Dear K,

I'm in the place where all my roots are and I can feel my strength gathering. 2017 is going to be a year of the sap rising. I'm gonna come out of this town running faster and freer than I've ever been. I've got my head on straight, and my shoulders back, and I'm gonna run and laugh and spit into the wind just for the hell of it all. I'm gonna get in fights and break bones and bloody my nose. I feel blood rising up in me. I feel a fight rising up in me. I feel the joy of piss and vinegar. The devil got in me and I'm gonna beat him with hammer and tongs. I'm gonna grab that old son of a bitch and mash his face in, and I'm gonna have a hell of a time doing it.


Blood and guts to you and yours,

K

V92.59 Shopping mall as the place of occurrence of the external cause

Dear K-

I was a ghost. I was the wind. I worked endless hours and drank more cups of coffee than my stomach could handle. What do I have to show for it? Empty hands and some people who can see a little bit better than before. I hate the rush at the end of the year. It always takes me by surprise. It always drowns me out.

You know I would never abandon you. Sometimes I just don’t have the words. I am happy that you are moving. Your soul was never content in Chicago. I could hear it in your voice every time we spoke. I am not sure where you shall come to eventually rest, but I don’t think that city is what you need, what you deserve. At least at this time.

I spent the holiday alone. I had to work and my family all lives too far away. Some considerate friends offered to take me in so I wouldn’t have to be solitary, but you know what? I actually wanted to stay by myself. If I couldn’t be with my family, I didn’t really want to impede on another family. I would feel like a burden. Like they pitied me. I could not stand that feeling. I was content to sit at home by myself and read a book, drinking cup after cup of tea. It was actually a very nice holiday, all told. I hope yours was well enjoyed.

Let me know how the next few weeks of transition transpire for you. I wish you the best. I will try to find more words to share with you soon.

Ever yours,
-k

How To Sit Still In Very Cold Water

Dear K,

These are the instructions you need for sitting in cold water.

1. Take off your clothes, they're not going to help you. Your mind will trick you into thinking your clothes will help, will hold the heat inside somehow. The water's already in there, next to your skin. Your clothes will not help you.

2. Put your head under the water. The shock will force the air out from your lungs. This is important. You didn't need that breath anyway. Surface. Take another breath.

3. Put your head under the water again. Keep doing this.

4. Realize that you are the master of the cold. The cold is a trick. It is a dare. It makes you uncomfortable. It makes you feel weak and tired. Remember that you are not weak. Remember that you are not tired.

5. Stay awake. Stay moving. Stay strong and conquerous. You are the master of your body. It does what you want when you want it. Remember this. Hold your hand to the ice fire. Hold it in the water. Your ego will tell you that you are weak. That this is pain.  That this is not good. That we just can't do this anymore. That we have nothing left to give.

6. Eventually get out of the cold water.

7. Sit next to a fire. Or better yet get in hot water, like a hot springs or a hot tub or a hot bath.

8. Drink hot chocolate.

9. Laugh at how you didn't think you could sit in the cold water.

Yours,

K

Dear K,

I'm leaving Chicago. I'm headed back to Des Moines. I'm going to live in a friend's basement for a month or two, get back on me feet, financially and emotionally. I think I'm going to head west next. I'm gonna see where that sun keeps going every day. I'm gonna go as far as the ocean, but I might stop in the mountains for a while. I'm gonna breathe in some clean air. I'm gonna talk to God. I'm gonna learn to play the guitar. I'm going to grow my beard out and sit in full lotus on a high high peak and wait for the idiots to come to me. I'm going to swim in the Great Salt Lake and see how it tastes. I'm gonna float on my back and stare up at the blue. I'm going to buy a house so I can rent it out and live on the road. I'm going to build a van up from rust and ruin. I'm going to build a bicycle. I'm going to ride my bicycle from one ocean to another.

There's a lot of things I'm going to do. And I'm gonna keep on writing to you.

Don't Worry,
You'll Catch Up,

K

Dear K,

I'm fairly certain this is the most I've ever written you without being answered back. Don't feel bad. We're writing these letters to each other for the long haul. A little blip like this isn't going to mean anything forty years from now.

Anyways, I'm leaving Chicago and heading back to Des Moines. I got laid off at the start of November and I've been living off of my savings since. Unemployment is about to kick in, but that's not going to be enough to pay my rent and eat, let alone keep the power and internet on in my apartment.

Also I miss my friends.

I miss my little city.

I don't think I need to struggle and strive here. I can do that at home. I can do that with my friends.

I'm very thankful for my time here in Chicago. It was tough. It made me grow quite a bit. Mostly, it was lonely. It's not a welcoming town. There's just too many people for me to really feel like I could meet anybody or hang out with anybody. It takes an hour to get anywhere, and anyway, I get to head home.

So I'm headed to my little city by a little brown river.
I'm headed home at the start of winter.
If you see my lady love, tell her I miss her.

Your Friend and Ever Faithful Confidant,

K

Hell

Dear K,

I'm writing about things that scare me. Things that really scare me. I'm writing about things that make me cringe. I'm writing about the darkest things I can imagine, and the horrible part is I know these things happen. I know they happened.

I'm working on my novel. I'm pushing into dark waters. I'm pushing into the places where I should not go, where we all need to go, looking at things we need to look at, looking at real evil and you know what my life isn't so bad. I know my life isn't so bad, it's a little tough right now, I am in a very uncertain financial situation, I may have to move back to Des Moines and into a friends basement. But, my little troubles are nothing. I am a prince living in a pleasure garden compared to what is happening out there somewhere in the dark. Right now there is a man handing a child a knife and telling that child to cut the head off of another man with it. Right now there is very real hell, and we more than ever need to look at it, we need to look it in the face.

I'm losing sleep though. I read about children being eaten by children in Liberia today. I watched a man talk about it. Tomorrow I'm going to write inside the head of a man who teaches children to kill, teaches them to eat human flesh, and the horror of this is this man is not unwell in the normal ways. This man and these children are unwell in a way that you or I could have been. Then I'm going to write from inside the head of a Gulag prison guard. Then I'm going to write from inside the head of a doctor in the Japanese Imperial Army as he experiments on living human beings.

I am going to lose sleep. I am going to lose some weight. The sort of writing I'm going to do for the next couple of days, it's not pleasant. It is not joyful creation, but I think the story needs to be told. I think people need to know they could be these monsters. I think if I do this right. If I write well and true, then I will be doing the most good I can do with this story. It's a story about being yourself, and everyone else.


I'll see you on the other side,

K

Dear K,

Today is Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful for so many things. I'm thankful for our long friendship. I'm thankful for: trees, and birds, and sunshine, and old romantic wounds that don't heal. I'm thankful for patterns, and repetition, and things that don't seem real. I'm thankful for wine, and books, and unending minuscule fantasies (wherein I pretend to live a life I love, doing things I love to do when I'm just moving forward doing something I don't want to be doing). I'm thankful for health. I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful to be from a place with clean air and green fields.

I'm going to overcome myself. I'm going to move around my internal blocks. I'm going to pour myself out like never before. I'm going to finish this fucking book if it kills me. I'm going to win. I'm going to conquer the city of Chicago. I'm going to stop doing things I don't want to do for people and companies I don't like, and I'm going to do it on my terms. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough, and doggone it people like me.


I hope you're having a happy holiday.

I've been having some rough living lately, but as you can tell it has only made me more determined.

Hope.
Fight.
Live.

Yours,

K.

Dear K,

My dad tells me something wise about times like this: "Live your life well" he says. If you live your life well then you can help other people, and that's part of living your life well. This man, he says, this man wants us to believe that people want to destroy us, that everything is broken, that our lives are bad. If we live our lives well he loses. Don't budge. Don't back down. Live well. Have hope. Have life. Have light. Stay firm. Stay strong, stay open. Stay safe.

Resolute,

K

jak to dopadne

dear k-

i am lost. what just happened? where am i?
don't let it touch you. if it doesn't touch us it can't hurt us.
i don't want to speak it aloud, because speaking aloud makes it real. i will not acknowledge it; i refuse to acknowledge it. is this the state of things? is this what is left?

what now? i can't even pick up the pieces because they aren't there. it all evaporated into air like a fickle phantom, never fully grasped and just taunting me with its shape and feel. i could feel it in my bones. and now it's gone and it's been replaced by filth and bile and poison and i feel sick sick sick and i want to hide. like chanie wenjack, i just want to start walking and i'll never stop. i'll die alone in the cold on an unfamiliar path but i know i can't stop. this is not my country. these are not my people.

sometimes i wish people had to pass a history test in order to vote in national elections.

perhaps i'll become an emigre, like in the old days, and sit abroad drinking absinthe and writing and thinking about the homeland and the people i left behind. will other countries take sympathy when i turn up at their border, and welcome me in with a sad and knowing nod of pity?

i can't even talk to people today. which is hard when that's basically my job. which is better one or two, one or two, one or two...the answer is irrelevant anymore. i don't care.

tell me what to do,
-k

Dear K,

Do you ever get mists in the morning? The kind that dissipate in full sun, but hug and skirt the ground, cloaking familiar in unfamiliarity. Making old seem strange? We get those mists here sometimes.

