[Applause] July 31st 1978 my darling McGeorge you said that things seemed clearer when they were written down well here with a very boring letter in which I will try to put everything down so that you may read and reread at horror at your Folly in getting involved with me deep breath to begin with I love you with a depth and passion that I have felt for no one else in this life and if it astonishes you it astonishes me as well not I hasten to say because you are not worthy of loving far from it
it's just that first of all I swore I would not get involved with another woman secondly I have never had such a feeling before and it's almost frightening thirdly I would never have thought it possible that another human being could occupy my waking and sleeping thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else fourthly I never thought that even if one was in love one could get so completely boted with another person so that a minute away from them felt like a thousand years fifthly I never hoped aspired dreamed that one could find everything one wanted
in one person I was not such an idiot as to believe this was possible yet in you I found everything I want you are beautiful gay giving gentle idiotically and deliciously feminine sexy wonderfully intelligent and wonderfully silly as well I want nothing else in this life than to be with you to listen and watch you your beautiful voice your beauty to argue with you to laugh with you to show you things and share things with you to explore your magnificent mind to explore your wonderful body to help you protect you serve you and Bash you
on the head when I think you're wrong not to put too fine a point on it I consider I'm the only man outside mythology to have found the Croc of gold at the Rainbow's End but having said all that let us consider things in detail don't let this become public but well I have one or two faults minor ones I hasten to say for example I am inclined to be overbearing I do it for the best possible motives all tyrants say that but I do tend without thinking To Tread people underfoot you must tell me
when I'm doing it to you my sweet because it can be a very bad thing in a marriage right second blemish this actually is not so much a blemish of character as a blemish of circumstance darling I want you to be you in your own right and I will do everything I can to help you in this but you must take into consider consideration that I'm also me in my own right and that I have a head start on you what I'm trying to say is that you mustn't feel offended if you are sometimes treated
simply as my wife always remember that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts uh but but I am an established creature in the world and so on occasion you will have to live in my shadow and nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that has to be faced third and very important and nasty blemish jealousy I don't think you know what jealousy is thank God in the real sense of the word I know that you felt jealousy over Lincoln's wife and child but this is
what I call normal jealousy and this to my regret is not what I've got what I have got is a black monster that can pervert my good sense my good humor and any goodness that I have in my makeup it is really a Jackel and hide situation my hide is stronger than my good sense and defeats me hard though I try as I told you I've always known that this lurks within me but I could control it and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it and then I met you and I felt my
monster stir and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you've known and with your letter my monster came out of its Lair black irrational bigoted stupid evil and malevolent you will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is it is a physical pain as though you'd swallowed acid or red hot coals it is the most terrible of feelings but you can't help it at least I can't God knows I've tried I don't want any ex-boyfriend sitting in church when I marry you on our wedding day I want nothing but happiness both for
you and me and I know I won't be happy if there is a church full of your EXC conquests when I marry you I'll have no past only a future I don't want to drag my past into our future and I don't want you to do it either but remember I am jealous of you because I love you you're never jealous of something you don't care about okay enough about jealousy now let me tell you something I have seen a thousand sun sets and sunrises on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey colored
light at Sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicolored nest of cloud slipping in and out of the vast ocean I've seen a thousand moons Harvest moons like gold coins winter moons as white as ice chips new moons like baby swans feathers I've seen Seas as smooth as if painted colored like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam moving ponderously and murderously I felt winds straight from the South Pole Bleak and wailing like a Lost Child winds as tender and warm
as a Lover's breath winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds winds that carried the moist Rich smell of a forest floor the smell of a million flowers Fierce winds that churned and moved like the sea like yeast or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten I've known silence the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a new dug well the implacable Stony Silence of a deep cave the hot drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotized and stilled into Silence by the eye of the Sun
the silence when great music ends I've heard s cardas cry so that the sound seem stitched into your bones I've heard tree frogs in an orchestration AS complicated as bark singing in a forest lit by a million Emerald fireflies I've heard the key callling over the gray glasses that Gran to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the Sea I've heard the horse street vendor cries of the mating fur seals as they sang to their Sleek golden wives the crisp staccato admonishment of the rattlesnake the cobweb squeak of the bat and the
Belling Roar of the Red Deer kneed deep in purple heather I've heard Wolves baying at a Winter's moon red howlers making the forests vibrate with their roaring cries I've heard the squeak purr and grunt of a hundred multicolored Reef fishes I have seen hummingbirds flashing like Opals around a tree of scarlet blooms humming like a top I've seen flying fish skittering like Quicksilver across the blue Waves drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails I've seen spoon bills flying home to roost like a Scarlet banner across the sky I've seen whales black as tar
cushioned on a cornflower blue sea creating a ve sigh of fountain with their breath I've watched butterflies emerge and sit trembling while the sun irons their wings smooth I've watched Tigers like Flames mating in the long grass I've been dive bombed by an angry raven black and glossy as the devil's hoof I've Lain in water warm as milk soft as silk while around me played a host of dolphins I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things all this I did without you this was my loss all this I want to do
with you this will be my gain all this I would gladly have forgotten for the sake of one minute of your company for your laugh your voice your eyes hair lips body and above all for your sweet ever surprising mind which is an enchanting Quarry in which it is my privilege to [Applause] delve
