Dear K-
I retract my previous apology for delayed correspondence. While I don’t exactly hold my breath in anticipation of your responses, I do look forward to eventually receiving them. After several weeks and still no word, I begin to wonder if you’ve become distracted by adventures unfolding in closer proximity. I wish I could be as lucky. Here, things are dull and quiet, as if the blanket of snow laying on the ground outside has muffled all activity in the town. I find myself miserable and tired frequently, and I wonder if I’m getting the proper balance of nutrients in my diet. Perhaps it is just this dreary winter weather.
Last we spoke you were enamored by a girl who wouldn’t return your affection. An unfortunately familiar story, I’m afraid. And what of her? Has she yet yielded to your advances, or has she dissolved away like sugar into coffee? Perhaps now you only see and hear her when you shut your eyes. I hope that’s not the case. I hope you can open your eyes and see her smiling before you, sitting cross-legged on the couch beside you. Maybe she’ll fill your life with watercolors, your days seeping into smooth blues and faded greens as she hangs her wrinkled compositions about your living room. Be careful of those artist types, mind you. We tend to be a fairly unstable and unhappy bunch.
But yet I am only left here to speculate and wonder, because I have no denial or confirmation from you. Perhaps you’re busy now with work and you’ve forgotten all about her and everything else external to a new-found business lifestyle. Perhaps she’s finally come around to loving you, and you are so caught up in a new love affair that you don’t have time for a distant friend who only can leave you choppy words upon a stark white page. I wouldn’t be offended if that were the case. Perhaps you simply haven’t turned on your computer for three weeks and are shunning electronic society.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Floating like line-dry laundry in summertime,
-K
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
tirer comme des lapins
Dear K-
Again I find myself apologizing for a lack of correspondence. This time my silence was not entirely intentional- I merely became sidetracked and bogged down and unable to adequately address your letter. Then, when I found myself ready to make a reply, I discovered the g key of my keyboard to be broken. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a response without using a single g. And so I waited, and now this letter may be full of as many g’s as I so desire.
And so with great grinning greetings I gingerly grate out my gentle correspondence.
I hear you have a new flat, something near the center of town and overlooking a garden. That’s all I really need to know about it, for I’ve already perfected a quaint image in my mind of what I expect it to resemble, and in some ways I’m afraid to spoil that daydream. I imagine there’s a firm wooden desk upon which you scrawl your letters and your prose, with your secrets laying stifled in the dark corners of the drawers. The place is relatively well-kept and enjoys lovely natural lighting, although you’ve purchased several floor lamps to aid in lightening the atmosphere at night. Especially now, as the days get shorter, you most likely find artificial lighting as the primarily illumination of your hours (as unfortunate as that may be for our health and happiness).
Whenever I imagine that garden, however, for some reason I picture a sort of graveyard or memorial. There are weeping angels made of stone that hang their dark faces to stare at the neatly trimmed lawn beneath them. The sidewalk is even and holds a gentle curve incorporated purely for aesthetic purposes, to maintain a sense of organic form. I like to picture you ambling through the grass in the dreary winter afternoons, avoiding the cracks in the pavement because you’re afraid you’ll hurt your mother. You imagine the statues to be alive, but to be moving so slowly it is imperceptible to your eyes. Only when you blink, that is what relieves them of their lethargy and for that simple split second when your eyes are closed tight, you imagine they look up to the sky and wail in desperation, they shake their fists and claw at the earth, and a few of them simply let their tears fall to earth to become small round pebbles in the soil at their feet. But maybe not.
Light dawns and marble heads. What the hell does that mean?
-K
Again I find myself apologizing for a lack of correspondence. This time my silence was not entirely intentional- I merely became sidetracked and bogged down and unable to adequately address your letter. Then, when I found myself ready to make a reply, I discovered the g key of my keyboard to be broken. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a response without using a single g. And so I waited, and now this letter may be full of as many g’s as I so desire.
And so with great grinning greetings I gingerly grate out my gentle correspondence.