Until about six hours ago I would have told you things are going very well for me.

Now, I feel cut off and alone. I feel disconnected. I don't know anyone in this city. I'm lonely. I'm uncertain about the future. I'm scared. I'm sick of people only looking out for themselves. I miss my little river town where nothing ever happens.

I wish I had someone to sleep with. I wish I could wake up next to somebody. Report in with them. Tell them about my day. Rub their back and hear about theirs.

I don't like anybody I meet. I don't meet anybody I like. I don't meet anybody. I hate online dating. My hope reserves are exhausted.

I'll be better soon.

Someday,
K

fragile symmetry

Dear K-

I get the sense that there is some vast expanse beside me, stretching out in the distance just waiting to be explored. I can feel it. Like a cool gasp on the back of my neck, refreshing and sweet. It feels so tempting, but my mind gives me pause. What cost, what cost? How long and how far would I have to go before I found peace?

Like a horse corralled in a field, I pace back and forth along the border longing to cross to the other side, to race off into the empty fields and away from the familiarity and comforts of my pasture. Suddenly everything I know tastes bitter, foul, and I know deep down that I will never be satisfied until I get to taste the foreign lands just beyond my reach. I think my great-grandmother’s blood runs strong in my veins, the spice of the Slavic disposition gives me an unquenchable wanderlust that boils against everything I have been raised to seek out: status, stability, routine. The things that bring me comfort also frustrate me. I’m like a fickle child, unable to articulate what I want but constantly howling because nothing here can fill that undefinable void. It makes me feel ashamed to be so weak.

I’ll continue to pull at my tethers, continue to stare out the window thinking about futures, but the truth is I am getting old and eventually I will just have to come to terms with the bed I have made. Eventually there won’t be enough fight left in me, and I won’t be able to keep running. My legs will be broken and bruised from overuse and I’ll collapse in exhaustion, and I just hope and pray that wherever I lay I can find peace in that place, since more likely than not I will never get up again.

I hope you are doing well.

Warmly yours, as always,

-k

an embrace as salty as the ocean

Dear K-

I haven’t been feeling well lately. That’s not to necessarily say I’ve been sick, I just have been in a mood. I want to avoid everyone. I want to make things. I want to break things. I want to sit in the crisp fall air by myself and drink coffee and think about everything and nothing. I feel guilty, because rather than admitting this to friends I have simply told them I am sick. Why aren’t you answering your phone? I don’t feel well. It sounds much more reasonable than “I honestly just don’t want to talk to anyone, and actually the thought of interacting with you right now makes me grossly uncomfortable and unhappy”.

Sometimes you have to take risks in order to find peace. I think I’m going to apply for a new job. I’m most likely grossly underqualified and it’s likely they will laugh out loud when they see my resume, but fuck it. Why not? What have I got to lose anymore? I just know I can’t keep doing this same routine ad infinitum. I’d rather have a job that I’m excited about and that gives me challenges that I am actually eager to tackle. There is so much more that I am capable of than what I have been doing here lately. Someone just has to give me a chance.

I am trying not to get my hopes up.

Tell me about your day. I notice that you attempted to write something to me, but didn't finalize it and so it faded into the ether before I had a chance to consume it.

Assuredly yours,

-k

guided meditation

Dear K-

Are you the type that works better when you have procrastinated? On the radio once I heard about a study conducted that tried to determine if people were more successfully productive if they accomplished things well ahead of a deadline or if they procrastinated and waited until the last minute to complete the task. I’ll skip past the introduction and methods and get right to the meat of it: the most productive and best results came when people started something, didn’t finish, and came back to it a couple times before the actual deadline. Waiting to the absolute last moment before completing the entire project was not effective, because the result was usually sloppy and rushed. But completing the assignment well ahead of time was also not the ideal, because usually the subject went with the first idea they had and while it might have felt good to get the task completed so he/she could move on to other assignments, the result wasn’t as good as when they had time to think about the project and change the idea a few times and work on it more later. So I guess what I am trying to say is don’t get stressed that you have been putting things off. Sometimes a little procrastination is just the ticket for a more creative and thoughtful approach.

I had a strange moment in the middle of an exam today. Sometimes, during the most repetitive parts of my job, my brain will occasionally wander for a moment. Usually it never ventures too far, but occasionally I will get a non sequitur idea that takes me by surprise. It hits me like a bolt out of nowhere. Today, I suddenly remembered sitting in a specific room on the campus of where we went to college, in the science building. It was a conference room on the third floor where small groups could meet to study, work on projects, or for classes, such as my 8 person class for my junior year that revolved entirely around the pronghorn antelope. I would intentionally arrive early to this class and sit alone in the conference room because I found it so peaceful. The windows stretched from the ceiling to nearly the floor on three of the four walls, flooding the room with natural light and providing an excellent view of one of the busiest sections of campus. Sitting up there, a few stories above the hustle and bustle of students on the quad below, I’d watch people as they went about their day. The room was well insulated so it was completely quiet. It felt like you were watching a silent film. Some students would put their heads down and bee-line to their destination, avoiding all distraction. Others would actively stop and chat when they saw a familiar face. Sometimes someone would sit down on the ledge to the fountain and open a book, killing time between classes or until their friend showed up to meet them. I can’t explain why, but this made me so happy. It was calming. I liked being in that room alone. I liked the quiet. I liked watching lives unfold in front of me from the comfort of a sterile room, above it all. That conference room was one of my favorite places on campus. If I could have sat there all day with a cup of tea and a book and just watched people coming and going beneath me, I think few things would have made me happier.

I haven’t thought of that room in years. I wonder why I thought of it today. I’d like to find another place that makes me feel that calm and comforted again. Although if I did, I may be hesitant to ever leave it.

Wandering in reverie,

-k

Dear K,

 I've spent the whole month putting work off. I've spent most of last month putting things off. I've spent my whole life saying that tomorrow I would get to it. I fill up the present with worry that I'm not getting enough done and the things I want to do will be done tomorrow. This is what I do sometimes with my life. Sometimes I beat myself up about who and what I am. Sometimes all I dwell on are my failures and my vices and my sorrows and I turn and twist each one into a barb.

I promise though that life is better when you try to stop doing that. I think clearer, I sleep better. It's hard though. It's really really hard to not believe that I'm throwing my life away. It's really hard to not believe that all the hours I'm spending in loneliness and boredom and all the hours I pour into things that may never be read or seen by anyone or enjoyed by anyone, that all these things are not wasted. It's hard to remember that I didn't start doing these things because I want to be famous. It's hard to remember that I started making things, started writing things for the pure pleasure of doing it. The world wants us to rate ourselves, or maybe we want the world to want us to rate ourselves. I don't know, anyway we spend our lives looking around at everyone else trying to figure out how good we are compared to them, and that's a losing game, because there is always a bigger monkey.

I'm sorry your down. I know that's hard. What makes you happy though? Give me a call sometime. Lets talk and laugh and reminisce, and think of distant Junes when we smelled flowers in bloom through screens in our windows, and we were young in the sun, and hangovers couldn't touch us.


In The Trenches Next To You,
K

anywhere but here

Dear K-

I’ve been feeling low lately. There’s no real reason. Science tells me it is probably because the serotonin receptors in my brain aren’t functioning quite as well as they should be. But who knows. I’ll shake it off eventually like a dirty old shawl, but for the moment it’s too cold to change. I started to doubt everything I’ve been working on lately. Who am I kidding? None of this will ever amount to anything. Even if I do finish these projects, who will notice them? How long will any recognition or appreciation last? My mistake was to give myself expectations. I mistakenly became excited and dreamed of flying a little too close to the sun. How could I ever expect to fly? I’ve got one foot in the grave and I’m terribly afraid of heights. These things I write, create…they can only be things to pass the time and bring me amusement. If I try to make them up to be anything but the simple diversion they are, then everything shatters. I need to be more cautious in the future.

You are a good friend. I don’t tell you that enough. I’m sorry if I’ve ever let you down. I hope we continue writing until we’re old and blind. I hope we never completely lose track of each other.

