A Schizophrenic to Strindberg: An Unanswered Letter

A SCHIZOPHRENIC TO STRINDBERG:

AN UNANSWERED LETTER

Dr Paul Fearne

INTRODUCTION

August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright who lived and worked at the end of the nineteenth century. He became famous for plays such as Miss Julie and The Father, but was also a polymath who wrote novels, poems, scientific works and historical studies. He led a very difficult life, was married three times, and often professed to suffer from the general vicissitudes of life. His plays were performed around the world during his lifetime, in particular in France and Germany. At the very end of his life, his plays were performed in the United States. He was very much a polemicist, and often shocked his audiences with his views. He worked as a journalist and critic for newspapers in Stockholm, and also worked as an assistant librarian in the city’s Royal Library. His first big break came when the King of Sweden gave him a stipend after seeing one of his early plays performed at the Royal Theatre. This initial success was to send Strindberg on the journey to fame that led to a life of adventure and extremes.

What interested me in Strindberg initially was a book he wrote in his forties called Inferno. The book was based on a diary he kept which displays many of the hallmark symptoms of psychosis. While I was doing my PhD, I was at a conference giving a paper on the dancer Nijinsky, who also kept a diary during a psychotic episode. An academic in the audience asked if I had heard of Strindberg, who I wasn’t familiar with at the time. I started doing some research and was fascinated. In Inferno, Strindberg relates how he feels someone is trying to murder him, by sending electrical currents through his roof via an electrical machine. He feels that lightning strikes during an electrical storm are specifically striking the ground for his benefit, a delusion known as ideas of self-reference. He finds special meaning in the most commonplace occurrences, things giving him special meanings and directions. He becomes increasingly paranoid. He develops an interest in the occult, and starts chemical experiments trying to convert metals into gold. His chemical experiments lead to a hospitalisation, after burning his hands. During this time, Strindberg thought that special ‘Powers’ were guiding his life, directing him in ways that he couldn’t control. These Powers, and their effect on him, were to cause many frustrations to his contemporaries. Overall the book seems to be testament to how psychosis can debilitate a person. Many commentators have argued that Strindberg exaggerated his sufferings for literary purposes, but I believe the symptoms are so true to the psychotic mind, Strindberg must have indeed suffered a psychotic episode.

This book is written as a letter to Strindberg. Strindberg is of course no longer with us. But I thought that the missive would be a suitable genre in which to fully explore my thoughts on Strindberg, enabling me to weave thoughts, inquiries, and a whole range of interesting facts about Strindberg’s life, while remaining true to the tenor of his work. I hope this decision works for you as the reader.

My own life has brought me to Strindberg. I suffer from schizophrenia, and have done so since 1998. I continue to take medication, and have been able to achieve a lot as a result. I have completed a Masters degree from the University of Melbourne, and a PhD from La Trobe University. My first book, Diary of a Schizophrenic (also published through Chipmunka Publishing), was launched at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival. It outlined my first psychotic episode. My second book, A Schizophrenic on Artaud, explored the life of the French writer Antonin Artaud, who suffered from schizophrenia. It was launched at Readings in Carlton. A reading I gave from the book also featured on Melbourne TV station Channel 31. I currently volunteer for the Mental Illness Fellowship of Victoria on their helpline, and also for a radio show called Brainwaves on 3CR here in Australia. The team at Brainwaves have been very supportive of my Artaud book, and the speeches from the launch were broadcast on the show. 

I hope you enjoy this book. It is written in what might be called poetic prose, a style I feel I am really finding my voice in. The poetic is a vehicle that can really set up resonances that otherwise would not be possible. It allows the writer the flexibility to explore thoughts in new and novel ways, thoughts which would otherwise remain hidden. So here it is, A Schizophrenic to Strindberg.

A SCHIZOPHRENIC TO STRINDBERG

Strindberg. The shifting winds that allow us to retain Strindberg in the marrow which is our heart, are the same winds that help us to settle in our combined dreaming. What we can never do is emulate Strindberg. For to do so would leave us in the same bind as before. Was Strindberg really schizophrenic, or did his motion through time allow us to relinquish all that we ever wanted? I hope we will find an answer here. For to believe anything else would shatter our need to drive the apathy from our eyes. I cannot explain what I feel for Strindberg, for when we have captured the neverness that is our home, we will think again, and in thinking be sure of something new—and that is hope, and all that will come.

Dear Strindberg,

You are all we wanted, but your wandering had another flavour. It was the flavour of ice as it melted on the disappearing shadows of our love. I knew, when I first encountered you, that there would be a resonance that lifted our directionless buoy out of the water and into something new. Your three wives were a testament to your difficulty—but more than that. You have given all that could be, and simply so that the word would find its proper place at the top of the world. You followed the Powers so that our power, in reading you, would come that little bit closer.

I knew, when I read that you once carried a picture of Verlaine, that you were the one who would show the dark what it really is, and that is nothing, or at least the semblance of nothing. Verlaine spoke to you of gold, as we whispered to you in forgetting that your time had come (from our vantage in the future). I know that things are right for you now. You are at rest … but indeed, how you suffered!

We must all come now, and be a part of the adventure which is yours, Strindberg. For when we reach into your soul, we find there something that will tantalise as it renders us motionless. This is the thing that we have yet to name, but in reading you, we have always named. I will bring fire to you, so that you will again wish for release, just as you did during your Inferno period. I will bring the fire which is your life, and transform it into ash, so that the considerable forces at work in creations will find new heavens and new hells from which to conquer the fierceness of your pain.

I love Munch’s portrait of you, because it shows you in your guise as a conqueror of the world. And in its depths is the newness of a fading light, and the oldness of the sun as it travels around a motionless earth. Come and be placated now with what you have done. Miss Julie, The Father and A Dream Play were your greatest achievements, which will set you on high with the gods that Hölderlin so eagerly dreamed of. I know our ‘Powers’, Strindberg. I have felt them, and felt their pain. But it is the pain of directionality, and all that it encompasses.

There is an ancient citadel that we can never know of. Only because you have found it, perhaps in the places you lived and fought, and knew to be your home—perhaps in your ‘Blue Tower’ in Stockholm? Can we ever truly know you, my friend? I guess we must, for to truly be ourselves we need to know more of what you are, and what you will be.

You are what we want in genius. But let us mention your Inferno. Was it the real expression of madness that we all hope for? I would say yes, that it is. This is a position few of the scholars have come to. They wish to excuse your madness as a mere ploy to cement your own literary glory. A rendering that changes as it sweeps away. But I cannot fathom this. I can only surmise, from the complete accuracy of your musings, that you were in fact ill at that time. But those who deny your schizophrenia, have never known its tendrils in real life, and to hear you speak with such verisimilitude, I know, a traveller like yourself, that you were at those gates that never really close. You were one afflicted.  Not in the refractory way your apologists will demand, but in a subtler and indeed more fearsome way. You suffered the real strictures of schizophrenia, Strindberg, and for that we must be thankful.

I have placed you, Strindberg, at the top of a very tall hill. Here you will voice your most ardent desire to be recaptured by the dawn. Your Inferno, your peak, your summit, was something that has plagued your inheritance, as it has lifted it. Your schizophrenia, which was expressed with such flexibility in Inferno, was indeed explored in its merits by some of the finest, including Jaspers. In the history of letters, I have never come across a flight from reality like yours. It is something which cannot be understood, only hinted at through trees in morning light. What I will give you for this opacity is my all, as I try myself to understand your wanderings.

The newness which we experience when we come to read you is something that castles in autumn ochre cannot dismiss, as they dance through time, and never know their moment of rest. The compassion we feel for you Strindberg, is what all great writers from history have had as their bow. I cannot fathom a song that has not been sung in your honour. Because you are the night, Strindberg. You are the night.

There will be a stillness that cannot be recollected. Your trial for blasphemy, echoing through the years of your Marriage, is something that brought you to our attention. Such trials have now largely been lost as a method for gaining a foothold in history. It is not something we should worry about though. For these trials are the trials of God that have no foundation in the secular, nor the religious. They are a book to those brave enough, but nevertheless not something to be savoured by the young. Your courage to return to Sweden and face the charges shows you to be a man of one simple fibre. And that is the fibre of history.

I am here waiting for you Strindberg to spread your net and have it envelop the stars. And here, where time and the misjudgements of humanity have had their fill, will be the place that night cannot enter. We are waiting for the moon to stop revolving around the earth, and a new sense of longing to engage us with the facts of listening delight. Your Inferno can never leave us—because it is in all of us, and the shouting of times that know no ease.

I believe that what we have instead of pleasure (those of us who suffer from schizophrenia) is the ringing in our ears that your plays have invited. Your touch of the aegis of Gauguin, and his travelling, are a testament to the nestling that fledglings do to guard against the cold. Also, your embrace of Nietzsche and his theories, your grand (but short) correspondence with him as he succumbed to madness, is a touching point for the intersection of greatness as it leaves its vapour trail through the sky. I can never believe in what is not enough.  But I do believe in fate. And this is where you are, Strindberg. Fate (or the ‘Powers’ as you called it) is what we all revel in as we dance in the Dionysian afterglow. You let yourself be guided by a system of intuitions that led to your many marriages and their failures. This is the writer’s duty, to be sure.

Why can we never find you when we want to, Strindberg? Because you are trapped in the ether of the spheres as it trapped Aristotle. You are trapped in a time that knows no pain because it is the very pain itself. You were only in hospital once, having burnt your hands while conducting chemical experiments. That you were only there once is a great testament to your resilience to write in the face of all that would come your way.

Treasures, I hear you say. There are treasures that only you have found. And because you have found them in your scandals (such as the Red Room) I have also found them in my imagination as it creeps towards the foundation of neverending systems of delight. Come now, do not say these words are bombastic—they are what we really want to shake the cobwebs from our eyes (and into our hearts).

The dance is what we ask of you Strindberg, as you slide away into oblivion. The dance and what the escape of lightest joy encompasses. There is no night in you, Strindberg, only what will come in eternal return, and its seemingly endless repetition. I cannot find fault with your words. Your life, yes, that is another matter. But even to find fault here is not really enough to placate what we always have thought of you. Your humming is a listening station weaving in and out of the hummingbird’s path. Your Intimate Theatre, established in Stockholm in 1907, was a venue in which you performed your own works. It was a stroke on the clock of ethereal things, as they come in floods to join the reaches of all that is worn in age and temperance. It was a theatre that knew how to succumb to the temptations of the twilight, and to do so without leaving its chosen destination.

There are new things for us to discover about the journey we are on with you, Strindberg. And this is where excitement really has its pulse. Your many wanderings to faraway lands (caused by your inimical reception in your homeland), and the success you found in these places (Paris, Berlin) is what the night needs for its satisfaction. You are more than we could ever behold in these climes. Your conquering of Europe was by far the greatest of any warlord. And it was a battle for you. And you were a knight, who upon reaching the field of conflict, would charge your brave stallion to the end of things, and then return like a long-lost child. Come now, you are free. But not before time.

Strindberg, you are what holds us to the flame. It is a light that illuminates as it burns to its base. In the evening, when all is quiet, and the mist has nowhere left to travel, here we will find you as a breathing the sky has never been able to accomplish. I am in tune with what you are in tune with, Strindberg. And that is suffering at the hands of an unruly fate.

Let us see what we can in your words to Nietzsche. What we will find there is an intersection of the trace. A land that has no travels, as it is a place that knows only the dimensions of time. Can we be free, Strindberg, to explore what the Powers have ordained, and what the night can never relinquish?

There can be a mighty force, as you have shown, in going from the right path to the wrong. In your pursuit of alchemy, you turned to that darker space, and paid the price of all that has lived. Your reaching for the occult during your Inferno period was like a new sort of flight, that had at its source the dimensions of a darkness that would only lead—in the end—back to life.

You met Shaw, who was a contemporary of the night, as many of that time were. His bind was your bind, as you travelled past neverness into the reaching of the beyond. Can we ever forgive this union? Only through the clasping at straws in the wind can we ever forgive it. Choose your weapon, Strindberg. It is all you can do.

There are tigers that anything dreamt in wonder can unleash. Your explorations into Swedish customs and history have been left at the feet of Shakespeare, and all that he was able to conquer. History is the fertile bed, and dimensions of rain in the cold is fertility to the grass. It is indeed a harsh fecundity, but one we must endure.

Let us speak of your three wives. Siri, the baroness. Though she was married when you met her, you dug in your heels. Her acting was a comfort to you, as it became your curse. Frida, the lion hunter, came for you when perhaps you were needing to be alone. And Harriet, perhaps your most backwards and forwards wife, left you because other things would not: the Powers that drove your words, but not your heart. Three wives, three adventures that could not contain your main adventure. And that was the word, and everything that could never be free of the night.

The night. We will come back to it again and again. Because what it encompasses is something more than simple misdirections because of a lack of illumination. It contains all your digressions, Strindberg. The affair you had, when all you could think about were your partner’s affairs. The public reception of your work, that stung as it was to bite. The dreaming we all did in your honour (before we were even born). Strindberg, why did you hunt when it has time for harvest? Because all that is great is in the hunt, as it takes with its own power, and its own inevitability of disaster and harm.

Why is there so much debate about how your life spilt over into your work? Because it did so with such clarity and with such aplomb. You refined your life so that it would catch the embers of the far away, and spread them over the fields of gold which were to be your history.

When you were starting out, King Charles XV of Sweden gave you a stipend to help you on your way. It was at this point that history took over your flight, and the night was to cast its deepest shadow. There is justice here, as there is the quest for fame. In this quest, there is a rocking back and forth, that knows how to settle itself when the breeze is right, and the seeds of tomorrow’s richness have been settled. In the end you were rich. In between you let the battle right itself so that you could create. And in creating you gave life—a life that has no boundaries.

And you painted, Strindberg. Polymath, yes, but artist? Of course you achieved here in your own way. You showed you could do whatever you put your mind to. So that when the clipping of papers and magazines had taken rest, here you explored new vistas, and new ways to be.

Can we ever really believe in the things you believed in? Even one who suffers as you did finds originality in your delusions. That the lightning would strike in your honour, that electric machines had been brought to cause you harm. That your wives were unfaithful. All this is for us to test. It is a gateway, like the gates of heaven have never tested. Why is it suffering that leads the blind to water? Because in these barbs are new chances to right the wrongs, and give sustenance to those who need it most.

I sometimes dream. But it is more than that. I have to let my life be as it is, so you do not overshadow me, Strindberg. Your power is what I crave. But it is more than that. So much more.

Come now, and be a part of the great power of history. As you learned, history is an unkind mistress. She can wrap you in darkness, as she wraps you in silk. She can lift, and burn new holes, whose depths we cannot really fathom. This is what your life gives to me, Strindberg. Your life is what I seek, but I am afraid. Afraid that I will join you in this battle for hearts and minds, as they seek bastions of pain to let the light in for their own devices.

Let us now speak of the Wrangle family. Your rival, Lieutenant Wrangle, was in love with his wife’s cousin. You chose this domestic scene to play your first real lover’s hand. Lieutenant Wrangle’s wife Siri, desiring to be an actress, reciprocated your love. Her desires were those not fit for her station. But you succeeded in wooing her, and your first adventure was truly underway.

You failed as an actor, tried to take your own life (as you would threaten to throughout your life) and then found your true calling. Fate has many tricks, but in this trick you found what few would. Your polemic would dance you to the edge many times. The hatred you evoked, even in those who loved you, would be the thing that raised you as it diminished you. And when you finally found your rest, as the crowds gathered on your sixtieth birthday, as they did at your death, then you knew, that things would always be left to the twilight, before it could ever turn into night.

Considering these things, we launch into that great divide that is your life. You were what we always thought you would be, and that is lightning strikes in the dead of night. Your fear of these strikes gave us a hint that your mind had succumbed to the difficulties of madness. You thought each strike was pre-ordained for you. And the electric machines that you thought were out to end your life, were a further testament. But they did not diminish your greatness, as the wind can never diminish the sky. Can we ever be fully aware of your hardship? You lived at a time when madness was treated with indignation and there were no songs to guide the unwary traveller.

I can only sit and read your words, and words about you. But I have felt your sorrow with an insistence that is hard to keep in check. When you travelled away from your homeland, you were cast in bronze. Your plays were being performed in the farthest places, but they could not steel your resolve to anything greater. Why have we only now begun to find a place in society for the likes of you? Because of course this would have diminished you, and not set you free—like your life had done so brilliantly.

I will find what it is that makes you flourish—through these words I write, and the reflections I have. I believe it is something that clouds in autumn rain can only ever hint at. A little piece of the night has left your grasp. But that is okay. We forgive you this, as we forgive anyone of your stature. We should not apologise though; we should only sweep you to that further place which is the yearning we all have for the depths of clarity that guide each of us.

A testing will come to us all at some point. A choice that we have, to follow this or that path. And when the weeds along our respective paths have been cleared, here history will pronounce her verdict, and we can rest like sheets blowing on a rickety line. There can be no more we can say of such matters, because they are written in the stars, as your life is now written in the constellations that have only one victory, and that is the victory of newfound things.