I hear you have a new flat, something near the center of town and overlooking a garden. That’s all I really need to know about it, for I’ve already perfected a quaint image in my mind of what I expect it to resemble, and in some ways I’m afraid to spoil that daydream. I imagine there’s a firm wooden desk upon which you scrawl your letters and your prose, with your secrets laying stifled in the dark corners of the drawers. The place is relatively well-kept and enjoys lovely natural lighting, although you’ve purchased several floor lamps to aid in lightening the atmosphere at night. Especially now, as the days get shorter, you most likely find artificial lighting as the primarily illumination of your hours (as unfortunate as that may be for our health and happiness).
Whenever I imagine that garden, however, for some reason I picture a sort of graveyard or memorial. There are weeping angels made of stone that hang their dark faces to stare at the neatly trimmed lawn beneath them. The sidewalk is even and holds a gentle curve incorporated purely for aesthetic purposes, to maintain a sense of organic form. I like to picture you ambling through the grass in the dreary winter afternoons, avoiding the cracks in the pavement because you’re afraid you’ll hurt your mother. You imagine the statues to be alive, but to be moving so slowly it is imperceptible to your eyes. Only when you blink, that is what relieves them of their lethargy and for that simple split second when your eyes are closed tight, you imagine they look up to the sky and wail in desperation, they shake their fists and claw at the earth, and a few of them simply let their tears fall to earth to become small round pebbles in the soil at their feet. But maybe not.
Light dawns and marble heads. What the hell does that mean?
-K
Monday, November 22, 2010
Mysteries of Ink and Paper in Times New Roman
Dear K,
We just can't stop breaking our own hearts, can we?
I've read the letter twenty times or more and every day it changes. Some days it is for you and on other days it was written for someone else.
I'll send it to you anyway, fuck it.
I'm just so hesitant because it is very true, and while I'm honest, I'm not very good at telling the truth. I'll admit to everything, but not all the time.
It's just so much distance, and so much space, and... I don't know what to do all the time. Its like I'm in a giant empty room, with puddles on the floor, and no visitors for days and days, and it's just me to write on the walls and walls and walls.
I've got nobody to bounce off of, nobody to talk to, and I smile at the night watch men and call my parents back at night, and say that I'm doing great and that I'm up for a promotion soon, and yeah I'm glad this is where I'm at, and sometimes I am, but... there's that space....
AND then there's you. I thought I had you to myself. We were prison inmates trapped together in solitary passing notes between the bars, but then...
I don't know where this is going anyway.
I'll send the letter. Maybe it will get to the right person, but I think the wrong person wrote it.
Who knows, the postal system is tricky these days.
You've never disappointed me,
K
We just can't stop breaking our own hearts, can we?
I've read the letter twenty times or more and every day it changes. Some days it is for you and on other days it was written for someone else.
I'll send it to you anyway, fuck it.
I'm just so hesitant because it is very true, and while I'm honest, I'm not very good at telling the truth. I'll admit to everything, but not all the time.
It's just so much distance, and so much space, and... I don't know what to do all the time. Its like I'm in a giant empty room, with puddles on the floor, and no visitors for days and days, and it's just me to write on the walls and walls and walls.
I've got nobody to bounce off of, nobody to talk to, and I smile at the night watch men and call my parents back at night, and say that I'm doing great and that I'm up for a promotion soon, and yeah I'm glad this is where I'm at, and sometimes I am, but... there's that space....
AND then there's you. I thought I had you to myself. We were prison inmates trapped together in solitary passing notes between the bars, but then...
I don't know where this is going anyway.
I'll send the letter. Maybe it will get to the right person, but I think the wrong person wrote it.
Who knows, the postal system is tricky these days.
