Dear K,
Well I'm glad you're out there, even if it is just in the woodwork. I wish you wouldn't tuck into yourself so much, but then again you're always fun to chase. I told you I wrote you a letter, and I did, but I don't think it's for you, I think I wrote it and it turned out to be for someone else, or the you in my head turned out to be someone else.
I'm not going to mail the letter to you. I'll try to mail something else though. It's a watercolor I made when I was trying to think of ways to cheer you up.
The whole lite-brite thing makes sense. I've always allowed others to arrange my life, and I rarely held onto any part for myself. I guess I thought that's what Jesus did, and that's what we should all do with our lives. When I was little I used to want to be Jesus, and every Good Friday I'd imagine dying for everyone, trying to redeem them all. I used to shiver and shake in the pew.
This took one took a dark turn,
I'm ending it now,
K
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
vsechno nejlepsi
Dear K-
I’ve been hiding. I’ve been weaving in and out of the wood work, keeping to the shadows, remaining quiet and tucked away. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It is not that I am invisible; it is more like something within me compelled people to look away. They know I’m there, lingering at the periphery, but they have no desire to turn and see me face on. I’m nobody- I’m just a blur in the crowd, the nameless entity in the optometry office writing down your health history. When they fall asleep at night, do they think of me? What about 30 minutes after they’ve left the office, are they still wondering who I am or what I’m doing with my life?
No. And that’s exactly what I want right now.
Obviously things have been a little uncertain in my life lately. Doctors call to tell me they don’t know what’s wrong, and they need to run more tests. I’m never really sure how to react, and so I merely adopt a friendly tone and assure them that I’m willing to submit to whatever they wish. But do I really have a choice? I see people every day who are slowly withering away from age, disease, misuse, disuse, and abuse. Why should I really be so different?
I am sorry I wouldn’t pick up the phone. I haven’t picked it up for a while, and mostly I just sit and watch it ring. It shimmies and slowly circles about in place upon the table, flashing bright white lights and singing aloud. A part of me really wants to pick it up. When I speak into the receiver, I inherently adopt that friendly, perky tone again, and for as long as I’m on the line I’m as healthy and chipper as one could be. But as soon as I hang up, the deception is gone and the smoke has cleared. I’m back to reality and my miserable self, and it only makes me feel more empty and pathetic than before.
I am the mess of colors which you describe. I’m a muddy and cramped palette, the thick oily pigments occasionally smearing into each other and becoming a sickly grey.
You are more like an arrangement of colors on a lite brite table. When your bulb is out, there’s nothing but a shadow, a blank black canvas of gloom and melancholy. But when you’re on, when you’re up and at ‘em, that’s when everyone admires you. You glitter in fantastic neon hues, your plastic pegs rearranged at whim to depict laughing clowns, stunning landscapes, bouquets of balloons, and whatever your heart desires. Even if it’s just a swirling river of colored lights, it brings a warm glow to the darkness surrounding us and brings comfort to sleeping children alone in their beds.
You smell like baking bread, almost done in the oven. It’s so light and airy, yet it snakes into your nostrils and fills yours lungs like a warm embrace from the inside. A scent so comforting and happy, like a winter day spent indoors in good company, with spiced cider in mugs to warm your hands and stomach. It also makes me think of home, and when I spent an entire summer destroying whole days making batch after batch of loaves, trying to find the perfect recipe for a French baguette. But I never got it quite right. So there’s always a tinge of sadness associated with the smell. A scent of disappointment and regret.
Still clinging to the dullness of dusk,
-K
I’ve been hiding. I’ve been weaving in and out of the wood work, keeping to the shadows, remaining quiet and tucked away. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It is not that I am invisible; it is more like something within me compelled people to look away. They know I’m there, lingering at the periphery, but they have no desire to turn and see me face on. I’m nobody- I’m just a blur in the crowd, the nameless entity in the optometry office writing down your health history. When they fall asleep at night, do they think of me? What about 30 minutes after they’ve left the office, are they still wondering who I am or what I’m doing with my life?
No. And that’s exactly what I want right now.
Obviously things have been a little uncertain in my life lately. Doctors call to tell me they don’t know what’s wrong, and they need to run more tests. I’m never really sure how to react, and so I merely adopt a friendly tone and assure them that I’m willing to submit to whatever they wish. But do I really have a choice? I see people every day who are slowly withering away from age, disease, misuse, disuse, and abuse. Why should I really be so different?