Please,

Stay on my map,

-k

Hope For The Hopeless, Love For The Loveless, Breath For The Breathless

Dear K,

I think there's a good chance that we'll keep writing to each other our entire lives. I'm sure there will be gaps. I'm sure there will be times when both of us are too preoccupied with our own lives to write each other. I know though that I turn to this place, to this bridge that we have created between the past and the present and between each other's pasts and the present, I turn to this bridge for comfort and succor against the abyss. I find myself staring into the emptiness of space and time more and more lately. I'm on a journey into the deep, and I'm not worried one little bit. I'm gonna get stronger. I'm going to get smarter. I'm going to come out breathing fire and flame like oxygen. I'm going to come out the other side with a bright torch and something to say.

Actually the stupid thing is the more I stare into the depths, the more I stare into the swirling abyss. The more I stare up at the sky and see the expanse, the unknown infinity of stars, the depth of time, the more I think about these things the quieter I get. I'm finding the things I want to say have already been said, and are already being said, by the stars themselves, by the rocks and mountains and trees, and the waving wind. The world is there to be read, and our insignificance is a fact.

I'm sure this sounds bleak, and it is, but it's also the firmest rock I can find in a universe of quicksand. Nothing is permanent. Entropy is coming for all of us, and thank god for that. Can you imagine something staying the same? Something being constant? How boring. How dull. How cruel. That would be anathema to life. That would be death. Nothing can be alive and unchanging, and so we require death to come for us. Require to come and lay us down. To deposit us into the sea of time, and let us float away into the past.

These letters are breadcrumbs. They're like buoys on a trawling net. Imagine your soul is a school of fish swimming through the ocean of time. These letters are trying to capture little pieces of it. To hold them up. These too will pass though. The ocean of time will have us all in her endless embrace.

I know none of that made sense, or anyway it didn't make any sense as to why I would write it here. I'm coming out of a writing paralysis though, so any words on the page are a victory and I don't care if they are jumbled and loose, I'm just glad they are there.

Like old friends. Like letters from old friends. I'm just glad they are there. Wherever they are, however they are, I'm glad you're here. On the page with me,

K

by sundown, i became tame

Dear K-

I didn’t realize you had modified your previous entry. You censored yourself for my sake. A part of me feels relieved. A part of me feels guilty. I don’t want to stifle your creative output. What am I so afraid of? You’re right: no one reads this anyway. If they did, I would feel sorry for them. Such a disconnected, self-centered collection of ramblings spanning 7 years of different lives, different perspectives, different ideals. To the lonely unknown reader, I apologize. I never wrote with you in mind. I never will.

Do you think someday we will be old and grey, our marrow soft as syrup, arthritic joints knobby and immobile, lips cracked and dry, and still be pecking out our correspondence, reading each other’s entries with cloudy eyes and foggy minds?

I hope so.

I hope so.

-k

an adventure from a work in progress

Dear K-

I have been ensnared. Utterly and completely. It is embarrassing, sitting here in the dying light of a summer evening and finding my thoughts continually drifting to him. I'm not sure what I expected. I guess I figured I would be more composed, more restrained, more careful this time. To tread the forest with a light step and always at attention...but I let my guard down and I let him catch me. And now I don't know what to do. I've lost my appetite. I haven't been able to concentrate all day. When I think of him I can't help but smile inwardly. And yet it makes me so nervous. I'm an anxious wreck.

Today at class, while sparring, my instructor kept telling me to relax. He tells me I'm too tense. I don't really understand how one isn't supposed to be tense while someone is throwing punches at you, but I suppose it is something I must learn. It is an order I've received frequently throughout my life: relax. I'm always on edge. Always at attention, expecting the worst. Always ready with the counter. Whenever I enter a room, I immediately note the exits and any suspicious characters that I think I would have trouble beating if things became rough. I don't know why I do that. I sound like some terrible dime store detective novel. But it's true. I don't like feeling vulnerable. I think that's why I feel so uncomfortable with the thought of falling in love. I feel out of control. But it's beautiful, so a part of me doesn't want to do anything to regain command. But every hard wired circuit in my body is screaming in warning.

Eventually, the appetite will return. The novel will fade into the mundane. But I hope the fire he sparks might burn brightly for at least a little while before he tires of me.

Falling,
-k

it hurts until it doesn't

Dear K-

I think about death sometimes. We’re writers: it’s what we do. I try not to focus on it too intently, however. It tends to make me stall out. I freeze. I get anxious all over and then I feel empty.

I cooked dinner for a man this weekend. It made me feel useful. He asked me what I was looking for in a relationship. I told him I was looking for someone I could list as my emergency contact. He smiled, but I wasn’t really joking. I smiled back, though, because it seemed like the polite response.

The night before, I drank a lot of scotch and worked very hard to finish up a piece of writing. I was worried that if things work with the relationship and I become happy, I wouldn’t be able to finish the piece. It’s hard for me to write when I am happy. Everything just seems like drivel. There’s no fire behind it. I’m sure whatever I wrote is god-awful, but at least I got it out there. A stark skeleton is better than a wisp of air. At least I can put flesh on the skeleton, if need be.

Of course, I’m not happy. So I guess there was no need to get drunk and rush the conclusion. The date went well, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes it feels like God is playing a joke on you. In the last two weeks, I’ve had no less than three ex-boyfriends reach out to me, unprovoked, and ask if I want to meet up, talk, hang out, grab a drink, etc. I had a different male friend surprise me with multiple gifts, all of which were thoughtful, but again, unprovoked. It stresses me out. It makes me want to stay indoors and not interact with anyone for a week. What comes to you as a prison sentence, a fever that immobilizes you for days on end, is like a sweet relief to me. Sometimes all I want to do is disappear for a spell.

I think I need to become a ghost for a while. At least until things quiet down again.

-k

Hello Blue Mondays

Dear K,

I know we talked on the phone tonight. That doesn't mean I can't write you a letter. Somedays the whole world seems against a body. I guess my biggest problem isn't that I'm poor or lonely, but that I'm worried that if I die I will not have done anything with my life. I'll just be one more candle snuffed out. I guess this is my big worry over all. I ask myself a question a lot. That question is "what do you need to do to be ok with being dead?" It's a tough question to answer. I hope I know the answer to that question before I die.

I think about dying a lot. Do other people think about dying as much as I do? How often do you think about death? I know you had a close brush with it a while back.

Do you think there's an afterlife?

I kind of don't.

I don't think its nothingness either.

I don't really know what comes next. I know that we only get a few years here, and sometimes those years are brutal, and sometimes they're sweet.

I hope I meet somebody someday. It would be awful to die alone. I'd like to make somebody happy for a lot of years, and then make them sad when I die.

I'm just in a funk. I'll come around the bend I know I will. Don't worry about me. I just need to be morose for a while. I've got let all this bile out. As the Russians say, I've got to spleen. I should go for a run.

Ugh,

K

Oh Hush, You Know Nobody's Really Reading These Anyway, Plus We're All Going To Die In The End

Dear K,

Oh hush. Also if anyone deserves to be read it's you. You're one of the great secret writers of our generation. Do you know that? I mean beyond your inevitable claims that you're terrible. We both know you're very good at making things and writing things and feeling things. You wouldn't like to do these things if you didn't find some sort of pride in them, and you wouldn't have some sort of pride if you weren't sure you were good. I think you're good enough to know how much better you could be and that is a thing that will cripple you.

That's one of the demons I tried to pickle with whiskey.

I've spent all week in bed with a fever. Well I went to work yesterday and today, but those eight hours and my commute were the only time I've spent outside of bed. Okay, I've also taken a lot of showers and baths. But you get the picture. I haven't had any sort of appetite for about five days. As I write this it's a Wednesday night.  I came down with my fever on a Saturday afternoon. Its been a great reminder of mortality and how actually flimsy our lives our.

More importantly I haven't written very much in the last five days and that upsets me. My standards are pretty low. When I say I wrote a lot I mean a page or two. Usually I satisfy myself with a paragraph or three. I'm training myself to sit still at the keyboard again. It's a good thing to train yourself to do. I think I'd like to spend the rest of my life training myself to sit still and type. Someday I imagine I'll be very productive.

What's it all for though? You know? What's the point? We die in the end. This planet will blow up, and nobody will even remember that our sun was our sun. Some days this fact makes things lighter, and some days this fact makes things heavier.

Lost in a fever dream and Nihilism Lite,

K

requiem for an illusion

Dear K-

Seven years. Seven fucking years. Broken. The illusion gone. I hope you're happy.

I sat and stared outside for hours. I watched the light fade. My reflection slowly became bolder and more visible in the window as evening set in and the backdrop shifted to black, but I still looked like a ghost. And some days, that's exactly how I feel. After the initial flurry of new adventures, new thoughts, new occupations, everything settles back to grey. Everything ends the same way: with me, staring out a window drinking tea in the dark, wondering if this is what I imagined being adult would be like after all. Living alone isn't all that bad sometimes.

