Vox Meditantis

November 15th, 1928
52 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village, New York, NY

My Dearest Cora,

I have begun this letter seventeen times, each attempt abandoned like autumn leaves scattered by an unforgiving wind. The wastebasket beside my desk overflows with false starts—eloquent phrases that ring hollow, careful constructions that fail to capture the rawness of what I must finally confess to you. Tonight, as rain streaks my window and the city below hums with its restless energy, I find myself stripped of the literary artifice that usually shields me from such naked honesty.

I am writing to you not as the composed editor who crafts measured responses to your brilliant, challenging letters, but as a man who has come to realise that his greatest fear is not rejection, but his own cowardice in the face of love.

Your last letter, dated October 28th, arrived three weeks ago. In it, you described your latest photographic expedition to the Acoma mesa, how you climbed those ancient pathways at dawn to capture the light as it first touched the pueblo walls. You wrote of sleeping under stars so brilliant they seemed close enough to pluck, of conversations with elderly pottery makers whose hands held centuries of knowledge. As always, your words painted such vivid pictures that I could almost taste the desert air, feel the vastness of that endless sky.

But it was your final paragraph that has haunted me these weeks: “Sometimes, James, I wonder if our correspondence has become a comfortable substitute for living. We write of intimacy whilst maintaining the safety of distance. I confess I grow weary of loving a phantom, however eloquent his letters may be.”

Those words cut deeper than you perhaps intended, not because they were cruel, but because they were devastatingly true.

I have been a coward, Cora. A romantic coward, which may be the most pitiful sort of all. I have hidden behind the romanticism of our separation, convincing myself that our epistolary courtship was somehow more pure, more meaningful than the messy reality of proximity. I told myself that distance refined our connection, distilling it to its essential elements. How prettily I wrapped my fear in the language of literary devotion.

The truth is far less poetic: I have been terrified of disrupting the careful order of my life. Here in New York, I exist within predictable parameters. My apartment with its neat rows of books, my position at the publishing house, my quiet evenings spent reading by lamplight—these things provide an illusion of control that your presence would shatter completely. You, with your fierce independence and bold spirit, represent everything I have been too frightened to embrace.

I think of the opportunities I have squandered. When you invited me to visit Santa Fe last spring, I manufactured excuses about pressing deadlines and editorial responsibilities. When you suggested we meet in Chicago during your visit there this summer, I cited financial constraints whilst simultaneously purchasing first editions I didn’t need. Each refusal seemed reasonable in isolation, but together they form a pattern of avoidance that shames me deeply.

You deserve better than a man who loves you primarily through ink and paper. You deserve someone who would board the next train westward without hesitation, someone whose adventurous spirit matches your own. Instead, you have become entangled with a man who analyses his emotions rather than simply feeling them, who seeks safety in contemplation when action is required.

I have been reflecting on the fundamental difference between us, and I believe it lies in our relationship with uncertainty. You embrace it as a source of possibility; I fear it as a threat to stability. When you write of your photographic expeditions into unknown territories, your excitement is palpable. When I contemplate stepping outside my carefully constructed existence, I feel only vertigo.

But here is what I have finally understood: my caution has not protected me—it has impoverished me. While I have been preserving my orderly life, real life has been happening elsewhere, in places like the New Mexican desert where stars shine with fierce intensity and love requires courage rather than merely eloquent phrasing.

I am thirty years old, Cora, and I have never felt truly alive in the way your letters suggest you feel daily. I envy your boldness, your willingness to risk discomfort for the sake of authentic experience. I envy the way you move through the world with such confidence, collecting moments and memories whilst I collect books and regrets.

This realisation brings me to the purpose of this letter: I am coming to you. Not someday, not when circumstances align more conveniently, but now. I have given notice at the publishing house, stored my belongings, and purchased a ticket on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. I depart New York on November 22nd.

I cannot promise I will transform overnight into the bold adventurer you deserve, but I can promise I will try to become worthy of your extraordinary heart. I want to see the desert through your eyes, to understand how it feels to live with such fierce authenticity. I want to love you not just through words but through presence, proximity, and shared experience.

If you will have me, I am yours completely.

With all my love and deepest regret for the time we have lost,

James

P.S. I am bringing my camera—you have inspired me to try capturing life rather than merely observing it.

---

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.