I am sorry I wouldn’t pick up the phone. I haven’t picked it up for a while, and mostly I just sit and watch it ring. It shimmies and slowly circles about in place upon the table, flashing bright white lights and singing aloud. A part of me really wants to pick it up. When I speak into the receiver, I inherently adopt that friendly, perky tone again, and for as long as I’m on the line I’m as healthy and chipper as one could be. But as soon as I hang up, the deception is gone and the smoke has cleared. I’m back to reality and my miserable self, and it only makes me feel more empty and pathetic than before.
I am the mess of colors which you describe. I’m a muddy and cramped palette, the thick oily pigments occasionally smearing into each other and becoming a sickly grey.
You are more like an arrangement of colors on a lite brite table. When your bulb is out, there’s nothing but a shadow, a blank black canvas of gloom and melancholy. But when you’re on, when you’re up and at ‘em, that’s when everyone admires you. You glitter in fantastic neon hues, your plastic pegs rearranged at whim to depict laughing clowns, stunning landscapes, bouquets of balloons, and whatever your heart desires. Even if it’s just a swirling river of colored lights, it brings a warm glow to the darkness surrounding us and brings comfort to sleeping children alone in their beds.
You smell like baking bread, almost done in the oven. It’s so light and airy, yet it snakes into your nostrils and fills yours lungs like a warm embrace from the inside. A scent so comforting and happy, like a winter day spent indoors in good company, with spiced cider in mugs to warm your hands and stomach. It also makes me think of home, and when I spent an entire summer destroying whole days making batch after batch of loaves, trying to find the perfect recipe for a French baguette. But I never got it quite right. So there’s always a tinge of sadness associated with the smell. A scent of disappointment and regret.
Still clinging to the dullness of dusk,
-K
Monday, November 15, 2010
Synesthesia's Getting Too Popular These Days
Dear K,
You haven't returned my calls or letters for a while now. I've found artifacts of you on the internet, so I know you're still out there somewhere.
Help me understand.
Please.
I found an apartment. The windows look out on a sculpture garden. It's just a small studio, but I think it will be home. I hope to have it by the end of the month, and then maybe I'll feel better about my place in the world. I'll lace up my shoes in the morning and walk to work. I'll sit down every other week and make a budget and pay my bills on time and do my own income taxes.
For my birthday I asked for kitchen knives, which I received along with a blender. I'm going to cook things for myself and be healthy and fit. I'm going to lose all this weight I put on in college trying to drink away my sorrows and angst.
I've got an attachment for my bicycle, it props up the back wheel and provides resistance against the spin. Every night I sit on it and pedal, and I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
Today I got a library card. The library is on the other side of my apartment building, and it's windows are all covered in a copper glaze, and it always reminds me of the end of a Summer and the middle of Fall. The end of Fall is dark and deep deep blow, freckled around the edges with crisp white and frozen breath. The end of Winter is a sort of warming Robin's Egg blue. The end of Spring is the end of romance, it is the end of lilac dreams, but it is a sort of trumpeting sound, Spring doesn't have a color.
You are a sort of tangled mess of things. You're violet and crimson and jet-jet black, but also turquoise and streaks of white and high electric blue, and somewhere in there is some pink, but that might just be when you blush.
You sound like a carousel.
And you smell like roses and onions in white wine, would you prefer if I said shallots? But also icewater, crisp and refreshing, with the slight metallic taste that is the iron in your own blood.
Come back to this place of letters,
I'll make it safe again,
K
You haven't returned my calls or letters for a while now. I've found artifacts of you on the internet, so I know you're still out there somewhere.
Help me understand.
Please.
I found an apartment. The windows look out on a sculpture garden. It's just a small studio, but I think it will be home. I hope to have it by the end of the month, and then maybe I'll feel better about my place in the world. I'll lace up my shoes in the morning and walk to work. I'll sit down every other week and make a budget and pay my bills on time and do my own income taxes.
For my birthday I asked for kitchen knives, which I received along with a blender. I'm going to cook things for myself and be healthy and fit. I'm going to lose all this weight I put on in college trying to drink away my sorrows and angst.
I've got an attachment for my bicycle, it props up the back wheel and provides resistance against the spin. Every night I sit on it and pedal, and I feel like I'm getting somewhere.
Today I got a library card. The library is on the other side of my apartment building, and it's windows are all covered in a copper glaze, and it always reminds me of the end of a Summer and the middle of Fall. The end of Fall is dark and deep deep blow, freckled around the edges with crisp white and frozen breath. The end of Winter is a sort of warming Robin's Egg blue. The end of Spring is the end of romance, it is the end of lilac dreams, but it is a sort of trumpeting sound, Spring doesn't have a color.
You are a sort of tangled mess of things. You're violet and crimson and jet-jet black, but also turquoise and streaks of white and high electric blue, and somewhere in there is some pink, but that might just be when you blush.
