supposed to be writing (#25)
... and i've been sending things off
it is probably too ambitious to think that i can meet my self-imposed rhythm of two of these letters per month, and it’s probably fitting to embrace the sporadic nature of everything. the problem is most of the time, i’m not ready to press send, but i have to anyway. this is one place where i like the immediacy of writing and then sending. writing anything feels like a time capsule; this thought you’ve had before strangely unlocks itself, detached from you and from the moment of writing. when the piece sits, the writing changes, the meaning really shifts, or at least it becomes clearer that the meaning sort of escaped you before. i’ve reworked all the way to the end of the chapter draft i started in april, may or june, and now it feels like i’m bowling without bumpers again. i forget and then remember that the point of writing this to practice that feeling, risk and exposure in the gentlest way: the longer you sit with something the less you notice it, and the below is what i would have sent if i had time to do so last month.
***
imagine you are a bathtub—in the sort of infinite platonic ideal mode of a bathtub. you & your tiles exist before you moved into the apartment, became aware of the grout or even the smoothness of the square quadrants—imagine you are the bathtub and you are also the person cleaning the bathtub, which happens often enough & sometimes you scrub more than others at the stains rusted in place or slowly grown over time, impossible to entirely remove.
one day you are busy. the product sits still for half a beat longer & you notice that the pink stain is now sliding in little atomic ribbons into the swirling drain. imagine that you are also the sink & because today you took half a beat longer and used the spray instead of a clorox wipe, the pink ring around this drain also rinses clean. you are the first person to clean this bathroom, even if it was cleaned often enough before & now you spit out your toothpaste into an old thing gone new.
i like the part about the toothpaste. it’s not even pristine it’s just better than it was before. it makes you, as the one cleaning, feel better about yourself, but first worse—why didn’t you realize before that it could be done? this is how you feel about growing as a person. it’s uncomfortable. not even because of the effort—usually growth happens in spite of your efforts—but because you have to reckon now with the stain you dislodged, the pink mold that you’ve been living with and was ultimately lifted.
– feed me
open call for inspiration, it’s been a while since i took on a project. of the food rut i’ve been in, here are the standouts: a secret shop with vegan donuts in every flavor (blood orange! loganberry!); a very fancy martini in front of beautiful wallpaper + a stella and a half (yl); take away bánh mi, eaten outside; late night halal cart; 2-drink minimum bourbon & ginger beer as a star is born (sh); hal’s jalapeño chips & chocolate covered halvah; not the tacos (either time) but the company (lt & nm); a bar that’s too loud, dark, and cool for us; post-karaoke kbbq; poppy bagel, lox, tomatoes & capers on a saturday afternoon; a strange little kiwi in november.
– read me
i’ve been flitting between books until one sticks; the strongest contender is la papeterie tsubaki (Ito OGAWA), which i picked up in the summer.
not books, but one movie prompted the other, which was subtitled
my policeman: i went into this movie knowing only that it was the other harry styles movie, and i think i can safely say this was underpreparing. harry and the love scenes are hot, but the rest of the movie lacked historical grounding where it really needed it. also missing: normal human emotions? the ending was so dissatisfying that i left the theater in a daze, as my poor little brain tried to make it make sense.
long day’s journey into night (Bi Gan, 2018): this made up for the previous cinema experience. a film noir that leaned into the absurd and improbable. at the half way point the investigating protagonist waits in a movie theater, and you join him in slipping on 3-D glasses & trying not to fall asleep. the rest of the movie is a labyrinthian dream sequence that leads you down, down, and back up again. a total different love story, but its impossibility was comforting. the filmmaker is a poet and so the nonsense made perfect sense: the lovers are waiting in a building near train tracks, speaking of the inevitable return of the woman’s ex (a threatening man). a passing train shakes a full glass of water to the edge of the table, and as it tips over the edge the scene cuts out. i’m trying to remember: the water, the reflections, the apples. i loved it.
– see me
the color blue on a walk (an exercise in not deleting). blue sign blue leash blue jacket. the ground is muddy, the leaves are brown. blue slide. blue trash, the black asphalt splits, dips under a tunnel and towards the river. blue collar, blue harness, the dogs are playing, telling each other to follow the rules. blue backpack. blue jacket, again. blue bike, blue raincoat, a kid. the sky is grey. blue reminders, blue shoes. a blue car drives past, is parked.