Ruess

April 18

Dear Bill,

As for my own life, it is working out rather fortunately. These days away from the city have been the happiest of my life, I believe. It has all been a beautiful dream, and with enough pain to make the delights possible by contrast. But the pain, too, has been unreal. The whole dream has been filled with warm and cool but perfect colours, and with aesthetic contemplation as I jogged behind my little burro. A love for everyone and everything has welled up, finding no outlet except in my art.

Music has been in my heart all the time, and poetry in my thoughts. Alone on the open desert, I have made up songs of wild, poignant rejoicing and transcendant melancholy. The world has seemed more beautiful to me than ever before. I have loved the red rocks, the twisted trees, the red sand blowing in the wind, the slow, sunny clouds crossing the sky, the shafts of moonlight on my bed at night. I have seemed to be at one with the world. I have rejoiced to set out, to be going somewhere, and I have felt a still sublimity, looking deep into the coals of my campfires, and seeing far beyond them. I have been happy in my work, and I have exulted in my play. I have really lived.

There has, however, been one flaw, aside from the insistent clamour of that disgusting god, money. Art needs an audience, or it will die, just as the world ceases to exist if there are none to contemplate it. I have had many sublime experiences which the presence of another person might well have prevented, but there are others which the presence of a perceptive and appreciative friend might have made doubly worthwhile. In all this country I have met but one moderately intelligent man, and he is too steeped in sarcasm. Only one hospitable family have I encountered, and with them, familiarity has bred contempt. For these reasons, and because of the corroding effects of money, I have shirked contact with humanity, preferring to live more perfectly in isolation. Yet, after all, people are interdependent, and I have felt the need of a real friend. That is all. Make of it what you will.

In the meantime, my burro and I, and a little dog, if I can find one, are going on and on, until, sooner or later, we reach the end of the horizon.

Your Alter ego,

Lan

~Everett Ruess’ letter, Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty, by W.L. Rusho