by Pamela Tarajcak

My Dearest Albert,

At first, when I started being a Twin Peaks viewer, I didn’t really notice you–too caught up in the mystery and the drama of it all, I suspect.  Years passed by and I couldn’t even watch the show, until your creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, said that they were making new episodes. Finding the series, I started to rewatch and saw you truly for the first time.

I figure if you were real and we had a chance to encounter each other there in that cherry-pie obsessed, what did you call it, “sinkhole,” we would have been bickering more often than not, at least in your first visit.  I would have been unimpressed with your “mask,” knowing that there was a kind, generous, caring man underneath all those cynical layers of harshness and, as Cooper would put it, “this attitude of general unpleasantness.”  I would have set out to give you the exact medicine that you doled out to others. 

However, through your eight episodes (I have watched all of them more times than I can count), I began to fall for you hook, line and sinker.  Your beautiful mind, your unique type of kindness given to everyone you care for, your loyalty and defensiveness to all you care for, your pacifism, your wit (when not used against others), the people you see as role models (Gandhi and King) all made me fall in love with the man who is Albert Rosenfield.  Moreover, I noticed things about you that drove me wild. Your handsome eyes, which were the first things that betrayed that inner kindness and care; your strident, rich and deep voice; your smile, which would light up the room when deployed; your caring hands. 

In your short cameo in Fire Walk With Me, I noticed all of these things and more, which meant that you were the same before the encounter with that little town in Northern Washington.  

Afterwards, with Season 3, I was pleased that you took a more central role and were featured in more episodes.  I found that age had allowed your kindness to show through more and more frequently. My heart was warmed with your mentoring relationship with Tammy Preston; it was sweet and tender to see you in that role.  Though, I did notice something else in Season 3, a sadness in those eyes not present when you were younger. Was it the sand running out? Was it loneliness? Sometimes I wished I could have been there to put a smile on your face.  Sorry, Constance and you were pretty nice together, but I saw you first! I saw you when you were still hiding your true self to the world. She got the mellowed version, I fell in love with the diamond in the rough. 

So thank you for lighting this fan’s fire.  I love you Agent Albert Rosenfield, every last bit of you, even the darker portions of your being.  

Signed,

Pamela Tarajcak