Email to John Milton

Dear John, I do hope all is well with you, wherever you are. I think of you often and always wonder what might have been had I perhaps made more of our connection – and, of course, not got myself foolishly banned from entering America.

Things are well here in the UK and I’m back to studying in my native Yorkshire, doing an MA in Writing for Performance and Publication, which after five years of trying to be normal and prove to women that I’m the kind of guy who can pay a mortgage feels like I’m right back where I’m supposed to be. Sure, I’m still trying to make it as a writer, and still tweaking that damn silly book of mine which I feel compelled to try and hawk to publishers ever driven by that long-ago feeling that it could do something good in the world (ever fading feeling too). Probably I should have been in the place where I am now five or more years ago but I guess I made it in the end. Now to see what’ll come of it. Something, I hope. Or, if not that, the freedom from something. If any of that makes any sense.

It’s a shame I don’t hear back from you when I write: you were a truly special presence in my life and a kind and good teacher who I know did more in shaping me for the better than I guess I will ever realise. Probably, too, they were the best days of my life, and it’s not without some sadness that I look back and contemplate they are days I have never been able to recapture, and perhaps never will, even though I long for it. Nothing greater than the adventures of the spirit, eh? But I suppose I’ve got others things I need to do for now. To write – for whatever purpose – and to think about women – likewise…

I guess always tweaking the book keeps me stuck back somehow in those days in America. Although perhaps I’d always be there even without that. In any case, whenever I reach into it to edit and try and make better and to sell it to the uninterested publishers, there they are, and there you are too, and are times together in Colorado and Mexico and Arizona. God, I was mad! Deliriously so – and I guess you tried to save me from it and I was too mad to see. So I learned the hard way (thanks Eve – she’s only just given up on chasing me, by the way) and little by little I got back down to Earth and in the process sacrificed whatever I had been gifted of insight and light – I imagine – perhaps as payment for my reluctance to let it go. Actually, that’s probably just trying to be poetic – in all honesty, I really don’t know what to think. I know I got too high – became one of those idiot bliss ninnies you warned us about – and lost myself to delusion and craziness and…well, I’d love to know what you think about it all: you’ve walked the path, studied all its nooks and crannies, and I’m sure you’ve something to say about where I’ve been. I sometimes think I’m too old to get it back – blew my chance – but then I realise I’m not really, not in the grand scheme of things. But how? That’s my question. How, when I went so far into spiritual craziness that I basically had to throw the baby, the bathwater, and the bath and all its plumbing to survive? (More silly poetry; I hope you get my drift.)

Anyways, I’ll leave it at that and hope that I hear something back from you. I still consider you as my teacher, even if you don’t think of me as your student. ;-)

Happily yours (it’s only certain contemplations that get me maudlin),

Rory