I've started wearing rings to hide my broken knuckles. I thought maybe the glitter would distract from the blood. I am not sure if it is working. All I know is every time I wash my hands it hurts when the water rushes over the wounds. That's the price I pay, I suppose.

This is disconnected. This is a mess. I feel like my sense of balance has been destroyed. They know who you are now, so they know who I am. It's no longer for the desk drawer if they can trace it back. Perhaps it is time for me to disappear for a while. That's what usually occurs whenever things get a little too present.

Until then,
-k

I GOT A FIRE LIT IN ME

Dear K,

I've never been able to do small goals. I think that's why I've never been able to finish the things I start. I know I should be just going on one mile runs, but I want to run across the Sahara. When I ride my bicycle I hear a sports announcer in my ear, saying my last name like it's a prayer. "Is K*****n going to do it? Is he going to ride his bicycle faster and longer than any other human being alive?" I live for those stupid dreams. I ride my bicycle with the belief, or delusion, that in that moment, when I lose myself, when I lose this stupid world around me where I'm just a guy who works in a bank and sits in a cubicle and has no interaction with history and will die and be forgotten so quickly, it might as well be tomorrow, but when I ride my bicycle and hear that voice, hear that little voice saying "K*****n, K*****n, K*****n, K*****n, K*****N! K*****N! K*****N!" I my tires leave the ground, my body leaves the ground, my soul leaves this body, I am lifted and transported. I become something just for a moment. I touch that other universe, the one right next to ours where that is the reality. Where I am the man who is riding a bicycle faster than anyone has ever ridden a bicycle before I become my dreams, for one single shining moment when I am on the verge of collapsing from being out of breath. When I RUN, god damn! When I push that limit inside myself I open up a door to a land where nothing can't be done. The same thing happens when I write. Hell yes I want to be taught in High Schools. You bet your ass I want a Nobel Prize for literature.

That's ego talking though. You know what I really want? I want to be satisfied with something I write, and thank GOD that will never happen. I will write the rest of my life and I don't ever want to be satisfied. I want to keep getting better. I want to write through twenty different styles. I want to write so much that people look back and say: "this was K*****n? It's so different from his later stuff? I'm a fan of his early work, he was rougher around the edges. Have you read his recent stuff? He's really let himself go."

I've been covering these ambitions up my whole life and I think it is about damn time that I stopped. I have a fire lit inside of me and I mean to feed it one page of writing at a time until it is a towering inferno. I mean to sacrifice time and energy and thought and love to it. I mean to make myself into something. I mean to do great works in this world with nothing but some fingers and some buttons and some paper and some ink. I want to capture lightning and heat and breath in words. I know it can be done, and I want to do it.

In the meantime, I'm gonna finish this marathon. I'm going straight from running around the block to trying to run 26.2 miles. Right up to the Queen's Balcony. Right up to Buckingham Palace. I've got my sights set on the big things, but don't worry. I'm not giving up. I'm gonna put the blood and sweat in until I get there.

Yours,

K

the struggle of memory against forgetting

Dear K-

I am sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. The insomnia is back and I have been trying to fight it, as best I can, through tiny measures. One measure is to hide my phone away at night. I make it lie quiet and dormant, not to make a peep until it is time for me to arise. Sometimes it helps to disconnect yourself. Sometimes it feels good to unplug yourself from the stress of responsibility. My phone has been making me anxious. The introverted insomniac of my youth is making a special guest appearance in this month's episode of my life. Every time my cell phone flashes I worry it is someone I don’t want to talk to or someone I don’t have the energy to converse with. It makes me feel guilty.

Keep working on the novel. Don’t lose hope. Stop trying to assign an unknown future to it. Are you writing it for a specific endgame? Is it going to be the work that wins you a Nobel Prize? Is it going to be the creation that makes you the world’s next literary darling, and they’ll add you to all the high school curriculums so millions of sulky teenagers can flip through your pages with indifference? These goals are too lofty for this moment. When I run, I don’t look off into the distance towards the eventual finish line. It’s too far away…sometimes I can’t even see it. The thought of that distance makes me miserable and exhausted. Instead, I focus a few feet ahead of me. A quickly evolving target. Easily attainable. It also lets me run in the present moment, prepare for the steps ahead of me and avoid any potential pitfalls or trip-ups. You need to do the same with your novel. Don’t get weary trying to strain to see the finish line. It may still be quite a ways away. Concentrate a few paces ahead, and work towards that. Repeat, repeat, repeat. You’ll get to the end, eventually. And then we can celebrate as the New York Times puts you on some list.

I bought myself a new blazer yesterday. I also punched a sparring bag until my knuckles broke open and bled. Sometimes the simple things in life can bring a dose of unexpected pleasure.

Enjoy the breeze,

-k

I'm A Little Piece of Everything

Dear K,

Sometimes I get sad. Sometimes I get down. Sometimes I wonder what this whole life is worth. I wonder whether I should just sit down and not move. It's been a long time since I wanted to die, and I'm pretty sure I'm done with that. I'm pretty sure I want to live and live and live and live. I'm sure that I want my heart to keep beating, even when it will be old and struggling to beat I want it to try for one more beat. I want to die in my bed in a hospital at the age of 136 struggling to breathe and forcing my heart to beat one more time. I like living. But I will die. So will you and the birds in the trees and the whales in the ocean and the grass on the prairie and the dogs in their kennels and the presidents and kings and all the shining faces on television. Statues will crumble. Everything will become ruins and dust and then even the ruins and dust will die. The sun itself will die. Then someday on some distant frozen shore of time the universe will give up its last beat.

Lately the thing that makes me at peace with all this is my secret knowledge that I am part of all these things and they are all part of me. There is no separation between you and I and the bird in the sky or God's wild eye staring down at us or the pig wallowing in its filthy sty. We're the same we're the same we're the same. Time and space are meaningless, you're a little speck in the body of the universe.

I guess, I also don't know how much peace I find there. Sometimes I force that feeling. Sometimes I force a connection with the universe. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm a part of everything and that I'm just a little useless cheap thing that's going to get trampled underfoot. Just something smaller and less useful than a million billion trillion other things just like it. Something that doesn't have anything important to say or do.

Then I go outside and I take a walk and I feel the wind on my skin.

Did you know that I've always believed that God is in the wind. Ever since I was a little kid. I've never been alone if I've been in the wind. I remember once I was walking from our farm house to go check on the neighbors horses in a blizzard. They lived a half mile down the road and it was a crazy cold January and this was a blizzard that kept us snowed in for most of a week. ON the third day my Step-mom and sister decided that they were going to go and check on the horses. I think they were both stir crazy from being stuck inside because of the snow. We couldn't go anywhere in our car because it was so cold. I went with them because I was tired of being inside.

We walked to the neighbors barn in white out conditions. It wasn't snowing anymore, but in Iowa we have WIND. There's nothing to stop it sweeping over the fields. The white out was from the wind picking up snow from all the fields and blowing it around. Making it pile up in huge drifts that covered the road. The wind could just about pick you up. Scoop you up in it's big cold God hands. I remember walking around in it with my arms tucked inside the torso of my coat, sleeves pulled in too, for extra warmth. Hat and scarf around my head, and laughing with delight at how cold and strong the wind was. I remembered thinking that I could lay back into it and be carried off by it, and that the cold would never touch me, but I would feel the giant soft hands of God.

Whenever I am cold and lonely. Whenever I am hot and miserable. I go for a walk and I wait for God to reach out and touch me. Any little bit will do. Any movement of the air over my skin and I am convinced again in a benevolent God that loves me and has a plan for me and that I am doing ok and going to be alright. I think this might be why I like bicycles so much. Because you can pump your feet and feel God rush over you, and it doesn't feel fake, it feels like God.

I walked home from a coffee shop tonight in defeat. My novel is defeating me. I'm being defeated every night I write. It's all garbage and it's all fear and cowardice coming from my fingers through the keyboard. I'm trying to extend the story I Guess. I think I'm trying to make this thing bigger than it is. I'm really afraid of letting it go. I don't know if that is it, or if its just fear, irrational fear getting in the way, stepping on the hose. You know? Fear comes in and steps on the idea hose.

Writing this blog with you is nice. I feel like I can come here and say anything that's inside of me and you won't judge me, and I know that what's inside of me isn't that bad. I'm not important enough to hide anything truly terrible inside of me. I'm just a little guy. I'm just a little guy trying to write. I'm just a little piece of a bigger thing. I'm just a little guy in the wind. I'm just a little piece of everything.

Yours,

K

my only swerving

Dear K-

Why can’t I be more like a lake? I used to be a lake. It was a long time ago. Sometimes I can hardly remember. They told me I had two weeks to live, but I made liars out of people who only had the best intentions. I kept breathing, and for years after that I was a lake. It was refreshing. It was remarkable. The world was vast, and there was so much more to it than my small, narrow window had previously admitted me to see. I needed to be shown what lay beyond my reach. I needed to be shown what I would care the most about when I didn’t think I was going to live anymore.

