Written For me, By me.

There's always been you. No one else touches me the way you could, the way you do. This is the relationship that I can see carrying to my grave when and if all else has failed.

Today I thought of you while driving back home and tried to imagine the streets you must have roamed in the city when you were here last Sunday. And what you must have looked like. I tried to imagine walking into the mall and running into you (because that's where you were on Sunday afternoon, I was told). Your hair was probably longish, and untidy as usual, I bet. You were probably wearing a slight scowl when you explained to the Apple store guy that your laptop had been stolen and you were there to get a replacement. I think I know what the annoyed look you might have been wearing. I had seen a tamer version of it last March when you weren't too happy about the way a lot of people were behaving around you. Still, you obliged me (and all of the people, including the rude ones) then because that's what you do. The kind considerate soul lives within you. Even when you are so inconvenienced you still reach out to people who need to see that side of you.

So today I wandered on the sidewalks you might have walked on just a few days ago and wondered about the people you ran into who might or might not be aware of who you were. I could imagine some of them saying, Doesn't that guy look like the guy from Lord of the Rings? or Do you know that guy? He looked familiar. Or simply, oh, that's Viggo! I would have given anything to be any one of them. I really wish I was at the mall on Sunday instead of being home alone, reading a mediocre book and when that's done, pretending to clean the house. But then what would I do if I met you? Probably nothing. At least my dreams would become more colorful perhaps.

It's not that I like you just for your smoldering look. Everything I see in you is much more than that - the way you carry yourself, the way you see the world through your unique eyes, the way you care for people - strangers and friends alike. They are all evident in your writings and in your conversations. You are the guy with the right dose of right and wrong, the guy who has the courage to say the things when needed to be said regardless of how the public would receive, the guy with the uncanny ability to feel empathy towards others. All of these qualities make me pivot towards you. You are the sun and I am the flower who seeks your light. I believe in you. Even if who you truly are turns out to be different than who I think you are, I am still thankful that you have given me the inspiration to be true, planted it deep inside me, and keeps nurturing it with your countless quotes and soulful writings.

You speak to my incomplete soul and for that, I am deeply thankful to have been touched by you.

P.S. I can't wait till I get my hands on your new book. I read its English description (talented you wrote it in two languages - Spanish and English) and even that brief summary leaves a dent in my soul. I carry the words with me and hear them echo inside.

CANCIONES DE INVIERNO / WINTER SONGS Viggo Mortensen

"A story that turns back on itself, built on yearning, determined to be hopeful, always incomplete. Memory fails, faces change, the urgency of any instant fades, ending as residue of light, rain, and snow. In the words of Thomas Merton: "The tighter you squeeze, the less you have." This book of photographs and poems will be available from Perceval Press on 16 July, 2010. Bilingual, Spanish and English. The accompanying landscape images are the product of travel and work during the last two winters, North and South. Although most of the poems and all of the translations are new texts, revised versions of several previously-published poems are also included."