SOLVE FOR MYSTERY
SOLVE FOR MYSTERY
BY JOHN TUFT
“A little ditty about Jack and Diane…”
You know the song. You’re probably already on to the next line. Hold that thought, if you can. This is a different version of that story, much different. This is a story of a different wonder, a different approach to the yearning of the heart to be loved. The longing of a soul for its mate. Longings of our deepest needs and desires that seem to find their own voice in some mysterious way and reach out across time and distance in ways we do not comprehend. The ephemeral etchings created by our thoughts and longings, our prayers and supplications, our griefs and groanings turned into the language of the soul.
Jack was a man who mostly kept to himself. He’d been a shy boy growing up and his greatest fear was of being publicly humiliated. He liked to read and pet his cat. He went to work and did his job well enough but always looked forward to getting home. The thing that he felt he was missing was someone to come home to. Someone to talk to in the evenings. Someone to share a meal with and wonder at the neighbors and the state of the world. Someone to love. A soulmate. Jack wanted a soulmate. He believed there was such a creature, but he did not know how to go about finding his soulmate. So, he took refuge in what he did best, writing in his journal each evening.
After making dinner and cleaning up, Jack would watch Jeopardy and then pick up the red leather-bound journal and pour out his longings to his soulmate. Whoever she was. Wherever she was. He wrote with an old fountain pen that had belonged to his father. He started writing in the journal in his late twenties, hoping that the search would be sure and the arrow to both their hearts sure and swift. Alas, it was not to be. Night after night ticked by. Week after week turned into month after month. Months turned into years turned into decades. Jack faithfully persisted. It became harder to find ink for the fountain pen, so Jack tried to buy ahead. The red leather grew worn and cracked, yet Jack kept adding pages until it was straining at the threads holding the backing together.
What did Jack write to his soulmate to be? He wrote letters and love notes. Poems and prayers and promises. Yearnings and longings. To open to any page of the journal was to see into the heart and soul of a man opening himself to the wonder of love. Jack’s twenties became his thirties, became his forties. In his early fifties, Jack contemplated giving up the search. What was the point of putting love out there if no one was there to receive it, he pondered. How long is too long to wait? What was the point of always trying to solve for the mystery of love if it was only going to be a mystery? He stopped writing for a month. But some little voice kept nagging at him that a true soulmate would not give up. She would be waiting, expecting, standing on tiptoe to see to the horizon for the approach of the one and only.
Jack resumed his journal. In his mid-sixties he decided to finally take a trip out west. He was not getting any younger and it was now or never to see the west coast. He set the journal aside for four weeks and set off to see the sights. In a small coastal town in California, he walked into a little bistro for some lunch. He noticed a woman sitting alone in the booth in the far corner, watching the door intently. When he caught her eye, she smiled in a broad friendly manner and motioned for Jack to come over. Jack hesitated at first, then took a few tentative steps toward the woman. His eyes noticed what was on the table in front of the woman. He froze. This was impossible. But there it was. The worn red leather of his journal, bursting at the seams and spilling out around her setting his secrets and hopes and fears about love.
She held out elegant fingers to him. “I’m Diane. I’ve been waiting for you. Every day I come here and watch the door. Wondering what magic will be in the journal this time.” Jack was sorely confused. “I don’t understand. That’s my journal.” Diane smiled and the sun shone a little brighter. “It’s the heart of my soulmate,” she said simply. “Each day there are new letters, another poem, a secret wish, a longed for kiss.” Jack sat down with a heavy sigh. “You know me?” Diane brushed her fingers across the worn leather. “Like the back of my own heart,” she whispered. “It’s been so long,” was all he could say. “When you solve for the mystery that is love, there is no time,” she stated with confidence.
As the afternoon passed and the sun sought the ocean’s horizon, Diane repeated Jack’s words to him by heart. She knew his soul. The red leather journal sat there untouched as the two explored the realm that is reserved for soulmates. It was magic. Real magic of the best kind. As the sun touched the edge of the sea, their fingers entwined. The heart wants what it wants. The soul seeks the only mate it knows. “How did you know?” asked Jack. Diane’s laughter danced across the gold and scarlet rays of the setting sun across the waves. “I just kept believing,” she sighed. “There was a time I almost gave up, back in my fifties. But I knew my soulmate would not let me down.” Together, hand in hand, arm in arm, they walked the beach to the water’s edge. Together they gently placed the old journal into the surf… to find it’s way to a yet untethered soul.
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
Photo credit: Dave DiCello
