Throwback Thursday: A Letter to My Future Self

I wrote this on December 3, 2010 for a blog that I kept pretty consistently from 2010-2012. I was following a prompt from a blogger I liked that said “Write a letter of love to yourself to read in one year.

To my lovely friend Rachael,

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing right now, I want you to take a moment, look around and appreciate all the wonderful things you have in your life. Then think about what you did to bring about those wonderful things. You’re a pretty cool chica.

You are beautiful. Yes. Beautiful. You have such a sense of style and class. Your smile could light up a room. I know you’re feeling upset because you’re not the size you used to be and like a bit of a failure because you think you should be so much thinner than you are, but stop right there. Do you really want to let yourself worry about that? You may not look like a model, but you are spunky and unique and something truly special. And your sense of style! You dress adventurously- the vintage jewelry and the necklaces and brightly colored nails. You never blend in with the crowd- and that’s a good thing.

I know you’re feeling anxious and sad about not having everything figured out- I know you get the blues sometimes. But don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re doing fine and remember- you are so much stronger than you feel in your darkest moments. You know this. You’ve been through bad stuff before and you’ve always gotten through it.

I hope you’re still pursuing all your dreams- you have such great big ones and I can’t wait to see them all come true. And don’t fuss too much over the things you’ve left behind- don’t let yourself guilty over not playing harp really anymore- don’t let yourself get down because you can’t do everything. No one can- remember? You’re doing all you can day to day- and that’s all anyone can ask for. You are amazing.

I want to remind you of how when you were a teenager, you posted Christmas lights up all around the top of your room. Sometimes you’d turn on the lights before you went to sleep. With your glasses off, everything looked fuzzy and beautiful and magical. I hope you always keep that view of the world- if you just step back and look at it again, it’s such a lovely place to be. Never lose your sense of wonder.

Continue believing the best of people- no matter how many times they disappoint you. This is a beautiful trait- don’t let anyone put you down for it. There’s nothing wrong with being an optimist.

You have a giving heart. Keep giving back in whatever way you can- whether it’s driving folks to the doctor, collecting pink yogurt lids or buying a skateboard for a little boy. You know that however little you may have, you are truly rich when you help others.

Have I ever told you how funny you are? And witty. And smart. You find the humor in anything and the joy in the everyday. You’re like a little kid, but really, that’s a good thing. Never never change.

You can do anything if you set your mind to it- with you, not even the sky is the limit. Maybe the Milky Way- but who knows? Still haven’t written that novel? It’ll happen – I know it. Traveling still on the agenda? You’ll make it happen. I know you can scale mountains and conquer the world- you are smart enough to make it happen.

Never ever forget that you are someone special and that a lot of people, including myself, love you and think you are awesome.

<3-Rachael

Steps

When I’m downstairs, I can hear the steps above me, John’s heavy rhythm, Wendy’s skipping and light beat, the flurry of the cats racing each other down the stairs. They all move toward me in their own percussive way, a symphony of sound bringing a smile to my face.

I hear it all and wonder what sound my feet make and when.

What impact do i make here in my own home? What path do i create?

Do I cover the stairs in my essence, my life, my way?

Can i be heard over the purr of the air conditioner, puttering along at 68?

Do I stand out as a soul sound in my echoey house the way others do for me?

Sometimes I'd rather read about cakes

I’ve been sitting here reading about cakes for far too long. I’ve lost count of how long, but surely /any/ length is too long when I could be working or writing on my books or cleaning the house or running outside.

But I’ve been paging through my favorite cookbook for recipes and stories and pictures of baked goods from long ago, filled with fruit cocktail or coconut or topped with lemon or meringue or powdered sugar.

Appalachian weddings would often feature cakes made of many thin cake layers; guests would bring one to add. The higher the cake the more popular the bride. How wonderful that sounds.

It all sounds much better than the vitriol online, then the laws out there trying to take my rights away and leave me bare and unprotected, the fighting among so many I know.

Conversations

I am very good at having interesting conversations that stay with me, reverberating in my head, but forgetting entirely who I had the conversation with or under what circumstances.

These days, I can’t even remember whether such conversations happened in person or via text, facebook messenger, g-chat, all the many ways our words fly across the world now - whether it was one on one, or had to do with numerous voices chiming in their varied thoughts and stories.

My conversation about the new scary laws in some states, or the meaning of some scene in Game of Thrones, or the funny story about my ten-year-old niece - did that happen with my husband in our kitchen, as we crafted a feast for only two? With my theater friends in our ongoing two-year-long group chat, where we vary from serious to mundane topics throughout every day? Over clinking glasses of wine and pretentious pizza at a bar with lawyer friends? Or with coworkers, standing on green grass and nodding, while forks delicately slice through cake?

Does it even matter? There the words stay, the thoughts tangle and untangle as needed to make their points and form my dreams.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from New York - January 10, 2012

Good morning New Year-
it’s so lovely to meet you
in this crisp morning street
sitting on my luggage outside a crappy coffee shop
waiting for a bus to catch me up into
January.

