Buck Up!

Dear K,

I started seeing somebody. I really like her. We just had our first date last night. But we've been hanging out all week. It's one of those head rushes that takes you out like a tackle from nowhere. You're trudging along in the snow and then someone wraps their arms around you and you find yourself on the ground in spring rubbing your head and wondering how you got there. It's a reminder that the world can be a fine place to live in, and maybe all we need is just a little kindness to get by with. Just somebody to look at you and say they like who you are and what you do and how you do it.  Thinking about all the time I spent crying into the wind, trying to get back something that I left, trying to march upstream in a river when the water's already in the ocean, and it strikes me that I'm a fool, and I'm glad I'm a fool. I'm an idiot in a good way. I'm really enjoying life. I've been going through a lot of ups and downs and this life is quite a wild ride and I'm so glad of it.

Cheers,

K

Now The Gates Of Jericho Were Securely Barred

Dear K,


Last week I went to the Des Moines Art Center, which is our humble little art museum here. It's got a couple of treasures and they do their damndest in a town that has little time for anything other than cubicle sitting and couch sitting. The new exhibit the art center has on display is photographs by Vivian Meier. There are exhibits of her photographs all over the country now, she's been in vogue for the last couple of years. They made a Netflix documentary about why.

You see these two yahoos in New Jersey went and bid on a storage unit in an auction and they won. In the storage unit were thousands and thousands of negatives. Some of them were dated and had the location on them. A lot didn't. Vivian Meier had died some time ago and never intended for this work to be exhibited or used or thought about. I believe that she took these pictures for herself. Took them and made them and kept them secret like you keep your writing secret. Now the secret is out though.

It's a strange exhibit to see, because there's no authorship in the work, by that I mean you don't know how or why she took these pictures. A lot of the ones up at the Des Moines Art Center are in the genre of Street Photography, which is where you take pictures of strangers on the street. Vivian Meier took pictures of strangers without them knowing, she didn't do street portraits. She didn't ask people about their lives. She just took little snippets of their lives, parts of their exteriority and hid them away. It's kind of the inverse of what happened to her work isn't it?


Here's the thing though. I guarantee that your work will resonate with somebody. I guarantee that what you write will save somebody's life in a small way. I say this because I think that we live and die in small events. Every minute is made up of sixty seconds and those sixty seconds are made up of smaller bits and smaller than these is where we live. They're not all good, and not all bad, and it's the whole that matters, it's in aggregate. I want you to share your work for the same reason that if we were all put into a choir we should all sing. It's the duty of everybody who can move a pen and put together a sentence to write to the best of their ability, and to share it. To sing with the choir.

I'm not going to stop trying to convince you to that your work should be made public. And I won't have any part of destroying it after you die. You know what I'll do? I'll edit it all into books and publish them myself. That's what I'm going to do. You better hope you outlive me because if you don't I'm gonna find all your writing and share your voice with the world.

Yours In Annoying Friendship,

K

i took the lights and radio towers out of my dreams

Dear K-

I am sorry to hear about your friend. It’s always hard to lose someone, especially unexpectedly, and especially when it was anticipated on their end but they didn’t relay that message until it was already over. Suicide always makes me feel guilty and selfish. I think to myself “what could I have done” or “why didn’t they tell me” and even sometimes “was I not enough to keep them wanting to live”? I may have only talked to the person once, at some crowded college party and we exchanged some joke about Jamaica, but still their choice to later consciously leave this world always hangs heavy and I feel like an opportunity was missed. I am not foolish enough to think these sentiments are original or unique; I am sure death tends to rock all our cradles in a similar fashion whenever it passes near. We always miss the things most that we can never have back.

