Images and a Love Letter from Leopold

Mortality Smortality 2014. Acrylic on panel, 64 x 48"

A nip in the air today which instigates nostalgia. I am so predictable to me. Who longs for autumn in the springtime? I think I might have a problem.
These are images set into my book Leopold Courting Rose—letters and poetry of determined love at a time in everybody's life when determined love matters most. Light poverty without a car or mortgage. Jobs for some money to buy food and wine and pay the rent, eventually. Couples could use Leopold as a primer to take back what the boss and mandated insurance policies have stolen. Cite it as one of several sources used to rekindle the fire that blazed during times of discovery. From the introduction:

I would argue that by covering up real memories of courting happiness to the extent that they exist on par with other childhood rites of passage, like losing teeth or leaving the familial nest, we have denied ourselves and loved ones a published account of what could very well be an example of burgeoning wisdom.

Photo taken by my 6 year old daughter a year into Rose’s and my courting bliss

My father would give me strips of paper birch to write on. This is a just one of several substrates I used as a letter base.

This little icon was drawn by our 12 year old daughter to be place at the beginning of each letter in Leopold.

Front and back cover and of the book without ISBN information

This one needs more explanation. It’s is an order from Helen’s dupe pad, another waitress at the restaurant where Rose and I worked. I wrote part of a Walt Whitman poem on it and set it under the windshield wiper of Rose’s Fiero while she was waiting tables. After her shift, she came into the kitchen asking who left it for her. I was too shy to admit “It’s me. I am your fool.” However, the manager, George H. (notice the “H” on the order sheet), acted coy, and neither confirmed nor denied his involvement in the caper. Rose dated him for the next several months. I was out my muse until the following year.

Many letters I would deliver myself to her mailbox. This is a typical envelope addressed.

Here is one of the first letters. She had another job as a live-in nanny, yet I didn’t quite know which house it was.

On nights off, Rose would come to my hovel for dinner.

I won the lottery in 1995

You’ve been very patient with my gushing. Here is a letter from Leopold:

Early a.m. Sunday and the navy ship we pirate cooks were supposed to raid is leaving the harbor. It’s work time but I am under the restaurant’s tree, happy in the grays with thoughts of you and the ten thousand things. The August rains are a-coming and you should see me smiling! I am clean shaven and well soaped. I’m too darn fresh this morning to bother about work. I might have thought I was risen a month ago. No leavening then. Shoot! I am fresh out of the oven now. Then I was a doughy slop. Today I am soft, spongy, warm and irresistibly delicious. You can smell me from the outside. You can eat me anytime.
And so approaches the autumn of my unbelief. A cigarette stuck between my lips, a miraculous gray that makes me giddy—again. I am plagued by an Olympus of amphetamine gods gurgling in my belly. I will pop. It’s just a matter of time. I believe... I believe in everything! Speckled I am, and the last one on the log. Plop! Yum-yum. Do you say “Fr-awe-g” or “Fraga”? If you told me to write frog with a “t”, then I would write “trog”. It would not make a bit of difference to me. “That’s a blue jay Ron,” says Rose. But once I thought it was a ground hog. Nope, not anymore. “Perfect,” says Ron. “Big, furry brown blue jay wings”.
I believe! “There is grass beneath our feet to cushion the wonder in us,” says Miller. Who the hell is he? Surely not Rose with lips, hips, eyes and nose. Surely not sleepy, silently laughing Rose, crushing the grasses’ wonder with her soft bum. Believing in believing. I believe in you too even if I am only a frog. Better to be wartful and green beside you, than anyone without you. Rib it?
Do you even know who I am? What is the name of the man holding you close? It’s not Kermit, not Gunther, not Barry, Jim, Rita nor Prince Thor. My name is Ron, and when you call to me, I will answer, “Yes, Rose, yes,” because I believe. When you yell down from way up there, “Hey Ron, catch this piano!” I will answer, “Yes!” It is not a matter of you telling me to jump and me asking “how high?”. It is believing that a leap of faith will improve my life. In a way similar to a smile using less muscles to frown. “Yes” is not necessarily easier than “no”, but will have better results. The difference between peddling a bike uphill or tugging a freighter up the length of the Mississippi. At least with a bike there will always come a coasting downhill. “Yes” is climbing to higher affirmatives. No is sunk in the dark, tucked tightly in its shroud, and desperately alone, moving nothing.
Rose cannot see my mouth now for my foot is stuck in it. Kevin has left the kitchen. I am alone again, sitting in the dining room with a bunch of stoic tables and chairs. It’s 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday. Baton Rouge. How does that move you? You look fabulous with a tan and your white dress. Will you teach me to dance? What about Cairo, Illinois? How does that grab you? Can I grab you? We’ll sit on the riverbank, roll up our blue jeans, and chew weeds. You will speak to me and your eyes will shine. Heck, I don’t care if we just climb back up the bank to the cement factory and make out on a conveyor belt.
Pardon me this embarrassing moment alone with you...

Lovesoreron