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March 31,1991

My dearest Karen,

V

I miss you. I love you. I don't deserve expect your forgiveness. I'm leaving tmnorrow XXXXXXXX though I plan to return. But who knows, right?

You've seen that place.

Guess I'm writing a will too. By the way I'm drunk. Sell the house, the film, everything I have, take it all. Tell the kids daddy loves/ loved them. I love them, I love you.

Why am I doing this? Because it's there and I'm not. I know that's a pretty shitty answer. I should burn the place down, forget about it. But going after something like this is who I am. You know that.

If i wasn't like this, we never would hve met in the first place becasue I never would have stopped my car in the middle of traffic, ran to the sidewalk, and asked you out.

No excuse huh? Guess I'm just another bastard abandoning XXXX woman and kids for a big adventure. I should grow up, right?

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I accept that, I'd like to it, I've tried to do it, easier said /written than done.

I need to go back to that place one more time. I know something now and I just have to confirm it. Slowly the pieces have been coming together. I'm starting to see that place for what it is and it's not for cable shows or National Geographic.

Do you believe in God? I don't think I ever asked you that one. Well I do now. But my God isn't your Catholic varietal or your Judaic or Mormon or Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist or whatever/ whoever. No burning bush, no angels, no cross. God's a house. Which is not to say that our house is God's house or even a house of God. What I mean to say is that our house is God.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Think I've lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe Maybe just really drunk. Pretty crazy you have to admit. I just made God a street address. Forget all that last part, just forget

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it. I miss you. I miss you. I won't reread this. If I do I'll throw it away and write something terse, clean and sober. And all locked up. You know me so so well. I know you'll strip out the alcohol fumes, the fear, the mistakes, and see what matters—a code to decipher written by a guy who thought he was speaking clearly. I'm crying now. I don't think I can stop. But if I try to stop I'll stop writing and I know I won't start again. I miss you so much. I miss Daisy. I miss Chad. I miss Wax and Jed. I even miss Holloway. And I miss Hansen and Latigo and PFC Misorotto, Bonton and Carl and Rogio and lieutenant Nacklebend and of course Zips and now I can't get Delial out of my head. Delial, Delial, Delial—the name I gave to the girl in the photo that won me all the fame and gory, that's all she is Karen, just the photo. And now I can't understand anymore why it meant so much to me to keep to keep her a secret—a penance or something. Inadequate. Well there it's said. But the photo, that's not what I can't get out of my head right now.

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Not the photo—that photo, that thing—but who she was before one-sixtieth of a second sliced her out of thin air and won me the pulitzer though that didnt keep the vultures away i did that by swinging my tripodaround though that didnt keep her from dyding five years old daisy's age except she was pciking at a bone you should have seen her not the but her a little girl squatting in a field of rock dangling a bone between her fingers i miss miss miss but i didn't miss i got her along with the vulture in the background when the real vulture was the guy with the camera preying on her for his fuck pulitzer prize it doesnt matter if she was already ten minutes from dying i took threem minutes to snap a photo should have taken 10 minutes taking her somewhere so she wouldnt go away like that no family, no mother no day, no people just a vulture and a fucking photojournalist i wish i were dead right now i wish i were dead that poor little baby this god god awful