Dear K-
You bring up a point I have tried to stress to others for years. For life to be appreciated we require variation. There must be epic heights and abysmal lows. There must be bile for the honey to taste sweet. The greatest love that could ever exist can only do so if one has also experienced heartache. I find the heavy days are more tolerable if you think how the later times will seem a bit lighter in comparison. At this point in my life I can’t complain about too many things of much consequence. Relationships are strained in some moments, but sometimes there is no other way. So it goes.
I apologize if I sweep to the dramatic at times. Occasionally I treat written correspondence with a great preponderance of professionalism and etiquette because I feel it to be a great overlooked, outdated form of communication. I like to keep it in the lofty erudite or artistic clouds since most electronic conversations have been reduced to as few characters as possible. Dismal Lols and ttyls. Disgusting.
Almost every day I run. It is one of the few things that brings me pleasure consistently. Even though some days are so bitterly cold and my bones feel weak and creaky, I still force myself to kick out the miles because I know I won’t feel right without it. Sleep is elusive once again, and it becomes nonexistent without logging at least a few miles of running a day. One day I’d like to live somewhere with numerous trails and routes to explore so I would never get bored. In Brno I occasionally would run along the river, on the deserted paths alternating between patches of loose pebbles and the sandy bank. Every now and then I would pass a lonely fisherman, sitting on the shore on an overturned bucket with his rod arcing gracefully over the gently bubbling waters. The river gurgled like hot pitch but I knew from a few slips and missteps that its water was still ice despite the slowly climbing temperatures that came with the spring months.
Some days I miss it. Today more than usual.
I think I am moving again.
Hope you are well,
-K
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
These Battleships Never Sink
Dear K,
Have you noticed how dramatic we've allowed ourselves to become? I suppose you have cause to be dramatic, being in love and in the hospital. That's fair I suppose. We write our letters though as if we were fighting in a great war. They are communications sent from a sinking battleship, or a city under siege.
I suppose we've been at war though. Life is a great struggle. Or anyway it seems like one when you end your adolescence.
What happens when the war never ends though? If the battleship never sinks, but just sits there half in the water? Or the armies never leave the field. People will go on with their lives. They'll ask the soldiers how the war is going, but still they will bake bread, and make soup, and gather crops, and have sex, and make children. If the siege never lifts it stops being a siege and simply becomes life. Soon everyone forgets why the siege began, and only that it is the way of the world, and the siege must happen.
But here we are, all grown up. Out there in the world, and I think we've found out that the war is not ending. The war isn't going away. The struggle won't end, because it is simply life, and life goes on and on.
Have you ever gone on a long run or hike? You follow a trail, and you've got this goal to get to the end. The whole time you are running along you say to yourself that this trail or road will never end, and the sun is shining and beating you down. You are covered in sweat, and tired and sick from the exhaustion, but because you have told yourself you will, you keep running to the end of the damn eternal road, it stretches on for miles and miles, it could be a hundred miles, it could be a thousand miles, but you keep going.
Then finally, finally you reach the end of the pavement. You reach the end of the trail, and you stop, breathe, and maybe sit and have a drink of water, and it occurs to you that you could run the whole thing again.
I think that is like life. I think that is what dying will be like. And I know it is what living is like.
You're city is under siege, and I hope the siege never ends,
All My Love,
K
Have you noticed how dramatic we've allowed ourselves to become? I suppose you have cause to be dramatic, being in love and in the hospital. That's fair I suppose. We write our letters though as if we were fighting in a great war. They are communications sent from a sinking battleship, or a city under siege.
I suppose we've been at war though. Life is a great struggle. Or anyway it seems like one when you end your adolescence.
What happens when the war never ends though? If the battleship never sinks, but just sits there half in the water? Or the armies never leave the field. People will go on with their lives. They'll ask the soldiers how the war is going, but still they will bake bread, and make soup, and gather crops, and have sex, and make children. If the siege never lifts it stops being a siege and simply becomes life. Soon everyone forgets why the siege began, and only that it is the way of the world, and the siege must happen.
