The Arcane Arts
From: Rawlins.T.M.
To: Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Good Morning
Ellsbeth,
Your impatience must be rubbing off on me, because it has been only 36 hours since you left my house on Friday night, yet I woke this morning hoping to find a writ magic ritual—and accompanying email from you—in my inbox.
I guess a bright young woman might have better things to do with a crisp autumn Saturday than spend sixteen hours in a research library typing out arcane ritual instructions.
(How was your movie, by the way, and your runner?)
Don’t worry, I did not email you just to check on your progress on your thesis.
I wanted to let you know that it was nice having you over, and I look forward to the next time we can continue your education in the art of fine wine; if you are to make your way in this world, to secure funding and court the support of wealthy benefactors, you will need to demonstrate an ability to select a decent bottle, or at least fake convincing appreciation.
(Just remember “notes of cherry,” works every time.)
I don’t usually share much in the way of personal information with students, but you were open with me, and your candor deserved to be met.
Keep in mind, I have worked hard to cultivate an air of opaque mystery, and it would be scuttled quickly if you started sharing details of my past, or my present grudges and resentments.
So hopefully I don’t need to email you merely to encourage you to keep my secrets, as I will keep yours.
I’ve been thinking more about the happiness question.
I was honest with you on Friday, but on reflection, that was not the whole story.
The truth is, I don’t believe that happiness was ever available to me.
There is something in my nature that does not allow for it, not unlike your inability to stand still.
As a younger man, I aspired to happiness, thinking it might accompany great achievement, but every accolade and triumph provided little in the way of lasting contentment, only revealing new challenges to be tackled next.
San neomeo san, goes the Korean proverb: mountains after mountains.
With each peak that you summit, another reveals itself.
The task of climbing may seem Sisyphean, but it is all we have.
In other words: No, I’m not happy, but I no longer aim to be, so much as I want to be engaged in meaningful work.
The end is not my goal, only to be on the road toward it.
I cringe at the grandiosity of the comparison, but I have felt like the Ulysses of Tennyson’s poem, an “idle king” of this department, perhaps this entire field of study; “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
It is not lost on me that this rediscovery of a sense of purpose has coincided with your arrival in my life.
Your curiosity and ambition have been refreshing and invigorating, and I thought you might be heartened to know that you have, even accidentally, stirred something in me.
But that is not the reason for my email to you, either.
Why, then, am I using the free hours of my Sunday morning to send this message? Simple: to let you know that you left your jacket here. And as we established last night, it clashes with my decor, so for the sake of my study’s appearance if nothing else, I should get it back to you soon.
But I do find myself wondering how you managed, on a cold evening, to depart without your outer layer?
Were you so thoroughly flummoxed by the moment we shared before you left that you did not even think of it?
Or perhaps, recalling the way your face flushed, I wonder if you were warmed by the rush of blood to your cheeks so much that you made it halfway home before the chill set in?
Or (more interesting) did you leave it on purpose?
Hoping that I would see it and recall the moment you shrugged it off when you came and sat beside me on the sofa?
Imagining that I might remember the way its removal revealed the delicacy of your neck?
Or perhaps you thought you might stop by to pick it up this afternoon, and the restraint I exhibited at the moment of your departure would evaporate at the sight of you on my doorstep?
Alas, I will be out for the rest of the day. I’ll drop the coat off tomorrow morning in the graduate TA office, discreetly so that other members of the cohort don’t gossip. And as much as my home will be aesthetically improved by its departure, I might miss having a piece of you in my possession.
Sincerely,
Rawlins