gravity plays favorites

dear k-

I've thought about posting several times over the past few months, but every time I brush the idea aside. It feels more and more like a diary rather than a correspondence. But let's be honest: we've been drifting in that direction for years.

I am actually happy you've been silent. I take it to mean you are happy. You are loved. You are in a good place. You don't need to vent your frustrations or fears, you don't need to sigh about missed opportunities and misplaced ambition, you don't need to while away the time. Someone is keeping your heart in a state of bliss, and for that I am glad.

I wrote a book. But you know that. It's published now. You always told me I needed to take my writing out of the desk drawer. Well, I've gone and done it now so I guess there is no turning back. The anticipation and anxiety I felt was probably inappropriate; I was wrong to think my writing would cause any commotion. It won't even cause a ripple. But at least I can say I tried. At least it is there in case anyone can find some good in it.

Speaking of writing, I've always had an awful time of writing if I feel happy and content. My most productive periods have always come when I have felt ill at ease. Restless. Depressed. Lonely. But now I think I am getting better at finding other motivation. I still linger on the melancholy when it comes to writing, but I'm slowly finding other channels of creativity that are healthier. Less anxious. Less unhappy. Things have been better these days, for the most part. Perhaps its the weather. It always feels good to get a little sun.

I hope you are doing well. Maybe some day I will hear from you again, and I hope it is positive.

Still friends after an ocean of time,
-k

getting even

Dear k-

Alone again. The feeling is starting to grow familiar. I found myself anticipating this split, so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. Still, the sensation of rejection is never a pleasant one. I am also annoyed that it took six bloody months before this guy figured out that apparently I wasn’t his cup of tea. And even then, it didn’t feel like his reasons were sincere. Who needs time to “think” about if this is really what he wants after six months? Who does this out of the blue, in the middle of a pleasant walk in the park?

Oh well, fuck it. As I said, I’ve grown used to the sensation and this time I didn’t shed a tear. I guess that means it wasn’t meant to be, if I didn’t care that much for him. Still, it’s frustrating to be back at square one. I feel like the romantic version of Sisyphus: constantly falling in and out of love.

The world is terrifying these days. Mass killings, threats of nuclear war, natural disasters one after another. It puts one’s own life into perspective and makes it difficult to mourn the loss of a potential friendship/partner when others are losing lives, homes, family. Who knows what is to come next.

I hope you are doing well.

-k

fuck global warming

Dear k-

A large portion of my life has been consumed with a bitter pursuit to experience the autumn of my memory. In actuality, it’s not one single autumn, but the amalgam of several years’ worth of autumns, spanning decades, loosely woven into one ideal memory that I keep reaching for but falling short. It’s comprised of those perfect days, the ones where, if you’re lucky, you pause and think to yourself, “this is exactly what I want in life right now and I am content”. The crisp breath of winter’s chill beginning to sneak into the late summer air, still heavy and radiant with accrued heat of the sultry months prior, the wind just barely nipping through my sweater, staring up at a blue morning sky unblemished by a single fluff of cloud. In the air there is the scent of a fire, carried by the intermittent breeze, from some neighbor burning leaves in his yard. It’s technically illegal within the city limits but I don’t complain because I like it; it makes me feel at ease and so I breathe deep and hope I never forget how that scent makes me feel.

Halloween is approaching. I have a marching band competition in a few weeks. I have college homecoming this month. I have to start winterizing my garden soon. I volunteered to monitor the corn maze with the other kids from church tomorrow night and my mom said she’d drive me and my friend. The pavement feels different under my shoes these days. It’s no longer the sizzling bright expanse that felt so brutally hard and intolerant the past few months. Now it feels somehow softer, older, more tame, gritty with sand and sparkled with broken glass, more forgiving in the wake of the first frost of the year. The gutters rustle with papery leaves of reds, yellows, but mostly browns. With every gust they shiver and break out into a thrilled form of applause, cackling as they tumble across the asphalt. I’m fourteen years old walking home from practice. I’m twenty, ambling across the University quad towards the library. I’m twenty five, standing outside a cafe with a steaming black coffee warming my bare hand, thinking about the exam I have to take in a few days.

Last autumn was nothing but a disappointment. We sweated through the months that are normally reserved for that first shiver, and then within a week the temperatures plummeted so violently that the flora did not know how to respond. Trees went from being green to suddenly bare. Grasses shriveled so quickly it seemed like the world changed nearly overnight. Snow was on the ground to muffle the crackling shuffle of leaves before the first gust could even catch them. It left me feeling empty, cheated. There would be no ideal autumn memories to log for this season. And it seems, upon retrospect, that the last few years have followed the same pattern. The quintessential transitional season is becoming rarer as I get older. Is it because my memory is flawed? Am I casting everything in the rosy glow of youth? Or are is my favorite season truly becoming scarcer? Do I have less to celebrate now? Am I not taking the same time to pause and admire?

Here’s to hoping this autumn will give us something better.

-k

places

Dear k-

I have been thinking about airports. For the most part, I like airports. In this day and age I know that might sound strange. Most people equate airports with long lines, stress, bitter cups of overpriced coffee, lost baggage, headaches…And I am not denying that all those things certainly exist at airports. I think what I like about airports is that they are a limbo. I have always been drawn towards transitional spaces. At the airport no one is permanent, everyone is en route, even the people who work there never truly seem to be established. They constantly rotate, change shifts, wander between gates, never limited to one post. So whenever I have a flight planned I arrive 2-3 hours early, even when I have a very early morning departure. I love to sit, headphones snuggly tucked into my ears, and watch. I watch people bustle to and fro, a family trying to make sure everyone is accounted for, a twenty-something turned face-in on a bench of seats, trying to sneak in a nap. Staring out the windows I watch the metal behemoths lift soundlessly into the air, as if they are just floating away with hardly any effort and I almost forget their bellies are seeded with human beings.

