How much time have I spent writing since the new year? I couldn’t say. I have been enjoying myself. Days have gone by quite quickly with all these steps toward what is next.

When a woman has the means to keep her own room and her own window, she can choose to open and close the curtains when she wills it. The door can be locked all day and all night for weeks. At eleven, she can decide that she is going hunting at noon. She can decide to go hunting for a dark blue dress, at 1 pm on a monday, because she thinks that no crowd could form at that time. She can try one on and decide it is too long, this one too low and this one, just right. She can pick at some leftover carrot cake at 9:33 pm and she can read her new book curled over her knees until the stretch of her back below her neck feels like it will snap. She can hop out of bed to write a random letter to someone who has not arrived, just yet. Then she can smile and cheat the end.

“I hope you will write soon and tell me about yourself. I think one’s letters ought to be about oneself (I live up to this theory!) - what else is there to talk about? Letters should be indiscretions - otherwise they are simply official bulletins.

Always yours
Tom”

Labels: confession, Eliot