In regards to your previous rants of the new year, I did not mean to make you feel targeted by my lamentations, although I always welcome your perspective. It is one thing to read a past love’s work and admire it for its sentimentality and heart, but it’s another thing to react in such a way as to make the author feel cornered, trapped. You know that I have a long history of writing without an intent to share, so I still startle easily when I realize that I am exposed, vulnerable. I don’t like my words being twisted to suit another’s purpose, especially someone who has left such a bitter taste in my mouth. But I guess that is inevitably the plight of every writer; once you give yourself up and let other’s in on your world, it’s no longer yours. Someone will always find themselves in your writing, whether the interpretation is accurate or not. Someone will always feel when they read your work (or maybe they won’t, maybe it won’t resonate at all), and that is something you and I and everyone else just has to accept. I am sure some of my favorite authors would probably be disappointed in the sentiments they evoke in me, because perhaps it wasn’t their intent. But there’s nothing to be done of it. You are right. I shouldn’t let it stop me. What should I care what some little, lonely man thinks?

I have been drinking a lot more coffee lately. I know it isn’t good for me, but I have been trying to be better about other aspects of my life in exchange for this simple pleasure. It’s hard to give it up. There just isn’t anything that can compare to staring out a cloudy winter window while sitting in my knickers, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee in the gentle morning silence and musing at the birds around my backyard feeder. I like to watch them flit and flutter and their undulating flight paths. I don't get to do it as often as I'd like.

Yours cordially,
-k

Listening To Absent Friends

Dear K,

Yesterday one of my friends ended his life. He sat down on some train tracks and waited to die. He left a note for the people he was living with. They got home, saw the note and ran to the tracks. The police were already there.

Charlie was a musician. He had this magical quality to his songs. They were democratic driving songs that didn't care too much about themselves and just rushed forward. Charlie's songs came at you and overwhelmed you with their sweetness and innocence and care for you.

When someone dies you stop and think about them. I don't know if I would have stopped to think about Charlie if he hadn't taken his own life. I went online and bought his albums for $10.00. They're the kind of music I love best.

I didn't know I would miss this sweet man the way I miss him now that we'll never have a chance to meet again.

You and I talk about sadness and sorrow a lot. We do a lot of wallowing together. I want to rebuke us for this but I won't. I can't. I'm just gonna end this with an excerpt from one of Charlie's songs.

"Misery loves company, and you're my favorite company, so won't you come and dance with me and take me home."

Regards,

K

Some Of The Ways In Which I Am An Idiot

Dear K,

Uhhhhhhhhhh....... Man. I know your pain but from the opposite side. I have been, and honestly I continue to be, the old ex that reads poetry. I hope though that I'm not putting my former partner through the tortures that you're describing. Also if my former partner is reading this I would like to apologize for reading your poetry online, but I'm going to continue to do so. Also I'm proud of her for continuing to write! More on this later.

That dude that's reading your writing and thinking its about him? I'm guilty of that sin ten million times. Hopefully, he'll quiet down. I have some real questions for you though. It is very stupid that he thinks he's a better poet than you, poetry is non-competitive. It's part of being human and expressing what it means to be human. Being a person is not a competition and anyone who thinks being a person is a competition is a DOOOMED idiot. But I suppose we all have to suffer in unique ways.  Still though, what a ridiculous area of life to make claims about being better or worse than in. Read that sentence out loud, I'm not sure it works written but it definitely works out loud.

How did he stifle your creativity? Perhaps a more precise wording of that question is "Can you tell me the mechanics of how he stifled your creativity?" Because I feel like I may be guilty of some parallel sin and did so obliviously. Ok, so one time I got into a really stupid fight with my most important ex about sudoku. I got really competitive about it because I was having fun and I'm good at Soduko and she was too. Sidebar she was and is smarter than me. But without noticing it I took all the fun out of the competition and turned it into a fight and when she stopped competing I got real mad. It was a strange moment for sure, but a moment that I've really learned a lot from and that I've grown from. Overall I learned from the relationship that you need to pay attention to what things are actually about and talk about them and negotiate, and a million other useful things.