I think I also like airports because they satisfy my restlessness. To be in an airport means I am going somewhere. There is something ahead to anticipate. Even if the final destination is not a pleasant one, such as a funeral, I still feel a guilty contentment from the journey. I’ve wondered if I was forced to travel more frequently, such as for work, and if I spent more time in airports if they would lose their appeal. Would they become the dusty, dingy, stressful places that most people see them as?

I hope that is never the case.

-k

like clockwork

Dear K-

You have nothing to feel ashamed of in this circumstance. People of our disposition fall in and out of love, even though many times we wish we could be in love, even if just to spare the feelings of the other person. I know I have debated with myself alone at the kitchen table over a cup of tea, asking why I no longer can feel as enthused, as mesmerized as I once was, and why I inevitably have to hurt anyone who dares to get close enough to me to care. The heavy chains of guilt are always there. The feeling is unavoidable. I blame myself for leading them on, even if it was inadvertent. I hate to be the source of pain for someone, especially when I don’t have a good excuse other than “I just don’t feel the same anymore”. It makes me nervous. Can I trust my own feelings at this point? When did I become so mercurial, that not even I can predict my sentiments in a month’s time anymore?

I think you made the right decision, if that means anything, coming from me. She doesn’t want you, she just doesn’t want to be alone. I don’t blame her; I’ve been in those uncomfortable shoes before and tried to waltz that same clumsy step. No one benefits.

You can find someone else to dote upon. You can find someone else to make smile. It’s one thing to find someone to elevate to be the center of your life, to admire and adore, but it’s another thing to find a Daisy Buchanan for which to waste your life away. Think about it. Daisy is Gatsby’s ideal, he falls in love with the idea of her, what she represents…but when you look a little deeper, Daisy is really an awful person. She’s a disappointment. Shallow and selfish, she gets by on her beauty and charisma, but she is barely a husk of a being once you scrape off those superficial layers. That was always the problem and the appeal of the Great Gatsby for me: Daisy didn’t seem worthy of the adoration awarded to her. As much as it frustrated me to see someone so hurtful and superficial be worshipped by a wealthy, love struck man for his entire life, it also seemed painfully realistic. Of course someone would throw everything away for her. Some people need that corporal source of light and purpose in their life, and Gatsby was one who needed a goddess, even one that he built up and embellished in his mind, in order to drive him. Don’t be fooled into thinking you need a Daisy Buchanan, K. Find yourself a powerful, eloquent women who not only appreciates your devotion but reciprocates in kind. Find someone who not only sparks the fire in your heart but douses it in gasoline and continues to stoke it with wood throughout the long years, after the initial fuel has long since burned off.

I know. Easier said than done.

I am probably a little more sympathetic than usual because I have also recently hurt a few men whose only offense was trying to love me. I have a heavy heart, K. Many men have tried to lift it and it has only ended in pain.

It’s spring. Try to think of the sun washed afternoons and the lingering cool twilights of summer to come.

Stay vigilant,
-k

Another

Dear K,

It's Spring and I feel guilty. I really tried to do the right thing. What I thought was the right thing. It gets hard to determine what that is sometimes. I was dating this woman, and we had a good time, however anytime it seemed as if the relationship would progress she would pump the brakes and say things like "maybe I shouldn't be dating you, I shouldn't be dating anybody right now, I should be single"

This was fine for a while. We had fun, things were casual. Then we started fighting, started getting distant from each other. We'd be in the same room and hardly talk. One day I said, "it seems like our dynamic has changed, maybe we should break up and just be friends". It seemed like what she wanted, what she kept telling me she needed.

The following week she said she wanted to get back together.

In that week I had realized that I had been spending a lot of time with her, or talking to her, and that this had taken up the focus of my life. I realized that I had spent the preceding months making things about her. I don't know if she ever felt this way, and maybe that's not even true, but it's how I feel about the relationship. Don't get me wrong I love doing that. I love doting on pretty women. It makes me feel good to hear them giggle and laugh and say nobody ever treated them so good. I like to be good, I like to do good things.

She's been sending me long text messages and asking to talk and trying to get back together ever since we broke up. I've been thinking about how I'm going to get to LA.

I still think she's a lovely lady. I still think she's funny and smart and cute. I just don't feel the way I used to about her, and that really hurts her feelings, and that makes me feel guilty.

I don't like it when anybody I care about is hurt. I'll usually try and do just about everything I can to make them feel better. I'll talk it through with them, I'll try and listen as best I can, I'll make jokes and dance around the room, I'll do anything, say anything to get them to stop crying. Sometimes though there's nothing you can do. It's not my job to make her feel better. I know that, but it doesn't stop me from feeling guilty because her feelings are hurt.

Anyways,

I hope everything's good with you,

K

Dear K,

Do you ever think about how hard it is to make things? And how hard it is to not make things? And how when we make things we tell ourselves that we have to make them so well that we become fabulously successful at them? And then we place so much pressure on being validated that it stops being fun to make things?

I'm in a rut right now.

I've got to get to work somehow. I did some good editing though yesterday. Things are moving slowly towards spring up here.

I hope you're well.

Best,

K