There will come a time when we will hear your song with greater flights of need than have ever been seen. And when the day has had its fill, and the night can no longer salvage the heartstrings, there will be strings and choirs that will raise you, Strindberg, to that loftier place that is like a charm used to sound out the enemy. Come and be a part of this adventure, Strindberg. You still live, but your living is like a knife in the gloom.  It comes in sweeping vectors that are like nothing we have seen.

There will be time for you to diminish what the sands of time have taken. But we cannot truly let them be until our race is nearing its finality. And when you are next to the chime that wrings our moments in solemn march, here there can be a weathering that will guard us against what is most needed. And that is love that can only be found by reading your words, and having them lie beside us so we can walk with a quicker step, and more of a need to fly.

You are so sweet in your lack of innocence, Strindberg. Your book, The Red Room, saw you gain enemies as you gained adherents. To so frankly discuss your milieu, and so thinly veil your contemporaries, was a thing that could only get you into trouble. But just as you dramatised your own life with such frankness, so too did you dramatise the lives others for your own purposes. And this would drive them from you, as it drove your wives away from you. Your obsession with the so-called ‘woman question’ was what gave your life, in part, its undoing. But do not be afraid. We have come to care for you, Strindberg, and make your life whole again.

Come and be a part of this great adventure, Strindberg. And here you will find what it is you are looking for. And that is peace, and escape from the vicissitudes that always plagued you. I know it is a hard thing to do, now you are gone. But the wisps of longing that still simmer through your words will take you there. You must only let it, and the comfort of immortality will be yours.

There is a place in all of us that can only ever be found with the greatest needs. And that place is the centre, a place you have already vanquished. There can be nothing more to say about these things, for your heart is at rest, but your spirit rattles on, as a new thing that only has the horizon as its guide. There is a wandering here, but it is a wandering that feels no pain, and only vanquishes what can be told by devils in the moonlight. Their resemblance to angels is like the distance. It comes when we least expect.

Your student days at Uppsala were where you found the substance that would carry you further than we could have hoped. And when the night, in all its profundity, has missed your worn-down soul, you will remember these days as where it all began. And to do this all you need is the key that can trouble us like we have never known trouble, and can bring desire like a farthing on the beach. You are the mist as you are the song, Strindberg; we can never take this from you.

Just wait. And what will cover the dust on this mantelpiece, which contains the books of the centuries, is a new type of repentance. It is something you sought for at the end of your life, but could not truly find. But that is okay, because by then you had achieved all you could. The wealth which your collected words gave you was enough to settle the debts of a lifetime, and send you into that windswept afternoon that is what we all, in the end, search for.

Let us now turn back to the occult. Many have sighed with disbelief, that one so talented with drama would turn to these black arts. In combination with your chemistry, and alchemy, you set the fires of a greater time. A time known as Inferno. This time gives me the key that you were truly unwell, and your schizophrenia was at its peak. But to fight this fight for pathology, we must somehow ignore your other deeds, that climbed so high. But why is this an impossibility? Why should someone who suffers from this condition be excluded from the domain of greatness? Greatness and schizophrenia are not incompatible. They indeed can be linked with surety, as the sun is linked to the sky. (Come now, we must forget this bickering. Strindberg suffered. He suffered from schizophrenia.)

There is something more we must add. That when you travelled to those outer reaches, you did reach inside and give birth to what can never be described. That was the intransigence of forever as it cascaded down your never–before-seen show. And here where the beliefs of yesterday climb the fabric of the trembling stars, here, oh here, did you find what we have all been looking for. And that is, that things will pass, and our souls will return.

I cannot fathom how a starling could have flown such a right path. Its wings are your wings, Strindberg, as you take us to that further dimension that has no worries and no cares left. Come now, and be a part of the show that has since stopped with your breathing.  There can be only one respite from the movement between shadows at daybreak. And that is what we most fear, and most have at our base.

There is nothing left for us here. Only when we shout our loudest cry do you come for the sands that are inheritance, Strindberg. I know that when you were alive you diced with the narrowness that is temporality, and you set it on fire so that we could know more of the night, and more of what can never really elude us. I can sense your reluctance to follow us here, but can we ever really be followed, when the tempest that charges from our combined souls is enough to quench the sea of its yearning thirst? Yes we can, because you are here, Strindberg—still in your grace, your laughter, and your polemic.

Come now Strindberg, you are the master whose ship is at dock. You have passed through the rough seas, and have now found your homeland. There is now nothing left to do, other than watch from your vantage point in the depths, and be content that you are the end of what can always be a feather in the spring sky.

There is a temperance in your being which until now I have not seen. There is something about you which is above as it is below, and up as it is down. And when the seamstress of the night has gathered you in for her final stitching, here we will come to know what is most in our hearts.

Your trial in Germany, for obscenity I believe it was, was something that you could not afford, but was something that made your words travel even further. We cannot be privy to what your inciting actually accomplished, but it is something we should see was a gathering of roses at the foot of an ancient citadel. For here, where the marrow of life is truly tested, you passed again, and let the withering of your life cast its most glorious pall.

There can never be what we most want in you, Strindberg. For what is at the heart of your work is what the cascading night is wont to keep from us. Strindberg, you are an enigma through your sufferings, as you are a little piece of glass in the summer sun. We stand at your altar, and let your shards fall their way to earth. And when this falling is at an end, there will be something more for us to tell our children: ‘We were there when Strindberg continued to unroll his fate, even when he was gone’.

Come now, this is no way for us to treat beloved offspring. But this is how it is for those of us who bark on the back of literature’s misdirection. We are not at liberty to savour life, as you did Strindberg, for this is the danger that is no longer at our most frightful disposal. Strindberg, you left a map, but today it is unable to be followed, because due to the evolution of palliative necessity, we have put paid to what is most at the centre of your being—and that is the ability to suffer, and continue on with suffering until there is only work left, and the mountains that are to be climbed.

Strindberg, you wrote poems as well, as you wrote in many other genres and styles. But your poetry was important for the development of your drama, which was sometimes couched in the poetic mode. But what is at the turning point of your oeuvre, Strindberg, is an immense respect for the poetic and how it can transform the everyday into something that the cliffs of every beach have at their base. Poetry, and what renders darkness into light, was one of your most pleasurable digressions. What we must never forget is your drama. But what we can indulge in is your poetry.

Strindberg, you were an advocate of beauty in so many ways. Your polemics did not detract from this in the slightest. There is beauty in this work that has nothing left to fear. For when you broached your net, it caught all that could be caught. And this indeed was a hall that could never know its future. Come now, we can’t really see into your life unless we give in to the night. Here is where we will find you, and here is where we will lose you.

What we can never forget is that you were accosted in so many ways by the Powers that directed your life as they directed your writing. There was so much suffering in you Strindberg, as there was so much brilliance, because of this teleological imperative. On one occasion, as you know Strindberg, you and your wife were on the verge of travelling overseas. But at the very last minute you said you couldn’t go, because the Powers forbade it. This sort of thing recurred throughout your life. But we shouldn’t discount you, and the strength of your convictions. What brought you into life was also the thing that brought you to the night.

There is a rustling of leaves which has at its heart the sound of a music from another world. During your Inferno period, you became interested in Swedenborg. Blake too, in his time, had become interested in this adventurer of ideas. Swedenborg was to leave his mark on you Strindberg, as he quested for solace and the happiness that was always to elude him.

Flights of pelicans are a truer indication of your night, Strindberg, than anything else, I would surmise. Because in this beauty there is a peace and ease that you would have loved to encounter. But you only encounter fire, which was enough to soothe your words into their majesty, but rendered your life into frozen wastes. Come now, I hear you say, why can’t there be more to this than we really know? But in this movement between the hard and the soft there is a pleasantness that only the writer knows. It is a respite that wings in times of rain have nothing but the good to ride with them. And here is where we will find you, Strindberg, before all that is left to the horizon will come again. There are plants which know no rest. They grow, fight of the rain and sleet, and keep growing like a thunder under the sky that only wishes for home. Strindberg, you were this home, and your own fight against the elements (especially when you attempted to kill yourself through catching pneumonia by jumping into the sea) was a reminder that sails are here for travelling, and not for fighting. Why had you not come to that point, Strindberg? Because of your heart and soul, and your need to continually rally against fate and all it could take.

Treasures are found in all of your works, Strindberg. They are hidden just below a surface that does not know tension. There can always be something which misses the mark, but these treasures are here for the unwary, and are constantly ducking and weaving towards a sort of celestial unnerving. We feel this through your Inferno. We are unnerved by the honesty, even though such honesty is tied to drama. I can still feel what you feel Strindberg, because your pain is my pain, as it is your solace.

Strindberg, I am waiting for you to unleash your tethering smile, and come back to where you should be—and that is inside the dawn as its light sprinkles over the rest of existence. Come and be a part of the great dance, Strindberg. Your suffering will be gone, and you will sleep in that most precious night. The night which follows the day as it gives us all, as it takes. There is nothing left to say here, except that your words will resonate with the stars, and your consideration of things other than your drama will be settled.  In this release there will be time for compassion, as there is time for new gatherings of rose petals in the bed of the strong, and of the weak.

I am like the wrestling we do to guard against the feathers of ineptitude as they slowly drift into better and more useful destinies. Here your third wife Harriet was your guide, as she distracted you from your calling, to bring you back to that final fight which was all-encompassing. I love what you do here, for it reneges as it transforms dross to gold, as you most ardently fought for. Strindberg, I know you are much more than this, because when you sing, each chorister in every choral work that has come since has believed in you and your wandering. Strindberg, you are the covers of an ancient manuscript that knows only what time of day it will see its last turning, and its gateway to forever.

Why can’t we write like you now, Strindberg? Because at our centre is a gulf that has no need to lift its head to bring on the lull that is a blessing as it is a curse. We cannot find you, just as the courts could not find a thing to convict you with. There are larger dreamings that have as their security the well-wishes offered to every adventurer as they set forth, and as their risk the sorrow of never returning home. (When your cousin, photographer Nils Strindberg, lost his life in a great ballooning adventure, your friends and family saw the name Strindberg in the newspaper, and thought you were the one who had perished). Come now, we cannot believe once again, when to believe is like the sand that covers all the beaches that you never visited.

Strindberg, you are what we most fear—and that is life that is taken to the edge of a wanting that steels itself as it relinquishes its grasp. I will come for you, because I know your greatest works (such as The Father and Miss Julie) are a sign that things in the world are right just as they are wrong. We see acceptance in your eyes, because to believe in things is what you did. You believed and then were received by even higher Powers than you thought imaginable.

Strindberg, why do we still search for you? Because when Munch painted your portrait he missed something that we know to be a truth. And that is that things will be right even in the mistakes we feel are our bread and butter—things we know to be a snowy evening at the height of a golden sunset. Come, we can only find you when you are lost. But that is okay, because when we have found out there will a reckoning that is like a forest in the dead of night. Here, Strindberg, it is here that your true gold was created. It was not the furnaces of your experiments that made this gold. It was the tumult of your imagination that made this the thing that would sustain all your wanderings until they had no time for recourse.

Master Olaf was your wind chime that closed in on the semblance of a reality we cannot doubt. Your whisperings here are the whisperings of a night that transcends as it gives new breath to a wind that has travelled for a century. Such boldness with the pen has not been seen since the day your were born, and the compassion we feel for you as a result of this work is a compassion we could not feel for any wrongdoer. There was no misdemeanour here like in some of your work, but a great travelling through time that took the harvest as it took the sea. We will find you here.

Strindberg, I know that you have lost much through your careering. But it is a loss which has as its fault the new need the sun has to cast shadows where before there were none. And with this comes a responsibility to gather up the petals of a flower that has not yet bloomed and give them to the darkness that results from your ceaseless penmanship. What is lost, more than anything else, is your life as you struggled against the great net of finding, before it has had a chance to correct itself by its own most inward motion. We can never forget you, Strindberg—because your suffering is our suffering as we peer into that abyss which is the moon at the apogee, and the stars which were your right.

When you thought your paintings would sell, you threw yourself into this tumult with the same measure as all your efforts. Your artistic effort was much in the same vein as your striving in the night-time presence of your soul. And here, where glass is like water, and determinations are the dross which your gold would uncover. Don’t ever stop being an artist, Strindberg. You would achieve whatever you set your mind to, and that is everything. There seemed not a domain of inquiry you could not conquer. A polymath to be sure, which even your plays could not keep hidden. Your painting is the treasure, that once uncovered by the night would be a wellspring that chooses only its course, but not its direction.

Nietzsche, and his unfortunate (yet necessary) descent into the abyss, was a warning to you that you should only take what is required before it is too late. Nietzsche was the dreamer, as you were the night. Nietzsche was the tell-tale sign, as you were the earthquake that quickly reneged on its promise. I can only find you when you need to be found, Strindberg. Because when Nietzsche descended, you were at that stage too, where you could have been at the gates of the fountain, and not in the stream itself. Come, you are neither here nor there with this. And that is what made your turnings and vectors the thing that could only help you (finally) sleep. I am like the simplicity in Nietzsche as his spirit met yours, Strindberg. And in this dance is the timeliness of life as it gives back what, really, could never be taken.

The book that really intrigues me is your Inferno. For in these pages are a glimpse into what clarity can accomplish when it is linked to madness. Why was everything a sign for you? Because in the vicissitudes of schizophrenia, everything is such a trace. In schizophrenia, which plagued you through the Occult Diaries upon which Inferno was based, are the seeds of remembrance that come only to take the sword, and not the shield. Your hints and guesses at this time are concerning only because you finally escaped their clutches. This was a time before the palliative cares of today and the wellness they can afford. It was something in you that overcame these most luxurious windings as they cover the moon in a snow that has never known the earth. Come, we will not truly have you here until there is something more. And that something more was your life, and the difficulties your schizophrenia presented the dross of the sea as it gave up more than it ever had before.

I am like you, but only closer to the fire. I am like the wind as it splashes its platinum over the weathering of the sand dunes of fate. Come, we cannot help you wander here, because when this feat of neverending cycles is finished with its song, here we will hear you sing again, like the withering wantings of the insecurities which bind us. You are the thing we seek, Strindberg, because in seeking we have lost the fight. And in being whisked away like this, we know the hour to be at hand when we lose our gathering knowledge, and let it slide back into what can never be accounted for.

Strindberg, you are what fate has in store for us. You are the sails on ships that have yet to reach their dock.  You are the sands in the hourglass that have nothing left but the past.  I can only hear you when style and time are in those ancient places. Come, I will sing, because to sing here is what we most appal. Your travels to England, while not your most successful adventure, laid some of the groundwork for future expanses of your work. You are the need we have to reach water. You are the summer as I am the winter. You are what we most abide, because in abiding we stray to those further places that have no respite. Harriet was your guide in so many ways, but so was your heart—and those ever-present Powers that lead the weather to be more than just an accomplice. Come, I will find you, and we will have it all.

You admired Poe, as all the greats of your time did, and your admiration has resonated with a depth. Poe is someone who has come to us today without the psychosis that plagued you, Strindberg. But that is okay, for in the forest that is the tempest as it yells, there will be a new farthing that will guide as it strips. I can know only what you know here Strindberg, for your terror is something we must switch into the quiet, as we switch it to the sea.

There are clouds that do not sing, only because when they are done, the rain that falls is your rain, Strindberg. It is like the farthest shore, that having been reached, is like a new window that looks onto a secret garden. This garden is your soul, and all that you lost in guarding its own genuine authority.  There can only be things in the world that do not bite, for when they bite, there is a simplicity that can bear no struggle. And this is your struggle, Strindberg, as you mount the fences as you did in A Madman’s Defence. And when we are through with the struggle, there will come a quietude that reasons as it embarks, that travels as it remains still.

Why are you so different from the rest, Strindberg? Because in your life you let the Inferno rain its barbs in sheets of what is most precious. I will come for this place myself in the fullness of time, and have it as a guiding buoy in the shipping channels of love. This is where the tempest wreaks its most beloved spell. And when we are gone from it all, we will forgive as we forget, and let the newness of a crying babe fill our windswept hearts.

Let us now return to your trial. Your book Marriage took you to a further place, for it was not your words, but your heart that kept off the gates of forever as they stole what was left of your innocence. And when you were through, and when you had won, your greatness was never further from the truth of things. There comes a time in life when the soldiers of fortune will deliver a new need – and that is the need to live forever, before you have had a chance to sing with a new force, and a new sense of what is right. This sense was different in you than in most people. Your sense was to conquer with the pen, as you conquered with the heart. And when you were through with this mighty battle, there was the chance we all had to reach for something more, and give back what is most in line with the stars.

You were, as we know, a polymath. You covered everything from drama, to poetry, to history, even turning your mind to linguistics in your later years. You covered science (as it was for you), as well as the black arts. But in this you were a soldier who never knew rest. Come, we should not let you go, simply because you excelled in all. Your drama (in life as in word) was your greatest accomplishment. And here where you sing, and let the wind sing, here we will find you at your most precious.