—

Nothing worse than that feeling
you get when you realize the cute guy
you’ve been eyeing on the subway has been
surreptitiously spitting every few minutes into a coffee cup
he’s holding.
I don’t even know if I can make a metaphor out of that.

—

Discovery of the day:
Seeing a guy dressed in a Navy uniforn
all slovenly and undone
Actually Offends Me.
Me- the champion of free speech and expression.
But also the girl who cries at patriotic songs
that I freely acknowledge are propaganda.
I guess I’m not as cynical as I thought I was.

—

Overheard on a subway:
“Straight guys high five like they’re tired.
We’re trying to be like them!”
I am amused.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - January 11, 2012

The trash can reveals
how much coffee I’ve been drinking
all day.
Strewn torn pink packets and slight
droplets of half milk on the bag.
(I try to make myself feel better about my
consumeristic caffeine driven waste
by reusing my stirring straw.
Aren’t I just so green?)

I hope the janitor doesn’t judge
me.

—-

I’ve worn makeup shadows on my headphones
from wearing them every day
at work while inwardly smiling, laughing,
crying and saying all the things to myself
that I might never say out loud.
To me,
I am the funniest person I know.

—

24?
I’m now
24?
When the hell did I get so old?

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - January 18, 2012

I put my brand new lipstick on
it’s free of cruelty, they say and it smells like vanilla
only to leave marks of it on my coffee cup
two fake sugars and a cream – like every day
no lover’s lips to turn fuschia
I have been very unkissed lately but I don’t think I mind, for once
no handkerchief to leave a romantic stain on
I lost my grandmother’s handkerchief back in September
no one to notice or see
I spend all day in a closed-up box – I could work naked for hours and probably no one would notice
but as I wipe the marks from the coffee cup
it was a birthday present, you know – my older black coffee cup never showed stains
this is for myself and no one else
and there’s something lovely about that

—

And so I wait.
My impetus to do something is already gone
And there is nothing to do now but
to see what comes next to change my life.

But I want it now.
I want it all now.
I want the books
and the knowledge pouring into my head
I want the language to speak the things I long to
understand.

And it’s a decision I long to make
but cannot yet
I have no Cinderella shoe
and so I chew on my fingers absently
the way I always do when I am
nervous
and leave dashes of dark pink across my pale skin
as if I have already been bleeding a long long time.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - February 10, 2012

I dressed up today in a
new blue dress that swings out around me
and makes me feel lovely
red tights and a little bit of heel
and a gold chain round my waist.

I wear makeup and lipstick almost every day-
but really
por che? por che?
I want to scream.

Who is it all for?

No one, nothing, no reason.
except the momentary pleasure I get by
looking in the mirror
until I realize how inexorably alone
I am.

 

——–

I often think of good songs to die to.
I’ll hear something really melancholy on the radio
and think
“Now this would fit.”

Or some terribly happy song from
a commercial for laundry detergent
and realize that it would be something ironic
to play in the background of a suicide.

I could make an entire mix tape
although really, who uses tapes any more?
of songs I have considered leaving the world to.

But it’s nothing, nothing much-
just a thought –
I’m okay-
I just like putting a soundtrack to my life sometimes

And it’s not like anything else momentous
will be happening any time soon.

They don’t know it-
and they wouldn’t understand it if I told them
But my toddling little nieces are the names I put down in boxes
of where things would go if ever something bad
happened to me – where money would flow from my
coffin into their coffers.
I have no one else to leave it to after all –
it’s not like my pet rats would ever use it.

I wonder if those names will ever change or if that
will always be the only beneficiary relationship I have.

Throwback Thursday: Just There

Written March 28, 2010.

I took a shower and
buried myself under water so hot it made my
arm hairs stand on end and then they
looked like bits of pale light covered with
dew drops

And I thought of Dali
how I wandered through his theater in Spain last
May and laughed and chuckled with his paintings
like they were old friends of mine
and shook my head and said to myself
oh Dali, you are such a fucking weirdo.

I was just there- Man, I was just there.

And my new rats are sleeping in one corner of my room
plopped on top of each other's fuzz- nose in tail and
face in belly-
while my older rat Monty on the other side of the room
naps alone- his own head curled under himself as
if to take in the warmth of his own body so he does
not feel so apart and separate

As I too have curled under the bed sheets at night
until my knees hug to my breasts and I can
hear myself breathing and pulsing and I
am not so trapped anymore.

But I still remember waking up above London streets
with the smell of sausage from the sandwich store downstairs
in my nose and the fluffy cloud like
duvet wrapped tight to my arms and then I would
turn and see if she was still sleeping on the other side of the room
and maybe I would fall back to think a bit before I
tried to tackle the day.

And we were just there, dammit, we were just there.

And I am drip drying now in my chair painted green-
hair longer than it's been in a while cold on my back
and my pink and purple fingernails tapping over the keyboard
like what I says makes a difference

They say that Dali was asked to come to a costume party once
dressed as his dreams and when they opened the door he
was standing there in the garb of death.

God, what an amazing weirdo.

And I was just there, girl, I was just there.