Anyways, how is this guy contacting you? Is he writing comments on your posts? If so, delete them! You're a powerful strong smart lady and you have tools and weapons at your disposal. Fight! Rise up! Sing your song for all to hear! The soul is a thing that is built for combat and action and it is built to suffer and in suffering, despite suffering, bloom and blossom and rise rise rise! Poetry is the language of the soul and no soul should be denied their voice. So write in metered or unmetered verse, or as I prefer to title my poetic musings: mangled meterless malformations. Your poetry is yours and no one not God not the Devil, not St Peter or Jesus or Judas Iscariot can take them away from you. Delilah might cut your golden locks but she cannot put your heart in the Philistines' public stocks. Souls are made of fire! So burn damnit! Burn! Light your pyre! Build the fire! Let your voice be heat and light and smoke. Raise it up to God. Poetry is sacred. Poetry is yours. Poetry is every individuals' provenance and promulgation and proliferation and providence and perpetuation and predominance and propensity and prosperity and prostration and a plurality of other potent properties. Take back your god damned land and write that poetry. Write it like it is branches you want to put forth on a bonfire. Write poetry with hope. Write it without hope. Light up the winter night sky with your words. It is the duty of every literate person to write, so write. [this paragraph is the more that I promised in the first paragraph]

Some confessions: I have abandoned all sense of what a paragraph should or should not be. I've just kind of started a series of loosely collected rants in this letter, I know you'll forgive me because this epistolary of ours has always been a place where we have been free to crack our heads and hearts open and let the goo pour out, and I think it should ever remain a wild protected preserve. Free from scrutiny. Free from the jealous venom of the red pen. Free from editing or second reading or re-writing or even proper punctuation. I'm a criminal of the written word and I hope someday to reform. In the meantime I'm going to continue creating sentences that are crimes against nature and god as evidenced above.

In conclusion my dearest K. Send me a link to your poetry blog and I'll send you mine and we can read the lumps of coal that pour out the bottoms of each other's souls, and I will not judge you and you will not judge me, we'll just be, together, in poetry.

Yours for better or verse,

K.

the district sleeps alone tonight

Dear K-

I am glad the earth of your youth is empowering you. Don’t break too many bones, tiger. I know we all go through phases when we want to smash and destroy, when the energy inside us is boiling to the brim and we have to let out the steam lest we scald out our insides, but be careful. The sinews and cartilage are not as easy to mend as they once were, now that we are getting older. Be mindful and selective of which injuries you incur so as to keep yourself functional. Other than that, have fun! Get that devil what for!

Speaking of aging, in less than a week I slip into another year of life. Almost done with my third decade. I don’t feel like celebrating. But then again, I haven’t felt like celebrating much of anything in what feels like rather a long time. I’ve gotten paler over the winter. The weather has finally started to show its fangs and frost is nibbling at my flesh every time I go outdoors. We finally got some snow, although it’s nothing like the snows I remember from my childhood. It did feel good to go for a run in the early hours of the morning, through some forest trails covered in unmarred snow, not encountering a single other soul. There’s something satisfying about that. Something that is rare to find ever since I moved to the city. I love the city, but sometimes it just feels too crowded. Sometimes I just want to be alone with my thoughts in the wilderness.

I’ve been drawing a bit more but I haven’t been writing. An old ex found the site I had been using to post my occasional musings, and he started encroaching on my quiet soil. He interprets everything I write to be about him somehow. He also fancies himself a better poet than me, and he used to remind me of that when we were dating. He always found a way to choke out my creative voice when I was with him, and even four years later he’s still finding ways to make me feel ill at ease. The few things I’ve written since his incursion have remained on their crumpled sheets folded on my nightstand. I hesitate to post them to anything for fear he will instantly try to attribute my words to something he’s done, something he’s influenced. In truth, they have nothing to do with him. I want to tell him: I never think of you. None of this is for you. But even so blunt a statement would most likely be re-interpreted and only better convince him of the opposite. So instead I’ll just stay silent. Radio silence.

At least the days are slowly starting to get longer.

-k