You sound like a carousel.
And you smell like roses and onions in white wine, would you prefer if I said shallots? But also icewater, crisp and refreshing, with the slight metallic taste that is the iron in your own blood.
Come back to this place of letters,
I'll make it safe again,
K
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Dear K,
I will write you a love letter. But not here. I will write you more than one love letter but not here. This space between us that exists here is too fragile for the crashing words and thrilling sentences in a love letter.
Between us here we have erected some sort of spider web of overly worked words, and melodrama and it is beautiful and unnecessary and great and full of self pity and oh how I love every minute of it, but it is fragile and delicate, but then maybe I wouldn't be honest to this space if I didn't write a love letter here.
" Dear K,
I don't know how long it has been since I've seen you. But I do know that I fell into a deep trap set by ourselves, and now I imagine sitting across a table from you and drinking wine with you and maybe at some point in the evening I point towards the cinema screen and kiss you on the cheek, slightly, not in a forward way, but in a way that reminds you of how young and earnest and bright I really am, and that reminds you that my breath smells of mint and warmth.
Or we never went to the movies, and instead it was spring or summer and after dinner, there has to be dinner, we walk in some perfumed garden and I steal your hand and wrap your fingers around mine, wouldn't that be grand?
We'll talk about the children we wouldn't want to have until we've known each other for at least half of this decade. You'll want to name them something practical like John or Susan and I'll argue for Telamachus and Orpheus and Persephone and Rhea or Euphrates or something out of Byron, but of course I don't really mean it, and neither do you, of course we don't even have any plans beyond whether or not to look the other in the eye and see whether the moonlight bouncing of their skin reminds you of the way you wanted to feel when you smelled flowers as a child, and whether or not that means you name a child Susan or John.
But more than these I want to fell your weight beside me. I want to slide into a booth at a restaurant and feel you move on my left, feel pulled into you slightly, but more the other way around. I want to walk down the street with you, and I want us to walk at the same pace because we figured out how fast the other person walks and we met somewhere in the middle. I wan to feel your breath as your lungs inhale and exhale. I want to watch your eyes as they watch mine and we'll try not to make a sign or laugh as we stare at each other face to face in bed on our sides in the morning.
I want to fail miserably at the Sunday crossword puzzle and have you take it away from me and master it easily and tease me mercilessly the rest of the day, because we've spent the whole day together.
I want to go out to dance and always have a dance partner and not have to bump and grind and rub up against strangers.
I think that it may be you that I want.
-K "
I know it isn't a very good love letter and it may be to honest, but it might all be a lie too. I'm not sure what's real in my emotion-box anymore. I've become a heartless romantic, cold and calculating and full of passion-less passion.
Where did I lose my targets?
-K
I will write you a love letter. But not here. I will write you more than one love letter but not here. This space between us that exists here is too fragile for the crashing words and thrilling sentences in a love letter.
Between us here we have erected some sort of spider web of overly worked words, and melodrama and it is beautiful and unnecessary and great and full of self pity and oh how I love every minute of it, but it is fragile and delicate, but then maybe I wouldn't be honest to this space if I didn't write a love letter here.
" Dear K,
I don't know how long it has been since I've seen you. But I do know that I fell into a deep trap set by ourselves, and now I imagine sitting across a table from you and drinking wine with you and maybe at some point in the evening I point towards the cinema screen and kiss you on the cheek, slightly, not in a forward way, but in a way that reminds you of how young and earnest and bright I really am, and that reminds you that my breath smells of mint and warmth.
Or we never went to the movies, and instead it was spring or summer and after dinner, there has to be dinner, we walk in some perfumed garden and I steal your hand and wrap your fingers around mine, wouldn't that be grand?
We'll talk about the children we wouldn't want to have until we've known each other for at least half of this decade. You'll want to name them something practical like John or Susan and I'll argue for Telamachus and Orpheus and Persephone and Rhea or Euphrates or something out of Byron, but of course I don't really mean it, and neither do you, of course we don't even have any plans beyond whether or not to look the other in the eye and see whether the moonlight bouncing of their skin reminds you of the way you wanted to feel when you smelled flowers as a child, and whether or not that means you name a child Susan or John.
But more than these I want to fell your weight beside me. I want to slide into a booth at a restaurant and feel you move on my left, feel pulled into you slightly, but more the other way around. I want to walk down the street with you, and I want us to walk at the same pace because we figured out how fast the other person walks and we met somewhere in the middle. I wan to feel your breath as your lungs inhale and exhale. I want to watch your eyes as they watch mine and we'll try not to make a sign or laugh as we stare at each other face to face in bed on our sides in the morning.
