Confused-Shoes

Dear Nikolai,

Like you, I am an original. A genius. A creator, an innovator. Although I am more a man of words, I do my own computations. I know my work and I strive to be the best.

Like you, I understand the perils of lofty dreams. I am aware of the terrible price of solitude that men such as us should bear. Like you, I am unrecognized, I am deserted, I am mocked at, insulted, jeered at, and laughed at. But I have great dreams. We have great dreams.

I would have wanted to write a Filipino novel where the hero would have a Russian name, something like Vassily Maximinov or Alyosha Kruzetsky. But that would be too ambitious for me, and besides Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy would rise from their graves. And since a great way to pay tribute to electrifying sports stars is to have their jerseys retired, I would do the same and shall abandon my hopes of being another literary commissar. So instead I would write to you, dear Serb, wherever you are, drunk and lonely, but basking in the glory of electromagnetism and the wonders it has produced for mankind.

And yet no one seriously remembers you except for your coil and your legendary loneliness.

Perhaps, I, too, shall someday be remembered only for my writings and my legendary loneliness.

Dear Nikolai, do you know how it feels to fall in love? Well, you should. It is crazy. It is wonderful, it is pathetic, it is full of rubbish and ecstasy. Hell, why am I telling you this?

Maybe because patents pending, I am the saddest person in the world.

Like you, I risk myself openly to the ridicule of the many. We are both proud men, blessed creatures aware of the glory that could have been, for us. However, I know that my potentials are useless. I am dead tired.

Why is it that lightning frightens me so much when you have so eagerly delighted at the mere sound of thunder? Why am I foolishly an adherent of all this hopelessness? I am lost, I am lost. Always lost and pretending to know my way. But I am lost.

Let us blast mountains and reduce those who dare oppose us to dust. Where are you in heaven? Beside Zeus, manufacturing his lightning for him with your brand? Have you ever dared cast your mighty fury against your foes?

Where do I go? I want to lock myself up in solitary confinement. I need the feel of being shocked again and again to remind me that I am feeble. I am a bird perched on high tension wires. I am a convicted murderer, the worst of all sinners, about to be burned by this dreadful voltage. I am jolted.

Dear Nikolai, how is it to weep while your rivals claim the Nobel Prize? How is it to know that you are the best in the world and yet not be known? How do you rise up from the stupidity of every blunder, the awkward rise after each fall?

Do I become arrogant and keep my head up while I am in mud? You see, I wonder whether electricity conducts well in pure slime.

Nikolai, send me a vehicle where I can levitate and float high up to heaven. Send me a weapon to burn my detractors. Give me a potion to electrify the hearts of those whom I love. Breathe life into me.

I am not joking, Nikolai. I hope you get to read my letter. If you have, send me a reply. I would treat you to a drink. Let us plan our scheme then to take over the world. I would love to have you as my partner. I would give you the money, the medals, the patents, the popularity. TIME might just make you Man of the Year.

But dear inventor, let me have my peace. Invent love in a new way where I wouldn’t have to weep every time I think about it and not get it at all. Love has ceased to shock me but through you I am full of hope that someday, somehow, it might shock me once again.