There are times in a life when the sight of what is most familiar is more a curse than a blessing. But when we have found those times, we must look to you and all you have accomplished. In this beckoning call, there is only the sound of wind as it travels through sandstone corridors that are as much our life as they are our belief. Those who read you, Strindberg, can come and be a part of this grand adventure. Let their pens be the things that etch away through the bluestone of history. We know they could make a difference, just as you, Strindberg, made a difference. This is a call to arms that will never leave us.

There is water where there should only be sand. There is poetry where there should only be silence. This is where we find you, Strindberg. When all else is lost, and the wanderings of butterflies can no longer move us, this is where we will finally find you, in the dark that resonates with a deeper chime, where things that can never be will be found again on the shoreline of the neverending ride. We are at that place that can only find hope. We are at that place because you have brought us there, and we will never forget it. We will never forget.

Strindberg, your tumult was something that struck us as a novelty, in the sense that wishing could never find its mark. And where you are most encumbered, is in the never-before-seen respite that your suffering could instil in others. I am like you now, as I have always been. But despite this show of utmost strength there is a candle that burns to its base, and here, where the travesty of tomorrow will holler its resounding call, there will be a new respite that has nothing of its owner but what is left in you. I cry at these words, because they are my words and not yours, Strindberg. I cry at these words because they are what we most want, and least hate. Come now, there should be more for us to find here, but we cannot find when we have no courage for the finding, and we can only love because that is what we are truly built for.

In many ways you shunned the limelight, just as you embraced it. For a time your underground was your overground, as your life was your true decision. I have come for you in the spark between lightning strikes, only because you thought these strikes were directed at you personally. I am like, but not like, the sense that the trees have that wellness is in tune with water, and life has its setbacks.

Why are you not here, Strindberg? Because like all that is precious, you have faded in your corporeality, but your spirit lives on. Come and be a part of the great show of strength that is the future. You will know it to be a truth, before truths have had their say. You drank, and you gave in to much that the night was heading for. There is a resonance in things that holds you as a newborn babe. And here, where resonances are at their strongest, we cry for you, because crying is what we do best.

Why do you not reconsider your lifeline as it drags you to those outer reaches that are the listening the tree does in the dead of night? Because what we encounter when we dream that dream a little harder is like what Samson knew of before he was caged by tradition. I am a lifesaver Strindberg, just as you are. But it is a life that some say should not be saved, only looked into when the clouds have had their fill of willing rain.

There is a neverness that we have spoken of before. And in that wind you lie like a facetious snake that has nothing left to eat. And now that you have had your fill Strindberg, here will be a time for giving in, and not wasting what it is that keeps us all going. Be sure you know what you are doing here Strindberg, because your fire is like ice, that burns in its own natural ways.

The king indeed gave you a stipend to kickstart your career. But this was no small matter. The attention it gave you allowed you to sneak up on the shores of night like a centipede in the light of morning. Where you are going with this measuring is the same path the Vikings took as they travelled to plunder but only found beauty. This the history books do not tell of, but we know it to be the thing that lifts, when lifting is not something we can really do.

There is a chance we all have to nestle down to the good, but this terrible impasse is what kept the likes of you going, Strindberg. I cannot get over this fact, as the dawn cannot get over the fact that the sky fights continually for its own survival. It is a battle which you have joined Strindberg, because in being this semblance of normalcy, there will be greater chances at what is most at stake.

I hear a cry, only because you did, Strindberg. It is the cry of meaning that envelops you still. Come, we cannot let this thing past, because it is the heart that makes us most miss the sea, as she cradles the infinite in the palm of her hand. I hear you whisper, because you are the one who ran away to that loftier place that I can only follow in weeping sand. This sand divides the infinite as it divides your soul, Strindberg. Your soul is what you most keep hidden, for in the daylight it speaks of a higher register that has grass at its base, so that the trees and the fledglings of the tomorrow will find their withering escape.

There is a well-wishing that guides the boat you sail in, Strindberg. And this boat has many leaks, but it sails on as you sail on. In the middle of this journey there is solace, for at the end there is only night.

Come and be a part of my greater plan for you. To wrestle with the leviathan (schizophrenia) one last time, so that when the coarseness of the winter is at ease, here we can reflect like longtime companions at a café of our choosing. There is a choice we all make, and that is for gold to be made in iron, the reverse of what you most sought for. In this reversal is the glittering of tiny shells as they find their way back to the sea.

You are never here where I want you Strindberg, because in the midsummer, fireflies reach that insistence that the motion of the sun around the earth is most likely to deceive us by. There can only be recompense where trembling hands have known security. It is your security, Strindberg, as the night gathers the rose petals of our combined loving, as it settles the scores of a thousand generations.

Your play, Miss Julie, is a mirror, as we are the gazers. One of your most ardent prayers. One of your most scintillating successes, that has given a glimpse into the fact your schizophrenia had not won. But come, should we muse with such abandon when all that is left of the flight of seagulls has your name written on it, like a treating doctor that knows this will be your last breath.

Soundless, but full of sound, you linger in the dreaming which is forever. And here, where we cast our nets for the thousandth time, and where we muse with still more yearning breath, we come for you as a motion which is neither here nor there, and which comes and goes as it baulks at the larger chasings whales do to find their longed-for home.

This is where you are, Strindberg, because the dance has had its own say, before the speckles of fresh dew make their hearts into a union that is for the treasures we cast aside in our living. I am simply free to be here, because where I am in this being feels like the being of a more sensitive bite. And this is the bite of fracture that transcends as it lets go, which raises as it knows how to fall. You are the intensity we all have in this letting go, which is interested in how being can dismiss itself as it raises up.

I will know what it takes to silence your critics, and that is an unyielding fate, that lives on as you have passed. The banner is passed to that beyond that has as its closure a continued opening that only the light can enter as it closes in on night.

I will gamble so I can see you, Strindberg. But the cards I leave on the table are like the feathers of a more risky venture. Why can’t we see it? Because when the fellowship of the stars begins to glow again, we find the might and power which is yours, Strindberg. We take it upon ourselves, because in this taking is the gift of a thousand nights’ labour, which (at its end) brings the coverings of every steeple a new and hitherto unfounded measure. Your measure is our measure, Strindberg. Because in this dance is the salt of a sea breeze that has rectitude at its base, and night as its accomplice.

I am with you on this journey. For when the silence which covers your footsteps is near and yet so far, here we will strain ourselves for the flight which is more of an adventure. I cannot see you, because your dreaming is that of a larger and more profound insistence. Come now, you must not be shy, for in your levelling of great mountains there is a semblance of what is to come. And this is where we sail towards our most profound victories as they guide the troops back to their barracks for a well earned rest. I am in the gap between moments because you are there, Strindberg. Come, come, we must not give away our secret, for to do so would leave us in a state of disrepair, that can only be fixed by the Dionysian gods, the ones who hold us back, but give us hope.

Your voluminous correspondence is what we thrive upon. In these words there is so much suffering, and yet so much at stake. The fine line you travelled was to us like a set of windbreaks that can never really be in working order. I will come for what it is that needs to be told. For in your letters is the work of genius as it strives for the mist, and cannot let go of the past. You are in these words still, as surely as your corporeal life is at an end. And this is where we will search for you, before you have had a chance to breathe.

Your children are your compass. You missed them after the break-ups of your three marriages. You loved them dearly, as they loved you, but could never really find what it is that keeps you breathing. I am like you in this respect, because when the sun has set, this is where history will find you, placed along a shore that is desolate, as it is freedom itself.

There are things we should never speak of, but you have spoken their tethering need with a solace that gives heart as it gives adventure. We return to your polemic. The ‘woman question’, as you articulated it, is something we cannot speak of in this era, because you were wrong Strindberg, but you wished to spark the fire that would always burn, and your misogyny is what, now, must be left behind.

There are also things that must always be spoken. And that is your truth as you set the avalanches of the night in their motion. Come, you now must agree that when the time was right, you released your most ardent arrows as they rained like a fire through the sky. There is a reminiscing we must all do to find the tethers that bind our souls to furthest things. And this is where we will find you, before you have had a chance to stop the goading that life imparts, and once again exhale our final breath so we can let things settle themselves for the last time.

Your debts kept you fresh. You were never extravagant, as some have been in your situation, but your income (until your final days) was never great enough to keep you secure. There were benefits held in your honour to help ease your hardship, but in some cases you refused to accept the proceeds and let the light of poverty trickle down your side. But that is okay, Strindberg, because it was these sorts of hardships that gave you your edge. It was in the gloom of poetry that you struck your most ardent blows, and witnessed what was truly in the line of sight for those less willing to try.

Help us to understand you more. Give us some sort of sign from your current abode that you are with us still. This could be a new insight from a world-renowned scholar, or even one of my insights that will make you appear anew. There is nothing more invigorating than to see history bear down on time, and on those greats who live forever in the minds and hearts of people who work diligently in their honour. I am working for you Strindberg, as I work for myself. And when you are done (which can never really happen now), there will be a rejoicing and a letting rest that is like so many of the times we heard were only a fiction. Come, we must be content with this, as news of the world washes over the rocks of the past and its forgetting. Come now, we must be happy.

There can always be time for what the sands have delivered to the beach. And that is instability amongst a momentous lapping which is the sea trying to find its home. You are this lapping, Strindberg, as you are the time it takes to once again find your home in the nether regions of the soul. You are a finding, as we are a seeking. You are a well-spring as it gives life, but never a new lease on what is at stake. You are the time it takes to finish a meal, as you are the difference between this life and the next.

This seems strange to say, Strindberg. But I have caught you, as you caught the jewels thrown by fate. In this catching is something we must abhor, and that is the time it takes to whistle away the never-before-seen gold that was your most ardent feat. You never created gold, but in your searching for it, we could see the genius in you rise to other places that are for guarding as they are for wishing. Genius never takes its step, as the right is sometimes the wrong, as the sky is sometimes the sea, as the night is sometimes the day.

I often wonder, what would Wittgenstein say about your genius? What would Kant, and indeed Nietzsche say? We know you corresponded with Nietzsche, but your correspondence continues with the other greats of the mind that knew only too well, that to write off genius is not something we should settle for. These greats of intuition were your allies, in certain senses. Their combined yearning, and their combined steel, was enough to get you over the line, which keeps shifting with the motion of all that is.

There can never be a place for all this wandering. For when the trees have ceased their sighing, there will come a new sort of deliverance, one that can never let go of you, Strindberg. Come, you are like the wind yourself, but in being such, you have left your substance to a listening that can be what it is not, just as it can be what it is. This is where we shall find you, until the never-reached stars are reached, and humanity can have its most verdant meal—free of the things which keep us trapped, as it is free of the things that will release us.

Your light is the light of aeons. It all converged on your being while you were alive. This occurrence, this aegis, is what we fight for in our daily lives. The water that is part of this great convergence is the same that gives life to the chosen—as it has done through history. The beading of this water is like a spring that has released its treasure, and knows when to stop. Your Dream Play is a testament to your always-inverted cry, as this water travelled from here to there, and back again.

I cannot resist this temporal flux. It is in my marrow—as you are, Strindberg. As you fly, so the sparks of the everyday are extinguished from the bee as it finds nectar. This ambrosia is too difficult to locate in the present, because when you fell, your falling was the measuring of the stars as they glanced through the mist, and into eternity.

The guess we all have to make, Strindberg, is what you will do now. Your spirit is still with us, and the lamp that is stolen to guide our ship depends upon an answering of this question as it rattles through our bones, and on into the breathing of worn-out soldiers, who know that there is one fight left. I cannot recommend your life, for as it was, and as it touched forever, there can never be a retelling where there should be a renouncing. The storm is with you Strindberg, just as the calm is. And when ancient castles are at their furthest ebb, we will come to find you asleep in your mighty citadel—a place of worship that knows no pain.

There is a strength in you I can’t take away, Strindberg. For when you rest, you are even more formidable, and to be close to this power, is like a shard in the night that has temperance at its base. I am like the candle in this knowledge, that having burned to its base, will come again in the streams that were our ancestors, and the dreaming which our souls have done to find bread to feed our children. I cannot dismiss this fact, for when you were married for the third time, there came a closure as there was a new opening. Your travelling here is like silk, and more must be said about it. But we must wait, just as Schoenberg waited for his time. Just as Da Vinci, just as Artaud waited.

From where I sit, I see the blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, and your mind as it hums in unison with the angels of forever as they sit listening to your plaintive melody. There is repetition here, as there has always been in the motifs of temporal exchange as they bury themselves in the night, and all she will take.

There will come to pass something more, as we sit in treasured languor, and know it to be a fact of the best weather that nature can concoct. And when I am with you Strindberg, a new sense of relief will guide us to the outer realms where whistling is something the crystal spheres will do as they welcome you in from the rain. Mallarmé was a peaceful exponent of these arts as they nestled into line without the fear that once bridled us. There can be more here, as there can be less. And Mallarmé was sure this would settle his accounts with the newness of things, and let him spin in useful harmony with what was left.

Why not speak of Hölderlin here, who suffered as you suffer, and who achieved the greatness of things that had as its saving grace the bending of light through a prism of the ancients. The Greeks were Hölderlin’s guides, just as for you writers such as Poe were guides. And indeed you were also guided by all that was left of the knowledge of the sun. You are the feelings of Nijinsky, just as he was the feathering of darts that have nowhere left to go. Let us also speak here of how the shooting of arrows brought the Trojans to their knees, and what it would be like to gather once again at the foot of everything. I am like all these people, and all these things, because when I weep I remember them, and all that has come to pass.

Strindberg, you are useful, as we all are useful. For in this votive stance there can only be one thing to remember, and that is that healing will have its way, just as the stationary and the quiet have their way. And this way is the chance we have to deal our cards and know that things will be right as they let go. There is nothing left to do but brush aside the cobwebs as they form on the moss which holds this mighty castle together. I will never relinquish what is most hurtful, because in this release is the sense the dawn has that it will always find a harbour, and will always find the ships it needs to propel it again into the sky for another round of giving life, as it gives sustenance.

You are like-minded with so many, and yet so different. Your voice trembles, as you know what you have achieved. And now that we are here, in this place of revelry, we find new solutions to old problems, and keep them at bay so that none can find them. Why am I so intrigued by your poetry here? Because it is this meandering into pastures of lavender which really sets me to the brink. I have always known, I think since I was born, that one day the light would cease, and the merriment of forever would lay its foundation in my soul. But somehow, you had reminded me of this, as I read the last pages of your biography. I had forgotten the strength of your soul, and knew less of how to be because of this failing. You can be forgiven, just as I am forgiven my trespasses, because when the kernel of insight that flashes through you is lost to the world, there will be new times for gathering rose petals.

Your first marriage started in the heat. But your last engagement settled on the coals of all who have loved, and all who keep loving as they separate through this life. Treasures are made for cunning plans that uphold virtue like they uphold the tremors of buildings built on the fault lines. There is a space here, a space between spaces that can never let on what it is about to be. For when this space remedies the night, here we will come for acceptances, and all that they can bring.

Difficulties were nothing new for you. You rode them, Strindberg, as a horse that has been ridden into battle, and has known the freedom of escape. This escape is our escape, but not before the heat of things has scorched us once again. I know this to be true, for in being true, truth itself lets in a new kind of fire. It is a fire which can only be written at night. Just as you wrote, Strindberg, before we could take the pen from your hand. My hands shake at the writing I must now do to help smother these embers, and let them dry the rain, as it comes down on your life.

There comes a time in every man’s life where the sands that were dictated to him have been shunned by the wind. Here where water and sky meet, there can be a new rejoicing that feathers as it curtails, and winds as it strengthens. You are this movement Strindberg, as your life is a stillness that has no joy. Come, we must forgive you these transgressions, because when you were ill, there was no chance at respite. There was only the need we have to once again reach for the stars and curtail everything that ever was. I am like this time in your life, because this time was the factory of new beginnings, and old endings. This sort of thing can never be our right, as The Father was not yours, but the world’s.

There is temperance in the sowing of seeds that are for destruction only. You destroyed as you gave life. You nestled as you gave in. And when the chariots of our love are at their most giddy, I will come for you like rainbows in the desert sky. There is more we need to know here, for when the castigation of the dreaming we do has reached the night, then we will find comfort that is so much like the longest walk. Walking in places that are made for running is how this battle will end. I cannot give you what you want here, for to do so will leave us as beggars on a street that is mired with darkness.

Why has your correspondence with Nietzsche never really been something we could hang our hat on? Because in this mobility is a fakery that has guilt as it has deliverance. Two mad men, winning the fight for forever. But this fight is our fight as we board those ships that are for lounging in and not necessarily for the fight which is the night. I am like the compassion the oarsmen feel for their respective hands. And in this dash for the rocks there will be a sense that the righteous will be unburdened, and the devastation of the reconnaissance will be unbridled.

