CONFRONT
Scene:
Dear you,
It’s 3:28 pm on Friday December 31st and I’m sitting at my desk with a mug of rose tulsi tea and a lavender racerback tank top on. My hair is wild again because I did not sleep well and tossed and turned a lot so there was no time for swaths of hair to flatten or for my scalp to release oils while dreaming. I would’ve liked more sleep and more dreams but I’ll take heavy eyes and wild hair for now. I’m looking at a blank postcard that I brought back from the Madonna Inn about 8 years or 9 years ago. It’s from room 133 where we stayed. There was a rock shower. My body was pre-babies. It makes me think of life in California and now I Iive 3,000 miles away. I want to send the postcard to a radio producer who I’ve never met before because she’s good at writing postcards and I fucking love mail and she’s interesting. I keep it in front of me to remind myself to send it to her, meanwhile it’s reminding me of night blooming jasmine and hedges of rosemary and palm trees and pupusas and waitressing and loss. I’m flipping it over for now.
I have my recorder out and it’s still connected to my headphones because I recorded myself crunching around in the icy snow in my backyard and flicking mini icicles off of my railing. I’ll probably send it to Eleanor and maybe you’ll be able to hear it on her Field Recordings podcast feed. I have a pile of yellow sticky notes with pencil scrawled all over them to my left. The notes didn’t have to be taken on sticky notes, they could’ve been taken in a google doc or a notebook, but sticky notes make the things I’m learning about or thinking about feel digestible. Outside, the fog is thick and the lichen on the tree branches pop. I’m hungry for color in this damp, dull December. Red lips, muddy road. It’s almost the New Year and I’m happy to be on the precipice with you. I’m listening to a referee's whistle and some sneakers squeaking from a basketball game on in another room. I want to hear a non-narrated story from the vantage point of referees. I want a window into what they see, hear, feel, smell. Do you know of one? Will you pay me to make one?
YOU:
Hey you, where do these words find you? What are you feeling in your body in this ( it keeps autocorrecting me to write at this, but I’m fighting it) moment? Where is your mind going as you skim? Are you searching for something useful, illuminating, distracting, connecting, in my words? Are you bored? Do you believe in boredom? If you’ve read all 11 of these letters that I’ve released into your inbox so far, holy hell…thank you. If you are reading these words for the first time because it’s NYE and Omicron is rampant and you decided not to gather and you saw me post a link to this on Twitter and you already have twelve windows open so you decided what’s one more? I see you and thank you to whoever you are! See, I write that and I don’t want it to sound like some form letter, like you know how bigger companies personalize their emails now by addressing it directly to your name ( Dear Bethel, Dear Ross, Dear Tina, Dear Marissa, Dear Ryan…) but then they just paste the generic email? I hate that. I feel cheated. Like don’t lure me in by using my name but then just share some generic veiled mumbo jumbo. I’m human and I want connection and reading my name feels like you’re looking for it too but you’re not. Rude! You’re not rude. I’m just trying to let you know how much the you in this is crucial to my writing, that you are not an afterthought, that you aren’t a gimmick. You’re my audience and your readership fuels me. YOU are alive. Do a dance, take a breath, smooch your lover, pet your dog, hide under the covers…we are in this together, tangentially, virtually, psychically.
Craft:
What do you need to confront? What if you tried to explore it in audio? In words? In paint? What’s the direct line between your face and the mirror? What do you actually see versus what you want to see? What relationships need mending? What parts of ourselves just need to be seen? What needs to hang out in the light, no filter? Make a little piece (scrappy, no fuss) of the unfiltered you, the undressed up and un justified direct to the heart and guts of it all you. You without mitigation, you that needs tenderness. Write or draw or record your thoughts and feelings about this and share it with no one. Also, speaking of unfiltered. It’s been exactly one year since I’ve been on instagram. Anyways, make something like no one is watching or listening or reading and your body will thank you.
