Ciclo DXXIX

Carissimo,

I have been thinking of the letter R, of its two legs and the belly that joins them, of how it is the only consonant that is also a small drawing of a man who walks. In the mirror it becomes a P, which is the same man but reversed, arrested in the act of falling. I have seen this in the canal’s slow ripples, in the way the water holds the shape of a thing and then lets it dissolve. The R is the consonant of rivers, of rio, of the breath that rises and falls as if it too were walking. When I write it, my hand trembles and the two legs of the R lean toward each other like two old men leaning on canes. Yet it stands. It stands and it walks. It is the consonant of the maker who is also the caught, the one who builds and the one who is built. The R is the sound of the saw cutting wood, of the bow drawn across the viol’s strings, of the rain that falls and is caught in the gutter’s curve. It is the consonant of the respiro, the breath that is both the maker’s and the made’s. I have written it a thousand times and it is always different, always the same. The R is the consonant of the unresolved, of the man who walks and does not know where he is going. It is the consonant of the journal, of the page that receives what speech cannot. The R is the letter that trembles but does not fall.

The candle gutters. The canal waits. The R waits.

Vostro per quanto serve,

— Leonardo