Good morning! How are you this Friday? It’s only a week now until I fly home — I’ll try to write to you on Thursday, but if I don’t, know I’ll definitely write on Saturday. The airport is like a second living room to me now. I’ve grown to quite like the process. I find that if you can learn to treat the plane like your living room, it makes the process much more comfortable, if you ever need to go on a long flight.
I went to the British Museum again on Wednesday, for another seminar. The seminars themselves aren’t very interesting, but the artifacts certainly are. A friend and I started wandering around a room of Nubian (near ancient Egypt) stuff and stumbled across two different corpses on display. Perhaps I’ve already mentioned this, but I find something so uncomfortable in taking somebody from their grave for tourists to stare at forever. Particularly the Gebelein Man, who is naked, skin intact, and curled up like he’s trying to sleep. Here’s some pictures of funner things:
It’s been getting warmer here. Is it warm down there? I know you’re a few degrees closer to the equator. I wonder if middle or high school have sent you to our natural history museum? I love that place. Besides this, not too much has happened. I watched a fun movie from the 1930s called ‘M’ with a friend last night; very well-made and spooky. Tell me something you’ve liked lately. I would talk more about things you like if I knew them, so until then I will guess at it. I saw some horses and cows on the train to London, very like a normal American road trip. I love those more than anything. I don’t remember how much you did. We were both very used to it. We both liked California, of course. But you liked everyone being together more, and someone’s always left behind on a road trip. You were quite right to think that way, in the end.
I feel like I am rambling now. I have little else to entertain you with this week. I suppose that is all I can do with these letters, now that I suspect nobody who could/would help will ever read them and pity us enough to do something: keep you company while we are far apart. And I ought to be nice company when I can. I wish it did not fall to you to reunite us. I wish we could have saved you right after it happened. I remember in October of 2017 thinking we would get you back in time for Christmas. I’m sorry I couldn’t. The silver lining is that you will do it on your own terms when you have the agency or the will to do so. Until then, I will keep you company here. In this black and white living room.
I sometimes have this fantasy of both of us being dead in some faraway place where no earthly force could separate us again, since that peace of security has been impossible in life. I suppose this place is the closest we have to that. Rest with me here awhile, if you would like to, and perhaps think on what you’d say if we were talking. It is the closest we have to conversation.
With love,
Alice