That’s not something I would recommend most 19-year-olds to experience, but it certainly puts a perspective on things.

But I lost that. Somewhere along the way I’ve gotten all cluttered. Did you know in Slovenia there are disappearing lakes? Lake Cerknica is the largest of them. It appears and disappears with the seasons. Sometimes, I feel like that lake.

Today I almost cried, just listening to a song. I’ve listened to it too many times. Songs sometimes become like smells to me. You know how sometimes smells can evoke a certain visceral reaction, a memory? It’s like Proust’s madeleine. When I hear a song that I have heard again and again, I start to associate memories to it. This song in question doesn’t even necessarily evoke a firm memory. It is more of a state of mind. It makes me think of sitting in an airport, waiting for a flight. That eager anticipation of going someplace different, an escape, mingled with the anxiety of change of routine and thought of possible complications. I’ve found that I actually love sitting in airports. Some of my best moments of creative productivity have been while slouched down in an uncomfortable airport bench seat, next to complete strangers, my feet propped up on my suitcase in front of me. There’s something extremely satisfying about being in transition. It’s the only time my restlessness is relieved.

I am glad that we are friends. I don’t think anyone else could bear to hear how miserable and lost I am the majority of the time. I’m supposed to be the stable one. I’m supposed to know what I’m doing.

So they say.

-k

A Handful Of Salt

Dear K,

I read this wonderful little koan the other day. Do you know what a koan is? It's a zen tradition. Where you tell a story, usually about some old bhuddist master explaining something to one of his students. The story is short. The story is true, and like all things that are really true it is true from multiple angles. This is why it is so hard to write a koan. It is hard enough to get something to be true one way, most people never manage it. We find the truth like people find furniture in a dark room. We stub our toes on it, bruise our shins on it, and curse it, when really it is a lovely seat made for us, if only we had the courage to sit in it, but you cannot sit in something that you do not know is there can you?

This is the koan I read: There was an old bhuddist master and his disciple. The disciple had led a life full of worldly suffering, and he complained about this to his master to the point where his master knew he needed to teach his student a lesson. So the master placed a glass of water in front of his student and bade him to pick up a handful of salt, and pour it into the glass, and then drink. The student did so. The master asked how the student liked the drink, and the student said it tasted bitter and salty. The master then asked the student to walk with him. They lived high up in the mountains so that they could be closer to God. The student followed his master to a mountain lake. The master again asked the student to pick up a handful of salt and pour it into the lake and drink. The student did so. The master asked him how he liked the drink. The student said it tasted fresh and sweet and cold and clear. The master then said that the pain we gather in life is the handful of salt, can you gather more than your hands can carry? No you cannot for you have nothing but your hands to carry things with, and the vessel we drink from is our sense of scale. Are you contained in a glass? Are you small like that? Or are you a part of something larger? Are you a glass or are you a lake. It is good to be a lake.


It would be much better if I could say that story in fewer sentences, but I am not very practiced at writing koans. I would like to say though, thank you for being my friend, thank you for being my confidant, thank you for helping me keep upright in the storms of life.

I hope we keep writing to each other for ever.

Kindest of regards,

K

A Fool For God A Fool For Love

Dear K,

I want to wake up next to somebody for the rest of my life. I want to look in their eyes and never ever want to close mine for fear of missing one single moment of theirs. I want to breathe their breath. I want to grow old with somebody. I want to watch each liver spot and each wrinkle and each crow's foot come in and I want to kiss them and bless them and revel in them because they are trophies of years spent with me. I want to raise children with somebody and watch them play in a yard. I want to watch grandchildren play in a yard. I want to lift somebody up. I want to make soup for them when their sick, and when we're both old and dying I want to say that I couldn't have done it better.

I want to reach my hand out for theirs and find it waiting for me already. I want to be so in love with somebody that the sun exploding could not tear us apart. I want somebody to love me this much I want to love somebody this much. I want to love everything about a person. I want to love their friends and family and their hometown and the bed they slept in as a child and I want to love each hurt and scar and each twist and turn of their life, for all of these things created the one I love and how could I love them without loving every part of them, being grateful and thankful to everyone on this whole damn planet for making the one I love. I want to die inside of a love like this.

I want to be buried in it. I want to spread a love like this. I want to dance slowly in an empty room with the woman I love and him softly a song that we used to dance to when we were younger. I want to do this until one of us is in a wheelchair. I want love and I ambitiously want love.

The Fool,

K

The Itch of Bloody Antlers, Bone Rubbed Raw Against A Tree

Dear K,

Did you know that I can be very good at talking to women? In the last few weeks I've had phone numbers thrust on me. I've had women approach me. It's strange. This is new for me. I feel no different. I don't feel as if I've changed one bit in my whole life. I'm just hopeless. I think that might be the cause. I don't care about what happens with any of these women. I'm not ready to fall in love again. I don't want them to fall in love with me, and still I write pretty things and do pretty things and wear pretty clothes.

Without meaning to I've built a career out of being a heartbreaker. Once at a party, before we were dating, my most recent ex heard me say "I'm just a lone wolf looking for my next prey." She thought I was being serious. I've never felt like a wolf. My last name means Fawn in German. I'm the thing that wolves eat. I'm supposed to be easy prey. I've always thrown myself at the best wolves. I guess somewhere along the way I grew antlers.

Nothing I can do about the past though. Nothing anyone can do about it. It's there, it happened, it's gone, we move on and on. Endlessly forward down the stream, and we can't ever see what's around the next bend. So I'm going to charge, and use all my strengths, and be myself and be fully myself and I won't worry about who I've hurt or how much I've hurt them anymore. They're all grown and gone from me anyway, and if they can't get over a little fawn like me then, what's the point in being a wolf?

Antlers down,

K

mirrors are so last season

Dear K-

I think there is something healthy in eventually letting go. After an appropriate period of mourning, we bury our dead. We can't keep those things around, because they just rot and decay and turn into something so distorted and far from what we remember them as, what they truly were, that it only sullies what once was, what we loved. The same applies to memories and past lovers. We can't keep such things hanging around for too long. Maybe, a few years later, once the grass and weeds have grown over the grave soil that formed a scar on the earth, we can dig up the bones and examine them like a scientist. Cold, distant, like an archeologist pondering over the history of an unearthed relic. But for now, you need to bury the dead. You've been holding onto that corpse for a bit too long and the air was starting to smell foul and sour.

If only life were as neat and beautiful as you write it. I am going to keep hoping for that remarkable character you describe, but who deep down I know can't exist. But maybe that's what holds me back. My cynicism is my downfall. But fuck it, I'm tired of putting so much value in the result of a wild goose chase.

I dropped everything and went north to the nation's border. I had to get out of the city. I've spent the last few days doing little except for sitting outside, drinking black coffee, and reading. This is what I am, more than anything. My bones feel so at ease here, with no expectation and no demands. But a voice deep down in the well of my heart whispers that it is only temporary. Even if I were to cut all ties and stay up here to live this lifestyle, it would lose its allure and grow dull. I would become restless, just as I always do. But for now it is beautiful. It is beautiful. You are beautiful. I am beautiful. And we don't need any fucking mirrors to know that. Mirrors are so cliche these days. I don't know about you, but I've broken all mine. I spun them like plates on my finger tips and then I shattered them on the rocks of the river bed.

Some days it might be better to be the third horse. Just enough resistance to keep the rider alert that at any moment I might change my mind, that I am only now giving in because perhaps it just so happens to suit my whims. But I know for now I am the fourth horse, bruised and bloody but still refusing the path presented. Stubborn until the end, blind to whether it may be advantageous to obey this time. True to myself, but also perhaps selfish beyond forgiveness.

If you have the gift of prophesy, I must be blessed with the gift of introspection. I can dissect myself apart better than the most gifted surgeon. It's the only time my hands can stop from shaking. I leave a little tally mark on one of my ribs every time I perform the procedure. It is so covered in the little grooves that I might need to start in the next rib soon. I should really never been worried about what other people might say or do to me, because I know it will never do as much damage or cause as much hurt as what I myself am capable of.

And as for your tattoo...pics or it didn't happen.

Off for more coffee,
-k

Le Fou et l'Ocean de doulear

Dear K,

I have a new resolve.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to move on. I'm steeling myself now. I'm going to make the choice to neither speak nor write of her. I've indulged too much in the bitter drink of sorrow. In my life I have come to enjoy the taste. It is odd how one can acquire a taste for heartache, like black bitter coffee. I drink in heartache like wine. I drink it in a garden staring up at the moon thinking of what was and what may be.