But here we are, all grown up. Out there in the world, and I think we've found out that the war is not ending. The war isn't going away. The struggle won't end, because it is simply life, and life goes on and on.
Have you ever gone on a long run or hike? You follow a trail, and you've got this goal to get to the end. The whole time you are running along you say to yourself that this trail or road will never end, and the sun is shining and beating you down. You are covered in sweat, and tired and sick from the exhaustion, but because you have told yourself you will, you keep running to the end of the damn eternal road, it stretches on for miles and miles, it could be a hundred miles, it could be a thousand miles, but you keep going.
Then finally, finally you reach the end of the pavement. You reach the end of the trail, and you stop, breathe, and maybe sit and have a drink of water, and it occurs to you that you could run the whole thing again.
I think that is like life. I think that is what dying will be like. And I know it is what living is like.
You're city is under siege, and I hope the siege never ends,
All My Love,
K
Saturday, December 15, 2012
vitiligo
Dear K-
You have forgotten me. You have let the memory of me slip to the far peripheral precipice of your temporal cortex, to be lost among the other overlooked moments and stranded images. It’s not dark here. In fact, it’s not really what I expected at all. There’s a warmness to it, and a dim but reassuring illumination, as if even in the discarded remnants of your conscious you couldn’t bear to encourage a feeling of complete abandonment.
But my sighs linger here, floating in the empty cavern like tiny ghosts looking for someone to talk to, something familiar. I stretch the hours between my fingers as if it were a game of cat’s cradle, waiting for a spark of inspiration.
I take consolation in the knowledge that you’ve been busy. I want you to be happy, even if that means I’m not involved. If it takes forgetting these silly letters to make you happy, then so be it.
All the best,
-K
You have forgotten me. You have let the memory of me slip to the far peripheral precipice of your temporal cortex, to be lost among the other overlooked moments and stranded images. It’s not dark here. In fact, it’s not really what I expected at all. There’s a warmness to it, and a dim but reassuring illumination, as if even in the discarded remnants of your conscious you couldn’t bear to encourage a feeling of complete abandonment.
But my sighs linger here, floating in the empty cavern like tiny ghosts looking for someone to talk to, something familiar. I stretch the hours between my fingers as if it were a game of cat’s cradle, waiting for a spark of inspiration.
I take consolation in the knowledge that you’ve been busy. I want you to be happy, even if that means I’m not involved. If it takes forgetting these silly letters to make you happy, then so be it.
All the best,
-K
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
kitten heart
Dear K-
You feel the restlessness that has shivered in my bones for most of my life. The temptation of the trivial, the tiny tasks and diversions that bring a smile to our lips- they whisper to us, a gentle pleading to come out and play. But you’re stuck behind a monitor that speaks in cyan, magenta, and yellow thoughts and I’m sitting at my kitchen table staring at the leaves of flesh from the corpse of an oak over which I’ve tattooed with graphite scrawlings. The deviation is equal to the distance decentered multiplied by the power of the lens...The saddest tattoo on the palest of flesh.
We can entertain whims when the time permits. These days, it seems you are abandoning the shore and wading into the deeper waters of uncertainty, attracted by the glitter of a distant horizon that promises happiness. You’ve acknowledged the land holds nothing for you: it’s time to swim. You’re treading between the novelty you wish to encapsulate on stage and the cobwebs you think you require for your prose. I hope you can find your way out of limbo. You are used to the work and the struggle, but I hope for you it pays off and you reach that distant shore.
I apologize for fading away again. The last few months have been hard to endure. A week ago I again found myself in a hospital, strapped up to machines by electrodes. They punctured me with needles, they stole my blood. They hooked me up to a sagging sack that dribbled its poison into my arm as I slowly watched my vein collapse and let the blood pool in darkening chambers beneath my flesh, later to become horribly unattractive bruises stretching from my inner elbow to upper forearm. All for nothing except for some sympathetic shrugging of shoulders, heads tilted in silent confusion, and a request for more tests at a later date. They can’t figure out what’s wrong with this heart and I’m beginning to think I will never know, either. In some ways, that’s probably for the best.