I want to fail miserably at the Sunday crossword puzzle and have you take it away from me and master it easily and tease me mercilessly the rest of the day, because we've spent the whole day together.
I want to go out to dance and always have a dance partner and not have to bump and grind and rub up against strangers.
I think that it may be you that I want.
-K "
I know it isn't a very good love letter and it may be to honest, but it might all be a lie too. I'm not sure what's real in my emotion-box anymore. I've become a heartless romantic, cold and calculating and full of passion-less passion.
Where did I lose my targets?
-K
we all have your shortcomings
Dear K-
When I was young, I liked to read the Confessions of St. Augustine. I can’t say I can remember it word for word today, but several parts really stuck with me over the years. One line I have certainly retained in my memory is a portion that I read over-and-over on cold winter nights like these. “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love…I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love…”
I have always wanted to love. The idea makes my heart feel airy with delight, and yet I have difficulty finding people to focus my affection upon. As much as I wish to experience love and to have some feeling of devotion or dedication, to be able to write love letters, to take someone out to dinner and stare across the table content to say nothing at all because my adoration crosses beyond the threshold of words, I am unable to find that relationship. And so I wait, in love with the idea of love and yet not in love. With this clumsy explanation I attempt to relate to your desire to reach out in your loneliness and yet admit you're not in love. You’re seeking the idea, the blissful feeling of having someone to think about and converse with, but without actually having to dedicate any actual feelings or hassle with the commitment. I suppose I can understand that. Just don’t expect me not to ever write you a reply. I reserve the right on these lonely winter nights, when I hunch over my desk half-naked in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep because I’m dwelling upon regrets and Brno, to draft up some responses. Perhaps I could use the relief just as much as you.
We’re more alike than you may think. You know me perhaps better than most simply because you’ve read my writings. You know how I feel when I’m alone with no comfort except a blank sheet of paper and a dull pencil. You’ve seen the me that I hide from the common world, the me that hoards receipts and old shopping lists, the me that thinks of lovers lost and yearns for days that can never return, the me that cries at the thought of tiramisu and still dreams of running paths in Slovenia and of a certain dark-eyed Slav. But what can I do? I have to let it out somehow. And just as you need to write letters, I have to let someone know that I’m not fully okay inside and know that I won’t be immediately judged. I’m sinking deep into myself, especially now that I’m alone here.
I’m always alone in winter.
Throw me flowers. I’ll pick them up and press them between the pages of heavy books, preserving their fragile, lovely petals for years to come.
Slowly fading into winter,
-K
When I was young, I liked to read the Confessions of St. Augustine. I can’t say I can remember it word for word today, but several parts really stuck with me over the years. One line I have certainly retained in my memory is a portion that I read over-and-over on cold winter nights like these. “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love…I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love…”
I have always wanted to love. The idea makes my heart feel airy with delight, and yet I have difficulty finding people to focus my affection upon. As much as I wish to experience love and to have some feeling of devotion or dedication, to be able to write love letters, to take someone out to dinner and stare across the table content to say nothing at all because my adoration crosses beyond the threshold of words, I am unable to find that relationship. And so I wait, in love with the idea of love and yet not in love. With this clumsy explanation I attempt to relate to your desire to reach out in your loneliness and yet admit you're not in love. You’re seeking the idea, the blissful feeling of having someone to think about and converse with, but without actually having to dedicate any actual feelings or hassle with the commitment. I suppose I can understand that. Just don’t expect me not to ever write you a reply. I reserve the right on these lonely winter nights, when I hunch over my desk half-naked in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep because I’m dwelling upon regrets and Brno, to draft up some responses. Perhaps I could use the relief just as much as you.
We’re more alike than you may think. You know me perhaps better than most simply because you’ve read my writings. You know how I feel when I’m alone with no comfort except a blank sheet of paper and a dull pencil. You’ve seen the me that I hide from the common world, the me that hoards receipts and old shopping lists, the me that thinks of lovers lost and yearns for days that can never return, the me that cries at the thought of tiramisu and still dreams of running paths in Slovenia and of a certain dark-eyed Slav. But what can I do? I have to let it out somehow. And just as you need to write letters, I have to let someone know that I’m not fully okay inside and know that I won’t be immediately judged. I’m sinking deep into myself, especially now that I’m alone here.
I’m always alone in winter.
Throw me flowers. I’ll pick them up and press them between the pages of heavy books, preserving their fragile, lovely petals for years to come.