There is something more in these ramblings. And that is what must keep us going when the mischief of your stare will bark back at us like fireworks in the dead of things. These fireworks have danger as their milk, which is your milk, and need to re-examine the tendrils that are our offering to you. Come, I cannot sense what you sense, but I am here with you because you wanted it. But my time with you must be short, because there is nothing left to say in the midst of all that is.

I can hear you when you are at your worst. I know your encounter with the Wrangel family provided your first victory. But it was a victory that combined much in the way of substitution. It was the taking of this for that, the taking of here for now, and the transparency of a finer point to things that bear no name. I am with the travelling we have all done to secure our personal happinesses. It is this which cannot be shaken, for to shake is to let go of the trembling night, and let it fill us so there is no more to fill. This is the darkness, as this is the light. To find our inspiration once again so we can travel to destinies unheard of.

I know there is a place we can hide, Strindberg. It is in the hope that our combined dreaming would rescue us from our tight grasps. Strindberg, you are what we most want in life. Because to tread here is to tread where our most ardent passions are unleashed on an unwary public. You can never know how much I ache for release. But this is not quite true.  For we do have a sense that the night will come for us, just as the day comes for us. I like what I see, because I can no longer truly see. So I like equally what I can touch, for this is the only thing left for me as I wander in streaming mists that have no result to show for their wandering. Come, this is ridiculous as it is right. There can never be what we want in life, for you, Strindberg, are free of your revelry. You are free.

The feelings we have for those that love us are the same feelings all the most devious devils have won from the clutches of the now. There is a mode of writing that cannot touch as it can release. Why is this so hard? Because in this counterweight is a world of unknowing delight, and newfound seedlings in the waste of things. There can be no now, because you have left us as you have given us in fledgling domains. Blake should be your companion here, as he is mine. Blake, who rose on the wings of a never before seen acceptance, is something we should not forget. To forget Blake is to forget you, Strindberg. Swedenborg is your united traveller, who sees things we don’t any more. Swedenborg, that most ardent theorist, who let the light of all shine on what was few. Swedenborg.

I know that Rimbaud is also here. At a place that senses only excess, as new life knows only acceptance. Come and be a part of this adventure, both of you. For when the sentience of the forest floor is well out of our way, there we will sing a new song that has repetition as its base. The light that enters the monastery windows at dawn is the same light that gives you both your love and your forbearance. The measure of this roundabout way of thinking is found in the chasm that only shadows of tomorrow are good for. There can be no more in this sightless depth. For when there is closure, there will be release as there is a found work of art. This art is inspired as it chases. It chases you Strindberg, as it does Rimbaud.

I am not like you Strindberg, because you are the arrow that flies in great arcs, and great ways of being. Maybe Heidegger can help us here. For in the first half of Being and Time, there lies a flatness that neologism can only recapture once. This flatness is a shining that illuminates all, as it diminishes our combined sight. You are so enthralled by the movements of things that we forget this. But Heidegger is your companion, Strindberg. He lifts as he relates—the relation between things which is the heart of all we can gather in our meek hands.

I will never let you go, Strindberg. I can’t now that the furnace which has hereto separated us has died down, and the whisperings of fairies in the recesses of burnt-out minds are what guide the ship we sail in. A motif here, an insight there. This is what I have for you, and you will never let me forget it. So much for that, but there is something more in our searching. And that is the claim that comes at the end of life, and the fight that soldiers in winter have also had at their call.

There is something in the trees we cannot hide.  It is you, Strindberg, as you brace yourself for what comes next.  I will value what it is that keeps you ticking, even in this age where light does not travel and stars are made for breaking. You are the news as you are the solace that winds its way through the seeming intransigence of well-worn manuscripts. I can hear your breathing as I hear your voice. But your second trial for indecency in Germany was the tempest as it was the blast. A blast that resonated down the years, before all this had come to an end. Come now, we must not forget the treasures that you stole. You gave them back in words, as all that something lost has seen found. I will tether you to the night as you tether me to what is most at risk. You are the first, as I am the second.

In the Inferno you left a mark of your schizophrenia. But that is okay, as most things are okay that find themselves emptied in the end. Your challenge is what braces us for future episodes, and new times to rejoice. There can never be a part of me that will let you go, for when I have, the rainbows of deliverance will bend themselves afresh, and the weather will know you to be a friend.

There can only be one form of forgiveness in the mess which was your existence. And that forgiveness contains all as it contains less.  We forgive, because we can never forget. And we live so that we will find your resonating song in all the darkest places. This is the fortune of the brave and the willingness of the steeple to comfort you when you are down, and give back what is most precious.

I am like the varnish on a mahogany table. It comes off only to the years that are to come, and the new families who will posses me. This is a musing that has truth at its bottom, as you have truth, Strindberg. There is never what we want in fires that never burn. There is only what we could need to send rushing embers on coals of quiet acceptance. The seeming intractability of these thoughts is what drives me closer to you, Strindberg. It is in you I find that fresh feeling that takes me away as the night takes me as its own. There is always more than we could hope for here, just as there is less. You are what we want because you cannot be found. We are all we want because you can always be found.

I look out my window and I see you, Strindberg. Why is this? Because in the dreams that are still to come, you are there. Nestled like a rope no one has used for ten years. In this length is your sustenance as it brings us further from ourselves than ever before. Mallarmé knew of this, just as Rimbaud and Baudelaire did. Their manna comes from gods we do not understand, nor can ever wait for. There is a sense here that things will be right, as night closes in our combined being, and sends it once again towards the deliverance we feed upon. I know your time is with us, these figures from semblances of determination. And this is what brings us closer together. And that is what is most at stake, and most in need of repair.

There can never be enough of you. Your words are stems that emerge from vases as they twinkle in the sunlight. This is not speculation, but truth as it stands amongst the longing we have for acceptance and success. Come, I can be your standard bearer on my own. I need something new upon which to rest my head, and let myself drift into that gentle sleep which is home.

There is a pull that the strings of fate have no control over. And that is where we will find you before you have set foot in the rambling snow. This journey is one that we all live to some extent. For when we think fate has got us, there comes a second power. And that is your power, Strindberg, as you wait for the night in all her guises and all her ramifications. This force, like the sand on a windswept beach, is not something we can really attest to before it is too late. Only now can we bring our usual forbearance on the train that carried you into Stockholm for your first trial. There will be people waiting on the platform of this excess, just as in your life and in your being. This seems hard to say, and is, because tendrils of you spark more than is necessary.

I am like the sea that has no tune. I am like the waves because you are, Strindberg. Your motion is the motion of condolences that have picked themselves up from the waste, and spring life back at us in a similar fashion to the clouds. These ever-watchful sentinels are a clever reminder that nothing lives forever—except you that is, my great man. There can only be a missive that knows itself to be what we want when the listening of the forest stops, and the well-wishes of our ancestors climb again into that faraway place that has our sentience stripped from it. This can be our recovery. This can be what we want.

There is something we cannot stop, even if we choose to. And that is life in your shadow, Strindberg. I cannot help this direction as it comes for the sky that is your home. There is a wellness in this fact that is like a feather, that having floated on the wind, finally comes to a stop in your most ardent passions. I cannot see you here as we all cannot see you, because you are the life, and I am a wellspring. When you are the night, I am there for you.

This never before seen urge is a blessing to those who know of its existence. I will overcome all to show you, Strindberg. I will overcome so that my further voice will wrap you in shards of togetherness that have nothing to guide them. This belief, or this lack, is the lack which is nothing as it wanders over spires of amber that do not delude themselves that travelling is for the fastest amongst us. To find joy here is to find the impossibility of the right as it becomes the wrong. I am like your happiness Strindberg, just as I am like your sadness. And this we must not forget.

Stuck, that is what I am. Stuck in your sight as someone who does not see. As a beggar who once had it all, but now has nothing. Not even the clothes on his back. This is not a trick, nor a recompense, but rather a sallying forth that brings many to their knees. I cannot even begin to delineate the finer complexities of the tanbark that bears your inscription. This inscription is our inscription as it carries us onwards, and towards the light.

There are times we must not speak of. For to speak them would be to let loose a new type of condolence, and this would undo you, Strindberg. The night would come, and the mist would recede, and all we would see would be the moonlight as it travels to those further recesses that are not for the wandering of stars. Here, where the mark of the future is something we must not let go of, is where the companionship of the clouds is what we most would like. I am uncovering this work for you Strindberg, as I am uncovering my life. For when we are truly at an end, this is where I will come for you.

The trees can never fully comprehend what I am about to say. For in their bending in winter gusts, there is a music that holds all you hold, Strindberg. It is the dust of mornings past, and the new need of starlings as they have their final say about what it is that keeps us going.  Even when there is nowhere left to go, we continue on, as if the shores of our forebears know only rest. But there is still work to be done, Strindberg. It is the work of everything we have ever wanted, as it scurries through the sand dunes at first light.

Hölderlin was your companion in many ways. For in his neverending song, there is a similar suffering that plays at fate as we all have. I fear what comes next, for when it is truly at its most ardent depth, both your lives will spring forth and give happiness as they have given hope. There is a time I once knew, that having been unhinged, will carry us to that place of rest and we will re-encumber what we thought would only unbridle us. There are things the dawn has seen, that we can only dream of. There are places that are not for the willing, but only for the chance we have to look at things afresh, and give a good luck message in a bottle made for the ocean.

I can always foretell what it is that the wind will do in your honour, Strindberg. For when the time comes, and I am at an end, there will be a rejoicing for the summer, as it barks the names of every sailor that has sailed rough seas. Your time at the edge of things was my time, as I swing from the branches of a hurried motion – a motion that can never really stop, as it comes again in the waves that are for believing. This merry motion is the dream I have for you, Strindberg, as we both travel through this world, and as our words disseminate themselves through the expanse.

It was rain that brought me to you.  It was a shower that could only hide itself as you hid yourself at times from the world. There is nothing left of what we were fighting for. There was nothing left, but what did retain itself was the abyss which sermons could never account for. There are joys in this world, as there are joys which do not encapsulate what it is that we both most need. Your success with Miss Julie is a testament to the wrongs we fight for as they lead us into regions of the soul which must never be found. These regions are where the heart is. Hidden away, just like a feather in a stack of hay.

I cannot foretell what will happen. Because it comes in gusts that are for the willing as they are for the weak. And here, where we thought we had lost our song, is where we will truly find the shackles that bind our fates.  I am like you in so many ways, but one way I am not like you is the need to be the polemicist. This is a strong statement I know, but it must be said, for to say it is to bring something new once again to the future, as it reaches for the past. This reaching is what we never could abandon. For in our past is a forever ending present, and when we have found that, we can let go of other things that hold us back. Just as Heidegger was the dream, so we are the longing that writers of every time know to be the difference between right and wrong, between the uncovering and then the covering back up. This is what I long for, as you do, Strindberg. This is what keeps me going despite everything that we wanted to say.

I cannot say where we will be going. The mist is too thick. But that is okay, because when we fought for death, we both fought for something more. And that is where I most wish to be, at the bottom of things, so that I might raise myself up, and become something I am not. You can aid me Strindberg, as I have aided you. You can witness great feats for me, and see them to be truth. This playfulness with history is what we thought would be an impossibility, but is not. With your Dream Play you saw the possibilities as they presented themselves to fate. With this one act you settled the score of a thousand nights’ labour, and knew it to be a victory. But it is not a victory we must savour, for we must move on to the next adventure as she yells at us to go away. This is the trouble with things, that they can never be done aright. Only fashioned into something more extreme, and so let go of.

Well done to you, Strindberg. That is all I can say. And now I must continue with my own journey, and let things come to that place of rest that is forever. But before I do that, I must say a few words about you, so that I can find what it is that will keep us singing.

You are such that I cannot not find you when I look. I search, and in searching find that other place where death does not lurk, and the sprinkling that fireflies do to find the light is what is most at your disposal. There are wings, and there are things which they lift. And this is you, where I know you to be.  I can carry you, for this is what I do best. To beat death is the surest way to find the end of your condition, Strindberg. To see death in its most ardent form, to look squarely at it, and to conquer. This is where your schizophrenia will leave you, and the well-wishing of family and friends will sustain you – before it is too late.

There is something more we must say here, and that is that things are made for bending. The light does this best, but what’s more, life (which is built on light) is something which also bends. And in bending it allows us to escape to states of mind that bring a new freshness, and a new semblance of what is best.

I hope you are well, Strindberg, in that place above the stars. I hope you have found the rest you so deserve.  Hopefully you have found that heaven which is the antipodes of the various hells you experienced on earth. I know that for most of us a prayer is like a time in seed. And when we are done praying, we will lift you up, so there is nothing left to secure. Your life for me is a guiding buoy that, having found its most needed place, will come for new ships to guide, and new adventures to be had. There is a difference in what we know here, and what should be said. But I have faith in you Strindberg, as I have faith in the dawn, and all that it always entails.

I do know that life for you is at the crossroads. By this life, I mean your life in me. I can see the challenges which confront you, just as they confronted Nietzsche at the end of things. But do not be afraid, I can see the clearing as it presents itself, and it is a thing of goodness. I know not how we will get there, but we will, Strindberg—you and I together, and all that the mist will allow. I know this to be a truth, just as all things are a truth. I can flourish more with you in my life, but that is not important. What is important is that we continue, and know this wellspring to be our birth.

There are times we should not let go of, but these times are far from finished. There is a newness in each fledging, that if we listen closely enough, we can hear at the foot of everything that is combined. And when I search for you here, I find you—unbidden and alone. But not alone in the night. Here you have your companions—Artaud, Hölderlin, Nijinsky, Nietzsche—and all the rest that have, in their own way, given rest, as you have given life.

I am like the wind that has only one source—and that is the time it takes to breathe a shallow breath before things have become their worst. And in this space, where light does not reach, I hear you singing, just as if you had never been, and had always been. This nexus is a blessing as it is a curse. It is a listening that has depth, a travelling that has length, and a merriment that knows no ease. This ease is you, my great friend, as you come apart once again to give the world words that have no intention of giving up. This is where we will find your most precious voice, as it gives solace to those who can no longer feel solace. There is something more here, but I do not understand. And that is how it must be.

There can be no more glamour where we look. It is all work, and the most stoic of intersections. This is your truth, Strindberg, as you always knew it to be. Can we really be forgiven for not upholding the lengths of time as she gathers up the rose petals of the night, and sprinkles them from every vantage point? I don’t know what you are meaning here. But I suspect it is something I must withhold from the universe as she rains in spades against the backdrop of praxis. This need to do is something that we are most fond of. It is like the feathers of a new headwind, that disappears as it reappears, and senses that things will right themselves before our very eyes.

I can’t believe my luck at finding you. An old academic introduced me to you before I had even learnt to fly. And in these butterfly’s wings are the travels that only a certain few can carry. I know I will find you again in more future existences I may have (in this life and the next). Because we are now linked like water to the river. This is my one wish, that we will have at our disposal a certain co-inhabitance that allows us to wander in the happiness we have all shared at your uncovering.

Why have I not seen you before? It is because of chance and the tendrils of history that we have been parted for so long. But your happening now, on this great road, is a feeling that will never belong to anyone else. There is a sureness in this that can only pass as it forgives. I came for you once in the night, only to release you from those electrical currents that tortured you so. You are free from them now, at least. You are what is most together in the sands of the hourglass as it tells of times to come, and homecomings to envision.

There can never be a threshold that the ravine gives to the running of accepted heartbeats. Only because you are this ravine as it gathers all the dust of the centuries, and spills it into vortexes that are like a kindness that has only one omission. This lack in the fabric of things is our lack as we look for you amongst the embers of a fire that has never given rise to smoke. This vacuity is more than we can imagine. Only because I am at the centre as you are to the left. I am here, only because you let me, and only because we are both the way.

I sense your hardship as my own. The things that unravelled you, are the things that unravelled me. And these things keep a pulse on the most ardent simplicities. These small insights into our experiences are what the philosophers live for. And without the pulse of capitulation that governs these things, we will turn to the philosophers and what they have said, and we will take them downstairs to look at new vistas as they launch a thousand ships, and a thousand new ways to dance.

What can we ever truly be in control of, if not fate? What can we ever really be afraid of, if not fate? There are beliefs which ring true in all ages, and these are your beliefs, Strindberg. They scatter over the clouds, as very few have done before. And now that there is no time left, I will be able to say, truly, that you are sentience that cannot have boundaries, and fellowship that relinquishes just as it takes up. I can hear the sighs of labourers who are sequestered to hard labour. Their voice is my voice as I take them to you. I do not allow myself to do otherwise. For in this labour is the very fabric of deliverance. In this labour is the weather as she scatters us. In this labour is the now.

Come and be a part of this great adventure, Strindberg. You know you have it in you, as we all do. But your spirit is a special one that has the night as its accomplice.  Yes, the night. It is a thing we can’t navigate at her choosing. But this is the choice of evening that has all of the sun, the moon and the stars, the clouds, the birds and the crystalline spheres at her disposal. We will not let this go, because to do so would end all as it gives new acceptance.

