Reality and Romance

Dear Mr. Echoes,
I realize it’s been some time since I’ve written you. I apologize for the delay in letters, and in pages, but I’ve run up against a sort of personal dilemma. It’s a silly quandary really, and I know this, but it has none the less trained my eye far away from our dear Odessa and has me focusing instead on much more inane matters.

It began in the library. Libraries, at least in my mind, have always been sacred romantic places. Like museums. My love for the written word is only enhanced by the intensity of emotions I feel when my olfactory senses kick in and instead of reading words I begin to smell the ink with which they were printed. Its as if my imagination can distinguish the hormones sinking from the fingerprints of the man who typed the word “delicious” or “candid” and he left behind a trace amount of scent, colored by his very biology, in the text of the book.

That is why I love libraries. It begins with the myriad of scents, coupled with the sight of books upon books upon shelves piled high, and then marries to the textures of heavy grainy paper- in my mind the paper is thick with goodness like heavy bread. This is what a library should be! Books should be sitting on mahogany! Or at least on wood! But they are not. And that is the root of my troubles.

It is hard, my friend, not to grow cynical with the world for not living up to my visions of integrity. I feel so heavy with the sterility of it all! Museums are free from dust! Except of course the dust that is neatly packed into glass cylinders and labeled with plastic plaques. Why can they not let the dust at least live in the oddly shaped medicine bottles that once littered the apothecaries desk!

Biff’s greatest disappointment is to come to the sight of death and find no signs of mortality. My greatest disappointment is to come to a hall of records and find no signs of history.

I will find a way to reconcile my research and my romance, but I may need some time. I will write as soon as I can. Until then Biff and Odessa will remain perched on the verge of open ocean with adventure precariously looming.

Best in Actions,
Sebastian