Did you know that it does not matter either way? That what was will happen again, and that what will be has already happened, and will happen again and all of it is all true. Everything is in the cycle. Everything is bound to the wheel. Even our universe will die, and then live and then die and then live, and we within it will live and die an unknowable number of times, and all of this does not matter because the only truth is the present. Did you know this? I'm sure you did. You're very clever.

I've decided on my first tattoo. I'm going to get a tarot card tattooed on me. The Fool. Because I am a fool, more than anything else. I am a fool, and there is a kind of wisdom in being a fool. It is a good thing to be a fool, it is fertile soil to grow in. I believe that I am on a journey. I am in progress, and that I will trip and stumble and make God laugh until the very end, when I'll probably go out with a big fart. I'll wear ashes in my hair and rags to the brightest dinners and a tuxedo to sleep in the alley. I'll throw away gems for apple cores and hold them up to the sun saying look how they shine and shine as they rot in my hands. I am a fool.

Bhudda says there are four types of horses. There is the horse that as soon as you jump in the saddle begins galloping off to where you want to go. The second horse needs only for you to grasp the reins lightly and gently. The third horse needs a gentle kick and a tug of the reins and will obey your commands. The fourth horse will struggle and kick and will need to be beaten with a lash until it's flanks are bloody and bone is showing in the wounds before it will move. I am like the fourth horse. We are all like the fourth horse. It is good to be the fourth horse. There is purpose in it.

Meher Baba was a Persian-Indian mystic popular in Hollywood in the 1930's. He took a vow of silence and spoke with an alphabet board and hand signs. He invited High Society women to come to his ashram and they did by the bus load, to scandal and scorn back home. Later in the 50's and 60's he demanded that twenty of his followers join him on a never ending pilgrimage. They must fill their hearts with hopeless helplessness, and be cheerful about it. No matter what difficulty they encountered they were to be cheerful in resolving it. They were to overcome sickness and death and hunger and thirst and pain and fever and flies and rainstorms and sharp rocks and broken bones with song and laughter.

I am convinced this is the way of things.

For now.

That is the advantage of being a fool, you can always realize that you are being fooled. It is much better than being wise or smart.

Le Fou,

K

A Lantern Must Be Alternatively Covered and Unvovered In Order To Say Anything Across Time And Space

Dear K,

I don't think you need to change anything about yourself except how much you like yourself. I've been telling you for years that you're too harsh on yourself by not just half but whole. You say you're a monster, you berate yourself for the things you've done that anybody would do. Dear K, if you are a monster then we are all Draculas and Wolfmen and Frankensteins. You're one of the good ones, one of the dear hearts, one of the true believers. You hold a lantern in the darkness. You hold love in your heart and water it secretly and outside of this you've built a shell of pessimism, but I am not so blind as that. I can see right through this flimsy little shell that you've built. I see through to your heart I see the love that you are so desperate to give away. I see the fires you keep banked. I see their warmth. I know that you are just waiting for the signal, waiting for the horn to sound, and that secret fire of yours will rage through your whole body. You'll burn in it. I know this, because I can see my own kind, the kind that loves love. The kind that throws themselves on the train tracks of fate. The kind that will say they love somebody two months in, and mean it, or if they don't say it they will think it and mean it. We are the dear hearts. We are the lighters of lamps. We are the audience and the author. We are the ones who spin this world of broken dreams around our impossible schemes to scale the heights of loves lofty cliffs and so often fall to the rocks below and then we see a distant glimmer of hope and start the climb over and over again. Oh dear heart I have faith in you. I have placed all my worldly faith in you. I believe you will be happier than you ever thought possible and still happier than I could ever dream for you. I believe that you will meet someone who likes coffee just as black as you. Someone who pushes puzzles pieces together just the way you do. But this tall and dark and handsome man, with a chin to write home about and coal black eyes that make you think of railroad tunnels and Raven black hair, this man will make you think of chess in the night and love in the morning and he will come to you and how to you and make you his and he yours and love will rain down upon you like an August thunderstorm. There will be a trumpet sounding in the hills, and dogs barking in the street and the clock towers will sing out your new love. I know this to be true, for one of the gifts that God gives the dear hearted is prophecy. Our prophecies come truer than most and hardly ever at all but, it's a lot like tilting your head and squinting an eye or better still one of those pictures where you have to let your eyes unfocus and then you see the sailboat, it is how you look at it. I believe in you and your future, and there is sunshine ahead for you, but first storm clouds and strong winds, because your boat needs to be blown in the right direction, because God and Nature abhor straight lines.

As for me. I will love again. I know I will. I still dream about her though. This week I've been out in the wilderness that she fled to. I've been with my family, and I've thought about her. I have my regrets and my bitterness, but now I am more me than I was then. I have regained myself. I don't think she had taken my sense of self, or if I threw it away, but I had lost it and now I've got myself back and that I think is a choice I would make a thousand times and one. But still, the barbs are there and they are deep.

Oh well. We must all cry and suffer and scream and then we will be washed in the light of love and made clean, in this life or the next or the one after and if we're lucky we can catch glimpses of how big the world is and how small we are and that makes our pain less.

I love you, I bless you, I hope all things for you,

Dear heart,

K

a nice heart and a white suit

Dear k-

I am tired. I am restless. I have decided I need to make changes in my life. Things have become too stagnant. The person I currently am could be consciously improved. I drink too much. My workouts have become too routine and have lost their edge. My social life consists of the same four friends doing the same things every week without much variation. I am floundering hopelessly when it comes to dating. It’s time to decide to fish or cut bait, and I am cutting bait and swimming for shore.

It’s time I take control and make myself the person I want to be, rather than relying so consistently on the approval and acceptance of others in order to dictate my happiness. I went on three really good dates with a guy and now it’s like pulling teeth trying to set up a fourth date with him. He dodges and weaves through my suggested meet-ups like a prize boxer avoiding punches. I’ve spent a few days feeling low, but now I think that he’s the fool. If he’s trying to strategize to play hard to get, it’s backfiring. Why waste my time pursuing someone who is not so infatuated with me after three dates that he’s not willing to make time for me? I want someone who looks at me from across the room and thinks “that’s a woman who deserves a man who is willing to fight for her” and he is apt for the task. I want a man who actively looks forward to spending time with me. I don’t like feeling like something that needs to be penciled in a schedule, squished between other commitments and made to feel like I should be the one thankful he’s even giving me a few hours of his busy time.

Of course, I suppose I have possibly treated suitors in similar fashions at times. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised when the tables are turned on me. But then again, that’s another thing I need to improve. Another thing to add to the list of changes to enact.

Drink at least 8 glasses of water each day.
Start the day with hot lemon water. Optional: add mint.
Eat better. At least a salad a day. Be conscious of portions and late night snacking.
Sign up for a new workout class; try something outside my comfort zone.
Do something creative at least twice a week.
Limit alcoholic beverages to less than 10 per week. Preferably less than 5, so as to fit with most advice given by medical practitioners of the day.
Stop calculating self-worth based on the love of others.
Make attempts to elicit what truly makes me happy.
ADDITION: Be attentive to how you impact the feelings of potential suitors, both those you are interested in and those you don’t intend to pursue.

Here’s to hoping for something better to come.

Swimming,
-k

its easy to hate yourself if all your love is inside someone else

Dear K-

We all have ghosts. Memory will soften their edges and airbrush away the flaws, and it will be tempting to accept these sea glass versions, but you must strive to recall the original. You threw the bottle away for a reason: it was trash. You couldn’t use it anymore. It wasn’t going to help you. It was just clutter. It doesn’t matter how much our mind’s eye will transform the painful shards of glass into beautiful opaque pebbles. We can never have those pebbles in reality. The reality is so, so much harsher. You will reach for her shape and she will cut you, just like she did before. Some scars don’t show as well as others.

I know you want to find her. I know your heart feels drawn to her like a ship looking for a port. Don’t be fooled by the siren’s song. You must carry onward, searching for a safer shore. I cannot guarantee you safe passage. Keep looking up at the stars; they are shining for you now. Remind yourself that in the end, this will be the better story to write yourself. You are powerful. You deserve to be loved by someone who can give you their whole heart with no expectation of receiving yours in return. You should exchange willingly. By choice. If someone reaches in and takes your heart and gives you nothing to fill its place except a shadow of a breath, then you will never be happy.

She can never make you happy. You cannot live or love with a ghost heart. I know you are hurt. I know you have cuts running deep through your bones. But I also know you have the bud of a heart still caged within your breast. It just needs to be nurtured, encouraged, cared for, and after a bit of time it will grow back into the full, caring heart that I know you can possess. It is going to be painful. It’s hard to grow an organ back after it’s been ripped away from you completely. There are many sinews to be formed and severed tissues to be mended. But once it blooms back into its full glory, you will no longer dream of ghosts.

