Last night, I was reading a chapter from Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (1998) by Anne Fadiman (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite essayists) on what she calls "You-Are-There" reading. Simply put, it is the art of reading an author's account of a particular place while the reader, herself, is there.
In her own account of reading from Major John Wesley Powell's narrative of his journey through the Granite Rapids, while camped next to the very same river-swept canyons with her husband, Anne Fadiman writes in her journal: "G. reads from Powell."
"G." for her husband George.
It was a detail so delicately nuanced, I felt it before I was even fully aware of it.
It got me to think that there will come a day when I, too, will no longer write out your name.
(I will call this "You-Will-Be-There" reading—a justification for hopeless romanticizing.)
You, like George, will become a letter of the alphabet like F. or D. or maybe R. And the pages of my journal will begin to fill with sentences like:
"R. came over today."
"R. is so beautiful."
"R. is so annoying."
I might tell you I was trying to be green and conserve paper or, as is often the case, that I got lazy.
But ten, twenty years later, I will be flipping through journal entries of past love interests and friends whose neatly inscribed names will draw a blank or a laugh—at best. Then my frivolous flipping will come to a halt. I will have come across a page whose significance will be evident by my knowing smile, and you will see me read it hastily, once, and then a second and third time with deliberate care.
I will walk it over to you (if you are not already beside me).
I will point out its date.
The day you became a letter, I will tell you.
The day I knew I loved you and would never forget your name.