You've never disappointed me,
K
Sunday, November 21, 2010
broken dreams club
Dear K-
I waited for your letter to come. Even though I couldn't find a way to work up the courage to talk to you in person, I found myself anticipating your letter more and more with every afternoon it did not arrive. Discovering now that you never sent it, I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, but there's also a breath of relief. You say you wrote it to someone else, someone who wasn't the me that you had envisioned. Your realization of the incongruence of your ideal, romanticized version of myself and the actual, less than idyllic reality comes as a painful yet necessary conclusion. This is why I stopped writing you. This is why I stopped answering the phone. I became afraid because I knew I would never live up to the image you had projected in the cinema of your mind, that shimmering, scintillating portrait glowing on the big screen in the dark, smoky theatre. You were the only member of the audience, but you were captivated by your own production as it glittered before you. But I am not that film. I am the girl with messy hair in the light booth running the film through the machines. I am the bored, dull girl with sad Slavic eyes trapped behind the thick glass of the ticket booth, tearing off your stubs and shoving them back to you with a thin, tight lipped smile.
And I know, I know, that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted that perfected love that flickers pure and beautiful in the soft focus, a distant and untouchable idea that could be pined for and dreamed about but never realized. And you achieved that. But I couldn’t take it. I am not that girl, and I don’t think I could ever be that girl, and it hurts me to admit that I cannot be what you desire me to become. I’d hate for you to waste any more ink or any more dreams on someone as miserable as me.
I understand why you did it, and I understand why you need it. But it can’t be me. It can’t be me anymore, because I’m just as lost as you. I start every day the same way I end them: with a handful of anti-acid tablets and the sign of the cross. It’s a rough world out there, but we’re both battling through it and searching for a happiness that may never come. We were born with some sense of entitlement, as if we think we deserve to find the perfect life and the ideal love. But there is no guarantee. Our searching may be in vain. Our happiness might only go as deep as a tidy new flat with a neat little garden or a memory of a distant city visited long ago, or the smell of her perfume or the sound of a lingering chord played upon our heartstrings. There may be nothing more than those simple, brief daily pleasures. We may spend our entire lives yearning for something that was never promised to us in the start.
And I don’t think I can make you happy the way you wish I could.
I did my best; it wasn't much,
-K
I waited for your letter to come. Even though I couldn't find a way to work up the courage to talk to you in person, I found myself anticipating your letter more and more with every afternoon it did not arrive. Discovering now that you never sent it, I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, but there's also a breath of relief. You say you wrote it to someone else, someone who wasn't the me that you had envisioned. Your realization of the incongruence of your ideal, romanticized version of myself and the actual, less than idyllic reality comes as a painful yet necessary conclusion. This is why I stopped writing you. This is why I stopped answering the phone. I became afraid because I knew I would never live up to the image you had projected in the cinema of your mind, that shimmering, scintillating portrait glowing on the big screen in the dark, smoky theatre. You were the only member of the audience, but you were captivated by your own production as it glittered before you. But I am not that film. I am the girl with messy hair in the light booth running the film through the machines. I am the bored, dull girl with sad Slavic eyes trapped behind the thick glass of the ticket booth, tearing off your stubs and shoving them back to you with a thin, tight lipped smile.
And I know, I know, that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted that perfected love that flickers pure and beautiful in the soft focus, a distant and untouchable idea that could be pined for and dreamed about but never realized. And you achieved that. But I couldn’t take it. I am not that girl, and I don’t think I could ever be that girl, and it hurts me to admit that I cannot be what you desire me to become. I’d hate for you to waste any more ink or any more dreams on someone as miserable as me.
I understand why you did it, and I understand why you need it. But it can’t be me. It can’t be me anymore, because I’m just as lost as you. I start every day the same way I end them: with a handful of anti-acid tablets and the sign of the cross. It’s a rough world out there, but we’re both battling through it and searching for a happiness that may never come. We were born with some sense of entitlement, as if we think we deserve to find the perfect life and the ideal love. But there is no guarantee. Our searching may be in vain. Our happiness might only go as deep as a tidy new flat with a neat little garden or a memory of a distant city visited long ago, or the smell of her perfume or the sound of a lingering chord played upon our heartstrings. There may be nothing more than those simple, brief daily pleasures. We may spend our entire lives yearning for something that was never promised to us in the start.
And I don’t think I can make you happy the way you wish I could.
I did my best; it wasn't much,
-K
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
This One's Too Short And Self-Obsessed
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
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
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
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