Dearest Diary,
Oh my friend, there has been a revelation! It is as wondrous as one of Mad. Blataslavsky's visions, as wondrous as the orgone ray! Our child, dear, fragile Albert, has come to a means of salvation!
Perhaps I should not be overly hasty. James would reproach me for that, I think. He would say that each discovery has it's own time and place, and that there are certain of those which should not be shared at all, or narrowly. But with you, my confidant, I can be at my utmost.
The inspiration came to me today, while applying morning colonic. It is a contemplative moment, when I compose my thoughts and direct my actions towards the body of the day. I felt a great pressure well up in my innermost being, and a vision burst forth like a fountain. I received a message from the garden!
It was Albert's sad, gratified face which floated before me in the ash-closet.
"Live not for me," he whispered, "for I am but a dream. I will be gone before my father returns, a moulder in the loam. Find He who waits for Me, see him mark his passage, a signature scribed naught by hand."
And then I beheld the face of the hopping man, clearly for the first time. Rushing out to the beds, I scrabbled in the earth, searching for sign of his presence. As usual, I uncovered his heavy barefoot tread. And there, kneeling undignified in the soil, I saw my own son's words made real.
Oh, how can I describe the timeless moments poured over that black impression? It was as though the globe had ceased it's incessant rotation and instead stood poised, like the first breath of a newborn babe, between spirit and carnality.
Just as the mystic Mad. Blataslavsky rends truth from my soul via the conduit of the palm, so too was the stranger laid bare by the impressionist poetry of his footprint. He had appeared hideous to me, a slouching, slovenly handed Lebantine. Now I saw, reflected in the turn of his ankle, the deep ball of the foot, the long second toe, a powerful but gentle soul. So ecstatic was I, I pressed my face into the impression. The heady smells of soil, dung and foot set me reeling! With the taste of earth on my tongue, swooning in the garden, I was inspired.
The man held no more terror for me. Once I thought that he stalked me as a hunter, waiting for the chance to practice abduction and rape. Now I realize that just as Shylock, who appeared so fierce, could be moved by gentle, simple love for his Cressida, so too was this poor creature transformed by his delicate observations. He realizes that I am a thing of the aether, too fragile by far to respond to brute force. Ugly, but brilliant in his uglicy, his lumpen Hebrew's brow is creased with lines of thought and care. I imagine him now, as I sometimes saw him from my window; creeping, always hopping, gazing tenderly upwards towards my bed-room.
I do not know if he is spirit, or simple man, but regardless, the soft and gentle eyes he casts upward communicate wholly sympathetically, without words. I remember a time, when James had returned from his journey among the Greenland blubber-eaters. He described a plain, so dazzling with snow that there was no sky or ground, no direction or perception but sparkling whiteness. This is where poor Albert's essence will fly, bouied on the shoulders of my compassionate friend. Albert is an explorer, an intrepid spirit like his father, but the vistas which open to him are not held within this weak sphere. All the manifestations which swirl above this plane, which whisper so sweetly to the Mad., will instruct him. Noble Alcabities will be his tutor, heroic Pantagruel his playmate. And most of all, my companion, whose unrequited devotion will be expressed by the care he will injoin to my child.
It becomes imperative that James suspect nothing of this. Scientist though he is, his sympathy with the spirits is weak, and he would try to stop me. I have dismissed Dr. Haas, so there are no spies in the house at all. I am the only one permitted into the nursery, and the sole wanderer in the garden. There is nothing left but to devote myself to the care of my ailing child, to help him gently from the world.
Dear Diary, I've admitted too much, now. My secret must remain sealed within you. Oh, but I know that you will not break our sacred pact. You are my greatest friend, my only comfort.