Things I want to tell you about:
Blue glitter glue dotted around the heart of E’s blue tie-dye hoodie
Watched leaves skip across the dirt road and thought they were bunny rabbits
Listened to Morganeve from Brown Bird croon about grief in a converted bank foyer, mini tears puddling on the top edge of my black kn95 while the woman in front of me, mask off, scrolled puppies of instagram. Some hunger for grief expressed and some escape from it
E thought the frost on the car window looked like little stuck on spiders
Wondered if the same person that smushes toilet paper instead of folding to wipe is the same person that shoddily half squeezes out their long hair in the shower before getting out instead of tightly coiling it in a wet bun and wringing, wringing, wringing til dry
The “selfie” album that my phone populates included pictures of cross sections of cabbages and radicchio along with my face and my son’s and I giggled myself to sleep. I am part pretty vegetable too
After my almost 95 year old Nana sent me an emoji of her chopping 2021 with an axe, she asked me via text to coach her into playing my personal narrative audio pieces on her phone. The ones about loss. She wanted to listen again and share with her friends
Finishing the latest Murakami book of short stories while lying down on a heating pad and then having dreams about talking to a monkey
Harbison cheese on an Akmak cracker
My mother wearing long fan like earrings for my sister’s birthday dinner, that swayed and got lost in her gray hair as she ate her verde burrito
Still thinking my parents are middle aged because that’s how I’ve always seen them. But realizing that I’m actually approaching middle age and now redefining where I am in life and where my parents are and what it all really means to me anyways
My worst fear is losing my mind and not knowing that I have and everyone knows it but me
The slow motion video my friend Arieh sent me of throwing her Christmas tree off of her porch and watching it bounce on the snow
I finished writing an article that you will read in a couple of weeks and it happened because I write these newsletters to you and they resonated with people that I admire and it might be the first time I’m getting paid to write
Recommendations:
Driving two hours from where you live to pick up takeout food and beer that you can’t get around where you live
Read children’s books or cookbooks and pay attention to what turns you on about them. Find new ways into your interests. We are vast
The 365 Stories I Want to Tell You Before We Both Die podcast finished up today and though Caveh is a super complicated person to listen to, I love the format and it’s okay to feel complicated, to be repulsed and desiring of more
Walk on the melting ice and listen to the crunch and watch the water below visually gurgle. Watch it move like separating cells and get unsteady with your footing
Make a list of things things that you both loved and hated about 2021 and burn it in a fire
Support ethnic restaurants in mostly white rural areas
If the thing you’re doing because you said you’d do it is just a should and that is the only thing going for it, stop. It’s kind of like walking on a busy street in a city along with the rest of the crowd and then just stopping and watching everyone whiz by
Record voice memos or write texts or make calls to friends when you’re feeling shitty and ungrounded, not just when you have it together. No one fully has it together and it’s a relief to hold each other in the shit
P.S.
Thank you for sending me your faces and your scenes and your thoughts. Here are a few that I received after posting my last letter:
“Read newsletter this morning in bed. In that comfy zone between waking up and the alarm going off. Steve Hillage’s “Rainbow Dome Musick” was playing. It was warm in bed but cold in the room. Here’s what I looked like as I yawned.” Geoff McQueen
“Sitting on couch with Opal, sipping coffee. Just ate some buckwheat sourdough toast with herbal ghee and almond butter. My knitting project — a blushy lavender popcorn cardigan for Jesse — and The Argonauts are to my right. But I indulge in your words and they make me smile.” Allison Riegel
”From my bedroom while my kid sleeps next to me :-)” Laura Kwerel
“This is where and how I’m reading you. My eyes are puffy from sleep. It’s gray here in New York. I’m drinking water but in a fancy cup that makes it seem like I got it from a source high in the mountains” Helena de Groot
Aren’t these the best? These make it for me. You make it for me. It’s a dialogue, a call and response, not just a launch into the void. If you read this letter and want to share a window into your world, I’m all eyes. Maybe even a glimpse into your new year: themomentmagnet@gmail.com
Happy New Year!
Xx,
Sara