I’m living hour to hour these days. The only thing keeping me afloat is the idea that winter will bring a break for the holidays, and an ever supportive presence of a boyfriend who refuses to believe I am anything but perfect for him. Note…for him. There is acknowledgement of flaws, but every nuance of my being seems to strike the proper chord with him. And he with me. When I was in the hospital he brought me soup…I don’t think he understood that soup is for colds but he’s Serbian and the soup was delicious so I will never correct him on it.
Go on and find your dreams. Some of us still struggle to even fall asleep.
-K
You feel the restlessness that has shivered in my bones for most of my life. The temptation of the trivial, the tiny tasks and diversions that bring a smile to our lips- they whisper to us, a gentle pleading to come out and play. But you’re stuck behind a monitor that speaks in cyan, magenta, and yellow thoughts and I’m sitting at my kitchen table staring at the leaves of flesh from the corpse of an oak over which I’ve tattooed with graphite scrawlings. The deviation is equal to the distance decentered multiplied by the power of the lens...The saddest tattoo on the palest of flesh.
We can entertain whims when the time permits. These days, it seems you are abandoning the shore and wading into the deeper waters of uncertainty, attracted by the glitter of a distant horizon that promises happiness. You’ve acknowledged the land holds nothing for you: it’s time to swim. You’re treading between the novelty you wish to encapsulate on stage and the cobwebs you think you require for your prose. I hope you can find your way out of limbo. You are used to the work and the struggle, but I hope for you it pays off and you reach that distant shore.
I apologize for fading away again. The last few months have been hard to endure. A week ago I again found myself in a hospital, strapped up to machines by electrodes. They punctured me with needles, they stole my blood. They hooked me up to a sagging sack that dribbled its poison into my arm as I slowly watched my vein collapse and let the blood pool in darkening chambers beneath my flesh, later to become horribly unattractive bruises stretching from my inner elbow to upper forearm. All for nothing except for some sympathetic shrugging of shoulders, heads tilted in silent confusion, and a request for more tests at a later date. They can’t figure out what’s wrong with this heart and I’m beginning to think I will never know, either. In some ways, that’s probably for the best.
I’m living hour to hour these days. The only thing keeping me afloat is the idea that winter will bring a break for the holidays, and an ever supportive presence of a boyfriend who refuses to believe I am anything but perfect for him. Note…for him. There is acknowledgement of flaws, but every nuance of my being seems to strike the proper chord with him. And he with me. When I was in the hospital he brought me soup…I don’t think he understood that soup is for colds but he’s Serbian and the soup was delicious so I will never correct him on it.
Go on and find your dreams. Some of us still struggle to even fall asleep.
-K
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Dear K,
I am all the things you imagine me to be. I am out there somewhere in the dark smoking a cigarette making new friends with my discussion of the inconsequential things that don't matter. I am happy, and I am sad. I am gripped by things.
I am out here on the prairie under the sky, the ground is lit a sickly orange by sodium lights. Falling stars leave their tails in my vision. My glasses are dirty and my thoughts are clean. I want to walk away. I want to hop a train. I want to run alongside the great iron horse and jump into a boxcar filled with the insane and eccentric.
I spend my nights in bars, listening to jokes about the state of things. About the worlds of people I know only because we've spent so many nights talking to each other from the stage. I hear ugly things. I hear hate. I hear sexism, racism, and all the other negative isms. I listen to jokes about cum and jizz and tits and ass and pussy and bitches and cunts and assholes and the gays and lesbians and black people. Do you want to know something curious? At the end of these ugly things, people laugh. They fill themselves with air and shake. They let loose. They get drunk and yell at the stage for more. You see it in their eyes. They're at a buffet of ugly things. A Golden Corral, but instead of half cooked things under the warming lights, there is only the dark side of humanity.
