i am not going to repeat all of the things that other people have said and have done with respect, admiration and esteem for your being...you were far too modest to be able to hear all of that praise and it is probably best that most of it is said in retrospect, as most philosophising is, all i can do is take up where we left off in our discussions and attempt to atone for the many mis-takes i made in relation to you...i don't know the girl i was when we met, but now at 60yrs of age, i realise and can finally forgive myself for just how shallow, neurotic (i allowed my irrational fears to intrude and interfere with the possibilities open to us as lovers of life) it is a tragic fact that i was incapable i was of trusting the man you were be-coming...so, when you told me "i love you" (and i couldn't hear those words coming from your mouth so i made you repeat yourself when you knew already that i was deaf to your meaning and purpose) i was so utterly stuck and unable to show you a willing heart returning that devotion (because i doubted i was worthy, enough to give or receive so much beauty) you told me that "the balance of the world is contained in women's hips" and that feminism "isn't the answer" (to which i had responded, "sure, you can say that because you are a man!" (and you seemed surprised that i should think of you as a man - not less than a man because you were more like a girl than any man i had ever met)...it would take me years to discover that the XX chromosome is "far more ancient, much more stable and has inbuilt endurance, which the y chromosome, being the newer 'freak', does not have"...and that you were perfectly true, the balance of the world IS contained in women's hips! I have spent my whole adult life, like Alice, running as fast as i can just to get nowhere at all...i understand what the Red Queen meant now, that if i wanted to get anywhere at all with you, i would have to learn to run much faster than i ever could! I know, now, that my love for you was a broken and bruised and much wounded process but that i have been ,in my own way, every bit as devoted to learning to love and affirm myself in the way that you were so affirmative and loving in and of yourself toward me...i have never given up, i have never been able to let it go...even if you are not 'around' in your own life, i have had to re-solve what you meant to me...resolve what i meant to you, too...i owed you that much...i think the most profound words about love, aside from your everlasting poetics of space and time and heart, must be this thought of Rumi's: "Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation." "This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be." "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about." "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along." "...and that's the way it was meant to be..."MH