I have started going out on dates again. I am timid and skeptical of everyone. I have been so abused and broken that I feel I cannot trust anyone I meet. Even now, with my best prospect, I have to hold my joy in check. I find myself looking for the catch, looking for the inevitable fault. I start thinking to myself thoughts about potential other girlfriends, or perhaps a hidden wife, or perhaps he’s secretly got an addiction. Maybe he’s only leading me along for some sick joke. Maybe it’s just a game he plays in which he captures a girl’s heart then tramples all over it, tearing apart her ventricles, and laughs about it later with his mates. Maybe I’m misinterpreting all his motions, and he’s indifferent to my presence but too bored to spend the day at home alone.

Even still, the prospect of anything new gives me a slightly lighter step. My breaths are shallow with anxiety but the air tastes sweet. There is something out there, K. Don’t give up hope. There’s something waiting for us, yet. Perhaps it is over a week of insomnia and shattered nerves speaking, but I think there’s something better for us. There has to be. Because I can’t live with just this.

The air is painfully sweet. It burns my lungs but I don’t know if I could have it any other way. It is about time something lit a fire inside me.

Don’t give up. I couldn’t stand to suffer through this world without my complement.

-k

In A Tunnel Under The Mountain

Dear K,

In my dreams she still comes to me. I'm as in love with her as I ever was. As I ever will be I suspect. Love like this doesn't fade, the edges just get softer like sea glass, tossed and tumbled by the waves until a bottle of Mountain Dew becomes an emerald. She told me in the dream that she was getting married and I've been burning with jealous rage all day. It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream. I can't stand it. I want her to come to me. I want to go to her. I want to say I'm sorry until my throat cracks and I choke on blood and I'll still scream to God I'm sorry. I miss her. I'm in love with a ghost, only she's out there.

I have to remind myself every day that I ended it. I was the one who looked around at it and said I'd had enough. I couldn't be that unhappy anymore. I couldn't let her push me around and push my friends away and push my sisters away, and I want children. I want to have beautiful little babies that stare up at me with wonder, and I want to raise them out in the country where you can't tell the fireflies from the stars in the midnight skies. I want that. But I want her. I want her to the point of tears. Some days if I breathe in too sharply I can feel the like of broken glass where my heart used to be. Some days it is hard to stop crying. I've learned how to cry on the inside and the tears just run down my insides and pool in my feet. I miss her. I miss the smell of her hair, her breath, her eyes, her voice, I miss her hands and feet and lungs and knees and hips and stomach and shoulders and breasts and teeth and tongue and nose and neck and ass and calves and thighs and forearms and elbows and scapula and liver and intestines and every other part therein.

I'm drowning in a ruined love.

Tell me there is air worth breathing,

K

Dear K,

I got the job. Today was my first day. It's a miserable little dungeon full of the kindest people I've met in this new city.

I don't like it here. I miss home. I miss being able to ride my bicycle out into the countryside and see fields and smell fresh country air and hear bird song and feel God stir me through the wind. The wind blows here too, but I don't feel God in it. I don't feel his kind hands, I feel grit and I smell garbage and fumes and people. The endless crowds of people. They press in around you. There is no escape from the crowds. This is how I die, pressed around by a mass of people.

Move to Des Moines. I'll move back. We'll write together. We can be neighbors and drink bottles of wine and sit on each other's back porches staring up into the night sky.

I feel older than I've ever felt, and I miss my home.

Take care of yourself,

K

the great sharpener of knives

Dear K-

I am pleased for you. There’s a certain furious, panicked excitement in the uncertainty, the anticipation of a potential cataclysm, for better or worse. You don’t need me to wish you luck but I shall do it all the same because you asked me to do so. I can almost see you, sitting in a stuffy white room in a chair that feels well worn, smiling with such a casual sense of ease as you navigate through a field of inquiries, plucking the best queries out like a choice flower from a bouquet, to hold and examine delicately as your expound upon its qualities, before you gently tuck it back into place before the interviewer. Then you lean back with eyes sparkling, glittering with the fire of your soul while the coffee rushes through your veins like a cataract, and give them another one of your warm, enthusiastic smiles. You will do beautifully. I have no doubt.

I am the sharpener of knives. It is what I do best, is it not? I apologize if my knives have ever found their way to hurt you; I never meant to bury them within you. Sometimes knowing me is enough to guarantee collateral damage. My life isn’t that terrible. I know I should be thankful and happy with what I have. And in many ways, I am. I am so, so very thankful for the opportunities I have been afforded and the successes I have found. But sometimes the world just weighs you down. I’m in a valley at the moment, and when I try to scrap my way up the rocks to make my way to the top of the hill, the gravel gives way and I slide back down to where I started. At the moment, I’m trying to decide whether or not I should just stay in the valley for a little while. Perhaps I will end up liking it here. Perhaps I am just wasting effort trying to climb the hill to reach some unknown that may not make me any more content.

It is dangerous to know me. It is a mistake to get attached. I have a friend who I’ve known perhaps two to three years now, and we’ve seen each other at least once a week for those three years. Lately, we’ve been seeing more of each other through various group social outings. He is a good person. I think he is a very kind soul and has many good qualities. But I fear he is getting too fond of me. And as much as I think he is a great human, I know that I can only bring him unhappiness. A younger version of myself would have interpreted his attentions as reason to start a relationship: oh look, this gentleman is actually interested in me! This is unusual! I like how this feels when someone is keen on me, so I think I’ll start a relationship so I can enjoy this on a regular basis. But now, older, jaded, I know that I could never make such a relationship work. He would always love me more than I could ever love him. And that isn’t a slight to his personality or ability; I just know my heart isn’t there. At one point it may have been, but it isn’t. I could never make it work and I don’t want to try. I love him enough to know that I could never love him enough to make him happy.

A part of me thinks he’s just another lonely person, a little shy of twice my age, and he may think that we would make a good match for simply that reason: two lonely people who get along well enough in most contexts might be able to entertain each other enough to consistently enjoy each other’s company in perpetuity.

On a related note, this same friend sees a therapist. I found out while rummaging through his wallet to try to help him find a lost slip of ticket. The ticket stub was absent, but instead I found several reminder cards for appointments at a therapist. A very selfish, disgusting part of me later wondered if he ever brought me up at therapy. I have no idea what the purpose of the therapist is, and I doubt I would be ever mentioned at any meeting, but there’s still a part of me that is curious. Have you ever wondered that? Do you wonder if people bring you up in other conversations with people who have no idea who you are? It doesn’t have to be a therapist- take this correspondence for instance. Do you think this man would ever wonder if I talk about him to a third party? Am I the only selfish, self-centered thinking person in the world who secretly (now not so secretly) wonders if they’ve ever been the topic of a session? Of a late night phone call? Of an emotional break down? Of a song? Of an unprovoked thought?

Maybe that just makes me a terrible person. Either way, I think I should try to limit my social outings for a while until I’ve figured out what this valley is really about.

Tell me you got the job.

-k

Deer Heart Dear Heart Here Dart

Dear K,

I'm sitting in a Starbucks trying to psyche myself up for a job interview and simultaneously thinking about everything in my life and the panic of the coffee is starting to grip me but that might be a good thing over-caffeinated ramblings sometimes knock some truth loose especially if you let the fingers hit the keys at a fantastic rate and you don't stop to think or to punctuate. That's the ticket you know? Just to type and type and let your words flow. They come in eddies and they come in streams and you get caught up in the patterns of things. You let the rhythm sort itself out, you let the things you say stop mattering. You let the thoughts you think become smaller and smaller and smaller until there is only your fingers hitting the keys, and that is about as close as I have ever come to finding a sort of peace. The secret to life is to somehow be ok with how terrible and great the world is simultaneously. There is great pain and great joy. There is nothing you can do about either. There is nothing you can do about it, so just let go and let your fingers hit the keys, and walk your dog and ride the bus and go to work and come home and make a big pot of soup and listen to the radio and maybe they will play billie holiday and she'll sing about your anxiousness and your unease and your sorrow and your guilt and your pain and all the little sharp knives you grow inside and, I know this is hard to read, its because punctuation and editing are things that we use to make things easier to read, but at least I typed this out and didn't write it out by hand. It'd be a real nightmare then. You know? Sometimes I sit and think about you. I wonder about when you smile. I'd like to be there someday soon and see that smile of yours, and I'm not talking about the everyday smiles. I'm talking about the ones that shoot out of your heart unexpectedly. You know, like when you see a really good dog in the park doing a really great thing, like leaning forward, bowing almost, but wagging its tail the whole time, you know how dogs like to indicate that they're playing? I want to see you smile at something like that. I've been filling my soul with knives for a long time, it is very poky in there. You know? I know you know. You're the great knife sharpener. But I hope somebody throws some lovely pebbles in there and dulls the knives. I hope somebody throws some great big rocks into your soul and convinces you that you're great and lovely and deserve to smile like seeing a big shaggy dog. But now I need to go and interview for a job. Wish me luck, even if you wish it to me in the future it will still affect the past, because luck is quantum.

