Love Letter
Mike pulls out a sheet of paper, a ruler and a pencil. He has just finished washing the dishes from his new year meal. To ensure that his writing is even, Mike draws lines in pencil across the page. It is cramped in the cubicle, two relatively large men crammed in with all of Mike’s things. I am in a constant state of awkwardness, trying as best I can not to get in the way of the light which is coming from one bare bulb on the wall. Mike is focused completely on the the lines. His face inches from the paper as he draws.
Occasionally, I step out of the room to shoot a wide angle shot. It is now night, the hall of the third floor completely dark except for an exit sign that has the fading red light of a decade old bulb. Every thirty seconds or so a piercing high pitched beep goes off, indicating that some kind of alarm is still functioning properly. At first it is truly annoying, but after time it becomes about as tolerable as the occassional honk from The Bowery.
After drawing the lines, Mike sketches out the letter in pencil. He writes so lightly, that I cannot make out what he is writing. A Japanese film starring a young woman and a young man is playing on Mike’s TV. Occassionally, Mike looks up. For most of the film there is a solo piano playing in the background. The music is sad, almost depserate. As it plays, Mike’s massive frame is hunched completely over, concentrating on the letter. By the time he has finished tracing the letter in pencil, well over an hour has passed.
The next stage of the letter is ink. Mike has all the tools of a master writer. (He doesn’t consider himself a calligraphist, because that is a Western term. Mike considers himself a master writer, so that is what I will call him.) The ink in a small glass vial, Mike wets the metal spade shaped tip of his pen. His writing is breathtaking, a flawless distribution of ink over the page. The letters are in cursive, large confindent loops that demonstrate years of painstaking concentration. As he slowly, moves down the page and toward the end of the letter, I begin to read what is written. It is addressed to the Chan Meditation Center, somewhere in Queens. He thanks them two or three times, adding that he is their humble servant should they ever need him.
Two hours after Mike started to write the one page letter, he is finally beginning to near the end of the process. Each word painfully perfect, so much concentration in each letter. The final couple of sentences surprise me. Mike has written that above all other things, he wishes to have a wife. He writes that because he has committed himself to scholarly pursuits, he is now humbled by poverty and age and is unlikely to attract a woman. It is a very sad letter, what seems to be a desperate plea for love. I begin to wonder what the Chan Meditation Center is, if it is a place where one can be arranged with a wife, or if Mike is simply hoping that the recipient of the letter will pass it along to a woman who is available.
When the letter is done, Mike pulls out a rubber stamp and seals it shut with a red goo. The insignia on the stamp shows up in the goo. This is how letters were sealed hundreds of years ago, I thought. My tape ran out and Mike told me he’d had enough of the camera. I said goodnight and happy new year, and headed for the train.