Ah Me

Dear K,

I have been absent. I have done nothing. Well that's not true. I have written so much more in my novel. I have said hello and farewell to long distant friends. I have filled my days with clouds and smoke and drink and songs and poems and endless solitude.

I am comfortable in my solitude. I wear it well. My solitude is a comfortable suit. Neither too thin or thick. It breaths in summer and holds close in winter. Perhaps I wear it so well because I am loved by so many, and by many not in the way that I would chose. But as you well know nobody can chose who and how they love.

I think a large answer to my problems is that I need to publish some of my work. Some of my short stories, not the ones in that terrible little green book, are ripe for publishing. I merely need to blow some dust off of them and send them in, and then in my fantasies I bask in adulation. A career is launched, where I spend my days riding a bicycle up and down the banks of the Mississippi River, gathering stories.

Today I heard a story about a friends mother. She was wild in her youth, and would steal away in the middle of the night to smoke cigarettes. She and her girlfriends would go to the roofs of tall buildings and spit off them. Once on ludicrous youthful excursion this woman, then a girl, snuck onto a neighbors farm and grabbed a watermelon. The farmer shot a round of buckshot at her, shattering the melon, and forever embedding a small piece of metal in her face. The buckshot remains there to this day, I'm told at the top of her cheek, just below her right eye, and you can poke at it, and she will laugh and tell you other stories about dark summer nights.


I hope all is well.

We should perhaps talk on the phone soon.

Regards,
K

nisam mislio na to

Dear K-

You know I have been in those trenches. You know I have held the burden of loneliness and spent days, weeks, years trying to avoid the very real possibility that people like you and I might just be destined to be alone. We aren’t like those “people”. We’re our own sort. We can’t go to bars and pick up dates because our hard drives have not been formatted to function in such a process. I tried one time and came pretty close: I was lonely and lacking self-respect so I went out to the bars and found a reasonable guy who seemed friendly enough and willing to engage in conversation and dancing. Towards the end of the evening, I could tell he was the other type of “people”. He leaned in close and whispered terrible things in my ear as I swayed back and forth between his hands in a drunken rhythm to the pop music blaring throughout the bar.

I thought to myself that I could be “people”, that this is what society told us was how people met and interacted in the dim hours of the evening. At that moment I wanted to be “people”, and I submitted to his advances and let him kiss me on the lips. All in all, it probably lasted about a minute. When his lips touched mine all I could taste was emptiness. It felt bitter and cold and it terrified me. I pulled away and excused myself, stumbling away awkwardly across the dance floor. I left immediately and drove home. The rest of the night was spent in agony; I felt cheap and ashamed of how I had acted, but also still struggling with the horrible acknowledgement that I may remain alone.

Since I have been there, perhaps am still there some days, I’d like to think I can relate to what you are going through. That being said, I know the last thing you want to hear at this point is all the standard drivel and stock phrases that “people” offer out whenever they discover someone in this emotional state. It will get better- you’ll find someone. There’s definitely a girl out there for you. You are well loved by all your friends and family. We are here for you.

But I know that those phrases fall like a drop of water on hot white sand. They are meaningless. There’s nothing I can tell you to ease the gnawing emptiness. All I can offer is that I have encountered those demons quite frequently.

When I sort medical charts at clinic, I sometimes get depressed when I find a lone file of a surname. No other files to accompany it. I wonder if this person is alone…I wonder if some day there will only be one file of my surname resting on the shelf.

Of course, that’s not to say I’m longing to rush headfirst into anything just for the sake of avoiding being alone. If I had wanted to get married to stave off loneliness I could have been married 3 times by now based on the offers I’ve received. But it wasn’t love. If I had accepted those bids, I would have been living a life far more lonely than I would if I had chosen to remain alone. I think we both know we’re not talking about being with someone simply to be with someone. We’re talking about love. True, honest and unabashed love for another human being…something incredibly rare and often misunderstood these days.

Keep writing. It will bring a sense of productivity and some relief, if nothing else.

Keep breathing,
-K

Plenty of Sunshine Though.

Dear K,

I've been out of the world for a little while. I guess. I don't know. I haven't posted anything in response, mostly because I haven't had anything new to say. I'm really pleased that you're happy.

I'm in a sort of purgatory. I feel the edges of towns calling to me. I'm getting restless and I want to go for long midnight drives across the prairie. I want to roll into towns and make miracles happen in my wake.

I've been fixing other people's problems. Maybe I've been doing that so long because I don't want to fix any of my own. But my biggest problem is something that I can't fix.

I'm lonely. I talk to friends, and that works for a while. I talk to old flames, and there's nothing there. I'm haunted by the empty space in my bed.

People make it sound so easy. They talk about going out to bars and fucking somebody. They talk about pick ups and booty calls and numbers written on cocktail napkins.

They also talk about romantic comedies. Somebody just falls out of the sky and loves them.

I think I might have to be alone forever, for my writing.

My writing is getting better. I practice everyday at work. I practice pacing out the paragraphs. I practice people talking to each other, careful not to reveal what they really mean. But mostly I practice putting a pen to paper and letting the words flow out like blood or guts or snot or tears or laughter, the things that cut you open and show something underneath these hard crusty shells we build up.

It's been a while since we've had rain in this part of the world. It's been hot, and so humid. It's been so humid your clothes stick to you the minute you walk out your front door. They suck up right next to your skin, and no matter how loose your collar is, it seems to be choking in the swampy heat.

 You know what they used to call the midwest? All the prairies? They used to call them "The Great American Desert". That's what it was labeled on the maps.

I think I might be a desert.
It's been a while since I've had some rain,

K