DEAR MR. WHITMAN
Dear Mr. Whitman,
I write to you now as a late disciple of yours because your words I read only just recently and they have inspired me to write regardless of timing and place.
I write to you too because it is my belief that what you have said while brushing your gray-beard and staring out into the horizon and trees and beyond with your strong eyes and stronger heart is all true and good.
We are both students of the human condition in our own way and I believe that is natural for any member of the human race but unlike me you are by far a master of the craft and I am but a tadpole trying to leave the pond and embark onto land.
It is a shame that you are dead. You are most needed now I believe better alive than not. If only many would listen to what you have to say and not to others who stand at podiums and shout and make false promises as though they know anything at all when really they don’t.
I wish to have met you and see you and talk to you as you have spoken to me through your work. It would be an honor I should think in the same way that Bram Stoker writing to you was an honor and in the same way that Emerson writing of you was an honor and in the same way that the Nobel Prize is an honor and in the same way that becoming a parent is an honor.
Were it possible I would ask you: How did you do it? How did you manage to retain a hopeful sentiment about all that you did and wrote and were in the midst of a chaotic and changing present and murky future? Although now I don’t think that would be a good question because that is less about your time and more about mine. But maybe that’s the crux of it and why I would ask you it because I need to know how to get by it.
Sometimes I wake up these days to a dark room and hear the news that something bad has happened far away but there is nothing I can do but listen. Or at least that is how I feel. More than ever people extoll drama rather than praises of good deeds and we are more scared and vindictive and bitter than before and it scares me. God it scares me.
You told me that “Death is far luckier than anyone supposed” and I believe that and I know that. I have come to the same conclusion after my Tito Ike died and after my mother nearly did too early. But I suppose I am simply afraid of living in this kind of world where there are more lies than truths and everyone seems to want to hurt each other or do worse things and bury their hearts in the dirt and then salt the earth so that no tree nor plant nor vegetation nor soul can grow.
I read “Leaves of Grass” every morning and I love your “Song of Myself” because it speaks to something true to the human spirit and perhaps if everyone read it then everyone would be so much happier. Or maybe that’s because having read it I am so much happier.
How do I go on in believing in happiness and good things in these times of doubt and fear? I don’t know. I thought you might and perhaps I still do and maybe that’s what this letter is: a request for your philosophy, a wish for your truth.
Tell me the ways to live Mr. Whitman so that I may live and be good and tell me that all that I am doing is worth what the work does and I am always hoping that things turn out all right in the end.
But I know better than to be happy because happiness is fleeting and nothing stays the same.
Love,
Jared
About the author:
Jared Berberabe will be attending Ramapo College of New Jersey as a sophomore this fall, working towards a BA in Literature. He also plans to minor in Spanish Language Studies, with a Concentration in Creative Writing. Additionally, he runs a small blog where he posts some of his work.
In the artist’s words:
Clarissa Cervantes is a freelancer and travel photographer member of PPAGLA Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles her professional galleries include images and essays from USA, UK, Japan, Brazil and Europe. In addition to her professional travel photography, Clarissa supplies freelance travel articles on a variety of travel destinations and medias such as USA TODAY, CNN and YAHOO.