Slowly fading into winter,
-K
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
something about tonight
Dear K,
It's me again. I don't know why, but tonight is a night for a mental release, catharsis. I'm going to hollow my nerves out for a while here. Don't take anything too seriously, unless you want to.
How prepared are you for my neuroses? You probably know them all already, but at the rate we're going you're going to be on the receiving end of an out pouring. Winter is starting and so is my seasonal misery in repose.
I love winter, as I love self-pity and sorrow and wallowing and crying and grieving for things that never happened and things that did and the possibilities in between, as I love the cold wind on my face and the feeling of my body shutting down as the temperature drops, and fighting back and prickling and numbing and beating and dying and all while staring at the stars walking alone with my back to the wind.
I love winter, but nobody loves me in winter.
I just thought I'd warn you that I'm going to become insufferable and pessimistic in email form, on the phone I'll probably be the usual cheery optimist everyone meets. But you might detect a tone or a pause or a swallow, and I'll play it off as being tired, and it is important that you allow me to think that I've fooled you into believing nothing is wrong, that is an important part of this game.
Are you ready for winter?
And then there's that whole issue about our escape. Can we pretend that I only invited you?
I'm so alone here.
I spend every minute of the day in my head, up the staircase of my fantasies, and it has been a long time since I came down. The next part won't make sense, and I'm trying hard not to delete it right now and forget I ever wrote it, but I try to be honest with you, and I'm not even sure what I mean in the next paragraph but I know that it is honest and earnest.
I need to write love letters. Can I write them to you until we agree that I shouldn't? I'll write them and you'll read them and they won't even have to be about you if you don't want them, they could be if you wanted them but that's not what they are, love letters are like flowers thrown onstage there is a an aim and a target but while they are in the air they belong to nobody, and when they land at the feet of the cast they mean nothing until they are picked up and claimed.
How would you feel about me throwing flowers at your feet?
You don't have to pick them up,
K
It's me again. I don't know why, but tonight is a night for a mental release, catharsis. I'm going to hollow my nerves out for a while here. Don't take anything too seriously, unless you want to.
How prepared are you for my neuroses? You probably know them all already, but at the rate we're going you're going to be on the receiving end of an out pouring. Winter is starting and so is my seasonal misery in repose.
I love winter, as I love self-pity and sorrow and wallowing and crying and grieving for things that never happened and things that did and the possibilities in between, as I love the cold wind on my face and the feeling of my body shutting down as the temperature drops, and fighting back and prickling and numbing and beating and dying and all while staring at the stars walking alone with my back to the wind.
I love winter, but nobody loves me in winter.
I just thought I'd warn you that I'm going to become insufferable and pessimistic in email form, on the phone I'll probably be the usual cheery optimist everyone meets. But you might detect a tone or a pause or a swallow, and I'll play it off as being tired, and it is important that you allow me to think that I've fooled you into believing nothing is wrong, that is an important part of this game.
Are you ready for winter?
And then there's that whole issue about our escape. Can we pretend that I only invited you?
I'm so alone here.
I spend every minute of the day in my head, up the staircase of my fantasies, and it has been a long time since I came down. The next part won't make sense, and I'm trying hard not to delete it right now and forget I ever wrote it, but I try to be honest with you, and I'm not even sure what I mean in the next paragraph but I know that it is honest and earnest.
I need to write love letters. Can I write them to you until we agree that I shouldn't? I'll write them and you'll read them and they won't even have to be about you if you don't want them, they could be if you wanted them but that's not what they are, love letters are like flowers thrown onstage there is a an aim and a target but while they are in the air they belong to nobody, and when they land at the feet of the cast they mean nothing until they are picked up and claimed.
How would you feel about me throwing flowers at your feet?
You don't have to pick them up,
K
more than anything else
Dear K,
One conflict? I have a thousand hopes and dreams for my life.
I want everything for my life. I want to do great things, and I want to do very small things. I want to live so well that they make statues of me in foreign cities, and I want to have legendary vices and habits. I have ambitions that cannot be met in one lifetime, but I don't want to live forever.
I'm afraid of a lot of things. But my biggest fear is forgetting. I feel things slipping from me some days, and other days the memories tip toe away without me noticing.
Will you help me remember?
More than anything else,
K
One conflict? I have a thousand hopes and dreams for my life.
I want everything for my life. I want to do great things, and I want to do very small things. I want to live so well that they make statues of me in foreign cities, and I want to have legendary vices and habits. I have ambitions that cannot be met in one lifetime, but I don't want to live forever.
I'm afraid of a lot of things. But my biggest fear is forgetting. I feel things slipping from me some days, and other days the memories tip toe away without me noticing.
Will you help me remember?
More than anything else,
K
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
