Slept badly. Awoke to find a letter from Olnoff sitting on the kitchen table. I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked at the envelope as if it were a severed limb. My old partner, whom I hadn't spoken with publicly or privately for over ten years! The letter trembled in my hand as I hesitated opening it. My heart raced. I couldn't imagine what it concerned, but all the curiosity in the world was not enough to keep me from fearing the worst.

Oh, how much we hide, how much pain we push down to carry on. Sometimes I think we carry on only to keep the pain at bay.

Olnoff was my dearest friend, my confidant, my soul brother, & ultimately, my biggest vice & almost my undoing. Ours was a partnership of great highs & terrible lows. I took him under my wing, when I was still young, & he still a brash, brilliant student. I saw great things in him, but ultimately I spoiled him, I fear, with love.
 
Yes I saw great things in him. He was the best, but he was rarely at his best.

I let him live in my studio. I fed him & bed him. We worked tirelessly side by side. We initially had great success, and admittedly it was all my work, but he was helping, & I thought it was only a matter of time before he started coming into his own, so until then, I was willing to share it all. However, alas, he quickly changed. He stopped contributing. Gone was that natural brilliant spark I was once so proud of, even daunted by. As I said, Olnoff was, in my opinion, the best, but so much less than his best seem to satisfy him. He didn't realise that all effort is rewarded. And the less he put in, the less he got out. He rapidly declined. Five years into our working relationship & he still knew only my very earliest theories, & was foggy & evasive at best concerning my new ones. Thus began the holding pattern. He was holding me back, but I refused to see the truth, & kept patiently hoping that things would turn around. Alas, they got worse. He would not turn up to the lab, he had no passion, no work-ethic, no direction, yet he would happily turn up to lectures & collect payments, and I, not wanting to make him look bad, was forced to give old lectures on old theories. I began to doubt his motivations, & integrity. The other important thing to consider is that while he was not working, yet we were partners, my own work was, publicly, severely limited. I feel into a deep depression. He was like a damn anchor! Dead weight that I could  not bring myself to set free, & would certainly not free itself. Again I ached for him to show me & the work the respect it deserved, instead of treating it with such disdain - treating me with such disdain. But it would not be so. As prolific as I was private in those early days, publicly, no one knew. And our shame & sham partnership continued.

My colleges scoffed at me. They thought I was finished, when in fact I was working harder than ever in my life, inspired, &, as they say, 'on a roll', breaking new ground, pushing further & further ahead every day. I waited & waited.... for seven long years & longer, I waited for Olnoff to join me, but in his frustration at not being ablr to lead, he refused to move at all.

You see, if one is overtly generous in private, when that generosity is taken away in public, the public tend to see this as overtly selfish. However I have no interest in the whims of the wicked mob who ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL, get it wrong. My only respect for them in this regard is their consistency. Why is it that society somehow miraculously never fail to get these things arse-about-face? Perhaps it is simply that society is a construct built on fear & can never truly understand the motivations of a single individual built on heart & soul & brain. I have been personally stunted somewhat socially because of this tendency to knock heads with the collective, and tho I remain nervous socially & formally awkward - knowing that often doing the right thing will make me appear the 'bad guy' - I continue to do it frankly because I know no other way. I feel safer sticking to my integrity, just as I feel safer not carrying a handgun... though others seem to feel the very opposite way in this regard. I think they're idiots, but again this is a socially unacceptable way of not being dishonestly humble. Bah! If you wonder why I took so long to break the ties with Olnoff, well, its because it broke my heart. It broke my heart that what I was willing to give did not matter to him. That I would give all to him & he would give so little back. It broke my heart that we could not share this wonderful gift, and this happiness. Remember, I knew he had it in him, but only he could find the love/faith/courage to step into the arena. Thus, when I let him go, I was served scorn mercilessly by the press! Hounded & ridiculed. They called me an ego-maniac, a tyrant, a blood-thirsty carnivorous vampire, one even called me a bow-legged, pigeon toed, crossed eyed, four-eyed, harelipped, homosexual, hunchback! Yet I wore it all & never breathed a word, for as far as I'm concerned, blood is sweeter than honey. And by that I mean truth & honor far outweigh the bullshit & vanity of this world, and the fickle unconsidered puddle of piss of public opinion.

Anyway, finally, after seven years I pulled out my coat-tails from under him, & forged forward, alone, but free. I finally completed my masterpiece & shocked the scientific world! Yet, accusations arose regarding Olnoff's whereabouts & contribution. I held my tongue, with at least the dignity of respect not to feed these leeches. When I sent Olnoff from my rooms that fateful day some twenty years ago, he understood what I was doing, and I believe he respected it, he was just not strong enough to do it himself. People on the outside always saw us together, so assumed the work was shared. How different the reality is, behind that convenient curtain! I was patient & wishful, and admittedly, weak. But seven years is long enough! Some people are everybody's friend. They schmooze strangers yet are quite hard on those they love & who love them. Olnoff was one of these most prickly contradictions. He could be as charming & cuddly to any old wanker hanging about, then take his closet friends for granted & use one's love for him as a punching bag & get-out-of-jail-free card. Whereas I am the opposite. Honest to a fault, I don't mind appearing to be the enemy as long as the true enemy is defeated. I give everything I have to my friends & the people I love, yet I don't have many. And maybe that's why. I need very little from them but love. Strangers I don't need anything from at all, thus I can be completely honest with them. I tell all people, friend or foe, what I truly think because I respect them & I respect myself. I know this offends most people, but again, that is not my concern. I am powerless to their fears & it's not going to stop me, tho I cannot say it does upset me a little. Of course it does! My mother told me when I was a lad that I should never expect applause from my peers for doing what they were too weak to do, & it made sense to me even then. So what doesn't kill m makes me deadly! Let the mean old stupid world go it's merry way. I tried with dear Olnoff. I was more than patient and would have loved nothing more than to have shared my work & my life with him, but he would not let that happen. It was his choice, finally. He put in less & less & wondered why he got back less & less. He couldn't understand that very fundamental alchemic rule. So now alone I get out what I put in & more. I was willing to share my work, yet all he could do was take, until he could take no more. He didn't value the work because he didn't work. He didn't value generosity because he could never understand why someone would be that generous. But generosity brings it's own rewards, and if he was only willingly to share, we both could have had it all. But as the great philosopher Nietzsche once bitterly remarked, 'the hand becomes callosed from giving' ...

Alas, I threw the letter unopened into the fire & wandered out across the grounds to feed the ducks, the frosty grass crunching beneath my feet.
 
A new day.