My dearest, in your absence I take long rambles along the shore, and sometimes up to Vandoeuvres and beyond, pausing in spots that evoke the wilds of the northern heath. The summer has been so frightfully damp and dreary that the dear land of the thistle is called up quite unbidden by my memory and fancy. But the vines look forlorn and I fear the wine will be poor this year. When may we expect your return?
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          Today I fancied hearing your voice, dearest, pealing on the crags above Argentière. But in truth, my Echo, I should make a poor Narcissus here. No water but which leaps, plashes and cascades down, even among the high alpine pastures. Where a pool sometimes lingers in a vale, it takes the color of verdigris on Grecian bronze, and I am reminded that Virgil’s glad realm lies just beyond a gleaming ridge. Why, then, did the ancients neglect these lofty haunts?
                                    Sent from my iPhone

          No, not Echo, dearest, but perhaps a banshee! Today I was at the foot of the Salève, whose great scarred cliff rears up from the valley like an enormous Hadrian’s wall. I had chased a vision from Plainpalais, stumbling like a ragged madwoman across fields and woods. I considered the silty Arve rushing down from Chamonix, and beneath the mountain I saw with double sight a vision of my monster clambering up its banded granite face, while by my side a tragic Prometheus cradled a young innocent. Do I have the strength to put this to paper? Must I bring down that wall or risk myself in an escalade?
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          On the Mer de Glace! Unsung marvels of this frozen river’s crags, crevasses and tilted seracs. In the maw of a dim blue chapel the walls pulse with the groans and sighs of souls in limbo. How long this motionless journey?
                                    Sent from my iPhone

          My dearest, still dreary here, but admirably green! Loneliness and nostalgia – not for home but a more familiar exile. Scotland, so dear to my heart, I knew in two guises, each defined by your absence: the first, when it was haunted by what, in my innocence, I never knew I lacked; the second, after our meeting, when that lack had a name and a face, giving meaning, but not presence, to the lonely moors, the standing stones, the keening wind. We loved one another in the interval.
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          First night above the trees, far beyond the trappings of mere life. Rapture of the early dawn in a landscape that evokes the furthest septentrion, yet fanned by a kindly Aeolus. Have never felt the South so near as in this Arctic waste, and am sorely tempted to follow the meridian.
                                    Sent from my iPhone

          Dearest, John says that beneath Lake Geneva is a chasm like the hull of an enormous sunken ship. I believe I shall never view its calm surface quite the same again. It seems our gentle lake was carved by glaciers that have since withdrawn to the mountains. But why did they go and will they ever return?
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry


          plunging headwaters o’er
                                    Sent from my iPhone

          Dreadful dream last night. I found myself among the vineyards by the house; the grapes were full and ready for the harvest. It was a fine late summer day, though the stillness all about seemed like the hush that follows a battle’s awful clamor. Upon waking I could not dispel the sense of ravages hidden under the simple appearance of things, and now, I know not why, that ghastly hush seems instead to portend ravages to come.
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          Have grown reclusive. Pass the days at my desk with the lake as sole companion, and come nightfall, my flickering image takes the place of the view in the panes.
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

Troubled by your silence of late. Preoccupied with the thought that the Scotland I feel here in Cologny is that of my first visit – the one unknown to you, as you were unknown to me.
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          Laboring still on this lifeless thing in which I scarcely know myself. I doubt not that you shall make the mountains sing, while I must content myself with stubborn prose, mud and mire that I would were clay.
                                    Sent from my BlackBerry

          Dear friend, I write at Mary’s urging to inquire of your status (“Have you influence, Polidori?”). Upon your return you should find things much as you left them, if a trifle more gloomy. The weather has been singularly grey, and the needle on the barometer, which I consult at all times, lies as still as the hand on a broken clock. I am inclined to believe that the creators of the device, through some odd perversity, meant only to show us what we already know, and to provoke the needless gesture of tapping on the glass.
                                    Sent from my Droid

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