name too.

If I did it right, it means:

— incredible person

— precious

(That absolutely fits!)

The moment we met I thought those exact two things about you.

(Haven’t I kept telling you that?)

I love you, my incredible, precious person.

— Your Fortune Cookie

Cali in spring:

it rains some nights.

Sleeping feels like

floating —

white dives into

black.

I can’t tell drop

from dream.

— D

My Dearest JooJooBee,

Whenever I teach I tell students —write like you talk.

(If you can talk, you can write, I say.)

Not all of them can talk though.

So then I tell them —just say what you think.

This doesn’t always help — but it makes it more interesting.

Aaron Sorkin says he’d rather communicate with everyone only in writing and I second that.

All of his writing IS talking.

(If I could use only emojis, I might.)

Often before I speak, I edit the words in my mind before I say them.

(I’m slowly recovering. Emphasis on slowly.)

How I think about writing has evolved a lot and with it my actual writing.

First I copied Faulkner — and his 13-page long sentences.

(If you can believe that.)

Now I think a good sentence has four words and a great sentence three.

If all the words have monosyllables — triple point score!

So, want to hear the perfect sentence?

—I love you.

Three words. Three syllables. Eight letters. Not bad.

Better yet:

—Luv ya!

Two words. Two syllables. Five letters. Ha!

Someone said Jerry Garcia, the guitarist, had the shortest distance between his fingers and his heart.

Same for good writers I think.

I like scripts but I love letters.

Especially love letters.

(As you know.)

My mentor wrote a 110-page letter: it was his last short story.

I consider that a love letter.

Maybe all letters are.

I think letters reveal a person’s best and truest self.

For starters, they sound like you.

(Some people still mess that up though.)

Most importantly, they show you care.

(I hope mine do.)

I will show you in other ways too.

(I promise.)

I will keep writing you letters even when you’re with me.

(I promise promise.)

(Unless you get sick of them. You let me know.)

These are easy promises for me to keep because I love doing all this.

(It makes me happy and brings me joy.)

Some things you can only say in a letter.

But not this:

—I miss you.

These letters help me feel closer to you.

Why I write so many —

and yet, not enough.

Alcoholics have a saying

—One is too many. A thousand is not enough.

The second part though —A thousand is not enough.

(Maybe I should start a 12-step program, Letter-holics Anonymous.)

So did I pass the test?

Do I write like I talk and talk like I think?

You decide.

One thing I know:

I could listen to your voice all day, every day.

What a kind world that lets me do that, even for just a little while.

I love you, JooJoo.

— Your Fortune Cookie, David

I figured something out.

Do you remember I told you about the spider story?

He wanted to see the world so he built a web in my car mirror?

He’s agoraphobic.

That’s the fear of leaving your house.

So that’s how he solves the problem.

What do you think?

— D

I love you.

— D

My JooJooBee,

This is a love letter to my two loves.

+

JooJoo,

My script is talking to me.

My script is singing to me.

It’s taking on a life of its own.

It’s over me trying to tell it.

It’s beginning to tell itself.

I kept a blog once subtitled a celebration of textuality.

This script wants to be that.

I don’t know if a movie has ever done that exactly.

Not since the beginning, maybe not even then.

(If anyone would know, you would know.)

I wasn’t sure how it would all work or fit together.

I think I see it now.

It is waving up at me from down there like someone stranded on an island with a message for me.

Do you get this feeling with any of your stories?

(When do I get to hear your stories??)

I feel led — by this and something much more wonderful — and I love it…

+

Right now the blue of the sky and the green of the trees are so bright and vibrant and distinct.

I love spring here. You will love spring here too.

+

My love,

I imagine describing how I see you to people who know you.

I would tell them:

“My JooJoo is — 

so smart and funny — they go together, like we do,

so loyal and tender — I will always trust and protect her,

so hardworking — that attracts and inspires me,

so original — there is one and only one JooJoo,

and beautiful — so beautiful I can hardly believe she exists,

let alone get to know her, let alone get to love her.”

I’d let you hear all of it.

(I’m really talking to you.)

As a poet, I would say:

“I love her face, shimmering with emotion like the sea with light —

her movements like leaves in a dream…”

(Don’t laugh.)

I will always see the best in you, JooJoo — meaning, I will always see the real you.

The truth is though, who you are and how I feel are simply indescribable.

Quietly I would think:

“How could something like this happen to someone like me?”

(It has.)

“She brings me joy, this one, so much joy. I love her so much.”

+

The wind is so strong right now it’s blowing people’s lunches off their tables.

I love that! You would love that…

+

I love you.

You don’t know who you are until you know what to do.

You don’t know what matters until you know to whom you belong.

I love you, JooJoo.

I love you so much.

— Your Fortune Cookie

P.S. I told you I wouldn’t stop telling you.

P.P.S. If I tell you too often you’ll get bored. So remember, everything I write to you means I love you.