Hey did you see Trek Saturday?  Catch the reference to the
Heart of Gold's Heart of Gold?  Seemed improbable enough...

	Well, I wasn't sure if I should respond by e-mail or by snail
mail or by phone, or what, but then it was too late to call and snail
mail seems so slow and my hand writing's horrible, and does this stuff
count as a love-letter anyway.  So e-mail it is at least until I can
try calling you.  And e-mail *does* have its strengths: communication
is distilled down to *words*, and nothing but: in that way, it is a
very pure form of communication- and even if it can have no texure,
it does produce luminence, a light that you know will reflect on the
recepient

	Moving out does suck.  Clothing and atari games and cds and
enough computer junk to choke a horse and books, books in very heavy
quantities.  But now I'm settled, got a little wonderful blue-and
-white room in my Aunt and Uncle's house and I start work on Tuesday,
an hour commute, but it's a good job, one that may easily produce
tangible results, so that'll be fine.

	Now that I think about it, I think I can see that it wasn't
that you weren't lonely: but you were almost never alone.  Maybe I had
forgotten how different the two can be.

	I said one time that hope is sometimes all I live on.  I still
find myself yearning to be with you again.  And your last letter
refused to take that kind of hope away, which I am in my own way
grateful for, even if I'm not being terribly realistic.  Even that
hint of possibilty sent my brain soaring, drunk on hope.

	In your letter you said that I'm not the only person who has
told you that they were unable to get at the essence of you.  Now that
I think about that I realize that maybe there is no simple, monolithic
core underneath the swells and currents of emotions: those currents
are what make you what you are.  At this point, I would sacrifice a
lot to be able to explore those currents, to take the time to see and
touch and hear and smell and taste those moods and textures, to savor
them and to be sometimes mystified by them and other times to look in
them and see echoes of what I can see is in me as well.  If somehow we
decided to start over, to find a romance beteen us, I don't think it
would be the same relationship again.  The last time was weird- do you
remember how surprised I was when, after it was over, how surprised I
was when I realized you really had had feelings for me?  Now I've
realized that just because you don't wear your heart on your sleeve it
doesn't meant that those feelings didn't exist.  I have learned alot
in the year and a half that has passed, and that would show up in any
relationship I entered.

	Well, this letter has been full of mixed metaphors and
compound sentences.  That's not bad, though.  I hope to see you soon.
I hope to be able to talk to you sooner.  My Aunt kind of dislikes the
idea of the phone being tied up for even brief periods, so in a few
days a second line should be activated, and I'll have a number that
belongs just to me (hey, I just noticed that that'll be a first for
me) and until then the number here is 555-1130 though I will probably
try and call you tomorrow.

	Please write back, even if only to say you got this and you
don't feel like writing through e-mail any more.

						Kirk