Fourth Letter, January 16

Dear Berlin,

I wake up to snow this morning, my dear. It isn’t that perfect, soundless white blanket that makes everything feel fresh. It’s the sound of cars driving on wet roads, gray slush, crunching and still exhilarating, and yes, of course I make a snowball.

Will is gone again today, so I play hooky (or as he tells me, I bunk? I skive?) during the middle hours. Winterfeldtplatz is glorious. The sky is blue, and the snow is playful. I find tulips in bundles, and wish I had someone to buy them for. I find a café with strawberry rhubarb pie, and chai lattes, and I read The English Patient. I underline the most beautiful passages as I go.

I think about love in my head and I think about keeping my feet dry in my body.

Darling, should we make a graph of relationships? I would think it should have negative to positive emotion mapped onto the y-axis. It’s been said that the opposite of love is indifference, but consider the need for hate on the graph as well. I think that indifference should be y=0. Then the integral of the graph can show passion.

Instead of time as x, I suggest familiarity. Who’s to say what the calendar of love is? Perhaps, though, passion is a function of familiarity.

The ugly snow and the sound of cars driving through the slush is familiar, if not beautiful. But being familiar, it is lovely. I love you, and the more familiar you are, the more I find myself let you in, let you minister to the needs of my soul and stir my creativity.

Someday, maybe, I will graph us onto this plane. Let’s fall in love and become familiar.

Thoughtfully,