There can be no more which needs to be said. For when the time is right, and the birds have finished their flight, there will be a gold that can only be found in you, Strindberg. This gold is what we most seek. It is in our veins as they go crashing into furthest places. This recompense is what the weather really shines for. This very difference in temperance is what we always knew was the most precious. Strindberg, that which fires you, is that which also burns you. Your hands, which felt the fire of your chemical experiments, and led to your hospitalisation, are what most speak of your truth. There can be no other way, no other which fires your semblance to its more indebted solace.

Come now, we must not go into things with such vehemence. It is only when we cry that you are here, Strindberg. This letter was sent when trees were there for the night, and the wind was there for your choosing. I cannot see clearly in this darkness, but I must continue before it is too late, before the sand in this beach is blown away, and the sea has nowhere left to reach. Your guiding is a testament to your travels. I wish I was guided like you Strindberg, and in the past I have been, but this is not what we truly want. In a sense it is, but only in that sense we cannot see.

I cannot see you now. But this is the blood we spill so that we can never again be caught in the light as it sheds its most ardent passions on the feelings we have for others, and the wellspring which these feelings know to be a gift. These things are before our time. But that is okay, because in wishing for your night, I know the day will shoot its victory song far above any type of deliverance. Come, this is not the way to truly sing. But we must continue. We must continue.

I am like the snake in the grass, that has solace through movement, and direction through flight. It finds heat as it lies on a rock, but this rock is the rock of ages as she sings for another commitment. You are this snake, Strindberg, as I am. Verlaine, whose photo you kept with you, is the tempest and the commitment to strike before laughing has had its say. This is not what we must look for. For in repetition there is the key to a new motif that lands us in trouble as it releases us again for the fight which is ahead. There can be no more which will be taken from us, because we have already been left with nothing. But we can fight again for the feelings we have lost, and see them to be a ghost that has sentience just as it has loss.

I have found you once again. And this is because wherever I look, I see you. I see you in the fortnights, I see you in the dawn, I see you in the weeks, and months. I see you turning the pages of ancient manuscripts. And when I no longer see you, I know that I must turn another page of any book, and there I will see you once again. There can be no doubt in this, as I travel to further places that have respite at their beck and call. Come, I know that this is what you want. Because it is what I want, and in this we are linked.

There comes a time when seeking is at an end. Where fate gathers up the embers of time and transports them to that other world where duty is finished and pleasure takes over. It is in this world I see you Strindberg, like a knight who has no armour, and a settlement that has only one outcome.

I feel that because we are so close, I will find you in this non-seeking, like a raging torrent that cascades in wonderment and intrigue. This torrent is our torrent as we believe in things that are not to be believed in. A place where your suffering is at peace, and your rage is turned against itself and splintered into the night. This is easy to say, but hard to put a finger on. It is hard because it is the easiest thing in the world, to come back again and see the light for what it truly is.

I see cities covered in dust. I see the forest is lingering in the morning light. And when these sights are finished, and I look to you Strindberg, I know that temperance will have its last look, and sighs will ring over the rooftops. These sighs are the sighs of the night, as she steels herself for another watch. This turning is the turning of the wheel of life, as it nestles into the breeze, and has a last adventure to placate the dawn.

Wind is here, like never before. When you lost your children through divorce, you could hear their voices in this wind. It was like a ghostly echo that could never find home. I believe, as we all do, that change is here for the betterment of things. Change, and all that cannot be lost is where you are now. But I must, in exploring the present in this way, be apart from you, Strindberg. Because when you dream, we all dream. And when you fight your way to the stars, here I will find you, like a rock, in having spoken of its life, is now at rest, with nothing further to do.

There are fruits, and there are heavenly fruits. These fruits are the labour we give to the ground, so that she will bring a fresh harvest, and a new need to fathom the depths to find our true belonging. Come now, this is not what we want. But it is in so many ways. To create, as you did Strindberg, is to lose sight of the fruit, and come again in rain that has been blown in from the sea. This oceanic deliverance is something we must never forget. For to forget is to nail the coffin shut. To forget is to be at a place that time and her wanderings cannot let go of. But we must let go. For to let go is to let words find their resting place, and quietness descend once again on some of the most noisy walkways. Here people walk, like ghosts that have no home. Here we are then, at your service, Strindberg. Here we are then.

I cannot really touch the space that is our hearts. Because in this space are the seeds of a larger growing. This growing is you as you strand before us, Strindberg. This growing is where we will lock our futures in, and see them to be the fault line that is our chance. Chance and the well-wishes of the neverending ride are what you came for, Strindberg. And to know this is to let the apple of the garden fall to the ground. We eat this apple, because it is right to eat. It sustains us as we forage. We forage for words, to set them free. We uncover them as a sculpture uncovers the figure from the rock. And in this we will be set free ourselves, and know the future to be a curse we can always protect ourselves from.

I am always needing. This is also true of you, Strindberg.  For in our poetry, there lies a semblance of what could never be. And in not being, the threads which link our words to the shoreline are tethered to the rocks which know no name. This lack, and its adversity, is what we need to see on our journey. This little bit of calm in the face of the tempest is the thing which allows us to breathe with a deeper breath, and let us forge ahead—an act which takes all our strength.

Writing is not for the fainthearted. To raise yourself to the heights of consciousness that is required is something you knew of all to well. You worked, and in work dispelled the myth that writing is for the smooth, as life is for the rough. There can only be one outcome for you from this point Strindberg, and that is greatness as she shares her thoughts for the simple things that will come. I like what I see here, because in the morning, when the rain has stopped falling, and the trees have bent their last, I will be able to say I read you, Strindberg, with passion if not thought.

Your Inferno period is what really interests us here. In the depths of the unknowing, in the sleet which is the darkness, you still kept writing. Even though your direction was the direction of psychosis, you forged ahead, and were placated in your life after this show. Your life started again, as all our lives start again when the finishing point has been extended past what we can ever bear. You have walked through the hell which is madness, and shaken the cobwebs from your soul. These cobwebs held you back. But it was not merely a fabrication for literary success. Your words during this time were so full of the dripping of the mind, that truth could never escape. You were Strindberg, and this has drawn me to you.

Inferno—yes this is where your greatness lurked. There are many who apologise for your descent, because they cannot believe that such fine words could still be at your disposal. But why should not madness accompany the heights? There is a force in these things that history has long known. But you cannot argue against the tide. You must simply flow with it.

I can sense what others can’t. I sense the truth in your words during your Inferno. What I am most at ease with is my conclusion—you were ill, Strindberg. I’ll fathom that poison of the mind that affects the largest as they spill words from the hilltops of forever. Your illness was one of bites from the night as she brings us to our knees. Your illness was the night.

Come now, we must not be afraid. We must deliver what we most want. And in this I see you Strindberg, as a sparrow sees the trail before it in every flower that has ever bloomed. This is what I know because it is what I have seen in the vagaries of destiny. This thought raises us as we meet our most ardent passions, as they whistle into life that is not ours, but the sun’s. This is a path that has forgiveness at its base, and the trials of forever as its directionality. I can see you Strindberg, as the trees see you that bend into autumn groves, and give the respite we need.

I am like a fighter who has blood on his hands. I am like the solace that we all find in the end. And in this I am you, in the most ardent sense that has the trapeze as its arc, and the wind as its companion. Come now, we must not be idle. We must believe once again in fortitude and the space which is the moment between this and the next. I can be what you want Strindberg, because we are together, and not lost in the hills. This losing is a finding, and a vexation and a crossing, and an example to the rest of us, who long for something to follow, and something to hold back the tears. These tears are our tears as we find the strength to continue on, and believe once again in the good.

Why could you never find happiness, Strindberg? What was it about you that left the seas dry, and the horizon in need of liquid? It is because you gave in to the force that was your writing, and the travelling that was your delusion. Delusion comes in many forms, but your Inferno was what gave it the mist that can never be surmounted. Your Inferno was a chaste reflection on the dreams we all have to give in to what afflicts us. And this was your dream, Strindberg, as it was the night’s, and the day which always follows.

There are times and there are times. And what gives your time its strength is what gives all of us strength.  And that is the need to carry on, and the need to keep striking forth as the things which hold us back disappear, and then right themselves for another attack. This battle is what we all feel as she renders the toil we give in to, and then renounce. This toil is what some call God, others religion, others fate and still others destiny.

A chance we all have in your shadow, Strindberg, is to break the bonds which keep us chained as they unravel themselves towards the constancy of motion, and the delinquency of direction. This fate as we call it is our fate as we reach for something greater to hang our hats on, and give more time to release us. I can never really forgive what is at the heart. For what is there is a lost passion. An emotion we no longer feel, and a belief that holds us back. But we must continue, you and I Strindberg, for to continue is the most pleasurable thing as she who is lost guides us to further shores and further encounters.

This is the life of the neverending race. The race towards the finishing line as we listen to the glass which collects the rain, and spills it onto a turning earth. This yearning is our yearning as we dispel the myths which bind us, and give the sentience of the forest a new chance to present itself. I cannot let go here, for to let go is to see the feathers of the night release themselves in a grand falling. It is a falling which is our falling Strindberg, as we find something more to collect our wanderings in ancient Greek vases. These vases, which are exhibited in museums everywhere, are what we seek. We seek them, and then find ourselves, as we travel onwards to new motifs and new chances at repetition.

Come and hear us, Strindberg. You must hear, for the symphonies that play in your honour are the home you seek. They are the art we create in your honour. They are the stars as you are the night. They are the wanting we have to gather up the pennies that are strewn along the way. The symphonies I here speak of are the symphonies of coldness, but they have a brightness which includes as they exclude. They include the breeze, but they exclude the meandering of work down footfalls as they guide us into action. Every sandstone building has these footfalls as they are the thing upon which time plays her lute. But these footfalls are you also, Strindberg. In this I cannot tell why or how, but just have an inkling at their truth. Truth, the quest of every philosopher, and the plaything of forever as she guides the ships which still burn after heavy gunshot.

Your polemics are what make you race, Strindberg. Your polemics, and what they created was something that the depth of the sea could not see. The depth is a place that harbours the dread of a thousand nights’ labour, as she, the deep one, winnows down to the base, and flies again into the sky. This vast expanse must not be forgotten, because to forget is once again to lose sight of the never before seen ground that lies at the bottom of every sea. Here, where creatures of the deep wrestle themselves into the unknowing, is where we will find you, Strindberg, as you take another apple from the tree, and know it to be ripe.

There are chances that we must never encounter. Because they are in you Strindberg, as the pearl is contained in the oyster. This agreement between things to shelter what is most present is a testament to your power as a writer, Strindberg. Your power is the night’s. Your power is the dream, as it is the spectacle. Your powers are ours, if we only seek them.

I can never be what you are, Strindberg. For this would render me more dysfunctional than anyone could ever know. But what I find in you is a little piece of myself, as I climb into the stars and forage around like a starling looking for its next meal. We all survive in the end, but this surviving is not what we expected. This surviving is a test of our skills, and a new need to gather up what is most important, and have it ready for another show.

Yes I see you Strindberg, only because you walk that walk that is like the fire of embers that have never smoked. Their smoke is the life force, whenever it comes, and it is the treasure of the dreaming we all do to charge our glasses to what is next.

You have changed me, Strindberg. In ways I cannot fathom. You have changed what is deepest in me. Through your acclaim, and your reticence, through your stoicism, and your need to cradle the dawn. I cannot begin to understand this shift in me, because it is all that I am. I wonder, in these farthest reaches, where can I hide? Where can I come to my senses so that they make sense? This is what I fear, and what I know to be mine. At least I understand this, Strindberg, and all that we have thought possible. I will never gossip about you, because you are a wind chime that makes no sound, a listening when there is nothing to listen to, and a keepsake that keeps away the dark.

There are things we should never mention. These are the things that keep us afloat. Artaud staged your Dream Play, and in this was the meeting of two minds that should have stayed apart. They should have stayed apart because there is too much greatness in their combined travelling. No, I recant this notion. Together, they entered into history, and all she will bring. There are times when the whispered solace of both these writers casts its shadow on the sea—a sea which laps on untold byways and highways. This sapping of strength is one that gives a greater strength, and a greater need to do what is to the benefit of history. I have come for you both, in my own rambling ways. But this is the truth of it as it spills its venom over the casting of hooks. This casting keeps us consoled, but lessens as we grow older and more in tune with things. I am righted by this thought, about this casting and about this whole business.

Again I say, ‘I must not look’. For to look is to see into the shattering of things before they break. And this is my breaking as I wind up the furies to take me once again. They will deliver me into a world which is your world, Strindberg. It is a world I cannot comprehend, but will do justice to anyway. And this is where I will stop, and know my pleasure to be the world’s treasure as she casts her net toward the unknowing, and the more than known—the tempest.

There is a strangeness where I can still see. This strangeness is a blessing which has no disguise, and no need to recoup its losses from the night. Again this is not the right thing to say here, but I must say it. For in these words are the Blakean grains of sand that show the world what it is not. This sand, the very same which Blake mused upon, is the sand under my feet, as I attempt to gain a stronger foothold than what is possible. Writing is a life I can begin to live without. Because when writing finishes, there is a finishing of everything that ever was and could be. Writing is the time for us to share our responses to things as they take us to places that are for the foolhardy. This hardship is the night’s as it is yours, Strindberg. You have taught what I could never otherwise have known. And this is a good thing as it helps me sleep, helps me travel, and helps me to reconcile the past to the dirty present.

I am coming your way Strindberg—but only because you will let me. I don’t know where I will finish up, but I take it in my stride just as the dawn transfigures itself to something else solely for our benefit. I cannot forgive you this gift, because it comes as a leopard on the range, and a feeling that things will be at their worst before their best. But we must not complain. For to complain is to see the end of days before they have really begun. But that is okay, as we know, for dancing is not something we do lightly, and only with the right partner. This is what I come for in your acceptance. A need to dance and belittle what it is that holds us back.

I know that things will be alright for you, Strindberg. Because when I look I see the charging horses that are at your beck and call. They have always followed you into battle, and know the resonances of your untimely flight. We must not be afraid to live, even though our words hold us back. We must launch into things so that we can have the life which is not given to others. Yes, given, in the full sense of the word and the deed. This is how we sing in our respective ways. We sing, and are released, so that we may sing again with a different voice and a different complexion.

I love what it is I find here. For she is not for the unworthy, history. She is a stick of dynamite that knows you only too well. She comes in ways we can accept and then let go of. She comes in ways that never can be separated from the adventure. This adventure is our adventure, Strindberg, as she climbs the stairs of neverending difference. This is not the différance of Derrida, but the difference of selected fates as they dice and declare themselves from the heights.

I know that I have a will much like yours, Strindberg. It is cast upon the frozen wastes that are ready for consolidation at any time. I will rewrite your biography Strindberg, so that none may come to pass who do not deserve it. I hear a harp playing here. It is our harp as she directs us where to go with the music written by the spheres. This sphere, this heavenly realm, is where we find you now. You are at peace, because we are all at peace, and have nowhere left to go. This may sound strange, but all of this is strange if I were to be frank. And that is what I am, an embodiment of something which lacks comprehension, but just does, as we all do, to placate the night.

I am alive here, for the first time. And this is what you bring, Strindberg. An unheralded flight into oblivion, but one which knows the rewards that are given to this unruly adventurer of the mind. I can believe what I am finding here. It is relief, but much more than that. It is a chance to start again, but like you did on your many wanderings. A chance to saddle the stars and look deep into eternity.

There is a path amongst the rubble; there is a way out. This much you have taught us. It is the path through the unspoken, and a listening that we all do to the trees as they blanket snow upon us. This shock is at first deep, then unyielding, and then in remission, much like you became after your Inferno. But this I do understand, that when travelling is at an end, and the nuances of the spoken are righted before the semblance of things, this is where I will finally lie myself down, and do what is right and just.

This is where we start. The true adventure is something that will lift the both of us towards the night’s sky, and will then bury our longing as a mist in times of forgiveness. Come, our journey is the same, Strindberg, as we net the detritus rather than anything that lives. For in this is the sound of the gathering of roses for the harvest, and a never before seen work of art that hangs in a gallery that has never known human feet. This is where we are strong, Strindberg, before all that is like the summer as she gives us clarity and all we could ever hope for.

I will know what you have now come for. You have come for the whispers that need no introduction. You have come for all that is, so that we will release you and still have time for happy thoughts. This is what I wanted when I first met you, Strindberg. I will be honest, and know things to be true when in fact they are false. This feeling I have as we drift into the neverness of forever is what is most at stake when the giving of a hand in friendship is locked into the searching of the night. This is what we aim for as we wash our hands and believe once again that disease will never touch us.

The same sort of thing has always been our companion on this long journey to the stars. The journey is one of infinite regress, or eternal return, as she lends our voice the strength to carry on. I know this to be what we most have found as comfort, as the cormorant swings in low arcs over the gravestones that are our right. This time we have left is nothing we should be afraid of. Because when things are right, and all manner of things are at rest, this is where the storm will find us once again, and lend its force to a becoming that is pure joy.