But still they laugh.
They laugh at themselves too.
And then I take the microphone from the stand, and I spill my silly words from my mouth. Like a person at the dentist, mouth shot full of novacaine.
I'm going to get fired from my job at the end of the month. There are a lot of reasons why. The main one is that I don't care enough to keep it. I'm not a person who should be lit with florescent lights. My back hurts from sitting at a desk. My wrists ache from typing. I need to stand. I need the endless night of a dark theater. I need the blinding numberless suns of the stagelights. I need the roar of the audience, cut with their silence and disapproval. I need humans. I need pain. I need joy. I cannot bear this monotony much longer.
But I have too. I have to grind away my years until I have paid my dues. I have to throw away those countless hours before the stage. Or in my writing, I have to throw away my youth for the old age I want.
I wasn't born handsome or rich. I wasn't born with enough talent to get paid for the things that make me happy, and I think I'm better for it.
I am nice. I take my victories like my meals. I work for them. They are not given to me, and they are all the sweeter for the hunger spent on them.
I hope I leave a body of work behind me when I die. So my friends have something pretty to read. My family will say nice things about me at my funeral, but they won't know me. I come from people who live in daylight and think of things in nice orderly rows, boxes to be checked, and categories to be filled. They put me in a box long ago and have, either through habit or comfort, neglected to change that box as I have changed.
To them I'm still the strange child who read greek myths at the dinner table. I'm still the weird kid who couldn't say anything profound, and now they won't listen to me. That's the danger with getting to know people. You don't allow them to change and grow.
But I have waxed.
I miss you.
Regards,
K
I am all the things you imagine me to be. I am out there somewhere in the dark smoking a cigarette making new friends with my discussion of the inconsequential things that don't matter. I am happy, and I am sad. I am gripped by things.
I am out here on the prairie under the sky, the ground is lit a sickly orange by sodium lights. Falling stars leave their tails in my vision. My glasses are dirty and my thoughts are clean. I want to walk away. I want to hop a train. I want to run alongside the great iron horse and jump into a boxcar filled with the insane and eccentric.
I spend my nights in bars, listening to jokes about the state of things. About the worlds of people I know only because we've spent so many nights talking to each other from the stage. I hear ugly things. I hear hate. I hear sexism, racism, and all the other negative isms. I listen to jokes about cum and jizz and tits and ass and pussy and bitches and cunts and assholes and the gays and lesbians and black people. Do you want to know something curious? At the end of these ugly things, people laugh. They fill themselves with air and shake. They let loose. They get drunk and yell at the stage for more. You see it in their eyes. They're at a buffet of ugly things. A Golden Corral, but instead of half cooked things under the warming lights, there is only the dark side of humanity.
But still they laugh.
They laugh at themselves too.
And then I take the microphone from the stand, and I spill my silly words from my mouth. Like a person at the dentist, mouth shot full of novacaine.
I'm going to get fired from my job at the end of the month. There are a lot of reasons why. The main one is that I don't care enough to keep it. I'm not a person who should be lit with florescent lights. My back hurts from sitting at a desk. My wrists ache from typing. I need to stand. I need the endless night of a dark theater. I need the blinding numberless suns of the stagelights. I need the roar of the audience, cut with their silence and disapproval. I need humans. I need pain. I need joy. I cannot bear this monotony much longer.
But I have too. I have to grind away my years until I have paid my dues. I have to throw away those countless hours before the stage. Or in my writing, I have to throw away my youth for the old age I want.
I wasn't born handsome or rich. I wasn't born with enough talent to get paid for the things that make me happy, and I think I'm better for it.
I am nice. I take my victories like my meals. I work for them. They are not given to me, and they are all the sweeter for the hunger spent on them.
I hope I leave a body of work behind me when I die. So my friends have something pretty to read. My family will say nice things about me at my funeral, but they won't know me. I come from people who live in daylight and think of things in nice orderly rows, boxes to be checked, and categories to be filled. They put me in a box long ago and have, either through habit or comfort, neglected to change that box as I have changed.
