My dear, how can you even suggest I've been consciously negligent? Of course, things are confused here, but that is more a matter of obligation than desire. However, I acknowlege a certain guilt and promise never to betray your correspondence again. I also humbly, my love, beg your forgiveness.
Work progresses as always: slowly. I still await permission from the University's library to get a closer look at the maps and diaries. Even the letters. I'm not sure Peter would acknowledge or demand such a close scrutiny, but, as we're both aware, he deserves it. I just hope the stuff hasn't gone to pot. I've heard nothing but bad about the library's sense of preservation (not its own of course, others'). A favorite anecdote involves a historian of science who had come to look at a collection of peculiar manuscripts based around a fifteenth-century visionary who imagined a crude version of the radio; a sort of divine conch or something which picked up the music of the spheres via, "an endless and transparent series of glass waves ridden upon by angels and tiny men."
Anyway, when this certain historian (now located in the University of Astoria's Cult-Psych deaprtment) eventually got permission to view the text, he found in its box half the volume and a very fat rat, its tail in a trap and its teeth 'round the book. Needless to say, the gent made the best of an awkward situation and interviewed the beast. Had more interesting views about Marconi than any damn hunger artist and better taste in music.
Speaking of which, have you listened to the the tape of Angstrom's Softshell Crab Suite? Stunning, no? My work, frustrating as it can become never loses strength precisely because of Peter's brilliance. The close tonal structures, the seeming chromatic ascension in the later part of the piece coupled with such a subtle sense of melody. And his preformance of the piece. Certainly no one will ever play Angstrom Peter Lewdelime's work as assuredly or as beautifully as he.
But enough for now. . . I anxiously await word from you, my love, about the country life. Right now I must go back to the University for a meeting with a dodgy old thief who knocked off somebody's mother for his keys to the library. Perhaps a sound beating will empty his pockets for him (just joking, my dear. You know I don't have the knack for knocking about in just that way).
Much love,
Henry
Peter, when he was
small,
was lost for three days in the fields surrounding his home village. He
stayed alive, eating roots, berries, and fish he caught with his hands out
of the streams which traced around the area. He was finally found in the
uppermost branches of a tree. No one saw him; rather, they heard his
humming.