The joy I speak of here is not the joy of breath that each of us possesses. It is the joy of the night as she whisks us away to that place beyond the heavens, and away from the things that will harm us.  I can never truly reflect on this, because in these words lies a terror that has not had the finding of seashells to guard against its intransigence. I came for you once before, Strindberg. It was while you were still alive, and I had not been born yet. It is a strange thing, this dissemblance of snow. It is a coldness that whets the appetite as she guides us away from ourselves and into the dreams that are for each of us.

The things I here speak of are not for the faint of heart. Because when the teleology of the night is truly with us, then we can rest and let the rain guide itself once again past our combined yearning. This yearning is not yet over. It is not over because it is here, and yet there, and yet nowhere. This is what I crave, to be in the movement of things that have no rest, and no place to go. I cannot envisage a greater chance at things. Because where movement stops, this is where life stops. And it is our life, Strindberg. You and I.

The Inferno is what drives us back against ourselves. This is true in two senses. In the first sense, the tomb is at call, and in the second the light which never allows us to sleep. I can only remember what you wrote there, but I cannot express it. For to express it is to let the wandering of the night sky belittle what is left of our claim. I know you have said this before yourself, Strindberg. Because when you were with me for that last time, I shed a tear that I will never forget. You lay dying, but you had signed the contract for your collected works. And in this, you said not to publish your occult diary. But we have it now, and it rings with a truth that is not of this choosing.

This is where we are at, then. It is a temporality which exists here that we cannot understand, nor even hint at. But that is okay, for when the dreaming of the neither this nor that is at an end, here we will sing. I know that places are made for action, but I do not wish this to become a habit. For when the timing of the butterfly’s flight is even out by a small margin, here we will look again for the deliverance of the solstice. This is where we will find what we want to give, and be aware that the night is not for toying with. I find you in these places because we are what is frank, and unyielding, and never before seen.

The chances that bind us are the same chances that give way to things that are never at their end. I have felt you in the breeze, Strindberg, only because you have let me. This seems strange as it all seems strange. But strangeness is where we find the beautiful, and this much Baudelaire knows. Baudelaire is your companion, Strindberg. Your arc is the same arc; your love is the same love. The love of adventure as she wraps us into the saying of this or that. This is the torch, and the baring, the light and the darkness. I know I have found you again, because I cannot stop. I have tried, but you are too powerful. You are too much of what we want, and what we thought we would never have.

I have a thought. And it is your thought, Strindberg, as you raise us to that lofty sphere which is the sphere of angels as they look down on us. Angels guide our quest and whisper to us, much like in Rembrandt’s Angel Whispers to Saint Matthew. This is where the truth will be told, and the semblance of things will take its rightful place amongst the weathering of ancient castles as they renounce all that is, and give back to the dark.

There can never be a time that will secure the clouds from their endless motion. The clouds are your domain —prince of clouds, partner to the sky. There can only be what is left for us as we once again climb that staircase that leads to everywhere at once. I have travelled these stairs once before, but only ever made it halfway. I turned back at this point, because I was scared. But this time I know what I am in for, and have no fear. I will travel all the way with you Strindberg, as Virgil accompanied Dante. We will first meet hell, then purgatory, and then heaven. But this is where I must leave you, Strindberg. Because I cannot enter heaven. She is barred for me while I live. I must first travel, and then stay in, a certain hell which gives release as it gives, in its final way, happiness. I must wait until I am like you, Strindberg. And then I will have my heaven, and I will know it to be a good place.

I am with you like never before, Strindberg. My musings are a gateway as they are a keep that harbours the soldiers of a thousand nights. I cannot let you go, for to do so would be to sow the seeds of a reckoning that I cannot fully comprehend. I sit here and write, because writing is all that I can do. I sit here and write because travelling is for adventurers past my substance. There is a link that keeps you chained, Strindberg. It is our link as we let go of the night and let her wish for something greater.

There are plusses and minuses to this game. It is a game of chess, where the players sit on an island in the Seine. They wear top hats and tails, and know that when the end of their game comes, there will be a chance to once again right the waves of every man’s labour. This labour is our labour, Strindberg, as we find what else it is that keeps us breathing. This breath and its full ramifications are what the archaeologists of a generation have known to be a fact. And this fact is how the considerable forces at our disposal will find what they are seeking. And that is power in nothingness, and love amongst the rubble.

A water falls as I write. It is the water of unknown places as it spills into the levee built for the centuries. I know this because I have seen which way the wind is blowing. It is blowing towards you, Strindberg. I uncover these words—I find them rather than create them. And they are my most honest dealings with a world that takes as much as it gives. In a sense, Strindberg, you are this world as she opens our eyes to faceless doors, and seemingly impossible hope. This is why I write, Strindberg.  To get closer to you, and yet further away.

The test of strength that is the listening of the stars is my first and only shot. I must take advantage of the never before seen sea air as she rights the ships that bear no name. I bear you on my back, Strindberg, because you are the night as I am the harvest. I can always find time to explore your resonances, Strindberg, because this is what I do. It is not a thankless task, but a task that carries with it all the newfound longing that was once buried in darkest night. This night is your night, Strindberg. This is what I can attest to, and know to be a truth.

The sense we all have when we first open our eyes in the morning is a respite form the clattering of hooves which no doubt would have kept you awake, Strindberg. Here there is motion with sound. But there is a place that has no sound and no motion. And that is the end of things as she brings us from our sleep, and tells us that things will be alright. There is a journeying in things that cannot provide solace, and she cannot provide the accomplice we need to finish the job. This job, or work, or eternal task is where the sands that hold us are buried their deepest. This is where I will find you, Strindberg. This is where I will find you.

Strindberg. I look at portraits of you as a young man, and what I find there is beauty, and the strength of vision that has guided so many to uncharted reefs. This is where I would most like to find you. Sitting on a deserted island, knowing that chance and belief are what we can never know. The songs that are sung here are not our songs, Strindberg, but if we listen deeply enough, we will find other songs. But it is your physical beauty which unhinges me. Your marriages are what bring the conclusion that you were committed beyond mere physical beauty to extending beauty to its most promising advent. Beauty through words was your main goal, and this you travelled with utmost assurance.

What is most important now is to take back what life has ripped from our grasp. As I have said, your schizophrenia was something that did not rear its head until late in life. But this does not make it any less real, or any less powerful. I am sure you suffered from this before your Inferno, but your literary substance would not let it shine before your forties. And when the daylight comes to let you into your final night, here your schizophrenia was the thing that was always present. I know that when we sleep that final sleep, all things will come to an end. There is nothing more to say here.

The frankness with which you pursued life was something that all the great must enter into. The pyramid of truth that has at its base virtue and passion is what you sought, but could never know to be true. I know this because in wandering with you there is a sense that cannot be unbroken. There are new belittlings to find, so that you can raise yourself aloft, and fight the fight you have always fought.

The end of things. I did shed a tear reading your biography, when the end came. It was such a beautiful end. The people mourned and gathered by your apartment, and they knew they were losing something of great note. Maybe one day I will visit your gravesite, and will come to find peace just as you have, Strindberg. No more meanderings, no more lightning strikes. No more electrical machines bent on your demise. This is the reward of a life well lived, and a power that can only be untamed when we find its source.

The dark is where I find you now, Strindberg. The dark and all that can be truly said. This is the light, in actual fact. They are the same, and yet not the same. They are the different, but somehow always related. This is a relation of birth that bears no earthly name. It is what is beyond, and over what we thought to be a pleasure.

The pleasure I speak of here is a lack. It is a void where no human resource can mine. But this is okay. Because where life breathes, there songs are sung to lift the unwary to places that are neither for here or for there. Neither up nor down, but around and about in flagging beauty, and the austerity of forgiveness. There comes a time when the daggers of fate must be put aside, and set packing like a well that bears no water. I will drink from this well, but it will not be an earthly water, but manna from the heavens. This is my reward as I sing a serenade to you, Strindberg. This is my reward.

When the sands of forever are left to their own devices, I will find your companionship, Strindberg. I know it to be a truth, that has the semblance of worn-down stairs that have the centuries behind them. This is my coming, and my going. I know that when the tempest will breathe its last, there I am to cling on to the desperation we both feel when the nattering of fireflies is at an end. There can only be one result from here, and that is the pleasure we feel that comes once again in unlikely places. This is my reckoning as she bends me once again to the night.

There are insights that we all have, and that you and I, Strindberg, are more wont to have than others. This insight is what we need to gather up the roses that have been cast by the crowds along our favourite walks. We are walking to think, to tend to the dreams of a thousand generations, and a new sense that beliefs will never die.

I can see things a little more clearly because of you, Strindberg. Because of you, I have the night as my companion, and the stars as my guide. This is not a truth I speak of lightly. It is because I wander with such conviction that I am at the crossroads of a country I can only steel myself to travel through. This is our country, Strindberg, as we dive and rise and do a little dance. This dance is history as she falls from the sky and knows the ground to be a friend. I can only hope that things are at their best when this falling has finished. It is because I dream that you are with me, Strindberg. It is because I dream.

There is never enough time. This is true in two senses. In the first, I gather up all that is and sprinkle it from the rooftops. In the second, I give in to what afflicts me, because it afflicts you. There are things we should never speak of, but you have spoken them, Strindberg.  In your various scandals there was a ringing in the ears that had fate as its guide. The Powers were something in you that we cannot understand. The Powers drove you, as they drive us all. This is a fact that knows only one recompense. And that is the drifting on summer rain as she nestles into that safety which we know to be home.

I will not let you go, Strindberg. For in your face is a timeless treasure that feels itself being let go of before it has a chance to enter the museum. This scaffolding is what the dance of neverness is likely to retain. I retain it in my fibres. In the depths of me. This depth has no height, and no tail spinning to watch.  I can feel you are like the wind here. You are like the sandstone on ancient buildings as she wrestles with the stars of night, and as she belittles us to hear our wandering again. I know that there can never be enough to keep us interested here. I know this to be the rainbow as it bends a little further to that place that is forgiveness.

There is a feeling that the trees have also had in your honour, Strindberg. And this is when they bend in the tempest that can always survive. And this knowing is like a feather that having been released from the bird, travels to a new destiny that brings on a startled response from the grass, which finally gathers it up to be sent once again into things which are the feather’s right.

The things which keep me huddled next to the open fire are your things, Strindberg. They are yours as they are mine. I cannot think of anything else that matters because when you fly we all fly, and when you sink we all sink. Come now, we must not be afraid of what will come. For in the dreams that are our acceptances there are new things to explore, and new lines in sand to draw.

When the fire that burns is no longer, here I will come to heal your hands, Strindberg—hands that felt the heat of the furnace for science’s sake. Your scientific writings were things that perplexed your contemporaries. How could someone so accomplished in the moods and swings of humanity actually turn away from these things, and send his talent into a field that knows no prisoners? This question always haunts your scholars, Strindberg, because when there are times for trying, we must not let go. We must hold ourselves as if the holding of the dam were enough to save us.

There will always be a right that has at its base the wrong. But this avalanche of meaning is something that we can only tip our hat to, as it comes crashing down the mountain.  I can only know you through your words, and the words of others. But this is okay, for when the singing that the birds do in your honour is far away, here I will come to dress your wounds, and know them to be the wounds of a great man.

I can hear a whistling. It is the breeze, and it comes from you, Strindberg. I know that when this sound is finished, we are all finished in one way or another. I love this, as I love the ground which supports you to find new heights from which to call your name. This is what I hope for, for some respite from the meandering of things. But you are the light, Strindberg, as you are the darkness. You are the things which bind, as you are the things that let go.

When the seeming incongruity between your beauty and your words is at an end, here I will gather the dawn and its rays and sprinkle them on your gravestone, Strindberg.  This I will do so that future generations will know of your fluidity, and your guise. This is what I will do for you, because there is nothing else I can do. It will be a ritual I will continue to the end of my days, so that the sun will have my forgiveness, and the birds will have my delight.

I love this adventure as my own. But when there are no things left to do, I will rest, and have my thoughts turn to you. Come now, this is not so hard.  This is not hard because it is the hardest thing to do for a companion who has travelled with you for so long. Personalities collide, and their melding is something we cannot easily forget. But come now, we must not get lost in the trace. The trace is the thing that lets the arrows of tomorrow breathe their final breath and come once again to that land of harrowing delight.

There are dreams which cannot be dreamt. For to dream them casts our shadow too long. This is our combined shadow, Strindberg. It is the combination of what is here with what is there, of what is up with what is down. This music is something which can hold the fabric of all that is as it stretches to cover more ground than can ever be imagined. This is the story that will arc through the ages, and be a little bit of solace for the willing. 

When the sands of this hourglass are at rest, here I will find you, Strindberg, as I never have before. This is the test for both of us as we unravel our cords and then send them into that further world. Here, where sand is no longer the issue, I will seek, and indeed find, your lonesome meandering. This is the test that we all face at some time in our lives—to be free, and not to care about consequences.

When lingering doubt has caused us to flee this place, I will be in the moment once again. I live here, for this is where I can think once again with a clarity that is not for the fainthearted. I can also see you, only because I look into those darker regions that are for the daring only. This daring is our daring as we saddle the stars for one last look at tomorrow.

This is the easy path. The harder path is not for us, Strindberg. For to find this clearing in the forest that knows only lies is to die a thousand deaths as they stroll down the street beside us. I cannot be more sure unless I write of your inadequacies, Strindberg. These treasures are what gave wind to your sails, and night to your splintered masts. I feel there is something more to say here. But I cannot reach into these depths because they are a sense we have that the day will reign, and the rain will not come.

The ease with which I write these words is what you can never catch, Strindberg. I write to you as if you were here, but of course you are not. But that is okay, for the sound of your longing is what the champion fighters of old have saved as their accomplishments. I can always believe, just as you believed, Strindberg. The gathering of light to fool the footsteps of our ancestors and neighbours is something we must never let go of. This intransigence plays at fate like a lifebuoy in the night. It bobbles and bounces in a harsh sea, but knows the end to be near.

Why can we never be sure of what truly is? Because in this malaise there is a finding that has heart as it has steel. This wandering we do to keep the night at bay is what we find when sentience has had its final say, and the dark comes to heal. This is what I long to be a part of. I love to be a part of your adventure, Strindberg. This is what my countenance is established for. I can only be one to let slip the feathers of recompense. This is what the fast and strong have as their blanket. A further guess here will bring me closer to you, Strindberg. The flow is what is most at stake in these ramblings. But I ramble for you Strindberg, so that you will save me and I will have you as my friend and confidant.

Words save me too. This is because when we fly we fly to that further shore, that is a blessing to the distinguished and a curse for the incompetent. I come to shock, but I also come to heal. This is my dual duty as I find the carriers of a worn-out silk that brings with it the night as she hurriedly prepares our next meeting. I can hear you ask a question here, Strindberg. It is not something I can take for granted. For to do so would open me up to criticism, and this is what I most enjoy.

You also enjoyed criticism, Strindberg. It was your lance, upon which you slew the dragon. This fight is our fight as we once again travel to that clime that is for the rich. Rich of heart, rich of spirit, poor in gold and all its trappings. A further thing I must say here is that the road to salvation is not an easy one, but one we must travel in our own chosen ways. I cannot believe you are still with me, Strindberg. Because your light is our light as we stumble on a disused monastery that has been turned into the thread of forever. I seek you here because I can. I seek you here.

There is a cut in the ice which holds our lives together, Strindberg. It is something I have always known about, even when the night was at its height. The feeling I get from this cut is what draws me closer to you. My words string a bow on an ancient gift that believes itself stronger than any type of forgiveness. I bleed because of this gulf, but it is not a blood that has known any human touch. It is a blood which gives the nib of my pen more heart than I could possibly know. And this I am thankful for.

I reach to further places, and am forgiven for my trespasses. This seems right, and it seems wrong. The staunch acceptance I have of things is your acceptance, Strindberg, as I write to enter history and be the one who never gives in. I can’t give in, because every time I list, I see the horizon beckon me to where I will not go. And this is a place that has foraging as its link to the grave, and compassion as its link to the stars. Come and be something we will never forget, Strindberg. Come and be part of the process of this to that, of here to now, of the wrong way with the only way.

The dreaming we do to stabilise ourselves in the tempest is a vibrancy that we can know as we can lose. The tempest is in our recovery. If we keep writing, you and I, we will believe once again that the trains which are our engines will bring us to the station amongst the waiting throng, just as when you arrived at the station to face your charges of obscenity in the eye of the law. It is an eye which looks onto things everywhere, an obstacle that feels its way to the strangest places and then back again before we know it.

I sit surrounded by books, and yet in their pages is the wanting that seagulls have always felt. These words are where the night will gather us, and keep us seething for that new respite that can never be truly what we want. But these words I have followed, and they have brought me to you, like a sound that we thought we heard on our last walk in this life. There can never really be what we want here, only because the longing which drags us kicking and screaming is what the warriors of every age have sought for. And this is to protect against the swinging blade as she enters the night and knows it to be a friend.