Thinking of you,

K

Not Dark But Light, Not Flies But Fires Soaring towards the heavens like love from our hearts

Dear K,

I was rusted into my armor. I got stuck in there, the damn thing rusted shut. Please accept this as my excuse for not writing back.

Oh my darling. So much has befallen you. I wish I could swoop down upon you and scoop you up in my arms. I wish I had been there for you. I wish you could have cried warm wet tears into my shirt while you apologized for getting your tears and snot all over my shirt. I wish I could have brushed your hair back and held you closer until you were all cried out. I wish then that I could have made you a chocolate shake with hot fudge and drawn you a hot bath with a big comfy robe. I wish that you would wake up every morning to joy and light and happiness.

I wish that you didn't feel trapped by everyday life. I know the feeling. My dove we are two birds sitting in cages states and states away singing to each other songs from our youth. Sad sweet songs that smell like the last blooms of a tree on a cold day in May.

I wish I could arrange for a band to play and sing your name. A big marching band, in uniforms, red with tasseled epalets, a hundred youth or more, singing at the top of their throats, singing glory glory glory, marching down a green field, shouting your name.

Although you'd hate that. I know you'd hate that. In fact I can't think of anything you would hate more.

So instead I'll arrange for a man to come from Eastern Europe. To whisper his love for you in your ear with his exotic tongue, even the word Goulash would sound seductive as dark chocolate and bitter black tea and annis flavored liquors coming screaming like lighting out of green glass bottles and sidewalk cafes and sharp short winds in winter and warm mulled wine and all the things of those smoky mysterious hills the hapsburgs used to claim.

But really I just want to tell you that I'm so proud of you. I know what you have been going through, and I'm so very proud of you. You have had a hard year, and it's not even half over, but you're strong, you're still standing, and you're in my thoughts and in my heart.

God Bless You And Keep You And Make His Face Shine Upon You,

K

west coast mind with an east coast mentality

Dear K-

You’ve forgotten your old friend again, it seems. I will continue to write, even if you aren’t actively writing back. It’s hard to say whether it is because I hold the hopes that eventually you will remember our correspondence and grace me with your witty replies, or if it is because I sometimes treat our correspondence more as a diary than a proper interaction. Perhaps it is simply because I don’t want to let go of what once was.

I am restless again. I wonder how much of my life will be spent trying to scheme ways to move back to Eastern Europe. And then if I ever accomplish that goal, will I finally be happy? Or will I start to miss the things I abandoned? Will the sacrifices I make to fulfill my desire be too dear?

I suppose I really shouldn’t be complaining, shouldn’t be sighing and looking across the ocean and thinking how nice it would be to be somewhere else. In fact, this is probably the most stable my life has been in the past 10 years. I have a steady source of employment (even if I hate it a bit), and I am making enough money to be fairly comfortable. I have a regular group of friends who I see at least weekly. Sometimes we go to events in the city together. But maybe that’s why I am getting so anxious. For the first time in my life, I don’t have any big change or anticipated shift in store for my future. From here on out all I see is the same old, same old, and it unnerves me. What do I look forward to? Is this really where I want to be? I am comfortable, but I’m not content.

What brought about this renewed agitation? Hard to say. Could be the recent return of warmer weather. Could also be the fact that I spent the weekend in Nashville with 8 other girls celebrating a hen night. It was the first time in my life I have done anything like that. It was actually a much more enjoyable experience than I had originally anticipated, but it left me questioning my current situation in life. I still can’t exactly put my finger on the reason why. I’ll continue to thumb through the index cards of my cortex and let you know if I come up with any answers.

I hope you are well. I hope you are managing to make it through each day appreciating the little things that bring us joy. I hope you haven’t felt the pain that comes with talking to B, or feeling her tug at your heartstrings as if they were threads of gossamer floss, ready to snap at any instant. I hope you are drinking martinis with friends and laughing that big, hearty chortle I remember. You know, the one that brings a smile to my lips without fail, because it is such an honest reaction. I don’t know if you could fake it if you tried.

I hope you are keeping your head above water.

Still treading,
-k

put the days away

Dear K-

My grandmother is dead. I received the message on a Saturday afternoon while I sat in an empty optometry office musing about how all my patients appeared to be cancelling or no-showing due to the recent blessing of warmer weather. It was one of those things where deep down I most likely knew it was coming, but I was trying to avoid it. Trying to think it would be pushed off for another year or two. Another close call.

I kept trying to send her an African Violet. She liked flowers, and I foolishly thought if I sent her something that would require her care and attention, maybe she could be persuaded to get better. But the florist could not fulfil my order, so instead I sent her the severed heads of assorted daisies and a stuffed giraffe tied to a crinkly balloon begging her to get well soon. It wasn’t enough. She told us herself; she didn’t want to live anymore. Between bouts of drug-induced sleep, she repeatedly asked my mother and her sister, “why can’t I just die?”

I wonder if I will ever reach that point in my life.

As morbid as the situation is, I am strangely comforted by the thought that she no longer wanted to hold on. I regret I couldn’t visit her this past year, before she had given up. I kept all the letters and birthday cards she sent me. I don’t know if she knew that. And that’s actually what makes me the saddest at current; the thought I won’t receive any more of her letters. I won’t hear any more about the weather in Minnesota, or how the squirrels have gotten into her tomatoes, or how Grandpa had a difficult time driving to the senior center to play cards due to the recent ice storm. I always smirked at the letters and tossed them in my desk drawer, usually scrawling some sort of reply and sending it her way. But now, faced with the realization that the letters will now cease, my heart sinks with acknowledgement that I enjoyed them more than I dared to admit. Even though the words may have seemed trivial, they were the only thing connecting me to a woman I haven’t seen in approximately 4 to 5 years.

So I spent a tidy sum purchasing the last ticket available for a flight out at 5:45am in order to make it in time for the funeral. You know, I’ve been feeling so run down lately that a part of me is actually looking forward to taking a day or two off, even if it is to attend a funeral. That seems somewhat selfish, but it is the truth. A part of me wishes I could’ve taken the whole week off. I just don’t feel like doing much of anything right now.

At least the weather is getting warmer.

On an unrelated note, finding medical quality syringes on short notice is more frustrating than I expected. I’m lucky the patient called to reschedule to next week. Buys me some time. Just throwing this out there for your information.

Un-reticently yours,
-k

needle in the hay

Dear K-

What's wrong with me? I try to make things work that I need to abandon as broken. How much longer am I going to keep saying to myself "maybe this time it'll be different"? I'm not happy in my current relationship. I haven't been happy for a while. I've been trying to fix things: make myself less judgmental, more friendly, more positive. I read somewhere that sometimes just making the effort every morning to tell you significant other "I love you" that it can be psychologically beneficial for each of you. I tried it. But it just feels empty. It feels forced. I hate myself when I say it, because I think he knows I feel guilty. I do feel guilty. I feel guilty that I can't just quip it out without even a doubt, give him a peck on the cheek, then go off to work, dreaming of the moment I get to come back home to his arms. My life doesn't have that sparkle. I don't expect things to be perfect, but I want at least something positive. Something worth staying for.

Instead, I find us getting into arguments over the tiniest things. I have even been making a conscious effort to stop starting fights over things I know are not big deals. But he finds the ways to aggravate and annoy me to the point where I just fall silent because I can't think of anything nice to say. You know the old phrase. But then he gets upset at me for "not being fun" or he takes my silence as disapproval. He's not entirely far from the mark.

The other day we went out to lunch. In the middle of our meal, which was being eaten in silence while he browsed his phone and I got lost in my own thoughts, a young man sat down a few seats away from us at the bar. I overheard him politely place his order, which was exactly the same as mine except a different beverage. He then proceeded to pull out a small notebook, full of scribbled writing, and started to make an entry while he waited for his food. He was painfully attractive. I found myself staring. I found myself thinking "if I was single, I would try to engage him in conversation in a heartbeat." But instead I glanced over at my boyfriend, looking dissheveled and unshowered, and felt my heart sink like a brick into a lake. Where did I go wrong?

Am I always going to feel discontent? Am I seeking something that isn't attainable? Why do I try so hard to achieve what should come more naturally? Who am I fooling anymore?

And yet I am too cowardly to abandon and hurt the one connection I still have to the social world.

I heard a song one time that mentioned that if you didn't like what you were catching, maybe it was time to change the bait.

Perhaps I am the problem.

Happy new year,
-k