Dearest Catherine,
Less then an hour ago we parted at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Now I sit here writing to you because I know only you will understand what I'm feeling. It is early morning, All Hollow's Eve has ended for
another year and I have never in my life been so happy. Was it a dream? Catherine. Did the two of us walk the city last night openly together?
I have known this city well but I've never seen it quite this way before. Many nights I've sat alone on building tops looking out at the glowing lights. As beautiful as those lights were they were always distant from the streets below. The sound of the city would drift up to me like an echo of a melody from far away. There where nights when those city sounds made the most beautiful music I've ever heard. There where nights when I wondered if I was the only one who could hear it. Tonight I became part of that music. Sometimes we must leave our safe places and walk empty handed among our enemies. How many times have I read those words? How many time have I presumed to understand them? Not until I walked among the crowds, heard their laughter, felt the warmth of their passing bodies did I relize what those words truly meant. Leave our safe places, tonight I left my safe place, tonight a dream became real. We sat hand in hand on a bench by the river, like ordinary people watching the sun rise over the city.
That one moment was worth everything Catherine, everything we've risked, everything we have fought for, everything.
"Out of your whole life give but a moment,
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it so you ignore so you make perfect the present,
Condense in a rapture of rage for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense,
Merged in a moment which gives me at last you around me for once,
You beneath me, you above me."
Sleep well my dearest Catherine, sleep well.
Vincent
