On Heavens' Embroidered Cloths

"Have I ever been in love?" he wondered, as he stood in the hallway by the mail slot, about to take in today's mail. He must've looked completely lost in thought, thinking about the world's problems and possible solutions, like he did most of the time. But this time the question on his mind was different, he couldn't remember the feeling of being exuberantly happy about entirely losing yourself to someone else. It didn't make sense to him though, for he had been in reasonably successful relationships a couple of times. But then what if that feeling wasn't there along the way after all? What then, would become of those 'relationships' he'd been in? He guessed they would have been mere manifestations of a rudimentary process evolution placed in his brain.
But if it wasn't 'being in love', what was it then? It didn't make any sense at all, since he'd been very happy at times when "he was with someone else", or, as his contemporaries put it, "his facebook status was in a relationship." He felt his thoughts taking a ride down to the badly lit quarters of Nihilism and Escapism, a feeling he knew all too well.
Instead of considering what Love And All His Friends were about, he continued doing what he came to do: fetch the mail and discover whether the reasons for this episode in the hallway were justified. His reason for freezing for a second, namely, was a small, yellowish envelope he saw upon descending the staircase. It was lying on top of some bigger mail pieces, probably paperwork for his dorm mates. He hardly received any mail at all, but when he saw the small letter prodding through the slot he immediately recognized his own name written in a feminine, but clear handwriting - this startled him at first, because his opinion of a woman's handwriting was this: they put such an effort in the looks that they rarely get about conveying their actual point.
He got out the mail and (not minding who it was addressed to) distributed it randomly over the pigeonholes right next to the kitchen door. Then he opened the door while firmly holding on to the small envelope and sat down at the table. After triple-checking that the name and address on the piece he was holding corresponded to his own, he flipped the letter over and carefully ripped the top open, only to see what he'd been worrying about confirmed.

What he was holding in his hands was a love letter, not such a cliché one with perfume, petals and all the ratzkaboodle, but a decent one. One of the kind that has a little poem at the top and a small body of lines written by a stranger who was throwing herself (or himself?) at him. He skimmed directly to the bottom, ceaselessly looking for a name that wasn't there. "Damn-it," he thought, "I hate the first guy that lacked the courage to put his name under a Declaration of Love and thus became the inventor of the anonymous love letter!" He started reading from the top, thoroughly now:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- W.B. Yeats

Dear Johan,

This might come a little unexpected, I realize. But for a while now I've experienced an unexplainable feeling of attraction to you, I guess it's what they call 'being in love'. All I know is that I just want to be with you, though 'this' probably can't be, for you always seemed occupied with other things and were not bothered by girls at all. But I'd really like to meet for us, at least once, so I have the feeling that at least I tried.

If you like, I'll be at The Artisan (a restaurant on City Square) this Friday at 4pm and I'd love to share an English High-Tea with you.

Love.

All sorts of thoughts started running through his mind after having read everything. He read the Yeats poem a couple of times to make sure he understood it, and returned to the letter then. Yes, he'd love to have a tea, but what was there to become of him and this girl after that? A friend he hadn't spoken to in a while would've told him: "Dooood, don't bother about that, all that's future, think about the now, man!" But he felt that he should be thinking about the future for a second, because now he encountered a problem he'd been fearing since his last break up.

Everyone of Johan's past relationships ended more or less the same, he was still terribly attached to the girl, but then all of a sudden she backed out. Most of the time with reasons such as: "I still really love you but just don't feel that way anymore," or one that seemed violent at first, but gave more peace after a while "you're a douchebag." Put simply: he didn't understand a thing of it. And then there was this huge date-culture emerging amongst his peers. It was becoming regulation that people brainlessly asked each other out on dates, only to find out after bunch of nights in café's and each other's beds that they didn't like each other at all.

It didn't make sense to him. At least not in the way things such as physics and history did. "But perhaps," he thought while thinking about all this at the kitchen table, "that's the point of it all. That everyone has got a different attitude towards what love is about and that the best you can do is try to find someone who thinks alike the way you do." Still, he was fearing to see himself hear-broken in a while again. In order to prevent this, he'd promised himself a while back, he wouldn't just jump in brainlessly in the next adventure.

He put the letter back into the envelope and cradled it with him in his pocket for the remainder of the day, because it was starting to attain special meaning to him. Someone was interested in him! One side of him told the other not to bother, and the other told the one to shut up.

Johan went about his Thursday chores like he would've done on any other day. He was done with classes for the day, so he cleaned the house, made dinner, read the paper, read a book, played a stupid game on his computer, but during all this he was accompanied by the rich feeling of being loved and the strange fear of losing it. He still didn't know what he was going to do on tomorrow's afternoon. He retired to bed for now, to fall asleep surprisingly fast, to sleep surprisingly well. For the past months he'd been somewhat haunted by images of old girlfriends in his dreams with an intensity Dr. Freud would've found interesting, but tonight was different. He wasn't bothered by any dreams at all.

He woke up next morning, and as if by divine inspiration he knew what he was going to do. When taking a leak at the toilet while reading the headlines in the morning paper he fully realized it. He pulled a huge smile, threw the paper against the door and said: "yes, yes!" out loud, getting goose bumps all over.
So it was going to be The Artisan at four then. In a rush he felt a stack of problems falling down on his shoulders, what should he wear? should he bring something? a rose perhaps? Then he realized that all that would probably be vastly inferior to his actual presence.

He departed from the house to attend the two classes that he was supposed to be attending on Fridays. His professors were delivering interesting lectures and he was listening carefully. He didn't really understand the people that fail to focus whenever they're in love. All of a sudden a panicking thought struck him, what if she was right here in this lecture hall right now? He looked around carefully, in order to prevent crashing straight into someone's gaze that had been locked onto him for minutes. Instead of wandering around speculative paths in his mind he returned his thoughts to the lecture, where they stayed until the end.
When the professor had rounded up Johan went for his bike to make the short trip home. He stopped over at the flower shop to pick up a red rose. Oh, if only he could be the romantic he was now forever. Back home he wondered what to wear, not really knowing what to expect he left out most formalities and got out one of his favorite shirts and put on some easy pants (he often wondered why such a thing as 'easy pants' existed, it surely must mean there are people on the streets walking around in 'uneasy pants'). He thought about the high-tea, and how the Victorian English went about that. He didn't know anything about it, and vowed to himself to read Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch and the collected works of the Brontë sisters soon. No matter how girly or gay others might consider reading such books.

His watch told him it was time to leave. He made some final attempts to put his hair in the ideal position, clutched the rose firmly in his left hand and felt like he was the happiest man alive. Happy, for having heavens' embroidered clothes spread out into infinity beneath his feet.