Dear _______,

                  Bless you for those two words after all these years. “What’s new?” Like stabbing a hole in a sack of rice for the kernels to spill!

                  How heartening to be recalled. We were so together once, shoulder by shoulder in our grand attempt. Then the moment changed and we were far apart, immersed in new adventures. Months turned to decades with surprising ease. A holiday greeting maybe, when we remembered to send them.

                  I know how old you are – to the day – by subtracting those few famous days from mine. One of our running jokes – “Older and wiser,” “Wiser and younger,” etc. Kidding’s a sinew of friendship, suggesting an intimacy not easily otherwise declared.

                  What’s new? What isn’t after all this time! Back then we were such different persons with such different dreams and prospects. These days we anticipate months – if we’re feeling spry, a decade – not careers.

                  So changed, yes, utterly it sometimes seems, yet your two words remind me that’s not true. “The Child is father of the Man,” someone wrote, Wordsworth I think; we are who we were. Hearing your voice, we are together again in the traces, afire with thrill and dread.

                  I am still ambitious. Maybe more. But it is no longer measurable prizes I crave or even boasting rights. I no longer care how I’m seen, except by Jane and my essential few. My feelings are harder to bruise because not seeking from others I cannot be rebuffed. I am happier, gladder, though still subject to the whiplash of moods.

                  What I reach for – you’ll smile at this – is the glory of a word well said. The plutocrats du jour mean nothing to me now – mostly I pity them – but the authors I revere I worship with warm devotion – composers and painters hardly less, though I know less of those crafts. Aside from passionate concern for my essential few, beauty is my all in all, my wonder and maniacal attempt. I know I can’t, yet I can’t not try. In this you’ll recall the guy you knew.

                  I scribble like there’s no tomorrow, to the limit of my strength, as if chased by a jackal. I do not fear death, but the notion of non-existence enrages me, my faucet stopped. Schubert moaned he couldn’t die with so many songs left in him – and he was only 29. Van Gogh painted a canvas a day for his last seventy days. Their genius I may not share, but their urgency, you bet.

                  I revile whatever balks me of my purpose – just like the old days. “Get into the wagon or get out of the goddamned way” – that old Faulkner quote. It’s not that I have to write anything in particular, impart some message to posterity, but that I have to write, to empty myself as empty as I can of what’s inside. I still must prove myself – as if I were an equation – be all I can – deserve my chance. Daily I find myself quoting Shakespeare’s Richard II – more than ever, Shakespeare’s my main man – “I wasted time and now doth time waste me.” Yet miraculously, after all my close scrapes, I still have time!

                  This sounds nuts – to anyone who doesn’t know me – but I’m guessing not to you. I can feel your eyes rolling, “Same old Carll,” eyes in the clouds, at risk of sliding into the ditch. A pathology, no doubt, but also, paradoxically, my doxology. Praise the impossible dream, from whom all blessings flow, that high peak which makes of existence a dramatic attempt.

                  Enough! My love to your kids.