To them I'm still the strange child who read greek myths at the dinner table. I'm still the weird kid who couldn't say anything profound, and now they won't listen to me. That's the danger with getting to know people. You don't allow them to change and grow.
But I have waxed.
I miss you.
Regards,
K
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
what's on the ceiling beats what's on tv
Dear K-
Days drift in and out and still not a single breath from you. I imagine you are busy and happy, because I like to think of you that way. I see you in an eternal loop in which you chuckle, eyes sparkling behind thick black eyeglass frames, mustache twitching over a lip curled into a grin. In your hand is a glass of whiskey, a rich amber color and sloshing thick like syrup, leaving sticky wet veins running down the edges of your glass. You’ve finished your novel. You’ve finished a marathon. You’ve finished your latest project at work and have been promoted on to the next level of task completion. In my mind you are feeling content to sit outside at night and smoke a cigarette, your voice lingering beneath the stars as you discuss music, as you discuss philosophy, as you discuss absolutely nothing at all. You’re just happy to be there and happy to be alive.
Since I am not provided with an alternative, this is how I chose to see you now in your lull of correspondence. It would explain your silence- if you are feeling up and productive than you have no use of me, your outlet for loneliness. It is a more pleasant thought than to think you’ve forgotten about me completely, or worse- that you’ve sunk into such depths of despair that not even my fragile words can reach you.
Hope all is well,
-K
Days drift in and out and still not a single breath from you. I imagine you are busy and happy, because I like to think of you that way. I see you in an eternal loop in which you chuckle, eyes sparkling behind thick black eyeglass frames, mustache twitching over a lip curled into a grin. In your hand is a glass of whiskey, a rich amber color and sloshing thick like syrup, leaving sticky wet veins running down the edges of your glass. You’ve finished your novel. You’ve finished a marathon. You’ve finished your latest project at work and have been promoted on to the next level of task completion. In my mind you are feeling content to sit outside at night and smoke a cigarette, your voice lingering beneath the stars as you discuss music, as you discuss philosophy, as you discuss absolutely nothing at all. You’re just happy to be there and happy to be alive.
Since I am not provided with an alternative, this is how I chose to see you now in your lull of correspondence. It would explain your silence- if you are feeling up and productive than you have no use of me, your outlet for loneliness. It is a more pleasant thought than to think you’ve forgotten about me completely, or worse- that you’ve sunk into such depths of despair that not even my fragile words can reach you.
Hope all is well,
-K
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
sets of keys
dear k-
it’s been weeks. I begin to wonder where you are, what you’re doing, if your heart’s still beating…have we just been lumbering freight trains, passing unnoticed in the night as we carry our respective loads?
I started school again. the summer tapered to a beautiful end as I slid back into my routine of early mornings and book-laden afternoons. so far I have been keeping pace and still managing to find time for the things I enjoy. the rains came and brought back the green that had lacked through the dusty months of june and july, but it also brought a heaviness to the air. its that miserable humidity that I abhor but you seem to hold a strange predilection for. every time I feel its oppressive embrace I think of how much you’d be enjoying that stifling environmental hug.
which brings me back to you.
you you you.
where have you been?
adrift,
-k
it’s been weeks. I begin to wonder where you are, what you’re doing, if your heart’s still beating…have we just been lumbering freight trains, passing unnoticed in the night as we carry our respective loads?
I started school again. the summer tapered to a beautiful end as I slid back into my routine of early mornings and book-laden afternoons. so far I have been keeping pace and still managing to find time for the things I enjoy. the rains came and brought back the green that had lacked through the dusty months of june and july, but it also brought a heaviness to the air. its that miserable humidity that I abhor but you seem to hold a strange predilection for. every time I feel its oppressive embrace I think of how much you’d be enjoying that stifling environmental hug.
which brings me back to you.
you you you.
where have you been?
adrift,
-k
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