Unsent Letters #27

I dreamed of you a few nights ago

Photo by Thomas Martinsen on Unsplash

Dear T.,

I dreamed of you a few nights ago. We were in a labyrinth made of hedges that reached up to the sky. The entrance was near the library on that hidden little hill in Parco Sempione that, although in plain sight, it took me years to discover. On my way to work, I had stopped to get a coffee at the kiosk on the corner, and the guy, instead of giving me back the change from ten euros, pointed to the entrance of the labyrinth, behind the trunk of a large tree, as if this information were worth the coins he was supposed to give me. And he told me to hurry, as you were inside waiting for me. Not because, without me, you wouldn’t find the exit, but because you had something for me. Is she trapped in there? I asked. The guy kept staring at me with his dark eyes, without saying a word. His dog, lying at his feet, said hurry up!. A little bird landed on a table nearby to look for crumbs and it, too, said hurry up!. Then, a worm on the trunk of the tree said the same thing, and soon enough, hundreds of indistinct voices from all over shouted hurry up! repeatedly, all together, as in a choir. I plugged my ears with my index fingers and shouted ‘ENOUGH! I got it.’ And all the voices stopped at once, abruptly. 

So I entered the labyrinth and made some random rights and lefts, until I saw you standing in a corner, immobile, your gaze directed at me as if you knew I was going to pop up from around the hedge any minute. Let’s get out, I said, but you had no urgency to leave. I’m staying, you said; if I exit this place, soon I’d have to find another maze to get in, and so on and so forth. You repeated and so on and so forth. I’ll get out eventually, you continued, but I’m not ready for it. Not yet. It all seemed so logical that I didn’t bother asking you to elaborate. And then I thought, how come I myself am not in a maze? In a maze of my own, I mean; not this one. But the thought vanished when you handed me a small black leather notebook, held closed by an elastic band. This is yours, you said: it’s your address book; you lost it on the train to Geneva, it might have slipped out of your pocket when you fell asleep. My address book? I haven't used one in decades, all my contacts are in my phone, I said. You smiled, and then started to become transparent until you disappeared.

The following morning I went from bed to desk, pulled out some sheets of paper, and wrote longhand until details of that dream vaporized. I don’t even know where to send this letter; I haven’t seen you in thirty years, perhaps. Many parts of that dream remain obscure, but then again dreams rarely make sense. Why was everybody telling me to hurry? It seemed the whole universe was shouting that I should hurry. We always accept what happens in dreams, without further investigation. I wish you were here to discuss this with me, like in the old days. Or rather, nights. Remember?

But I haven’t decided to write to you solely to recount a dream you were in, as unsettling yet mysteriously nice as it was (yes, it was nice to see your face after so long). I’m writing because the main object of that dream -- the address book -- was mailed to me yesterday, I don’t know by whom or from where. I just found a thick envelope in the mailbox. One of those padded with a layer of bubble wrap inside, designed for small fragile items. It contained the black address book and a sheet of paper folded in four. On it was a brief message handwritten by a certain Scott L., saying I found this address book with your name on it, and mailed it to you, hoping that the address written next to your name is still where you live. Printed on the back of the front cover was: ‘If found return to’, with some blank lines below. And I instantly remembered when, absent-mindedly, I had jotted down my name there, along with my address and telephone number. It was late at night and I was on the phone, talking but mostly listening. To whom, I don’t remember. But I remember that I used to scribble things or draw shapes while on the phone, and that very night I decided to write down my details in the allotted space. Evidently, I wasn’t too captivated by whatever was being said on the other end. The address written in the space, however, was from perhaps eight or ten addresses ago.

Leafing through its pages, I read names from a different lifetime. Each written in a different calligraphy, often with a different ink color, some just penciled in, others underlined or circled. My calligraphy has always been variable, I thought. It depended on my mood, or the weather. It still does. Back then, it was a source of annoyance. Today, I kind of like to think of it as a reflection of a particular state, as if, by merely reading a handwritten word, I could detect how I felt and what my day was like, supposedly, when I wrote it. A photograph is worth a thousand words, they say. Well, in the case of my handwriting, a word is worth another thousand words. But just for me: I’m the sole interpreter of these scribblings. 

Where did I lose this address book? More importantly, when? If I haven’t used one in at least thirty years, I must have had it on me in the early nineties, at the latest. In the dream, you say that I lost it on the train to Geneva. I used to take that train often when I was with Beatrice, whose family owned a chalet in the Swiss Alps. We’d go skiing there on the weekends. From Milano, we’d take the train to Geneva, but get off in Sion or Sierre, about halfway through, and continue up to Crans-Montana by taxi or bus. That was in ninety-one or ninety-two, so there you go: more than thirty years ago. Having it delivered to me today feels like living parallel realities, each on its own timeline. I remember that you once wanted to discuss that Borges story, The Garden of Forking Paths, as it had a profound influence on you. I wasn’t familiar with the story, which you urged me to read so we could spend entire nights talking about it -- our most beloved activity. 

On a page, toward the back, I found some notes I took on a Bill Evans recording. How weird, you may say, in an address book? There was a time when I used to write on any available surface: on the back of business cards, on supermarket receipts, on paper napkins. And the address book was the one thing I always had on me. I wrote: Waltz For Debby, 1961/62; fifth and final album by the best Bill Evans trio, with Paul Motian on drums and Scott LaFaro on double bass. The word Best was underlined in red. Then it continued: LaFaro dies ten days after the recording in a car accident at age 25. Evans, shocked, stops performing for months. Underneath these notes, I saw Scott LaFaro’s telephone number circled in blue ink. In yet another, different calligraphy. Certainly not mine.

I remember well the LaFaro story, one that haunted me for decades. I spent countless nights listening to that Trio’s music, while reading about LaFaro’s genius and his unfortunate destiny and Evans’ refrain from playing in public for months afterwards. I thought it was magic, music from a different dimension. Naturally, I still own those five LPs, all they got to record together, including Waltz For Debby. 

So, I don’t know what to think. I dream of you handing me an old address book in a maze, and a few days later I receive that address book in the mail with a few words from a certain Scott L., sent to my current address. I then find a note on a page of that book, clearly written by me, with Scott LaFaro’s telephone number underneath, scribbled in a calligraphy that is not mine. I wish you were here to talk about all this with me, infinitely, at night. Or maybe I just have to wait until I dream of you again, for a second installment.

A second of many, hopefully.

---

"Unsent Letters" is a series released every other week. These are imaginary letters penned (though never dispatched) to individuals who have influenced my life, not always mirroring actual events. Some entries contain elements of autofiction, while others are based on reality. However, I won’t specify which is which.

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