Dear K-
I retract my previous apology for delayed correspondence. While I don’t exactly hold my breath in anticipation of your responses, I do look forward to eventually receiving them. After several weeks and still no word, I begin to wonder if you’ve become distracted by adventures unfolding in closer proximity. I wish I could be as lucky. Here, things are dull and quiet, as if the blanket of snow laying on the ground outside has muffled all activity in the town. I find myself miserable and tired frequently, and I wonder if I’m getting the proper balance of nutrients in my diet. Perhaps it is just this dreary winter weather.
Last we spoke you were enamored by a girl who wouldn’t return your affection. An unfortunately familiar story, I’m afraid. And what of her? Has she yet yielded to your advances, or has she dissolved away like sugar into coffee? Perhaps now you only see and hear her when you shut your eyes. I hope that’s not the case. I hope you can open your eyes and see her smiling before you, sitting cross-legged on the couch beside you. Maybe she’ll fill your life with watercolors, your days seeping into smooth blues and faded greens as she hangs her wrinkled compositions about your living room. Be careful of those artist types, mind you. We tend to be a fairly unstable and unhappy bunch.
But yet I am only left here to speculate and wonder, because I have no denial or confirmation from you. Perhaps you’re busy now with work and you’ve forgotten all about her and everything else external to a new-found business lifestyle. Perhaps she’s finally come around to loving you, and you are so caught up in a new love affair that you don’t have time for a distant friend who only can leave you choppy words upon a stark white page. I wouldn’t be offended if that were the case. Perhaps you simply haven’t turned on your computer for three weeks and are shunning electronic society.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Floating like line-dry laundry in summertime,
-K
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
tirer comme des lapins
Dear K-
Again I find myself apologizing for a lack of correspondence. This time my silence was not entirely intentional- I merely became sidetracked and bogged down and unable to adequately address your letter. Then, when I found myself ready to make a reply, I discovered the g key of my keyboard to be broken. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a response without using a single g. And so I waited, and now this letter may be full of as many g’s as I so desire.
And so with great grinning greetings I gingerly grate out my gentle correspondence.
I hear you have a new flat, something near the center of town and overlooking a garden. That’s all I really need to know about it, for I’ve already perfected a quaint image in my mind of what I expect it to resemble, and in some ways I’m afraid to spoil that daydream. I imagine there’s a firm wooden desk upon which you scrawl your letters and your prose, with your secrets laying stifled in the dark corners of the drawers. The place is relatively well-kept and enjoys lovely natural lighting, although you’ve purchased several floor lamps to aid in lightening the atmosphere at night. Especially now, as the days get shorter, you most likely find artificial lighting as the primarily illumination of your hours (as unfortunate as that may be for our health and happiness).
Whenever I imagine that garden, however, for some reason I picture a sort of graveyard or memorial. There are weeping angels made of stone that hang their dark faces to stare at the neatly trimmed lawn beneath them. The sidewalk is even and holds a gentle curve incorporated purely for aesthetic purposes, to maintain a sense of organic form. I like to picture you ambling through the grass in the dreary winter afternoons, avoiding the cracks in the pavement because you’re afraid you’ll hurt your mother. You imagine the statues to be alive, but to be moving so slowly it is imperceptible to your eyes. Only when you blink, that is what relieves them of their lethargy and for that simple split second when your eyes are closed tight, you imagine they look up to the sky and wail in desperation, they shake their fists and claw at the earth, and a few of them simply let their tears fall to earth to become small round pebbles in the soil at their feet. But maybe not.
Light dawns and marble heads. What the hell does that mean?
-K
Again I find myself apologizing for a lack of correspondence. This time my silence was not entirely intentional- I merely became sidetracked and bogged down and unable to adequately address your letter. Then, when I found myself ready to make a reply, I discovered the g key of my keyboard to be broken. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a response without using a single g. And so I waited, and now this letter may be full of as many g’s as I so desire.
And so with great grinning greetings I gingerly grate out my gentle correspondence.
I hear you have a new flat, something near the center of town and overlooking a garden. That’s all I really need to know about it, for I’ve already perfected a quaint image in my mind of what I expect it to resemble, and in some ways I’m afraid to spoil that daydream. I imagine there’s a firm wooden desk upon which you scrawl your letters and your prose, with your secrets laying stifled in the dark corners of the drawers. The place is relatively well-kept and enjoys lovely natural lighting, although you’ve purchased several floor lamps to aid in lightening the atmosphere at night. Especially now, as the days get shorter, you most likely find artificial lighting as the primarily illumination of your hours (as unfortunate as that may be for our health and happiness).
Whenever I imagine that garden, however, for some reason I picture a sort of graveyard or memorial. There are weeping angels made of stone that hang their dark faces to stare at the neatly trimmed lawn beneath them. The sidewalk is even and holds a gentle curve incorporated purely for aesthetic purposes, to maintain a sense of organic form. I like to picture you ambling through the grass in the dreary winter afternoons, avoiding the cracks in the pavement because you’re afraid you’ll hurt your mother. You imagine the statues to be alive, but to be moving so slowly it is imperceptible to your eyes. Only when you blink, that is what relieves them of their lethargy and for that simple split second when your eyes are closed tight, you imagine they look up to the sky and wail in desperation, they shake their fists and claw at the earth, and a few of them simply let their tears fall to earth to become small round pebbles in the soil at their feet. But maybe not.
Light dawns and marble heads. What the hell does that mean?
-K
Monday, November 22, 2010
Mysteries of Ink and Paper in Times New Roman
Dear K,
We just can't stop breaking our own hearts, can we?
I've read the letter twenty times or more and every day it changes. Some days it is for you and on other days it was written for someone else.
I'll send it to you anyway, fuck it.
I'm just so hesitant because it is very true, and while I'm honest, I'm not very good at telling the truth. I'll admit to everything, but not all the time.
It's just so much distance, and so much space, and... I don't know what to do all the time. Its like I'm in a giant empty room, with puddles on the floor, and no visitors for days and days, and it's just me to write on the walls and walls and walls.
I've got nobody to bounce off of, nobody to talk to, and I smile at the night watch men and call my parents back at night, and say that I'm doing great and that I'm up for a promotion soon, and yeah I'm glad this is where I'm at, and sometimes I am, but... there's that space....
AND then there's you. I thought I had you to myself. We were prison inmates trapped together in solitary passing notes between the bars, but then...
I don't know where this is going anyway.
I'll send the letter. Maybe it will get to the right person, but I think the wrong person wrote it.
Who knows, the postal system is tricky these days.
You've never disappointed me,
K
We just can't stop breaking our own hearts, can we?
I've read the letter twenty times or more and every day it changes. Some days it is for you and on other days it was written for someone else.
I'll send it to you anyway, fuck it.
I'm just so hesitant because it is very true, and while I'm honest, I'm not very good at telling the truth. I'll admit to everything, but not all the time.
It's just so much distance, and so much space, and... I don't know what to do all the time. Its like I'm in a giant empty room, with puddles on the floor, and no visitors for days and days, and it's just me to write on the walls and walls and walls.
I've got nobody to bounce off of, nobody to talk to, and I smile at the night watch men and call my parents back at night, and say that I'm doing great and that I'm up for a promotion soon, and yeah I'm glad this is where I'm at, and sometimes I am, but... there's that space....
AND then there's you. I thought I had you to myself. We were prison inmates trapped together in solitary passing notes between the bars, but then...
I don't know where this is going anyway.
I'll send the letter. Maybe it will get to the right person, but I think the wrong person wrote it.
Who knows, the postal system is tricky these days.
You've never disappointed me,
K
Sunday, November 21, 2010
broken dreams club
Dear K-
I waited for your letter to come. Even though I couldn't find a way to work up the courage to talk to you in person, I found myself anticipating your letter more and more with every afternoon it did not arrive. Discovering now that you never sent it, I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, but there's also a breath of relief. You say you wrote it to someone else, someone who wasn't the me that you had envisioned. Your realization of the incongruence of your ideal, romanticized version of myself and the actual, less than idyllic reality comes as a painful yet necessary conclusion. This is why I stopped writing you. This is why I stopped answering the phone. I became afraid because I knew I would never live up to the image you had projected in the cinema of your mind, that shimmering, scintillating portrait glowing on the big screen in the dark, smoky theatre. You were the only member of the audience, but you were captivated by your own production as it glittered before you. But I am not that film. I am the girl with messy hair in the light booth running the film through the machines. I am the bored, dull girl with sad Slavic eyes trapped behind the thick glass of the ticket booth, tearing off your stubs and shoving them back to you with a thin, tight lipped smile.
And I know, I know, that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted that perfected love that flickers pure and beautiful in the soft focus, a distant and untouchable idea that could be pined for and dreamed about but never realized. And you achieved that. But I couldn’t take it. I am not that girl, and I don’t think I could ever be that girl, and it hurts me to admit that I cannot be what you desire me to become. I’d hate for you to waste any more ink or any more dreams on someone as miserable as me.
I understand why you did it, and I understand why you need it. But it can’t be me. It can’t be me anymore, because I’m just as lost as you. I start every day the same way I end them: with a handful of anti-acid tablets and the sign of the cross. It’s a rough world out there, but we’re both battling through it and searching for a happiness that may never come. We were born with some sense of entitlement, as if we think we deserve to find the perfect life and the ideal love. But there is no guarantee. Our searching may be in vain. Our happiness might only go as deep as a tidy new flat with a neat little garden or a memory of a distant city visited long ago, or the smell of her perfume or the sound of a lingering chord played upon our heartstrings. There may be nothing more than those simple, brief daily pleasures. We may spend our entire lives yearning for something that was never promised to us in the start.
And I don’t think I can make you happy the way you wish I could.
I did my best; it wasn't much,
-K
I waited for your letter to come. Even though I couldn't find a way to work up the courage to talk to you in person, I found myself anticipating your letter more and more with every afternoon it did not arrive. Discovering now that you never sent it, I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, but there's also a breath of relief. You say you wrote it to someone else, someone who wasn't the me that you had envisioned. Your realization of the incongruence of your ideal, romanticized version of myself and the actual, less than idyllic reality comes as a painful yet necessary conclusion. This is why I stopped writing you. This is why I stopped answering the phone. I became afraid because I knew I would never live up to the image you had projected in the cinema of your mind, that shimmering, scintillating portrait glowing on the big screen in the dark, smoky theatre. You were the only member of the audience, but you were captivated by your own production as it glittered before you. But I am not that film. I am the girl with messy hair in the light booth running the film through the machines. I am the bored, dull girl with sad Slavic eyes trapped behind the thick glass of the ticket booth, tearing off your stubs and shoving them back to you with a thin, tight lipped smile.
And I know, I know, that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted that perfected love that flickers pure and beautiful in the soft focus, a distant and untouchable idea that could be pined for and dreamed about but never realized. And you achieved that. But I couldn’t take it. I am not that girl, and I don’t think I could ever be that girl, and it hurts me to admit that I cannot be what you desire me to become. I’d hate for you to waste any more ink or any more dreams on someone as miserable as me.
I understand why you did it, and I understand why you need it. But it can’t be me. It can’t be me anymore, because I’m just as lost as you. I start every day the same way I end them: with a handful of anti-acid tablets and the sign of the cross. It’s a rough world out there, but we’re both battling through it and searching for a happiness that may never come. We were born with some sense of entitlement, as if we think we deserve to find the perfect life and the ideal love. But there is no guarantee. Our searching may be in vain. Our happiness might only go as deep as a tidy new flat with a neat little garden or a memory of a distant city visited long ago, or the smell of her perfume or the sound of a lingering chord played upon our heartstrings. There may be nothing more than those simple, brief daily pleasures. We may spend our entire lives yearning for something that was never promised to us in the start.
And I don’t think I can make you happy the way you wish I could.
I did my best; it wasn't much,
-K
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
This One's Too Short And Self-Obsessed
Dear K,
Well I'm glad you're out there, even if it is just in the woodwork. I wish you wouldn't tuck into yourself so much, but then again you're always fun to chase. I told you I wrote you a letter, and I did, but I don't think it's for you, I think I wrote it and it turned out to be for someone else, or the you in my head turned out to be someone else.
I'm not going to mail the letter to you. I'll try to mail something else though. It's a watercolor I made when I was trying to think of ways to cheer you up.
The whole lite-brite thing makes sense. I've always allowed others to arrange my life, and I rarely held onto any part for myself. I guess I thought that's what Jesus did, and that's what we should all do with our lives. When I was little I used to want to be Jesus, and every Good Friday I'd imagine dying for everyone, trying to redeem them all. I used to shiver and shake in the pew.
This took one took a dark turn,
I'm ending it now,
K
Well I'm glad you're out there, even if it is just in the woodwork. I wish you wouldn't tuck into yourself so much, but then again you're always fun to chase. I told you I wrote you a letter, and I did, but I don't think it's for you, I think I wrote it and it turned out to be for someone else, or the you in my head turned out to be someone else.
I'm not going to mail the letter to you. I'll try to mail something else though. It's a watercolor I made when I was trying to think of ways to cheer you up.
The whole lite-brite thing makes sense. I've always allowed others to arrange my life, and I rarely held onto any part for myself. I guess I thought that's what Jesus did, and that's what we should all do with our lives. When I was little I used to want to be Jesus, and every Good Friday I'd imagine dying for everyone, trying to redeem them all. I used to shiver and shake in the pew.
This took one took a dark turn,
I'm ending it now,
K
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
vsechno nejlepsi
Dear K-
I’ve been hiding. I’ve been weaving in and out of the wood work, keeping to the shadows, remaining quiet and tucked away. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It is not that I am invisible; it is more like something within me compelled people to look away. They know I’m there, lingering at the periphery, but they have no desire to turn and see me face on. I’m nobody- I’m just a blur in the crowd, the nameless entity in the optometry office writing down your health history. When they fall asleep at night, do they think of me? What about 30 minutes after they’ve left the office, are they still wondering who I am or what I’m doing with my life?
No. And that’s exactly what I want right now.
Obviously things have been a little uncertain in my life lately. Doctors call to tell me they don’t know what’s wrong, and they need to run more tests. I’m never really sure how to react, and so I merely adopt a friendly tone and assure them that I’m willing to submit to whatever they wish. But do I really have a choice? I see people every day who are slowly withering away from age, disease, misuse, disuse, and abuse. Why should I really be so different?
I am sorry I wouldn’t pick up the phone. I haven’t picked it up for a while, and mostly I just sit and watch it ring. It shimmies and slowly circles about in place upon the table, flashing bright white lights and singing aloud. A part of me really wants to pick it up. When I speak into the receiver, I inherently adopt that friendly, perky tone again, and for as long as I’m on the line I’m as healthy and chipper as one could be. But as soon as I hang up, the deception is gone and the smoke has cleared. I’m back to reality and my miserable self, and it only makes me feel more empty and pathetic than before.
I am the mess of colors which you describe. I’m a muddy and cramped palette, the thick oily pigments occasionally smearing into each other and becoming a sickly grey.
You are more like an arrangement of colors on a lite brite table. When your bulb is out, there’s nothing but a shadow, a blank black canvas of gloom and melancholy. But when you’re on, when you’re up and at ‘em, that’s when everyone admires you. You glitter in fantastic neon hues, your plastic pegs rearranged at whim to depict laughing clowns, stunning landscapes, bouquets of balloons, and whatever your heart desires. Even if it’s just a swirling river of colored lights, it brings a warm glow to the darkness surrounding us and brings comfort to sleeping children alone in their beds.
You smell like baking bread, almost done in the oven. It’s so light and airy, yet it snakes into your nostrils and fills yours lungs like a warm embrace from the inside. A scent so comforting and happy, like a winter day spent indoors in good company, with spiced cider in mugs to warm your hands and stomach. It also makes me think of home, and when I spent an entire summer destroying whole days making batch after batch of loaves, trying to find the perfect recipe for a French baguette. But I never got it quite right. So there’s always a tinge of sadness associated with the smell. A scent of disappointment and regret.
Still clinging to the dullness of dusk,
-K
I’ve been hiding. I’ve been weaving in and out of the wood work, keeping to the shadows, remaining quiet and tucked away. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It is not that I am invisible; it is more like something within me compelled people to look away. They know I’m there, lingering at the periphery, but they have no desire to turn and see me face on. I’m nobody- I’m just a blur in the crowd, the nameless entity in the optometry office writing down your health history. When they fall asleep at night, do they think of me? What about 30 minutes after they’ve left the office, are they still wondering who I am or what I’m doing with my life?
No. And that’s exactly what I want right now.
Obviously things have been a little uncertain in my life lately. Doctors call to tell me they don’t know what’s wrong, and they need to run more tests. I’m never really sure how to react, and so I merely adopt a friendly tone and assure them that I’m willing to submit to whatever they wish. But do I really have a choice? I see people every day who are slowly withering away from age, disease, misuse, disuse, and abuse. Why should I really be so different?
I am sorry I wouldn’t pick up the phone. I haven’t picked it up for a while, and mostly I just sit and watch it ring. It shimmies and slowly circles about in place upon the table, flashing bright white lights and singing aloud. A part of me really wants to pick it up. When I speak into the receiver, I inherently adopt that friendly, perky tone again, and for as long as I’m on the line I’m as healthy and chipper as one could be. But as soon as I hang up, the deception is gone and the smoke has cleared. I’m back to reality and my miserable self, and it only makes me feel more empty and pathetic than before.
I am the mess of colors which you describe. I’m a muddy and cramped palette, the thick oily pigments occasionally smearing into each other and becoming a sickly grey.
You are more like an arrangement of colors on a lite brite table. When your bulb is out, there’s nothing but a shadow, a blank black canvas of gloom and melancholy. But when you’re on, when you’re up and at ‘em, that’s when everyone admires you. You glitter in fantastic neon hues, your plastic pegs rearranged at whim to depict laughing clowns, stunning landscapes, bouquets of balloons, and whatever your heart desires. Even if it’s just a swirling river of colored lights, it brings a warm glow to the darkness surrounding us and brings comfort to sleeping children alone in their beds.
You smell like baking bread, almost done in the oven. It’s so light and airy, yet it snakes into your nostrils and fills yours lungs like a warm embrace from the inside. A scent so comforting and happy, like a winter day spent indoors in good company, with spiced cider in mugs to warm your hands and stomach. It also makes me think of home, and when I spent an entire summer destroying whole days making batch after batch of loaves, trying to find the perfect recipe for a French baguette. But I never got it quite right. So there’s always a tinge of sadness associated with the smell. A scent of disappointment and regret.
Still clinging to the dullness of dusk,
-K
Monday, November 15, 2010
Synesthesia's Getting Too Popular These Days
Dear K,
You haven't returned my calls or letters for a while now. I've found artifacts of you on the internet, so I know you're still out there somewhere.
Help me understand.
Please.
I found an apartment. The windows look out on a sculpture garden. It's just a small studio, but I think it will be home. I hope to have it by the end of the month, and then maybe I'll feel better about my place in the world. I'll lace up my shoes in the morning and walk to work. I'll sit down every other week and make a budget and pay my bills on time and do my own income taxes.
For my birthday I asked for kitchen knives, which I received along with a blender. I'm going to cook things for myself and be healthy and fit. I'm going to lose all this weight I put on in college trying to drink away my sorrows and angst.
I've got an attachment for my bicycle, it props up the back wheel and provides resistance against the spin. Every night I sit on it and pedal, and I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
Today I got a library card. The library is on the other side of my apartment building, and it's windows are all covered in a copper glaze, and it always reminds me of the end of a Summer and the middle of Fall. The end of Fall is dark and deep deep blow, freckled around the edges with crisp white and frozen breath. The end of Winter is a sort of warming Robin's Egg blue. The end of Spring is the end of romance, it is the end of lilac dreams, but it is a sort of trumpeting sound, Spring doesn't have a color.
You are a sort of tangled mess of things. You're violet and crimson and jet-jet black, but also turquoise and streaks of white and high electric blue, and somewhere in there is some pink, but that might just be when you blush.
You sound like a carousel.
And you smell like roses and onions in white wine, would you prefer if I said shallots? But also icewater, crisp and refreshing, with the slight metallic taste that is the iron in your own blood.
Come back to this place of letters,
I'll make it safe again,
K
You haven't returned my calls or letters for a while now. I've found artifacts of you on the internet, so I know you're still out there somewhere.
Help me understand.
Please.
I found an apartment. The windows look out on a sculpture garden. It's just a small studio, but I think it will be home. I hope to have it by the end of the month, and then maybe I'll feel better about my place in the world. I'll lace up my shoes in the morning and walk to work. I'll sit down every other week and make a budget and pay my bills on time and do my own income taxes.
For my birthday I asked for kitchen knives, which I received along with a blender. I'm going to cook things for myself and be healthy and fit. I'm going to lose all this weight I put on in college trying to drink away my sorrows and angst.
I've got an attachment for my bicycle, it props up the back wheel and provides resistance against the spin. Every night I sit on it and pedal, and I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
Today I got a library card. The library is on the other side of my apartment building, and it's windows are all covered in a copper glaze, and it always reminds me of the end of a Summer and the middle of Fall. The end of Fall is dark and deep deep blow, freckled around the edges with crisp white and frozen breath. The end of Winter is a sort of warming Robin's Egg blue. The end of Spring is the end of romance, it is the end of lilac dreams, but it is a sort of trumpeting sound, Spring doesn't have a color.
You are a sort of tangled mess of things. You're violet and crimson and jet-jet black, but also turquoise and streaks of white and high electric blue, and somewhere in there is some pink, but that might just be when you blush.
You sound like a carousel.
And you smell like roses and onions in white wine, would you prefer if I said shallots? But also icewater, crisp and refreshing, with the slight metallic taste that is the iron in your own blood.
Come back to this place of letters,
I'll make it safe again,
K
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Dear K,
I will write you a love letter. But not here. I will write you more than one love letter but not here. This space between us that exists here is too fragile for the crashing words and thrilling sentences in a love letter.
Between us here we have erected some sort of spider web of overly worked words, and melodrama and it is beautiful and unnecessary and great and full of self pity and oh how I love every minute of it, but it is fragile and delicate, but then maybe I wouldn't be honest to this space if I didn't write a love letter here.
" Dear K,
I don't know how long it has been since I've seen you. But I do know that I fell into a deep trap set by ourselves, and now I imagine sitting across a table from you and drinking wine with you and maybe at some point in the evening I point towards the cinema screen and kiss you on the cheek, slightly, not in a forward way, but in a way that reminds you of how young and earnest and bright I really am, and that reminds you that my breath smells of mint and warmth.
Or we never went to the movies, and instead it was spring or summer and after dinner, there has to be dinner, we walk in some perfumed garden and I steal your hand and wrap your fingers around mine, wouldn't that be grand?
We'll talk about the children we wouldn't want to have until we've known each other for at least half of this decade. You'll want to name them something practical like John or Susan and I'll argue for Telamachus and Orpheus and Persephone and Rhea or Euphrates or something out of Byron, but of course I don't really mean it, and neither do you, of course we don't even have any plans beyond whether or not to look the other in the eye and see whether the moonlight bouncing of their skin reminds you of the way you wanted to feel when you smelled flowers as a child, and whether or not that means you name a child Susan or John.
But more than these I want to fell your weight beside me. I want to slide into a booth at a restaurant and feel you move on my left, feel pulled into you slightly, but more the other way around. I want to walk down the street with you, and I want us to walk at the same pace because we figured out how fast the other person walks and we met somewhere in the middle. I wan to feel your breath as your lungs inhale and exhale. I want to watch your eyes as they watch mine and we'll try not to make a sign or laugh as we stare at each other face to face in bed on our sides in the morning.
I want to fail miserably at the Sunday crossword puzzle and have you take it away from me and master it easily and tease me mercilessly the rest of the day, because we've spent the whole day together.
I want to go out to dance and always have a dance partner and not have to bump and grind and rub up against strangers.
I think that it may be you that I want.
-K "
I know it isn't a very good love letter and it may be to honest, but it might all be a lie too. I'm not sure what's real in my emotion-box anymore. I've become a heartless romantic, cold and calculating and full of passion-less passion.
Where did I lose my targets?
-K
I will write you a love letter. But not here. I will write you more than one love letter but not here. This space between us that exists here is too fragile for the crashing words and thrilling sentences in a love letter.
Between us here we have erected some sort of spider web of overly worked words, and melodrama and it is beautiful and unnecessary and great and full of self pity and oh how I love every minute of it, but it is fragile and delicate, but then maybe I wouldn't be honest to this space if I didn't write a love letter here.
" Dear K,
I don't know how long it has been since I've seen you. But I do know that I fell into a deep trap set by ourselves, and now I imagine sitting across a table from you and drinking wine with you and maybe at some point in the evening I point towards the cinema screen and kiss you on the cheek, slightly, not in a forward way, but in a way that reminds you of how young and earnest and bright I really am, and that reminds you that my breath smells of mint and warmth.
Or we never went to the movies, and instead it was spring or summer and after dinner, there has to be dinner, we walk in some perfumed garden and I steal your hand and wrap your fingers around mine, wouldn't that be grand?
We'll talk about the children we wouldn't want to have until we've known each other for at least half of this decade. You'll want to name them something practical like John or Susan and I'll argue for Telamachus and Orpheus and Persephone and Rhea or Euphrates or something out of Byron, but of course I don't really mean it, and neither do you, of course we don't even have any plans beyond whether or not to look the other in the eye and see whether the moonlight bouncing of their skin reminds you of the way you wanted to feel when you smelled flowers as a child, and whether or not that means you name a child Susan or John.
But more than these I want to fell your weight beside me. I want to slide into a booth at a restaurant and feel you move on my left, feel pulled into you slightly, but more the other way around. I want to walk down the street with you, and I want us to walk at the same pace because we figured out how fast the other person walks and we met somewhere in the middle. I wan to feel your breath as your lungs inhale and exhale. I want to watch your eyes as they watch mine and we'll try not to make a sign or laugh as we stare at each other face to face in bed on our sides in the morning.
I want to fail miserably at the Sunday crossword puzzle and have you take it away from me and master it easily and tease me mercilessly the rest of the day, because we've spent the whole day together.
I want to go out to dance and always have a dance partner and not have to bump and grind and rub up against strangers.
I think that it may be you that I want.
-K "
I know it isn't a very good love letter and it may be to honest, but it might all be a lie too. I'm not sure what's real in my emotion-box anymore. I've become a heartless romantic, cold and calculating and full of passion-less passion.
Where did I lose my targets?
-K
we all have your shortcomings
Dear K-
When I was young, I liked to read the Confessions of St. Augustine. I can’t say I can remember it word for word today, but several parts really stuck with me over the years. One line I have certainly retained in my memory is a portion that I read over-and-over on cold winter nights like these. “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love…I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love…”
I have always wanted to love. The idea makes my heart feel airy with delight, and yet I have difficulty finding people to focus my affection upon. As much as I wish to experience love and to have some feeling of devotion or dedication, to be able to write love letters, to take someone out to dinner and stare across the table content to say nothing at all because my adoration crosses beyond the threshold of words, I am unable to find that relationship. And so I wait, in love with the idea of love and yet not in love. With this clumsy explanation I attempt to relate to your desire to reach out in your loneliness and yet admit you're not in love. You’re seeking the idea, the blissful feeling of having someone to think about and converse with, but without actually having to dedicate any actual feelings or hassle with the commitment. I suppose I can understand that. Just don’t expect me not to ever write you a reply. I reserve the right on these lonely winter nights, when I hunch over my desk half-naked in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep because I’m dwelling upon regrets and Brno, to draft up some responses. Perhaps I could use the relief just as much as you.
We’re more alike than you may think. You know me perhaps better than most simply because you’ve read my writings. You know how I feel when I’m alone with no comfort except a blank sheet of paper and a dull pencil. You’ve seen the me that I hide from the common world, the me that hoards receipts and old shopping lists, the me that thinks of lovers lost and yearns for days that can never return, the me that cries at the thought of tiramisu and still dreams of running paths in Slovenia and of a certain dark-eyed Slav. But what can I do? I have to let it out somehow. And just as you need to write letters, I have to let someone know that I’m not fully okay inside and know that I won’t be immediately judged. I’m sinking deep into myself, especially now that I’m alone here.
I’m always alone in winter.
Throw me flowers. I’ll pick them up and press them between the pages of heavy books, preserving their fragile, lovely petals for years to come.
Slowly fading into winter,
-K
When I was young, I liked to read the Confessions of St. Augustine. I can’t say I can remember it word for word today, but several parts really stuck with me over the years. One line I have certainly retained in my memory is a portion that I read over-and-over on cold winter nights like these. “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love…I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love…”
I have always wanted to love. The idea makes my heart feel airy with delight, and yet I have difficulty finding people to focus my affection upon. As much as I wish to experience love and to have some feeling of devotion or dedication, to be able to write love letters, to take someone out to dinner and stare across the table content to say nothing at all because my adoration crosses beyond the threshold of words, I am unable to find that relationship. And so I wait, in love with the idea of love and yet not in love. With this clumsy explanation I attempt to relate to your desire to reach out in your loneliness and yet admit you're not in love. You’re seeking the idea, the blissful feeling of having someone to think about and converse with, but without actually having to dedicate any actual feelings or hassle with the commitment. I suppose I can understand that. Just don’t expect me not to ever write you a reply. I reserve the right on these lonely winter nights, when I hunch over my desk half-naked in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep because I’m dwelling upon regrets and Brno, to draft up some responses. Perhaps I could use the relief just as much as you.
We’re more alike than you may think. You know me perhaps better than most simply because you’ve read my writings. You know how I feel when I’m alone with no comfort except a blank sheet of paper and a dull pencil. You’ve seen the me that I hide from the common world, the me that hoards receipts and old shopping lists, the me that thinks of lovers lost and yearns for days that can never return, the me that cries at the thought of tiramisu and still dreams of running paths in Slovenia and of a certain dark-eyed Slav. But what can I do? I have to let it out somehow. And just as you need to write letters, I have to let someone know that I’m not fully okay inside and know that I won’t be immediately judged. I’m sinking deep into myself, especially now that I’m alone here.
I’m always alone in winter.
Throw me flowers. I’ll pick them up and press them between the pages of heavy books, preserving their fragile, lovely petals for years to come.
Slowly fading into winter,
-K
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
something about tonight
Dear K,
It's me again. I don't know why, but tonight is a night for a mental release, catharsis. I'm going to hollow my nerves out for a while here. Don't take anything too seriously, unless you want to.
How prepared are you for my neuroses? You probably know them all already, but at the rate we're going you're going to be on the receiving end of an out pouring. Winter is starting and so is my seasonal misery in repose.
I love winter, as I love self-pity and sorrow and wallowing and crying and grieving for things that never happened and things that did and the possibilities in between, as I love the cold wind on my face and the feeling of my body shutting down as the temperature drops, and fighting back and prickling and numbing and beating and dying and all while staring at the stars walking alone with my back to the wind.
I love winter, but nobody loves me in winter.
I just thought I'd warn you that I'm going to become insufferable and pessimistic in email form, on the phone I'll probably be the usual cheery optimist everyone meets. But you might detect a tone or a pause or a swallow, and I'll play it off as being tired, and it is important that you allow me to think that I've fooled you into believing nothing is wrong, that is an important part of this game.
Are you ready for winter?
And then there's that whole issue about our escape. Can we pretend that I only invited you?
I'm so alone here.
I spend every minute of the day in my head, up the staircase of my fantasies, and it has been a long time since I came down. The next part won't make sense, and I'm trying hard not to delete it right now and forget I ever wrote it, but I try to be honest with you, and I'm not even sure what I mean in the next paragraph but I know that it is honest and earnest.
I need to write love letters. Can I write them to you until we agree that I shouldn't? I'll write them and you'll read them and they won't even have to be about you if you don't want them, they could be if you wanted them but that's not what they are, love letters are like flowers thrown onstage there is a an aim and a target but while they are in the air they belong to nobody, and when they land at the feet of the cast they mean nothing until they are picked up and claimed.
How would you feel about me throwing flowers at your feet?
You don't have to pick them up,
K
It's me again. I don't know why, but tonight is a night for a mental release, catharsis. I'm going to hollow my nerves out for a while here. Don't take anything too seriously, unless you want to.
How prepared are you for my neuroses? You probably know them all already, but at the rate we're going you're going to be on the receiving end of an out pouring. Winter is starting and so is my seasonal misery in repose.
I love winter, as I love self-pity and sorrow and wallowing and crying and grieving for things that never happened and things that did and the possibilities in between, as I love the cold wind on my face and the feeling of my body shutting down as the temperature drops, and fighting back and prickling and numbing and beating and dying and all while staring at the stars walking alone with my back to the wind.
I love winter, but nobody loves me in winter.
I just thought I'd warn you that I'm going to become insufferable and pessimistic in email form, on the phone I'll probably be the usual cheery optimist everyone meets. But you might detect a tone or a pause or a swallow, and I'll play it off as being tired, and it is important that you allow me to think that I've fooled you into believing nothing is wrong, that is an important part of this game.
Are you ready for winter?
And then there's that whole issue about our escape. Can we pretend that I only invited you?
I'm so alone here.
I spend every minute of the day in my head, up the staircase of my fantasies, and it has been a long time since I came down. The next part won't make sense, and I'm trying hard not to delete it right now and forget I ever wrote it, but I try to be honest with you, and I'm not even sure what I mean in the next paragraph but I know that it is honest and earnest.
I need to write love letters. Can I write them to you until we agree that I shouldn't? I'll write them and you'll read them and they won't even have to be about you if you don't want them, they could be if you wanted them but that's not what they are, love letters are like flowers thrown onstage there is a an aim and a target but while they are in the air they belong to nobody, and when they land at the feet of the cast they mean nothing until they are picked up and claimed.
How would you feel about me throwing flowers at your feet?
You don't have to pick them up,
K
more than anything else
Dear K,
One conflict? I have a thousand hopes and dreams for my life.
I want everything for my life. I want to do great things, and I want to do very small things. I want to live so well that they make statues of me in foreign cities, and I want to have legendary vices and habits. I have ambitions that cannot be met in one lifetime, but I don't want to live forever.
I'm afraid of a lot of things. But my biggest fear is forgetting. I feel things slipping from me some days, and other days the memories tip toe away without me noticing.
Will you help me remember?
More than anything else,
K
One conflict? I have a thousand hopes and dreams for my life.
I want everything for my life. I want to do great things, and I want to do very small things. I want to live so well that they make statues of me in foreign cities, and I want to have legendary vices and habits. I have ambitions that cannot be met in one lifetime, but I don't want to live forever.
I'm afraid of a lot of things. But my biggest fear is forgetting. I feel things slipping from me some days, and other days the memories tip toe away without me noticing.
Will you help me remember?
More than anything else,
K
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
sunset soon forgotten
Dear K-
I’d like to believe every one of us has that conflicting inner self, the one that is throbbing with pure and possibly irrational desires, usually concentrated into one main pipe dream. For you, it’s sailing through waves buttered golden by a setting sun, drifting wherever the wind so pleases. For me, it’s returning to my homeland. We both know that these things have an incredibly small chance of ever occurring, and if we ever should manage to accomplish our dream it will never be able to live up to its sparkling, pristine projection cast within our minds. It is simply fated to never be.
And so we grow up, we get our jobs and distract ourselves from day to day with the tasks that come our way. The rent is due. Your boss wants you to draft up the new copy of the lease. Your fridge is empty again. But at the end of the day, when you lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, we inevitably return to that deeply seeded dream. You see the undulating waters; hear the slap of the waves against the bow of your gently pitching craft. We’re beautiful and young and happy. I’m wandering the streets of Brno, smelling the brewery down the block and watching the trams go to sleep. I’m still young and athletic and there’s adventure with each and every day.
But look at us now. Should we really be disappointed in what we are today? I don’t necessarily think that we are dissatisfied, but we’re at a point in our lives where we have to buckle down and make the call. We’re putting on the slacks and suits everyday and realizing we’ve chosen our path and it’s finally time to start making some commitments if we hope to get anywhere. It’s God-damn terrifying.
I will take care of your eyes until my own give out on me. I will be there as long as you are still willing to talk to me and receive me during visiting hours.
I will escape with you.
-K
I’d like to believe every one of us has that conflicting inner self, the one that is throbbing with pure and possibly irrational desires, usually concentrated into one main pipe dream. For you, it’s sailing through waves buttered golden by a setting sun, drifting wherever the wind so pleases. For me, it’s returning to my homeland. We both know that these things have an incredibly small chance of ever occurring, and if we ever should manage to accomplish our dream it will never be able to live up to its sparkling, pristine projection cast within our minds. It is simply fated to never be.
And so we grow up, we get our jobs and distract ourselves from day to day with the tasks that come our way. The rent is due. Your boss wants you to draft up the new copy of the lease. Your fridge is empty again. But at the end of the day, when you lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, we inevitably return to that deeply seeded dream. You see the undulating waters; hear the slap of the waves against the bow of your gently pitching craft. We’re beautiful and young and happy. I’m wandering the streets of Brno, smelling the brewery down the block and watching the trams go to sleep. I’m still young and athletic and there’s adventure with each and every day.
But look at us now. Should we really be disappointed in what we are today? I don’t necessarily think that we are dissatisfied, but we’re at a point in our lives where we have to buckle down and make the call. We’re putting on the slacks and suits everyday and realizing we’ve chosen our path and it’s finally time to start making some commitments if we hope to get anywhere. It’s God-damn terrifying.
I will take care of your eyes until my own give out on me. I will be there as long as you are still willing to talk to me and receive me during visiting hours.
I will escape with you.
-K
Monday, October 18, 2010
A Short Reply
Dear K,
I just got back from that place where we met, and now a big part of me wishes I'd never left. But I had to we all have to, and everyone will. I'm settling into my grown up job, and I think that maybe I'm scheming for an escape. I'm going to bide my time though, build up supplies, so really at this point I guess it is a matter of where do I want to go.
So where do you want to go?
I'm putting together a crew. What if I bought a boat? Would you come and keep my eyes healthy?
We could get everyone that we never get bored with, a short list to be sure, and sail away to wherever, and someday we'd come back to visit the mainland and find that the world had changed while we were away and that after fifty years of sailing into sunsets we'd become younger and tanner than when we first left.
But I don't want to just live on a boat. I want to go inland, and so I'll bring my bicycle and make room for everyone else's bikes too. And speakers, and it will be a whole bright shining barge. We'll sail up rivers and over oceans and call out to other boats in the fog.
But really I don't want to do any of that.
Well I do, at least half of me does.
But I want to do it with somebody,
and not just a crew.
And don't worry that somebody isn't you,
But I do know who, I think it is, but I don't know if she'd ever allow herself the pleasure of just one person's company for a lifetime.
But still. I am planning an escape.
So where do you want to go?
K
I just got back from that place where we met, and now a big part of me wishes I'd never left. But I had to we all have to, and everyone will. I'm settling into my grown up job, and I think that maybe I'm scheming for an escape. I'm going to bide my time though, build up supplies, so really at this point I guess it is a matter of where do I want to go.
So where do you want to go?
I'm putting together a crew. What if I bought a boat? Would you come and keep my eyes healthy?
We could get everyone that we never get bored with, a short list to be sure, and sail away to wherever, and someday we'd come back to visit the mainland and find that the world had changed while we were away and that after fifty years of sailing into sunsets we'd become younger and tanner than when we first left.
But I don't want to just live on a boat. I want to go inland, and so I'll bring my bicycle and make room for everyone else's bikes too. And speakers, and it will be a whole bright shining barge. We'll sail up rivers and over oceans and call out to other boats in the fog.
But really I don't want to do any of that.
Well I do, at least half of me does.
But I want to do it with somebody,
and not just a crew.
And don't worry that somebody isn't you,
But I do know who, I think it is, but I don't know if she'd ever allow herself the pleasure of just one person's company for a lifetime.
But still. I am planning an escape.
So where do you want to go?
K
Sunday, October 17, 2010
spaces between days
Dear K-
You know, I really don’t feel so bad about it. Not as much as I had expected, at least. I’m used to being alone, and now that I am back to being a solitary figure things seem to be progressing along about as smoothly, if not more so, as they were before. It’s given me a lot of time to myself. A lot of time to reflect.
Some people meditate for relaxation and the collection of thoughts. I exercise. It’s my “zen time”. Nothing allows me to better clear my mind than to spend an hour shooting hoops or running laps or cycling. Lately, I’ve taken to swimming laps. There’s hardly any distraction at all beneath those chlorinated aquamarine waters. It is just the steady rhythm of the splash of each stroke and the whooshing bubbles of every exhalation, a repetitive mantra that brings my inner peace. Those quiet, lonely laps have allowed me a lot of time to mull over my life decisions, and in the end I feel okay. I don’t feel super or amazing or on top of the world, but I feel like I’m still a valuable person. I feel like I still have some worth, hidden deep down beneath all the self-loathing and sentiments of rejection.
It’s autumn. I like to sit outside at night and look at the crisp clean stars in the cold evening air and smell the smoke from the fires of some nearby neighbor burning leaves. You know, it’s illegal to burn leaves and organic yard wastes here. The city expects you to take your trimmings, bag them up, and then place them at the side of the road for collection. I know many people have allergies and maybe the smoke is a nuisance to them, but for me, personally, there is hardly a more powerful nostalgia-inducing aroma than that of burning leaves. It stirs recollections of autumns past, memories of raking leaves in my backyard and shaping them into long piles to stretch across the withering grass. I’d arrange the piles to form the floor plan of an imaginary house, within which I would play and pretend to live a fantasy domestic life, until the dog came bounding through the kitchen wall and sent the leaf barricade spewing throughout the dining room. As a kid I’d volunteer at the church to help rake the yards of the elderly. I wasn’t really so keen on community service as I was with having an opportunity to hang out with my friends who also signed up for the church volunteer group. We’d have raking races and throw armfuls of leaves at each other, squealing with delight as we took an hour to complete what would normally take only about twenty minutes worth of hard work. There was the time when we accidentally broke one of the rakes when we were pretending they were swords, and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon using an old broom as a replacement. At least we usually got rewarded with cookies and Kool-aid at the end of the day.
I love this season. I’m trying to be a better person now. Nothing can be done about the past. Nimam obzaluje. When I fall asleep at night I now rest with the knowledge that I will never have to choke on his flesh again. He won't make me feel sick inside and he won't take advantage of my good nature. But I will also never feel his tender embrace, laugh with him, or smile and feel at ease just to be beside him. At parties, I was so proud just to be sitting with him. But now I can no longer feel that peace. There is nothing but agitation and a desire to be alone.
But I still miss the good days.
Tell me about your week.
Still occasionally lonely,
-K
You know, I really don’t feel so bad about it. Not as much as I had expected, at least. I’m used to being alone, and now that I am back to being a solitary figure things seem to be progressing along about as smoothly, if not more so, as they were before. It’s given me a lot of time to myself. A lot of time to reflect.
Some people meditate for relaxation and the collection of thoughts. I exercise. It’s my “zen time”. Nothing allows me to better clear my mind than to spend an hour shooting hoops or running laps or cycling. Lately, I’ve taken to swimming laps. There’s hardly any distraction at all beneath those chlorinated aquamarine waters. It is just the steady rhythm of the splash of each stroke and the whooshing bubbles of every exhalation, a repetitive mantra that brings my inner peace. Those quiet, lonely laps have allowed me a lot of time to mull over my life decisions, and in the end I feel okay. I don’t feel super or amazing or on top of the world, but I feel like I’m still a valuable person. I feel like I still have some worth, hidden deep down beneath all the self-loathing and sentiments of rejection.
It’s autumn. I like to sit outside at night and look at the crisp clean stars in the cold evening air and smell the smoke from the fires of some nearby neighbor burning leaves. You know, it’s illegal to burn leaves and organic yard wastes here. The city expects you to take your trimmings, bag them up, and then place them at the side of the road for collection. I know many people have allergies and maybe the smoke is a nuisance to them, but for me, personally, there is hardly a more powerful nostalgia-inducing aroma than that of burning leaves. It stirs recollections of autumns past, memories of raking leaves in my backyard and shaping them into long piles to stretch across the withering grass. I’d arrange the piles to form the floor plan of an imaginary house, within which I would play and pretend to live a fantasy domestic life, until the dog came bounding through the kitchen wall and sent the leaf barricade spewing throughout the dining room. As a kid I’d volunteer at the church to help rake the yards of the elderly. I wasn’t really so keen on community service as I was with having an opportunity to hang out with my friends who also signed up for the church volunteer group. We’d have raking races and throw armfuls of leaves at each other, squealing with delight as we took an hour to complete what would normally take only about twenty minutes worth of hard work. There was the time when we accidentally broke one of the rakes when we were pretending they were swords, and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon using an old broom as a replacement. At least we usually got rewarded with cookies and Kool-aid at the end of the day.
I love this season. I’m trying to be a better person now. Nothing can be done about the past. Nimam obzaluje. When I fall asleep at night I now rest with the knowledge that I will never have to choke on his flesh again. He won't make me feel sick inside and he won't take advantage of my good nature. But I will also never feel his tender embrace, laugh with him, or smile and feel at ease just to be beside him. At parties, I was so proud just to be sitting with him. But now I can no longer feel that peace. There is nothing but agitation and a desire to be alone.
But I still miss the good days.
Tell me about your week.
Still occasionally lonely,
-K
Monday, October 11, 2010
i get world sick
Dear K-
I tried to take your advice. There used to be such a fire in my life, and I used to feel like I was somebody. But lately I have felt empty and dull like a light bulb with a burned out filament, although still warm to the touch, hinting at what used to be, I no longer radiate with such ferocity and intent. Wasn’t I the one who came from an asphalt cradle and chewed batteries as a teething ring? I used to fight, I used to feel a purpose.
This weekend I tried to fight again. I didn’t want it all to fade away from disuse and neglect. I canceled my plans and drove out to see my love. But it was already too late, and he was no longer in love with me. I can’t accurately explain how it feels to sit in a room with someone who won’t look you in the eye, knowing what they are thinking but are too cowardly to admit. The love is gone. Every action brought his anger; even comments that used to be jokes were suddenly uncalled-for insults, and every footstep I took was on the wrong soil. I tried to fight, though. I bought him dinner, cooked him breakfast, smiled at him and held his hand in public. I tried to do everything I thought I should to keep him. But it was too late, and instead he just used me. When it came time for me to load my suitcase and drive away, he wouldn’t kiss me anymore and I left him there, lying on his bed and reading a book of poetry.
It’s over. As much as I wanted to turn left and continue on with him, I went straight. Maybe this was my psych-out maneuver. Everyone believed I was going to turn left- hell, I had even convinced myself, but in the last moment I realized that was not the correct decision. I have to go straight. We have to split our paths.
So now, I have a new bag of memories to pull out in the springtime when I feel nostalgic. There are no regrets, but I do miss many things. He was part of the reason I chose America, and now I’m floundering here alone, rejected, and confused.
As you said, every morning the sun comes up, and every evening the sun goes down. Let the sun make a few more cycles and I’ll begin to feel dull again and it will be okay. Eventually I will look back and perhaps I will say, “That was a fun time, but I made the right choice.” Perhaps I will always wonder what life would be if I had turned left. But I can’t dwell on that. There are new adventures ahead, and soon I will stumble upon them. But for the moment I must spend a few days dragging myself forward, forbidding myself to glance back at that fork in the road, letting the side of my shoe scuff the dirt up in scattered clouds because I don’t want it to settle because I can’t settle. At least, not yet.
At a steady pace,
-K
Friday, October 8, 2010
Dear K,
Pack it in. You've gone over the edge and you're not coming back unless I haul your canoe up with a rope.
It's been a month since you've seen your love?
Where's the brawler I used to know? The one with fists as hard as alley walls and broken glass for teeth and chewing tobacco for blood? You used to be as tall as an oak tree and twice as hard to pull up by the roots.
Look. If you're not going to try for something... then I don't know. I don't really have a threat. I just want so badly for you to understand that yes you can be happy and all it takes is for you to stop treating this life like every decision has been made for you.
You spun my last letter completely on its head, when you said that fiction lets people have nice tidy little resolutions.
I was trying to say that you are free, and that every character ever written will never ever know what it means to be able to turn left when the universe and everyone in society says you can only go straight, or maybe you go straight to fake them out and because they think maybe you're the kind of person who randomly turns left, but then pow as soon as they believe that you're only going to move forward, bam, left turn and you're running through the fields in the hidden woods with the prairie weeds up to your hips and the rattlesnakes hissing in the grass.
Look, every morning the sun comes up. And every day away from spring is filled with memories of spring, and every moment of spring is filled with childhood scents, and every thing is all how you remember to look at it at the end of your life when the curtains close in and finally this beautiful thing, a shining bauble for the rest of the darkness to envy, comes to a very satisfying end, like warm oatmeal cookies being swallowed with a glass of milk, that is what life is.
So buck up kiddo,
Your Elderly K
Pack it in. You've gone over the edge and you're not coming back unless I haul your canoe up with a rope.
It's been a month since you've seen your love?
Where's the brawler I used to know? The one with fists as hard as alley walls and broken glass for teeth and chewing tobacco for blood? You used to be as tall as an oak tree and twice as hard to pull up by the roots.
Look. If you're not going to try for something... then I don't know. I don't really have a threat. I just want so badly for you to understand that yes you can be happy and all it takes is for you to stop treating this life like every decision has been made for you.
You spun my last letter completely on its head, when you said that fiction lets people have nice tidy little resolutions.
I was trying to say that you are free, and that every character ever written will never ever know what it means to be able to turn left when the universe and everyone in society says you can only go straight, or maybe you go straight to fake them out and because they think maybe you're the kind of person who randomly turns left, but then pow as soon as they believe that you're only going to move forward, bam, left turn and you're running through the fields in the hidden woods with the prairie weeds up to your hips and the rattlesnakes hissing in the grass.
Look, every morning the sun comes up. And every day away from spring is filled with memories of spring, and every moment of spring is filled with childhood scents, and every thing is all how you remember to look at it at the end of your life when the curtains close in and finally this beautiful thing, a shining bauble for the rest of the darkness to envy, comes to a very satisfying end, like warm oatmeal cookies being swallowed with a glass of milk, that is what life is.
So buck up kiddo,
Your Elderly K
Monday, October 4, 2010
it's only a paper moon
Dear K-
Time keeps progressing onward. It doesn’t quite feel as if it is sailing by me, like some lightweight clipper, but rather like a steadily chugging ocean liner. When viewed at the horizon it hardly seems to be moving at all, but in actuality it is persistently pressing onward at a respectable pace. Working 7 to 6 every day, I don’t get a lot of time to sit and reflect upon my days. I move from one day to the next, trying to find small events to motivate me through the weeks. My days are spent looking at people’s eyes, which I guess isn’t too much to complain about since that is the career path I settled upon. Eyes are beautiful. But now, when I try to relax, I still find myself noticing the slight amblyopia of an actor in the movie on the television, or I try to guess the eyeglass frame my old friend is wearing on her trip home from college. It’s the first thing I notice. I don’t even think about how long it has been since we’ve spoken and caught up on each other’s lives. Instead, I think about her -3.25 OD and -3.75 -0.50 167 OS prescription. I wonder if I’m losing myself.
At times, I miss the student’s life and I find myself picking up old text books for my night reading. Of course, spending each night reading Remington’s “Clinical Anatomy of the Visual System” doesn’t really compare to your Marquez and it doesn’t lead to very entertaining dreams, but it keeps me focused on the present. It’s somewhat depressing to admit that your life isn’t the makings of some great novel. We’ve written bits of ourselves into so many of our short stories, poems, novels…But, as you stated, those are merely characters. They get to progress through the bodies of text and find neat little solutions and tidy situations which circle around to make some point. Our lives, unlike fiction, don’t necessarily have to make sense. Reality is quite a bit messier, and not always so eloquent.
It’s been over a month since I’ve seen my love. I regret to admit that with each day that passes without his presence my heart grows gradually more remote. While I adore companionship, I’ve spent the majority of my life alone. Left to my own devices, I revert to an independent lifestyle. My heart grows cold and dormant, and I think of him less and less. It’s hard to remember his voice. For the moment, I still miss him. I am not the type of girl who will make demands, but regrettably I am the type passive enough to let a good thing fade away through disregard and cowardice. I hate getting sentimental. I’d rather focus on things more useful and meaningful, like chemical reactions, trains, or iambic pentameter.
Tomorrow I fly to Phoenix alone. I’ll switch to the more personable, extroverted facet of my personality, the portion which has been trained and practiced over the years and is usually recessive, by my choice. Smiling and responding to interview questions with comprehensive, intelligent quips, dressed in a suit and maintaining an air of confidence…it’s an exhausting routine. I enjoy the experience, but when I go home at the end of the day I’m self-critical and weak. Perhaps it will be different in the dry desert air. Maybe it will be good to get out of the Midwest again.
I’ve started writing letters again.
I love the way the air feels this time of year.
Yours truly,
-K
Friday, October 1, 2010
Leitmotifs Don't Really Exist
Dear K,
Whoever told you to stay? For that matter who told you to go? I know I told you both, but we both know you shouldn't listen to me when it comes to these things called decisions. I've been reading a lot of Marquez lately, ridiculous amounts. I read Love In The Time Of Cholera twice, and I'm almost through 100 Years Of Solitude for the fourth time this year, not to mention the collection of short stories that I stole from a friend three years ago. I read that last week.
I've been waiting for this job to start, and everyday when I put down the book by Marquez, I go and look in the mirror. I think maybe I'll see myself grow old before my own eyes, because the books and the waiting and the trembling thoughts about being a taxpayer and a job holder and that gleaming stainless steel future that awaits beyond make me feel as if my youth is a rope or sand running through my fingers, and in my mind I'm grabbing and holding the rope made of sand but gripping around it won't work and it seems as if the time is almost up.
We're talking as if we've already settled into the antiseptic beds of the last hospital we'll visit. As if the phantoms of our failures and successes and our loves and losses are already surrounding our death bed.
I found something out though, we have a common problem. We've read too many books and we've seen too many movies, and probably the worst part is, we've written too many stories. The thing I found out is that we're not characters in a book or a film or even in the New Yorker. It is a trick of memory that makes us think so. Do you know what this means? It means anything can happen to you and it doesn't have to mean anything, but it can if you want it to, and you can really do whatever you want, because there's no giant author there up in the sky deciding what you do.
I'm writing, and soon I'll be out there in the world, living again, and I'll sweep away all these waves of disappointment and displacement. Why are you mourning for a past that hasn't happened yet? Whoever said you couldn't change your mind?
Regards,
K
Whoever told you to stay? For that matter who told you to go? I know I told you both, but we both know you shouldn't listen to me when it comes to these things called decisions. I've been reading a lot of Marquez lately, ridiculous amounts. I read Love In The Time Of Cholera twice, and I'm almost through 100 Years Of Solitude for the fourth time this year, not to mention the collection of short stories that I stole from a friend three years ago. I read that last week.
I've been waiting for this job to start, and everyday when I put down the book by Marquez, I go and look in the mirror. I think maybe I'll see myself grow old before my own eyes, because the books and the waiting and the trembling thoughts about being a taxpayer and a job holder and that gleaming stainless steel future that awaits beyond make me feel as if my youth is a rope or sand running through my fingers, and in my mind I'm grabbing and holding the rope made of sand but gripping around it won't work and it seems as if the time is almost up.
We're talking as if we've already settled into the antiseptic beds of the last hospital we'll visit. As if the phantoms of our failures and successes and our loves and losses are already surrounding our death bed.
I found something out though, we have a common problem. We've read too many books and we've seen too many movies, and probably the worst part is, we've written too many stories. The thing I found out is that we're not characters in a book or a film or even in the New Yorker. It is a trick of memory that makes us think so. Do you know what this means? It means anything can happen to you and it doesn't have to mean anything, but it can if you want it to, and you can really do whatever you want, because there's no giant author there up in the sky deciding what you do.
I'm writing, and soon I'll be out there in the world, living again, and I'll sweep away all these waves of disappointment and displacement. Why are you mourning for a past that hasn't happened yet? Whoever said you couldn't change your mind?
Regards,
K
Saturday, September 25, 2010
you take the red line to morse
Dear K-
I headed out into the woods yesterday evening. Just as the sun began to dip in the sky, I jumped the last fence and wandered deep into the timber and brush, with no real destination in my head. But how is that different from my everyday life? Do I ever really seem to know where I’m going?
It felt good, that crisp, early autumn wind; I ignored the thorns that caught on my pant legs and sleeves and tugged me in various directions. After an hour or so, their tiny claws dragged me to the creek bed. The creek bubbled thick and black, like tar, as it ambled lazily past. I sat on the bank as night crept upon me and I just stared at my reflection in that murky water. Eventually, all I could make out was a shadowy figure with a glowing red flame for a mouth, the embers of my cigarette pulsing orange with every inhalation. I couldn’t help but think of all the crunchy dead leaves cluttered at my feet as my ashes gently drifted to the soil. Smoky the Bear would have cried that night.
We’re adults now, aren’t we? Doesn’t that mean we should have real lives and real jobs? You say you want the sterile house and the clean pressed dress shirts and the shiny shoes, and yet I’m still sitting out in the woods alone, chilled and ashamed. I want it, too. I want that life. I want the clean-swept apartment with wooden floors and imitation marble countertops. I want a window that opens to let me hear the city streets below as I read on the couch. When I go to sleep at night I want to know that when I wake up he’ll still be there beside me, and I can make him breakfast and kiss him sweetly on the lips before we each head off to our work.
But I don’t have that happiness yet. I’m still stranded in the small town of my youth, drifting through these autumn days and wondering if I should have stayed here after all.
I chose to stay. I chose to give up the life I had there, across the sea. And some days I still wonder if I should have just boarded that plane after all. I’m afraid that sensation may never fully fade away.
Consistently doubtful,
-K
Friday, September 24, 2010
Screaming madly east.
Dear K,
So, now it is Fall, and I've taken up running again, and I've also been looking back on everything I wrote to friends and family in the last year, because I keep a copy for myself. I've been so obsessed with myself. Really it has been disgusting.
But I guess it is only natural because I haven't had anyone telling me what I'm going to be doing five years from now, and I just realized that that has all ended. Now I know that I'm always going to remember this last year.
But I got a job, or anyway, now I'm living back in the town I grew up in. I've just realized that all those sappy sayings and movies and greeting cards about not being able to go home again really are true.
I just want to be clean. I want to live in an apartment in the sky, with white walls and a concrete floor. I want a shower with white tiles, and white towels hanging on the walls, and the sink in the kitchen and the counter-tops, everything is luminous and white, like some Scandinavian surgeon's dream. I want to go running through the streets in my appropriately anonymous work out attire. I want to shave every morning and wear a tie. I want to wear dress slacks and neat black oxford shoes, and my car will be clean and I'll have a briefcase and a stainless steel thermos.
And then a year from now I'll go screaming madly east, and jump into the hordes on the ocean shore and disappear forever in my youth.
What?
-K
So, now it is Fall, and I've taken up running again, and I've also been looking back on everything I wrote to friends and family in the last year, because I keep a copy for myself. I've been so obsessed with myself. Really it has been disgusting.
But I guess it is only natural because I haven't had anyone telling me what I'm going to be doing five years from now, and I just realized that that has all ended. Now I know that I'm always going to remember this last year.
But I got a job, or anyway, now I'm living back in the town I grew up in. I've just realized that all those sappy sayings and movies and greeting cards about not being able to go home again really are true.
I just want to be clean. I want to live in an apartment in the sky, with white walls and a concrete floor. I want a shower with white tiles, and white towels hanging on the walls, and the sink in the kitchen and the counter-tops, everything is luminous and white, like some Scandinavian surgeon's dream. I want to go running through the streets in my appropriately anonymous work out attire. I want to shave every morning and wear a tie. I want to wear dress slacks and neat black oxford shoes, and my car will be clean and I'll have a briefcase and a stainless steel thermos.
And then a year from now I'll go screaming madly east, and jump into the hordes on the ocean shore and disappear forever in my youth.
What?
-K
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
i wanted you to feel the same
Dear K-
I’d ask you to forgive me, but I have trouble even forgiving myself these days. My life has been a wilderness, and I’ve become the naughty child who wanders off alone and off the path. Why should I be startled, then, by the twigs and branches which snap against my face and limbs? Why should I cry out in surprise when I feel the bite of the thorns and brambles against my flesh? When I decide to start deviating from the “planned course” of my life, I should surely expect to encounter a few unpleasant thickets.
I can’t go back there. my dreams are empty now. my memories are less like elaborately painted masterpieces and more like snowflakes which flutter and drift as small hazy specks across my face, leaving only a small sting of cold to even hint at their existence before they melt away into obscurity once more. I sat for hours today pondering a note I found scribbled upon an old notepad from a year ago. It asked simply “where does trolley 37 go to sleep?”
I couldn’t remember. I used to know every cobblestone, every jumbled Slavic street name, but now I can’t even recall such a trivial fact of where the autobus 37 shut down for the night.
I miss you, but somehow I don’t think it makes a difference. We’ve become each other, don’t you get it? Am I really missing you, or am I only missing myself? When I look into the mirror and find my nose bloody, am I the culprit? This slick, near-black blood that smears over my fingertips (our fingertips?) seems more like the juice of a summer blackberry than something so precious, so necessary for my life.
Speaking of life, the doctor told me that my heart skips beats.
Mendlovo namesti. Fucking mendlovo namesti. That’s where the 37 goes to sleep.
Regrettably mistaken,
-K
Friday, August 13, 2010
When Will Everything Be Alright?
Dear K,
Did you write that last letter to me? Or was it me that it wrote it to you? I'm still so confused. Did I do that when I was drunk? Did I hit you? Did you just pretend that you hit yourself when it was really my fist? Is my nose bleeding or was it your nose? We've got to figure this all out before everything comes apart at the seems.
Anyway I'm better now, I think. Maybe. Out here in the mountains I don't sweat at night, and I'm shivering in the morning even though it is summer still. The peaks aren't even white yet. The shack that I live in doesn't have insulation and there are holes that let moths in when I stay up writing with a flashlight because there is no electricity.
But I'm better. I think my insides are fixing themselves. I think that everything is going to be better.
It was nice to see you for a while though. Even though when you were around it felt like you were further away, it was nice to dance with you and maybe watch everyone around us age a little while we got confused about who was who and why we ever met.
But I'm better now.
How are you?
Have you left yet?
I'm going to miss you.
And I hope this isn't sappy, because I mean it platonically:
Love,
K
Did you write that last letter to me? Or was it me that it wrote it to you? I'm still so confused. Did I do that when I was drunk? Did I hit you? Did you just pretend that you hit yourself when it was really my fist? Is my nose bleeding or was it your nose? We've got to figure this all out before everything comes apart at the seems.
Anyway I'm better now, I think. Maybe. Out here in the mountains I don't sweat at night, and I'm shivering in the morning even though it is summer still. The peaks aren't even white yet. The shack that I live in doesn't have insulation and there are holes that let moths in when I stay up writing with a flashlight because there is no electricity.
But I'm better. I think my insides are fixing themselves. I think that everything is going to be better.
It was nice to see you for a while though. Even though when you were around it felt like you were further away, it was nice to dance with you and maybe watch everyone around us age a little while we got confused about who was who and why we ever met.
But I'm better now.
How are you?
Have you left yet?
I'm going to miss you.
And I hope this isn't sappy, because I mean it platonically:
Love,
K
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Dear K,
Was there ever any chance for us?
I mean right now I'm not so sure there was ever any chance for me.
My right nostril is bleeding right now. It is my fault. I thought that my arm would stop my fist before it hit my nose. That was my fault, I should have known that I'm stronger than I let on.
I'm messed up. Right now I don't think that anyone thinks I'm worth anything.
God is the cruelest person I've ever prayed to.
Apologies for introducing myself, K.
Was there ever any chance for us?
I mean right now I'm not so sure there was ever any chance for me.
My right nostril is bleeding right now. It is my fault. I thought that my arm would stop my fist before it hit my nose. That was my fault, I should have known that I'm stronger than I let on.
I'm messed up. Right now I don't think that anyone thinks I'm worth anything.
God is the cruelest person I've ever prayed to.
Apologies for introducing myself, K.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Dear K,
Lately I've been listening more. This isn't a good thing. I listen too much already. A person is supposed to have a healthy balance right? Take in give out. But I just don't have anything to give out. I'm getting greedy. I just want to sit and listen and never have to say anything ever again.
If I sewed my mouth shut do you think people would notice? I think I'd like to do that. I'd like to have the assumption out there that I'm not going to reply.
But I guess that's half the point of listening, people want you to reply, because they think that if you don't say anything then you haven't heard anything.
I'm just tired of being who I am and I want to move on and move away. I want so badly to leave.
Leaving,
K.
Lately I've been listening more. This isn't a good thing. I listen too much already. A person is supposed to have a healthy balance right? Take in give out. But I just don't have anything to give out. I'm getting greedy. I just want to sit and listen and never have to say anything ever again.
If I sewed my mouth shut do you think people would notice? I think I'd like to do that. I'd like to have the assumption out there that I'm not going to reply.
But I guess that's half the point of listening, people want you to reply, because they think that if you don't say anything then you haven't heard anything.
I'm just tired of being who I am and I want to move on and move away. I want so badly to leave.
Leaving,
K.
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