I’ve been thinking of you.

Sorry to barge in this way – into your silence – but it’s late and I’m lonely. Jane’s next door sleeping – I could wake her to gab, I guess – but how cruel – and odd. Sleep’s skittish enough at our age – and what is it, dear, you wish to say?

Henry I could talk to, curled on his chair. He’s a matchless listener, never minds being woken, eyes me curiously with his big brown eyes, but what does he hear? There’s an absurdity verging on insanity conversing with one’s dog for longer than hello. One of Henry’s countless gifts is simplicity. His love (call it) is truly unconditional, as a parent’s is supposed to be but seldom is. My parents’ love was wholly conditional: behave or else. I behaved – but is that love?

I could write to myself – and have often – only that activity suggests a sad sterility, as if I had no one else. The confessional is a comparable interlocutor, I suppose, but I’ve never entered one, it’s not part of my tradition.

Plus, lucky me, I have you – as real and palpable just now as Jane or Henry or the ringing stillness, as real as God was two years ago when he settled on the end of this very bed. I can almost hug you, tousle you, but that isn’t the nature of our intimacy. It’s my brain inviting you to dance, blushing at your acceptance. I must mind my movements now, not to bruise your toes.

What should we talk about (for silence is awkward)? Pondering what to say I jotted a little jingle:

Conversation is less about what one discusses than the fact of one’s discussion. It’s about being together, endeavoring to amuse, beguile, caring enough about each other to try, a sort of lovemaking. It’s why I write: not to tell, teach, preach, promote, not to soften you up for some “ask”, but to be together, not alone, in this pregnant quiet.

Conversation is the earthly activity I most enjoy. But it isn’t easy. Nowadays especially, everybody’s so busy, besieged by emails, texts, news, gottareads, opportunities, videos, who has time to schmooze? Imagine yourself in one of Chekhov’s plays, where the silence weighs heavily. Have you ever known such stubborn silence? Would you know how to deal with it if it suddenly befell? I wouldn’t – I’d be tongue-tied, at least at first. Talk, serious talk, takes practice.

Jane chides me at times for being taciturn at home. Talking with friends – after a glass or three – I reveal things she didn’t know. Guilty as charged. But it turns out, until I’ve written things, I do not know them. My spoken words are mostly prepared remarks, reviewed if not rehearsed. I want my words to Jane to be fresh, worthy of her attention, not recycled.

This month I’ve been reading Flaubert’s letters, brilliantly selected, translated, and edited by Francis Steegmuller. Flaubert unburdened himself in lengthy letters to distant intimates in an era before electronics, when a letter could be in transit a month. He was not a nice guy – and his candor can be monstrous – but what a writer! His letters reek of his moment.

Distant intimates are an anachronism in our wired world. If needed, we can connect instantly. That’s a blessing – and privation – depriving us of opportunities to describe ourselves from afar. Your presence, dear reader, at the other end of this transmission, wakens me to life. I long to return the favor.