Dear Paul,
Looking back, there was a time when I clung to literature simply to survive. It was in my early twenties, when my mind felt broken and every waking moment, every breath and blink outside of sleep, was pain. Trying to escape that suffering, I turned to drinking, which only pulled my life deeper into a vicious cycle. I cannot forget the writers and their worlds I grasped in desperation when I reached my lowest point and was close to drowning, as if begging them to save me. Some of their sentences still live inside me, etched like burn scars or tattoos that do not fade.
I am no longer a reckless twenty something, and my life now carries too much responsibility for me to live drunk from morning until dark. In retrospect, life then and life now are not so different in how suffocating and difficult they feel, and the only difference is that I can no longer run away or hide as I once did. So I stand before the weight of life laid out in front of me, vast as a mountain, and hold my gaze there for a long while. At times, I wonder whether it is at the pace of that heavy and steady gaze that we grow up, little by little, each day.
As I did during the hardest period of my life, I have recently returned to books. Perhaps it is because, as it was then, I am quietly but desperately in need of some kind of salvation. In that wandering, I stumbled upon a book you wrote. What you wrote was so astonishingly good that it moved me to tears, and I feel compelled to thank you for that before saying anything else. Are you at peace now? Does it still ache to think of the people you loved and left behind, your achievements, or any lingering attachment to this life? Do you still write?
Do you know that your work has been read as widely as that of Keats or Stephen Crane, who, like you, were taken far too young, and may have traveled even farther than theirs? I have so much I want to say to you, yet I suspect that if I were ever to meet you, I would end up quietly listening to your voice rather than rummaging through my own stories. That, perhaps, would be my clumsy but gentle way of showing respect, from someone wholly captured by your writing and your life.
Paul, as I approach my fourth year in the US, I find myself struggling with my sense of self worth. Life here is never easy, and despite my efforts to live each day with humility and my whole heart, to narrow the distance between who I am and who I hope to become, I feel myself growing increasingly withdrawn. If you were to ask what I am struggling so desperately to protect, well, I guess it is for the same reason you pushed yourself to complete your medical training, even knowing you had little time left.
Perhaps it is because of the same burning thirst that lives in both you and me. The moment you asked where biology, morality, literature, and philosophy converge, and chose to pursue your answer by becoming a neurosurgeon, deeply stirred me. So did your return to literature near the threshold of death, as you struggled to complete a single book. Watching your life fade far earlier than any of us had hoped, I learned one thing that within our lives there is a current we can never resist by our own strength, and yet, when we gather every ounce of ourselves to protect what matters most to us, something like the meaning of life begins to crystallize there.
Paul, your life is simply too vast and too heavy for me, so ever since encountering you, I feel unable either to move forward or to leave that place behind, as though I am standing still, restless and unsure. How many more nights must I spend in prayer, and how many times must I break apart again, before my life can become as clear and weighty as your sentences? If the longing within me to understand the meaning of life grows deep enough, will I one day be able, like you, to lift this life above my head, as Atlas once bore the world? I wish I could look into your eyes and finally give voice to this suffocating feeling.
But you remain far away, faint as a distant star. So, I will carry you quietly in my heart, forging myself with fierce resolve, and slowly learning to resemble you as I follow the path you once walked. Please watch from time to time as I continue along that road. In this way, what you left behind will live on far longer than you imagined. I will not tire easily, so please trust me.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung