Dear K,
It is late and I am depressed. I don't to die, but I'm not really sure I want to live. If I could sleep for a century and wake up from my dreams in time to see the earth get hit by an asteroid, well I think I would. I want to be fluid and mercurial and not bound to my body or the laws of reality.
I want to waste away in the real world and get stronger in my dreams everyday.
I dreamt that I was poor and driving through a graveyard with my girlfriend, and then we stopped to have a picnic lunch, and we found that one of the graves was made of quarters and silver dollars and other coins. We took them because we were poor, and I carried her giggling and kicking all the way back to the car and we drove on and made love by the side of the road, spilling all of the quarters out of our pockets onto the floor and never caring for a moment.
Once I dreamt that I was a tree, and I grew tall and strong and shot rainbow colored peppers from the edges of my leaves that exploded on contact with a psychedelic-mushroom cloud. I lived a full life and died in peace at the center of the forest, surrounded by other trees that couldn't talk or listen.
When I was six I had a fever dream that a dragon was robbing the bank where my mother worked. I woke up shouting and vomited on my bed.
I dream of things that will be and things that haven't ever been and never will be. I'm tired of what is and what can be. I want to live in the land of dreams and impossibilities.
The only question is where to find the poisoned apple or enchanted spindle.
Regards,
K
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Forks, Books, and Fucking Drum Circles.
Dear K,
Today it was warm, well it got up into the thirties. I'm wrestling with something else too. Someone has come back into my life, and I'm torn between the scars and the love buried underneath.
I feel my life forking again. I'm excited to see which way it goes. Because life isn't something to be suffered, it isn't a drudgery to be borne. I'm excited for my life.
I need to leave this town next year though. As much as I love it, as much as I love home I need a bigger city, I need vibrancy and life, and that is hard to have in a town full of banks.
I miss college, and being poor, not that I'm rich but I felt like I was accomplishing something by struggling. My life is too easy here. I only have to show up at work for eight hours and they pay me. I don't have to put in the effort, but I do.
I need young people, and I'm surrounded by middle age and automobiles. I want to ride trains with strangers and get into arguments with people about what Proust really meant, not that I've ever read any Proust or have any idea what he meant, or why he would write such a god-damn long "book".
I'm trying to write again. Did you know that whiskey helps? I'm at a bar right now. My first glass of whiskey carried me three pages, and those were just sketches of dialogue, once I get back to them and embroider them I'll have nine or ten out of them.
But now there are too many people, and everybody is here with their friends, and all of mine live in other cities.
Also the people who play the drum circle every tuesday and wednesday night below my apartment are here. I'm not sure why they have their own place and their own space to play in. I fucking hate drum circles.
Regards,
K
Today it was warm, well it got up into the thirties. I'm wrestling with something else too. Someone has come back into my life, and I'm torn between the scars and the love buried underneath.
I feel my life forking again. I'm excited to see which way it goes. Because life isn't something to be suffered, it isn't a drudgery to be borne. I'm excited for my life.
I need to leave this town next year though. As much as I love it, as much as I love home I need a bigger city, I need vibrancy and life, and that is hard to have in a town full of banks.
I miss college, and being poor, not that I'm rich but I felt like I was accomplishing something by struggling. My life is too easy here. I only have to show up at work for eight hours and they pay me. I don't have to put in the effort, but I do.
I need young people, and I'm surrounded by middle age and automobiles. I want to ride trains with strangers and get into arguments with people about what Proust really meant, not that I've ever read any Proust or have any idea what he meant, or why he would write such a god-damn long "book".
I'm trying to write again. Did you know that whiskey helps? I'm at a bar right now. My first glass of whiskey carried me three pages, and those were just sketches of dialogue, once I get back to them and embroider them I'll have nine or ten out of them.
But now there are too many people, and everybody is here with their friends, and all of mine live in other cities.
Also the people who play the drum circle every tuesday and wednesday night below my apartment are here. I'm not sure why they have their own place and their own space to play in. I fucking hate drum circles.
Regards,
K
Saturday, January 22, 2011
please connect this call
Dear K-
I don’t. The days get bleaker and I get more bitter and weathered with every exposure to the winter wind. I’m faded, resting pale against a pastel landscape. I miss the sun, the summer air and the summer cares. Deep in my bones I know it will someday come again, but for the moment I ache for relief. Hours stretch into days and days into weeks, and eventually I will be old and remember all the winter days I wasted in anticipation of spring. And perhaps I will regret.
It’s funny how little things can throw off your balance. I’m a creature of routine, and I rely on stability and repetition. Something as simple as having to shift which wrist I wear my watch upon due to the bruises left by an IV needle is enough to set me off-kilter for the entire day. I look to my wrist for a sense of temporal bearings and instead I find a sickly green and grey bruise with a tiny purple pinprick at its center. My stomach lurches, I quickly glance at the watch on my opposite limb, but already I have been knocked out of step and I’m stumbling to find my rhythm. I fumble with some paperwork, drop my pen, forget to smile to a patient. My mind is still thinking about the bruises.
