I hope you are all right. I don't know when you will receive this letter, it is always after my death.
I am now sixty-five years old, and we met today, thirteen years ago, when I entered your alley to ask for directions.
I bet that this package will not disrupt your life. I can't bear to let these cameras lie in the second-hand window of a camera shop or be transferred to strangers. By the time they arrive in your hands, they are already quite shabby. But I don’t have anyone else to leave, so I have to send it to you so that you take the risk. I’m sorry.
From 1965 to 1973 I was on the road almost all year round. I accept all the overseas dispatches I seek, just to resist the temptation to call you or come to you, but in fact, as long as I am awake, this temptation exists at all times in my life. How many times I said to myself: "Go to it, I'll go to Iowa Winterset, I will take Francesca away at all costs."
But I remember your words, and I respect your feelings. Maybe you are right, I don't know. I only know that driving out of your alley on that hot Friday was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and I will never do it again. In fact, I doubt how many men have done such a difficult thing.
I left "Geography" in 1975, and I will devote myself to photographing subjects of my own choosing in my photography career. Difficult, but it's passable, I always pass it.
Many of my works revolve around Puget Sound. I like this. It seems that people turn to water when they get old.
By the way, I now have a dog, a golden retriever. I call it "Broad Road", and it travels with me most of the time, reaching out the window, looking for objects to capture.
I fell off a cliff in Acadia National Park in Maine in 1972. I broke my ankle. The necklace and the medal were broken together. Fortunately, it fell nearby and I found it again. Yes, ask a jeweler to repair the necklace.
My heart is covered with dust. I can't think of a more appropriate term. There were several women before you and none after you. I didn't vowed to stay single, just not interested.
I once observed a Canadian goose and its mate was killed by a hunter. You know that the spouse of this kind of goose is always the same. The geese circled the pond all day, day after day. The last time I saw it, it was still searching. This analogy is too shallow and not literary, but this is roughly what I feel.
In the foggy morning, or in the afternoon when the sun beats on the water in the northwest, I often try to imagine where you are and what you are doing. Nothing complicated--it's nothing more than going to your garden, sitting on a swing on the front porch, standing in front of your kitchen sink, etc.
I remember everything: your breath, your summer taste, the touch of your skin close to my body, and the sound of you whispering when I love you.
Robert Pen Warren once used a sentence: "A world that seems to be abandoned by God." Well said, it is very close to how I sometimes feel. But I can't always live like this. When these feelings were too strong, I loaded Harry into the car and spent a few days with the road.
I don't like self-pity. I am not such a person. And most of the time I don't feel that way.
On the contrary, I am grateful, because I at least found you. We might have missed like two particles of cosmic dust passing by in a flash.
God, or the universe, or whatever it is called, in short, the great system of balance and order does not recognize time on earth. For the universe, there is no difference between four days and four trillion light-years. I try to remember this.
But I am a man after all. All the philosophical reasoning I can remember cannot stop me from asking you, every day, every moment, every moment, deep in my mind is the cruel cry of time, the time that can never be with you.
I love you, deeply, and wholeheartedly forever.
The last cowboy: Robert
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