I must not stop. For to stop would leave me at the mercy of something greater. Something we both will not understand as we are left to think upon what may have been. This movement is our movement, Strindberg. It is a movement from the very bottom, to the very top. From the complete left to the complete right. I feel you as a transport that has no propulsion, and no means to get to its next destination.

I will have what it is that keeps us going, Strindberg. For when this is lost, there will never be anything greater. Come now, we must shirk our combined responsibilities. I know that this is your forte, but I cannot understand when you do not come to me in the depth of things. This is our task, to be where we should not, and have something of a pleasurable ride to gain our momentum.

This is where I find you, Strindberg. In the night that knows no bounds, in the day that has no end, and in the spring that has as its wish the greater finding that is at once the feeling as it is the respite. There can only be one more thing I need from you, Strindberg. And that is your totality as she whispers our deepest regret, and is our most ardent folly. I can never truly be in the right place at the right time. For to do this would be to place my life on a tenuous footing. There is reason behind this madness. And it is your reason as you swing yourself once again into everything that knows itself to be true.

I cannot see so clearly here. For where I am, no one can follow. And if they do they will be scorched by your fire, Strindberg. I have a sense that when the embers of this fire are at their weakest, there will be a rejoicing, and a new need to gather up the pebbles that stand at our base. This is a ritual that we could never have once believed in. But we do so now because what is at stake is nothing other than all. I feel you when you are near, Strindberg. That is because the daylight is not a thief, and the stars are only here to guide us. We must run from this. For to run is to give into the night as she finds her way back from oblivion to start once again.

This is where the sand that binds us is at its lowest. Up until now it has been up to our necks, and we have had difficulty breathing. But I should not speak of such things, for to do so would be to end the journey before it has even begun. I know what you are thinking here, Strindberg. There is no plan, no map to guide us as we slide up to the fence that buries our need to go further. There is a trick to all this, and it is our trick to do with what we like. There can only be one winner in all of this, and that will be ourselves as we float in the air as a union and not as separate things.

The distance I feel here is not your distance, Strindberg. It is as if the night would not let go of us before we have really felt its power.  But I have no need of these things. I just want to live and be free to pursue my own horrible well-wishes. These wishings I think are my greatest accomplishment. But they are not for the ease of things, but for the hardness of things as they bend the stones of our combined breathing once again towards forever.

There is repetition here, but it is the leitmotif which guides this dance. I know I have been here before, but I cannot let go of things so easily now. The thought of such a feat is beyond even my powers of reasoning as they fight for the lack where there once was only the movement of clouds. This solemn acceptance is the what for and the near at hand. There can only be the night as she sends shards of what tomorrow will be once again through the envying eyes of a nation that cannot forget its past.

When the silence has had its way, and the nearing of the rain has spelt an end to our gathering, here I will lift you as none have done before. This twilight ritual is one that can never let its face be seen by what the daylight would not hold. And this is everything as she wanders in the best places for the seal to be broken. I can only dream of what is to come here. For to say anything else would be to right the wrongs of a thousand nights’ labour, and be ready to cure the sky from its turning.

What is more is that I have no light left to sprinkle on you gravestone, Strindberg. I know this will not shake you, but it shakes me, as there is something left I wish to do. And that is raise you to further heights, and new reasons to come again. Your Inferno, your testament to madness, is where I will find the strength to carry on. Your schizophrenia, as I will call it, is like the wind that holds no sound, and the dreaming of fireflies that will not lift us further than we need to go. There is luck in these things, as there is luck in all things. We only must look, and we will find it.

There is something I have not alluded to yet. And that is when the foraging we do to stay alive is at an end, here I will bark our name and know it to be a thing of great beauty. This I have also had the means to achieve, but never really felt it to be what we wanted. There can only be one outcome from all of this. And that is the shards of naming that have needed only the slightest encouragement are back with us once again. I will sit and review these thoughts as I rest. This rest is what we should all have when the tempest is at its low point. There is no storm that is powerful enough to knock you off your chosen course. But that is okay, as the things that have swept us here are the things that will save us.

When I am through writing this I will have a glass of wine and know it to be what I most deserve. This is because each foray into the mind of genius leaves its mark, as the madness which accompanies it stays with you for a time at least. This I have always felt to be sure, but I still run for these forays because they are what I am. I cannot shake this feeling, because when I do there is nothing left. Not even the fibres of a story that has always been told. This telling is our telling, Strindberg, as I know it to be mine.

There are places that are not for the lighthearted. But I will sing from these places as night buries itself in the depths of our being. Heidegger would have said there is a clearing we can expect in the middle of this place of Being. We must only be authentic, and we will find ourselves anew in the sleep that is no sleep but which is life.

I can only swallow what is enough. But to do so is to forget you, Strindberg. This is true in the sense that the air we gulp down is never enough to truly sustain us. I have felt this rhythm in all that is. It brings me back to where the shores are still twinkling with gold, and the unsavoury victories of life are not enough. There can be compassion here, but only because I hear it in your voice. I know, that when the time comes, there will be a rejoicing that has only ever had one purpose. And that is to cover us in silk and know it to be the last straw.

These are strange byways. But we must travel them, you and I, Strindberg. For to travel them is to allow us to once again forget the night and all the constraints she puts us under. This is a journey which has light as its companion, and the speed of horses as its engine. This can never be really what we want. But we must travel this way to get to our destination in the quickest possible way. I know it is possible, for my tears are not dry as they read your words. My tears are not dry.

What is more, is that the wind has ceased blowing in your honour, Strindberg. This is okay, but now I must find new ways to trumpet your name across the rooftops. This is no easy task, for when you are near me I feel the pull of your being. It rides in scattered cobwebs over the treasures that are still to be found. This movement, the one I have spoken of earlier is our movement as we once again find distance where there should be proximity. Heidegger spoke of the proximal, and did so to say that distance is a fabrication. But I know this is false, from all the yearning I have done to placate you, Strindberg.

But there will come a wasteland that has significant points of departure. It will see us lose our friends and family, and be a closing as it is an opening. There can be no doubt that what I have found in your being, Strindberg, will be enough to send Redon’s chariots back to their barracks, and believe once again that stillness is a right.

In the meantime I must not be concerned with the world and all that she can give. The only thing that matters is the word as it resonates in all the recesses of the past and its forgetting. This should be an easy task to accomplish. For when we are back at headquarters (or heaven as some have called it), we will know we have done a great thing that needs no more shine.

The really important thing here is to dismiss the chiming the swallow does, and give it newfound reign amongst the crowns of ancient monarchs. This task is one angels have always thought possible. But I would rather be human, and feel the scalding water of a world that is made for disquiet. For in this is the seed of our larger chasing as it nestles in for a quietness that can have only pain. I know this will be the thing that drives us on. But I will not stop. Not for any making of any sense, not for any arrow that is shot in my direction. Not for any sling that throws the barbs of temperance. That shall be my task, and I will keep to it.

Exposure to the sun can kill. But exposure to the word can also have its ramifications. This is more than we can ever really fathom. But we must not lose hope, for to do so will mean the end of things in this era. We must look to our closest confidants, and not be afraid to set them free. In this way we climb new mountains, and can be at our leisure to once again find love.

Your life startled me, Strindberg. I do not know why, but I have the feeling that it was your considered boldness in the face of criticism. These barbs came at you in waves. And you fought them off like a war stallion that has no need to live. Your polemics stung as they lifted, and were given at a time that only the frankness of forever could ever truly straddle.

So this is where I will find you, Strindberg. Neither in the trees nor on the ground. But right in the middle where there is no space and no time, no forethought nor togetherness. This sounds problematic. But it is not. This place is the afterglow of the night as she lingers by our gravestones, and can always be found by just giving a call. This call is the call of enemies that have become friends. This call is your call, Strindberg, as you divide and are never conquered. I have felt a new song in the rumbling of the hills. It is the song of past pleasures as they were taken from us to give us this life. But this life is not for taking. It is for keeping, and keeping still.

Your Dream Play has always fascinated me, Strindberg. It transcends the marrow of life like a new fledgling that has no mother. This situation is alleviated when she is found by a passerby and taken into care. I can sense you have a question here, Strindberg. But it is not what I want. I want your soul to come down from high above and guide me towards the direction I must take. I want your Powers to be my Powers. I want your life to be my life. But I am not bold enough, not intrigued enough by fame. The fame the Powers gave you was and is their fame. As your plays were beginning to spread throughout Europe, you found what true fame was. And it was exile in all its forms.

Your writing can never be still. This is because we are left with so much from you that we don’t know how to act. But do not be afraid, there is mania where there should only be light. But it is a pleasant mania that does not come down. It lifts and lifts, as all who have suffered from the high would want. I cannot believe I am writing this, but I must. Because to be free of you is something I don’t want. I want to have all your eloquence, and your style. Your fortitude and your guile.

When the seeming impossibility of this quest has come to a conclusion, there will be something more. And that is a chance to saddle the stars once again, and believe that they will hold our combined weight. They must, for there is no other way. This is a commotion that all scholars have wrestled with. But we must not give in at this point. Because when we are truly free, we can be ourselves once again.

What is life for but for living? In the dark recesses of your soul, Strindberg, there are things which should not be said. These things militate under your skin like wounds in times of battle. I must not think here, for to think is to let go of the past as she travels to that further vortex which is neither here nor there. Come and be what we want you to be, Strindberg. For in this there is redemption, and a shot at something greater. I know that when I have had enough of this life, I will go one further mile. And then another, and another, until finally I will sleep.

This sleep is what I know to be true. Where there are resonances, and things become unhinged, I will be like the night in my travels. I can only look up to you Strindberg, because your life is the spinning as I am the wheel. This can only be glimpsed in the reflection of a mirror that has ivory at its base. It begins to creep over the vision, and holds it back like nothing has done before. Be careful here, Strindberg. Your reflection is too important to lose through such creeping. Every time the word stings me, I will sting back. This I know to be a seeming lullaby beside a slow-moving stream. I know it, so it is.

There are always things to do for you, Strindberg. My writing is a conduit to something that I don’t quite understand. But what I do know is that with the lives we have led respectively there is something greater that can be seen. It is the dawn as I spy her. It is the night as she descends. It is the well-wishes of spiders that have no rest. It is all of this, and more. It is something that comes in scything force. We know it because we live it. We live it because we breathe it. And we breathe it because it reaches into the depths.

I have seen what it takes to enter history. It is not a thing we should take lightly. History is an unkind mistress who only ever barks when there should be silence. But I can never be sure what we must do in this regard. There is life, there is death, and there is the in between which rains as it sprinkles happiness. There should only be one entry point, but there are many—as you have shown, Strindberg. What can we do but hope and pray and give in to those darker voices which are a wellness as they are a deception? I can only be what you want, Strindberg. For here I will find peace, and a little bit of the water of life.

There are people who wander through existence without a care, and then there is you, Strindberg. Your fight was the fight of closure as you ran through the sandstone corridors of belief. You had such strength to keep going. You had vestiges of hope that have rarely been seen. But I will never let go of these things. For to let go is to fall on swords that can wound with mortal force. The trappings of this truth are like the distance between this raindrop and the next. It is distance we cannot traverse as the rain comes down on our thinking might. This is how it has always been.

The temptation here is to stay away from the fire which burns. But we must embrace this fire with all of the heat of our bodies. Only then will we truly be said to be arrogant. This arrogance is the accompaniment of genius as the flight of gulls is the accompaniment to fate. I can only hear what you want me to hear here, Strindberg. Because when we are through with this, I will come again as I have never known. This is what is at stake for us. A never ceasing, a never giving in, and a never found home.

What is more important than the sleep we find at the end of the day? I am unsure, but what I do know is that you are here with me Strindberg, and have lent a harmony to my existence that is hard to trap with any stone. I can believe once again that sisters in winter’s night will find the happiness we all seek, and they will trap it like a hunt in the forest. For now I must be content to simply swing from branches as I await that final happiness as well. Come and be the wind as we are the sails, Strindberg. Come and be what is best before the closure of things takes its final bow.

I am listening intently to things. It is here I find my solace and my rage. This rage is not one of anger but of the sea as she shifts the curtains for us to gain a better view. I am like nothing else I can remember, only because I am something more. It is you who has brought me to this place, Strindberg, as you dance the dance of life-giving waters.

There is a hesitancy in the moon as she smiles on the heartstrings. This hesitancy is the hesitancy of movement as it rains in symphonies amongst the soldiers of time. I cannot believe this to be true, as I believe other things to be true. What I seek is something special before the light has melded itself to forever, and then smiled once again for the darkness to reappear. I will find the sap of ancient trees here, and know it to be a life-giving force. Something we can hang our hats on as we pass to that other side of oblivion. There can be a whiteness on the ground here. And we will know it to be goodness of the clouds as their ice became too hard to carry.

What we can always wait for is the meandering of leaves as they fall. This is the great happenstance that reaches for the gloom as it reaches for the stars. I have no thought left here. I only have feeling, as Nijinsky did. This feeling is free from pleasure, but has direction as its guide. I will follow this power as your Powers controlled you. There are substances that cannot be sown into the earth. Because to plant them would be to uncover the secrets of life. This we must not find, because this is what we have always found. Deep within us, at the least effective time. But once these treasures have been sold, here I will find once again what keeps me breathing.

There is a water we all seek. It comes when we least expect it, or most expect it, depending on your view. And here, where you are, Strindberg, I can sense its approach. I know this sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. Well, maybe it is. I will let you decide, Strindberg.

When we are all said and done there will come a further lingering. It is like dust on mantelpieces that tell of the centuries. It is like a smattering of something special which does not know how to deal with what comes next. But this is my forte, to deal with what comes next. This is what I will offer you when you are close. I can be prepared, as you are Strindberg, because the night is close and not for wandering through. I am like the fire that heralds the new assault. But I am also more. I am you Strindberg, as you bounce your way through eternity and into the sky which is our birthright.

I will never allow myself the opportunity of really being beside you, Strindberg. Because I must keep writing. I can never stop, because I can always stop. I can only let the breeze send me to where I will follow. And when I am truly down with these side-glanced hopes, I will remember you Strindberg, as you remember me. And that is time that travels both ways. From the past to the present. From the future to the past. And all the way back again.

There is a joy I have not spoken of yet. It is the joy that accompanies all the words that have ever been written. In actual fact it is like they have been written on glass. One wash and they are forever gone. But there is a guardian who conceals this fact, and it is you Strindberg, as you divert our eyes to some other place, and some other way to be. This is the chance we must all take in order to really achieve. Before we can know what to do, we must be sensible, and come once again from a different angle. Here I will find you, hiding and redirecting. And I will know it to be my time to shine, as you had yours, Strindberg. My time will be different, but less in the way of suffering. I have now the capacity to conquer suffering through experiencing so much. But I will not let you bend me Strindberg, as much as I would like to bend. I would rather sing, than hear the night in her full voice.

And when we seek further adventures, I will be with you, Strindberg, to hold your hand, like a feather might who knows which direction to go. There is sense in these ramblings, as there is sense in all things. But I must not let go too early, for to do so would be to let the champions of forgiveness do their evil. I am not sure why I call this evil, because in the hand that shows compassion is a greater treasure than we could ever know. I am like myself in this, I am like the horizon that can no longer move. I am like so much, but only so little. Come now, we must rest—but we must keep going until there is no more.

I look after the mirror that reflects the world. In it I see you Strindberg, because you are the traveller that sees only himself in the world. There is nothing wrong in this, as we can be sure of. It is the little grain of salt that has found itself on the floor. It can never be swept, not invigorated to new tastes. And this sort of downfall is our downfall, Strindberg. True enough, but not yet ripe for the harvest. This can be a trying time, as the end of every relationship is trying in its own way.

I have decided to find myself in you, Strindberg. Here I will be like a viper that senses the strike is not too far away. I will come directly, and bring my most prized looking glass. This is all I can do. Once the journey is begun it can never be reneged upon. But this is simply fate and her guile. I know that I am no snake, I am rather the rooftops that guard against the elements. But seeking of myself in you is something I should have done a long time ago. I see you here as I watch the night fall. I see you here, but will not let go.

I can see clearly now, Strindberg. It is because you are with me and the night is at peace. But how long will this last? I have been here before, when I was young. But I am fearful of what approaches. It comes in carriages pulled by black steeds who race and jolt like a phantom that still wants life. Come, I should not be so dramatic, but it is something I can’t dismiss. These chains are like iron, and the feathers which have cradled my respite are forever being tightened.

When the daylight sends me spinning, I will find you. I will find you in the gold that is buried deep. I will find you in the rock that comes to the surface. But when the travelling we do stills, and the fastness of the wind is at ease, I will truly find what it is that keeps our hearts beating. I have known, in this direction and in that, a new form of accomplishment. It is the prize that none have won, and yet it is the jewel which we all win in the end. Come now, this seems like a contradiction but is not. It is something which fires us until the wisps of smoke are gone to furthest realms. In these places a name is spoken. It is the name of eternity as she wings herself for what the difference between this moment and the next expects.

