It struck me in this unfreezing and unexpected cold in Louisiana: whatever problems there are are not mine alone; the body clinging to mine knows as little as the body to which it clings.

The usual cluster of notables peopled my dreams and lifted me into consciousness on a fat red rug ably designed for rest. The twitter of my soul and a blink of light behind me that was no blink but where my imagination thought it brought me to a rousing desire to snuff more wine outside.  My wife--any other title would be inept--came into the room, twirling with the spangles of an angel's sleep, replete with a mouth upon whose motions calm and excite a sailor as do waves, and said the smoke polluted her. We respond:

When you burn a piece of paper over a campfire it alights to the wind, carrying it upwards in a rocking motion that reminds you of the seemingly arbitrariness of butterflies, of vultures circling the sky about to drop.  Lunging into the air as you dream a butterfly might, gratifying, you make your way. Detach, then, from myself, as you would the deft cut in the air left by the remonstrance of a butterfly following its instinct, and consider the unlikeliness in our care for smell and sound as matters to no less my soul than the next boy who dies today for lack of water.

My digits type frozen and every misstep a likely hazard. Send me in all ways but not onto a balcony because you, delicate smoker, couldn't take a whiff of the poison you work to buy.

Gao, to.

When it surprises you that most of your beliefs were a chimera, hanging slick and fork-tongued on the penumbra of your life, blink twice and then let it go.  I've taught you to trust, stand readied with one fist of text balled in one hand; in the other, a sword. Every father asks for his son to bleed for his beliefs exactly to the extent that he would for his own. If all things are equal between us, and they are, bleed only for the father you know as you; bleed for compassion or for cruelty in whatever measure your conscience tells you; and know that your conscience lies if you're not listening very closely. For that, go to where no one can hear you; you, anyone; and care not for the world then. Everyone will laugh and shake your hand; and shake theirs; and then look on the form and essence of life.

Sometime, circa. a couple of thousands of years past, they say someone died for you.

No one has died for you. Everyone has died for you. Decide what emphasis you'll choose to guide most of your life; but never, for anything, let your life be in vain, a passive mark of biological passing no more remarked than a slug's. Never that. Safeguard your life until you reproduce; your soul until you can stand it. If in conjunction with the love I feel for you, that will be forever.

Your tongue will never exceed your heart. Follow the latter with the former in faith. My legacy to you is you; my love, as truly  unbounded as the universe. Kiss all you see, if only in your mind, at least once. Kiss those things you love frequently and forever. Destroy the first hint that your kiss will be interrupted.

Wend wisely, Dearest and Truest Chum. My blood's yours. Remember that it is as powerful as the oldest of things.