I don’t adapt well to change. I hate transitional periods. Lately, I’ve been feeling like this entire year is a transition, and it makes me sick.
I’m going back abroad in the summer. I plan to see Brno again…the city I loved but couldn’t have, although in all fairness I had every opportunity to take it back. I’m both eager to see it and frightened. What if it’s not as beautiful as I remember? Will I still be content to stroll its streets and admire my surroundings, or will I find it more faded and dreary than my crisp, beautiful memories? But what if I find it even lovelier than in my dreams? What if I break my heart all over again and throw my life to ruin just in order to return to its embrace? What emotion will I feel when I smell the brewery? Taste the halusky, drink a beer, amble through the Tesco, hear the fluid river of native Czech language spewing from a citizen’s mouth?
Don’t worry. It’s not a one-way ticket, and I’m being accompanied by a lover who aims to keep me settled in America at all costs. He’ll bring me back. He’s part of the reason, whether he’d like me to admit it or not, that I stayed in America in the first place. He was one tether that I couldn’t shake loose.
Be cheerful to compensate for my persistent gloominess.
-K
I don’t. The days get bleaker and I get more bitter and weathered with every exposure to the winter wind. I’m faded, resting pale against a pastel landscape. I miss the sun, the summer air and the summer cares. Deep in my bones I know it will someday come again, but for the moment I ache for relief. Hours stretch into days and days into weeks, and eventually I will be old and remember all the winter days I wasted in anticipation of spring. And perhaps I will regret.
It’s funny how little things can throw off your balance. I’m a creature of routine, and I rely on stability and repetition. Something as simple as having to shift which wrist I wear my watch upon due to the bruises left by an IV needle is enough to set me off-kilter for the entire day. I look to my wrist for a sense of temporal bearings and instead I find a sickly green and grey bruise with a tiny purple pinprick at its center. My stomach lurches, I quickly glance at the watch on my opposite limb, but already I have been knocked out of step and I’m stumbling to find my rhythm. I fumble with some paperwork, drop my pen, forget to smile to a patient. My mind is still thinking about the bruises.
I don’t adapt well to change. I hate transitional periods. Lately, I’ve been feeling like this entire year is a transition, and it makes me sick.
I’m going back abroad in the summer. I plan to see Brno again…the city I loved but couldn’t have, although in all fairness I had every opportunity to take it back. I’m both eager to see it and frightened. What if it’s not as beautiful as I remember? Will I still be content to stroll its streets and admire my surroundings, or will I find it more faded and dreary than my crisp, beautiful memories? But what if I find it even lovelier than in my dreams? What if I break my heart all over again and throw my life to ruin just in order to return to its embrace? What emotion will I feel when I smell the brewery? Taste the halusky, drink a beer, amble through the Tesco, hear the fluid river of native Czech language spewing from a citizen’s mouth?
Don’t worry. It’s not a one-way ticket, and I’m being accompanied by a lover who aims to keep me settled in America at all costs. He’ll bring me back. He’s part of the reason, whether he’d like me to admit it or not, that I stayed in America in the first place. He was one tether that I couldn’t shake loose.
Be cheerful to compensate for my persistent gloominess.
-K
Monday, January 17, 2011
None of these things.
Dear K,
I've had several drafts of responses to your last couple of letters. But I'm not going to send them because they are too tragic and true. It is raining right now. January rain is a sign of hope, and I feel it welling up inside of me. I'm looking up at tall buildings with the promise of a future instead of imagining them crumbling to the ground.
Can you feel it? Can you feel the edges of your consciousness slide towards hope? Do you feel the wonderful tingling of tomorrow, as your soul bends around the other side of the world, glimpsing at the bright light heat of tomorrow's sun melting everything around us? I feel it. I feel that hope for the children playing in the street.
I've been helping homeless people eat, handing them money and telling them that they know what they need to spend it on and who am I to tell them what to do.
I feel it. I feel the hope that is Winter's secret promise. This is the only way to be ready for Spring.
Tell everyone you see that I love them,
and that none of these things
stop a brighter tomorrow from coming,
-K
I've had several drafts of responses to your last couple of letters. But I'm not going to send them because they are too tragic and true. It is raining right now. January rain is a sign of hope, and I feel it welling up inside of me. I'm looking up at tall buildings with the promise of a future instead of imagining them crumbling to the ground.
Can you feel it? Can you feel the edges of your consciousness slide towards hope? Do you feel the wonderful tingling of tomorrow, as your soul bends around the other side of the world, glimpsing at the bright light heat of tomorrow's sun melting everything around us? I feel it. I feel that hope for the children playing in the street.
I've been helping homeless people eat, handing them money and telling them that they know what they need to spend it on and who am I to tell them what to do.
I feel it. I feel the hope that is Winter's secret promise. This is the only way to be ready for Spring.
Tell everyone you see that I love them,
and that none of these things
stop a brighter tomorrow from coming,
-K
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