And when our dance is done, Strindberg, I will carry you to where you want to go. That is because I have found the thing which heals, and the thing which washes all wounds. I do not know how I have found this, but it is here. It is partly because of you, and partly to do with the stars. When your Inferno ravaged you, there was something that was missed. And that thing is here now. I know you have passed to the beyond, but that should not stop you sharing this victory with me. It comes in short bursts, and hurries as it slows. But I must be content to simply watch it as it descends upon me like a ball that knows no resistance. Can we ever be what we want to be? I think we can, and before all this is through I will be how I want to be. Not just in mind, but in body and spirit.

There is a feeling that each new soldier feels. It is the feeling that death is close. But for us, this need be no concern. You see, we will live forever in the words that rain down on history like a clock that has stopped ticking. This is the truth as I see it, but may not be the salve. We can sense the improvement, just as you carried on, Strindberg, to write your great books, and have your plays performed around the world. I can think of no more apt reward for your suffering. For you did suffer, Strindberg, at the height of your intransigence. This is not something we should forget before it is too late. I know you are still with me, even here in health. There should be nothing to stop us now, and nowhere else to go.

I look out my window and I see a massive oak. It has known time like water, and has seen thousands of sunrises. But what is more important is that it guides us Strindberg, to that place that is lost in the mist. It is an albescent wonder that has reckoned only what we thought had passed. I have the feeling, like we all do, that time is still on my side. But this breakneck speed begins to wound as it begins to heal. I am so in tune with the sounds of night that I can only be what we all want to be. And that is comfortable in our own skin.

Strindberg, why can you not hear me? I sense further reasons for your reticence. But they are not what the lengths and arrows have submitted to the breathing waste. They are something else which puts ice in the glass, and then removes it again for our pleasure. I can now hear you as you straddle your great engine. It is a vehicle that resists the trappings of the ether, and lets the sand of tomorrow winnow down steep slopes. There is, as I said, ease in the trees that have only one function. And that is to provide beauty where beauty never was. This puts a strain on my beating heart, but it will not stop me. I will not be stopped because I cannot stop. I have had others try to stop me in the past, but to them there was no accomplished rite. This is because the things that burn in me burn in you too, Strindberg. They burn as they release.

There is wanting I cannot let go of. For to do so would be to forget you Strindberg, as you announce yourself once again to the world. In the movement that is life, there can be a pronounced brevity. This you have discovered, Strindberg, as you move from the here to now, from the backwards to the forwards. This is no simple task, for to achieve it, you must renounce so much. You must renounce satisfaction, you must renounce the jewels which are our deliverance. But this must not be dismissed as mere triviality. We must embrace this as a solid plateau that underpins our journey.

Life is made for acceptance; this much you know, Strindberg. But what it is also made for is the night as she walks in silk and has no response to vicissitude. I am aware of this, as I am aware of you as you sneak back under the turning of the sky. Compassion can aid us here, but what is the cost? The cost is of course everything that we have ever known, and could ever be loathe to truly accept. I can go on, but I grow tired of the chase. But there is nothing left to do before we can once again be in the shade. The shadows here are our shadows, Strindberg. We cast them as we stride forth and know the sentence to be light.

Your correspondence with Nietzsche came at an important time for you both. Nietzsche was just beginning to unravel, and you picked his madness as you picked your own. But in the meetings of words between you there was a poetic reverence that has always been the wellspring of madness. I know of your loss here, Strindberg. You lost one who was great, and knew how to be in the centre of things, as he was to the far right. Things never really are let go of here, just postponed until the dreaming of the neverending night has had its final say.

There can never really be anything lost here, Strindberg. Your words are secure, and your dreaming is in its rightful place. But what we still need from you is the action that has no words. Your biographies tell of this, but their words are secondhand. We need you to be born in this era, in the form of some enigmatic bereavement that can only transpire. This is an act that has not been seen since your final wish. This wish is a lodestone that guides us in the right direction, and then back again like the simplicity of forever. Come, I am not for wasting words, only for savouring them when they come to pass.

When the dawn comes for you, I will know that you are truly in the depths of things. This, Strindberg, is what I have gleaned from the heavens as they shower us both in dreams of gold. I can only be sure of one thing, and that is the comfort we both feel when things have righted themselves, and the blistering of the sun is at its peak. Certain sounds echo in the passageways of universities that are built from sand. These echoes are what we both need to complete our combined tasks, and take words to where they will not go. The tempest is here, like in all things. But I am not concerned because I am with you Strindberg, and your travels.

The harp that sings the fate of destiny is what you have clutched in your bleeding hands. These hands have guided your writing until there is nothing left to guide. I bestow my success upon yours, Strindberg. And here there is a doubling that does not know any respite.

And when there is silence I will come for you, Strindberg. It is in my nature to do such things. There are times and places for the right of compassion to stretch her claws from the wind to the dying light, and here I am more with you than ever before. This synopsis of eternity is like a breaking of a wave that has only sentience to feel its way, and gold to bury the last hopes of a nation. I am longing to see how this will finish. It is because the trembling of winter nights can only be a salvageable wreck that has insistence as its flotation.

The trembling I speak of here is your trembling as she nestles the ground for recompense and sings up to the stars. Can we ever truly be free here? I think not. It is because I am lacking in certain things that I still come back for you, Strindberg. This life we lead is not for the faint, nor for the quick. It trembles as it sprays to outer reaches, and knows that time will not stop her unearthly passage. This is what I want from you Strindberg, to be in touch with outer things, and things that are not for keeping.

I have witnessed something I can’t explain. It is your light as your visage sends itself to the edge of forever, and knows what will be in store. There can only be one result from these musings, and that is a sweet happiness that can only ride as it announces. This vocalisation has tracked through desert sands, and now believes once again that the time is right for your countenance to forage for food amongst the forests of deliverance. There are now things we must do, Strindberg. It will be a mighty effort, but we must not shirk our responsibilities. These were never your forte, but that is okay Strindberg, because you have wept at the appropriate times, and led a life that is for leading.

Come now, we must not be afraid. We must embrace things like they have never been embraced before. This I have recognised, because in the moment between heartbeats there is a sentence that no jailer has been able to hold. This sentence is our sentence as we reach our respective Infernos as they drive us to greater things. Your Inferno is my Inferno, Strindberg. This much I have fathomed. But I am still leading the existence I want to lead. I know this sounds strange but it is the truth in so many ways. Around and around we go, in and out, backwards and forwards in a night that has only one outcome.

I can hear you before you sleep, Strindberg. This is because we are linked by the threads of the unknowing, and the travesty of the night as it sends your electric currents through your bedroom above. These currents had many meanings for you. But they should have only had one, and that is madness. But the madness I speak of here is a madness that the snaking grass has to forgo. Because in forgoing there is a nestling in summer dreams that can only be for the righteous. These righteous needles as I will call them spoke to you in many ways, Strindberg. They were the barbs which were your comfort, and your need to sit as still as you could to herald the morning light.

There can never be solace where there is no road to follow. The road I speak of runs into the mist and then beyond. This beyond is your beyond, Strindberg, as you carry on despite what afflicts you. The neverending motion of what comes next is with us here. It cradles us as we seek for sleep but only find rest. I can believe that your Ghost Sonata was anything other than a mild jogging of the senses that had its key in the terrible beauty Baudelaire ran to. This offshore delight was our delight as we read your work with more avid attention than we had before. The condition of being that is your condition was mine as I read your work with apt vision and self-expressed terror. This will suffice for now, but it will not be long before you take over (as you should).

I will be alert to your changes, Strindberg. I will be as alert as I can be in the face of something I do not understand. This capacity on my part is to do you honour in places that have no honour left. This is the only way to proceed. For what I find here is your lack, and your need to start slowly as you start quickly. Come, we really must not be afraid, but we are, and in that I will sing to the mountaintops that have no height. Their only existence is in our minds as we eke once again for love.

The night is also what brings me here. I can only be the fast as you are the slow, Strindberg. I can only be the strings of a Stradivarius that has been passed through the hands of generations of musicians. This temptation is our temptation, Strindberg. You have forged a path to the sea, and I am with you. But I cannot stay long, because what I really want is to see you shine from a distance that has a loss of miles as its condition.

I have woken up to something, Strindberg. It is your light as it shines on the multitudes that you have touched. This light is nothing more than everything as it rains down on shores untouched. The seeming madness you presented was real enough. Your schizophrenia was a bridle that lay in shards of night as she came for you without respite. The longing I carry with me to banish these ghosts is like the weather as it changes from this to that, from here to there. Our schizophrenia is a well-worn path. But it is not for the fainthearted. It is a journey that carries with it the barbs of something further than we have ever dreamed (and then back again).

There is mist between my eyes and that moment when we are free, Strindberg. This mist is the vapour of stars as they shine on twilight dances. This mist is our mist as we both read your Inferno for the very last time. Life is a risk that takes no chances, a fire that burns before the light of ages has washed upon the beaches of deliverance. Come now, I must not be so flippant. But indeed I must, just as the sea will not give up its lapping. The sea is what I find in your Inferno. A sea that puts out the flames of our respective loves.

I will be swimming when you least expect it, Strindberg. This is so I can escape your whirlpool before it drags me in. But for the time being I am happy to skirt around you as if there were nothing left. In this motion I find rest, as we all find rest before it is too late. I am sure that we will meet in the after of this life, when there will be time to have a drink and marvel at what we have accomplished. There can never be too much in this, for when things are at their slowest, I will speed them for you, Strindberg. I know I have one last attempt to break, but there is a part of me that does not want to.  And even if I did, there could not be force strong enough to save me.

I will linger a little longer, just to finish my letter to you. This letter contains all that is, and all that will be in the temptations that are to come. I have confidence that I sing a heartfelt tune and know it to be good. Plato was an advocate of the good, just as you were not. Yours was the journey of fame, and not of the spirit. This seems unfair, but is more true than we could possibly know. This sense I have is locked deep beneath me in a place I have up until recently shied away from. I know it is wrong of me, but what am I to do? I cannot go backwards, I cannot go forwards; I can only retreat in time for the song that I sing to find its final note.

The distance between us is the same distance as between two flightless birds that yearn for the sky. This yearning is a treasure that defies seeking. It lets us know when things will right themselves, and finally be where we want them. I can be a bit relieved here Strindberg, because the night is not our night, but history’s. If you fail to receive this missive, I will not be upset. I will only be more glad that your words will encounter mine, and the trees will stop swaying.

Think very carefully about your next step, Strindberg. You are walking on a sand that has nowhere else to go. This sand shifts as it parts, and swallows as it releases. Indeed it is a quicksand that can only be bottled, fermented, and then made into a drink for the courageous. The time we spend fighting over this brew is the time it takes to release ourselves from what holds us. But I sense, as you have sensed, that the darlings of winter falling will be the next things to right our passage before it is too late.

These books are like ice. They come from somewhere I do not comprehend. Their power is your power, Strindberg, as you sally forth to pick your next golden apple. This apple is stolen from an orchard that has known a hundred owners. The seeds of these trees are eternal in the sense they will never wither, and never be allowed to drop their apples. This orchard is our orchard, Strindberg, as once again we fight for the life that is our solace, and our recompense.

I will run from you before too long, Strindberg. In my stride will be the gap between the stars, and all that remains. Do not be concerned, for we will find each other again before this letter is through. I know you are the weight, as I am the forest. In this there is a soothing that is like the forgiveness that we never found while alive. Come and be here before I go. I will only want one thing from you, and that is everything we have felt to be true. This price is our price as we travel through the sandstone corridors of forever and know the place to be a friend. We will enter Nietzsche’s eternal return, just as you replied to his letters with such conviction. You must now reply to my letter with everything you have at your disposal—your polemic, your will, and your heart. These things I must have from you, or all will be lost. This is what I ask, not because I want to, but because fate wills it. Fate is a funny beast that has a lot to answer for, even here where things are slight and time is made for breathing.

The sentience I find in you still is a roundabout thing. It drives me, but I cannot capture it. I find it on my bedside table in the morning, and out to sea in the evening. But the night which does descend is the missive indeed I give to you by hand. No postal service in the world could hold these words back from you. They are for you and with you in ways that I cannot comprehend. Do not flee here as I am about to flee. Because your station is for manning, and mine is for the journey.

Sometimes I see you in the darkness, waving. Why does this catch my attention now as we are about to close? It is because the dreams that are for wishing away have returned to renounce the clouds, and give back what we never could. The feeling that is here is not a conquest, but a rite of passage that curtails as the sun curtails its activities for the night. The night, will it win? Yes it will, because it must.

Yes, we must return the clouds. Their motion is that of dust, and shining brightly in autumn sun, they do something to us that we can never forget. Why do I say this to you now? Because I am entrusted as a keeper of knowledge, and a sort of catching that lays bare as it envelops. The words strain here, as they always have, but not because of a tightness, but because of a lethargy. It is a slowness that burns brightest when it is captured—so I must capture you, and not let you go.

I am feeling like I never have before. And this is in part because of you Strindberg, but also for other reasons I cannot grasp.  My letter to you is one of hope, and of consistency. It is a thing that has at its base the movement of bows in ancient orchestras. They play a music that has no tune, but has the harmony of the underworld as its guide. This sound is one of another world that we are yet to come to. But I must bide my time, for to hear this music too soon is to burn the bridle of a steed that can only be ever thought, and not ridden upon.

The thing that keeps me from the abyss is the words we write, Strindberg, in all their malleability. These words come in arrows from some other place, but that is okay, as long as they spill into line for the finding, and not for the taking. Clinging on to a raft like a picture in a forgotten gallery, I see you as you whisper names that have always lived. These names are etched in stone, and will never be worn away. Yes, etched in stone—this is my life, and yours.

The night sees us through. I don’t know how or why, but her talons are made for comfort and not for hunting. This I cannot undo as the tempest blows in gusty gales, and the sunlight reaches for that next step along the path. This path is your path, Strindberg, as you wind your way to forever, and then back again along a line in the sand that none have set foot on. Come and be a part of the grandness, Strindberg. The night is your sister, as the day is your brother. We are both here together, and will always be part of the great fight.

I am like the rain, as you are, Strindberg. Your mighty quest is the journey now of us both. I have expressed my opinion about you, now I must fly to other parts of the world, and see the dawn for what it is. But there will come a second meeting, far in the future, where the compassion we feel for each other will be at its height, and the night will be a blessing rather than a catching. This I believe to be true for all it is worth. But I must not stop for you. As I have said, I cannot stop for any force of nature. I must continue, even though I suffer, and I suffer through you. There will be a time for wriggling from the deepest places, and that time will be our time as we wait once again for tomorrow.

My letter to you is almost through. But there is still time to say a few final words to you as you gather up the rose petals of love and spread them to the furthest shores. These words I have given you are a gift and a thing that warrants a new type of deliverance. This deliverance is at the centre of things as it is to the left. This can be interpreted in many ways, but there is only one way I wish it to be interpreted by you, Strindberg. And that is as an act of forgiveness, and a new type of belief.  It is the belief that certainty can live here, and not be disturbed by the play of the drums that herald in the new. This is what I want from you. You can have my words, but my disbelief you will never have.

The singing that the birds do at the start of the day is your song, Strindberg. It gathers you up, and puts you down. It sends you to the edge, but picks your motion up like a new steer that is set for a fine life. This life is our life, but do not be afraid. The singing I speak of has been heard by all, as they rest in weary beds and know happiness to be a thing we can obtain. It is like a transaction between two men of business as they negotiate to the sound of fresh water at a waterhole that stands in the middle of nowhere. This nowhere is an elsewhere that contains all, but does not let go. It does not let go, because it always lets go in the middle of what we least expect. I can hear your voice, only because I am listening intently. This is my promise to you.

I am like a hole that is dug too deep. But luckily you have found me nonetheless, Strindberg. It is a nicety I will always treasure as the gold is at the end of the rainbow, and the seeds of a larger chasing are in the back of the coach. This coach is pulled by dreams as it embarks upon your most ardent passion. This passion is the well, as I am the water. This passion is the tree that never stops growing, and has a hundred years to be what it might not otherwise be. Come, this is for the end of things, which we are almost at. The day has not forgotten you, but neither will I. I will be here for you whenever you need, and whenever the time is right.

This is the time to say goodbye, Strindberg. It is only because I have addressed you in this fashion that I know life has its self once again. This seems a strong thing to say, but I do not say it lightly. The end of things is only a beginning, as the start of things is only an ending. I cannot be more pleased for you Strindberg, as you nestle up to that favourite place of yours outside the reaches of the solar system, that place known as heaven. But come, did you really make it to heaven? Your life was one of suffering, as your Inferno is a great testament to. But as I have said, your schizophrenia cannot be the only thing that is left. We must forgive all your transgressions as we accept your life. This life was a great one, and this much we will know to be sure.

Yours truly,

Dr Paul Fearne