Yes, that’s what this is. It is a farewell…for the time being, at least. I have to go now. These four walls have come to represent more prison than shelter, and I must shuck them off and go forth to seek that which I crave.

Before doing so, however, I would like to thank you for allowing me the grace of your time and attention. Through that gift, you have honored me, surely. There are many of you, whom I have come to know in these past months, who have become very important to me. Each of you has, in one degree or other, gifted me with something precious. I thank you for that, as well.

But, time passes on, and so do people. There are things in my world that demand attention, and I must address them now. I suppose that means that I will be gone for a while. I won’t be posting. I will be doing me very best to attend my mail, however. Of course, there may be times when I am abroad, wherein I will be unable to respond for a short time. But, do not despair. Write and you shall receive a response in due course. As always, I will be honored to hear from you.

If you would allow it, I shall leave you with a parting thought:

A few days ago, I was engaged in a telephone conversation with a close friend of mine. It started out plainly enough. She and I were discussing dreams, and their hidden meanings. I was listening to her speak of one particular dream wherein she had been walking through a forest, and all of the trees were textureless and flat because, in her life, she had never really paid attention to the intricacies of their surfaces. Her mind had no accurate point of reference with which to define the tree, itself. So, despite the fact that she had spent all her life among them, she realized in that moment that she had never really stopped and looked at one before. She had never taken her fingers and run them across the convoluted surface of the bark, or lifted it to find the spongy underneath, pungent, earthy, and fragrant.

And I thought…

If there is such a thing as sin in this world; whether you subscribe to the beliefs of Christianity, or you cling desperately to agnosticism, sin lay somewhere in allowing the precious, ineffable beauty of life to slip past, unnoticed.

If you believe in the concepts of eternity and afterlife, then know that all that you are is made up of all that you touch, feel, and see. It is all that you carry with you through this life, and all (should you believe in such things) that you’ll have to take with you beyond. Just that. Nothing more.

If there is one thing that I hope I can say about myself in years to come, it is that I shall not dream silently of featureless trees and imagined sunsets. I will go out among it all, drink it in, and carry those precious gifts inside of me wherever I roam. It is my way of being worthy of it. And, I think, that is all the service that peace and happiness require.

With Love,
Redguard@blackvault.com

P.S. I will still be there in the Summer for our proposed Las Vegas rendezvous. I hope that you will be, too.

Write me.

Goodbye.