也许，真爱一如歌中所说：“You don't have to change a thing。 I love you just the way you are ”看来人们不断归入教条的要女人这样那样去拴住男人的心其实都是误区了。真爱你的你会最喜欢看你做你自己，真真实实的自己。虽然这样去爱女人本真的男人越来越少，更多的男人把眼光驻足于暂时的虚假的表象或光环。但是如果你希望找到真爱的话，就不要靠矫揉造作去糊弄人。因为那样你糊弄来的往往也不会是真爱你的人。
if i had to live my life without you near me
the days would all be empty
the nights would seem so long
you i see forever oh so clearly
i might have been in love before
but i've never felt this strong
our dreams are young and we both know
they take us where we want to go
hold me now
touch me now
i don't want to live without you
nothing's gonna change my love for you
you oughta know by now how much i love you
one thing you can be sure of
i never ask for more than your love
nothing's gonna change my love for you
you oughta know by now how much i love you
the world may change my whole life through
but nothing's gonna change my love for you
if the road ahead is not so easy
our love will lead the way for us
like a guiding star
i'll be there for you if you should need me
you don't have to change a thing
i love you just the way you are
so come with me and share the view
i help you see forever too
hold me now
touch me now
i don't want to live without you
I hope this finds you well. I don't know when you'll receive it.
Sometime after I'm gone. I'm sixty-five now, and it's been thirteen
years ago today that we met when I came up your lane looking for
directions.
I'm gambling that this package won't upset your life in any way. I just
couldn't bear to think of the cameras sitting in a secondhand case in a
camera store or in some stranger's hands. They'll be in pretty rough
shape by the time you get them. But, I have no one else to leave them
to, and I apologize for putting you at risk by sending them to you.
I was on the road almost constantly from 1965 to 1975. Just to remove
some of the temptation to call you or come for you, a temptation I have
virtually every waking moment of my life, l took all of the overseas
assignments I could find. There have been times, many of them, when
I've said, "The hell with it. I'm going to Winterset, Iowa, and, whatever the cost, take Francesca away with me."
But I remember your words, and I respect your feelings. Maybe you were
right; I just don't know. I do know that driving out of your lane that
hot Friday morning was the hardest thing I've ever done or will ever
do. In fact, I doubt if few men have ever done anything more
difficult than that.
I left National Geographic in 1975 and have been devoting the remainder
of my shooting years mostly to things of my own choosing, picking up a
little work where I can get it, local or regional stuff that keeps me
away only a few days at a time. It's been tough financially, but I get
along. I always do.
Much of my work is around Puget Sound. I like it that way. It seems as men get older they turn toward the water.
Oh, yes, l have a dog now, a golden retriever. I call him "Highway,"
and he travels with me most of the time, head hanging out the
window, looking for good shots.
In 1972, I fell down a cliff in Maine, in Acadia National Park, and
broke my ankle. The chain and medallion got torn off in the fall.
Fortunately they landed close by. I found them again, and a jeweler
mended the chain.
I live with dust on my heart. That's about as well as I can put it.
There were women before you, a few, but none after. I made no conscious
pledge to celibacy; I'm just not interested.
I once watched a Canada goose whose mate had been shot by hunters. They
mate for life, you know. The gander circled the pond for days, and more
days after that. When I last saw him, he was swimming alone through the
wild rice, still looking. I suppose that analogy is a little too
obvious for literary tastes, but it's pretty much the way I feel.
In my imagination, on foggy mornings or afternoons with the sun
bouncing off northwest water, I try to think of where you might be in
your life and what you might be doing as I'm thinking of you. Nothing
complicated --- going out to your garden, sitting on your front porch
swing, standing at the sink in your kitchen. Things like that.I
remember everything. How you smelled, how you tasted like the summer.
The feel of your skin
against mine, and the sound of your whispers as I loved you.
Robert Penn Warren once used the phrase "a world that seems to be
God-abandoned." Not bad, pretty close to how I feel some of the time.
But I cannot live that way always. When those feelings become too
strong, I load Harry and go down the road with Highway for a few days.
I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of
the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at
least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems
of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe,
four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep
that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I
can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every
moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you,
deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
