The Letters by Luanne Rice, Joseph Monninger

a rise out of you. The truth is, I did, but all he wanted to talk about was his sculpture and the big one-man show he’s having in the spring. He’s split with his wife, and there’s someone else—a beautiful grad student he met at, of all places, Clyde Lorus’s villa in Greece. Clyde collects his work or something, and the grad student was there with a boyfriend who’s signed to whatever the hell record label Clyde Lorus is connected with, I should know but I don’t, and John stole the grad student right from the hot young rocker, and John’s wife is depressed and calls him crying and can’t talk except to whisper she wants him back, wants their marriage back, and he doesn’t know what to do, he’s stopped caring about that part of his life, he can only think about when he’s going to see Lyra—that’s the grad student’s name—again, because he’s worried she might go back to the hot young rocker, but he has to stay here and finish his work for the big spring show. I sat silently and listened and felt a little sick. How stupid we all are.
    What you wrote about Daniel is haunting me, because now I see what you saw.
    There’s a poem by Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” that goes, “You do not have to be good / You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” But I feel as if I did have to do that, repent. My knees are rubbed raw. I’ve felt so terrible and guilty. I’m not sure that I’ve come to Monhegan exactly to forgive myself—I think I’m just too tired to keep doing this.
    I’m really tired. So I’m going to stop.
    I think I’m beginning to really get the hang of on-by…
    You’re turning me into a Buddhist, my darling. I read something by the Dalai Lama on the Diamond Cutter Sutra and seventy verses on emptiness. He speaks of the scope of suffering. I think he might have been writing about parents who’ve lost children. Is that the ultimate emptiness? I know it’s the ultimate suffering.
    Hadley

December 3
    Hi Sam,
             
    It’s twenty-four hours since I stopped mid-letter, and all I can say is the sun is out. Bright, shining sunlight hitting the rocks and harbor all day long, moving across the island, making it warm enough to sketch outside, at least for brief periods. The wind is strong and steady, but I’ve been drawing in the lee of some granite boulders. I’m enclosing some of the sketches here so you can get an idea of the landscape.
    Cathedral Woods is so thick with tall pines, almost no sunlight penetrates—but neither does snow nor strong gusts of wind. It’s eerie, with boughs creaking and the air whistling through the pine needles at the very tops of the trees. This morning I walked through on my way to the lee shore, and I really understood why they named it as they did. I was all alone—not another human being around; the sound of my boots walking across the soft bed of pine needles made me feel I was the only one on the entire island. But I felt a presence—a warmth inside and a sense that I was surrounded by goodness. I had to stop, try to hold on to the feeling—and I wished you were there. It reminded me of how nature was always our church, yours, mine, and Paul’s, how mystical and sacred the outdoors always felt to us.
    Down a sloping hill I found a small hollow, dug out between boulders and looking over a series of rocky inlets. The coastline is jagged and treacherous, with waves crashing and churning, salt spray shooting into the sky. It’s impossible to imagine anything surviving that wave action, yet the coves are full of seals. They sunbathe on the rocks, which ice over between tides—and they curve, snout and tail upward, just like bananas. Then they dive and glide, and ride the cold frothy waves, their heads poking up to watch me draw them, their eyes so black and bright.
    And there are shorebirds, too: harlequin ducks, common eiders, white-winged scoters, surf scoters, long-tailed ducks, alcids, and