today i got a love letter.
though I generally believe correspondence best kept private, sometimes the words hand-picked by an artisan of the pen are too beautiful, too poetic, too funny, and too inspired not to be shared.
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i'm so glad to hear from you. I think of you so much as well. almost weekly you pop into my thoughts. A delightful pause in the usual hamster wheel.
I am doing a lot of work. Too much perhaps. I am, as the French say, tres fucking tired. I have so many things I want to do and I keep pretending I can do them all. Still in SF doing graphics and the occasional architecture assist. Moving my way through 7-10 yrs Master Sommelier court, and also making clothes, where a future business may bloom. And then of course there's the supplementary bottle service job I do for a giant night club that makes me loads of money while only claiming 8 hours of my week, constantly making me question all things life. All over the place. Emphatically bestowing my mother with high blood pressure and likely at least a few cerebral conditions. But it’s the least I can do to stay positive in the midst of what is most definitely the saddest turn of events in American history. Come November, you may have an indefinite house guest.
Being in our 30’s is interesting, isn’t it? I cannot recall a time I’ve ever felt so present. I have more moments than ever where I’m too tired to nap and too weary to drink. Probably because no one has designed a silent cocktail shaker that allows me to make my martinis without fear of my fellow cohabitants knowing the severity of my drinking desires. Living at a point in our nation’s history that lacks any oxygen to feed the breath of progress nor exits for escape. Yet I must remind myself that: optimism is better than the alternative, and clearly Prince should have run for president. How rare, and powerful, and absolutely intoxicating it is to see a person so fearlessly dedicated to being themselves. And also there’s water on Mars. And also a pope in the Vatican who preaches love, humility, and universal kindness.
So, aside from modern American life being depressingly shallow and isolating at times, my increasing use of cuss words far too casually, and loving vodka and it not loving me back, I think I finally have adulting down. Though by most people’s standards, I should be making more money and working towards the wedding and the family and the property and the possessions and knowing more important people. But I have never really wanted any of that. I prefer ascetic fulfillment to material success any day. I want to make things. Not manage process (which is apparently where the money is). I want to care deeply rather than vest quickly. I want an adulthood that most people don’t think is feasible. And I want it to be honored and supported properly. I mostly have that here. I love San Francisco. Like intensely love it. Some days I’m all like “It’s kinda cool that there’s a dude in the neighborhood who plays the bagpipe in his front yard.” And some days I’m all like, “Nah man. This aint cool.” More the former though. And I have an amazing boyfriend. Who shares my tragic and comedic awareness that every person will frustrate, anger, madden and disappoint us, and we will undoubtedly do the same to them.
Which brings me to you. No one is exempt from this type of loss. Love doesn’t care about our feelings. It doesn’t care what we believe in or what we sacrifice or what our dreams are made of. Love is not a thing forged and broken in a moment. It’s a thing forged and broken over many strikes of the hammer. Sometimes someone just needs to take love out to pasture and old yeller it. I encourage you to keep wearing your experiences more as a medal than a scar to hide. It makes you cooler than most and more honest than many. Don’t hold on to the past so fiercely and blindly, as that memory which prevails upon you to recreate itself is, most likely, a well constructed lie. Don’t try to make any sense of what happened. Ever. For the rest of your life, if you can. You’ll never find the right construction of ethos to capture it. Just be eternally grateful for it, defined intrinsically by those who have given love to you most, and the way you’re then able to give love, and be changed forever by it. Always. It’s hard to have new awareness and capabilities everyday. You’re so intelligent. Sensitive. Kinetic. Charming. A lover and a fighter. You have a wonderful ability to suck the air out of the room and return it in the form of laughter. You are terrifyingly strong willed, just like your beautiful mother. Heart achingly independent. And a testament to the importance of intelligence, ambition and endurance. We control only one thing in our lives…The decision that life is worth living. Not our health. Not the tragedy. Or the victories. Not the trajectory nor the stability. Only the idea that we believe it is worth the effort and the reward. No one said it was going to be easy. Only important.
When you’re back in the states I will find you. I wish I had known you were in my area for NYE. I would have whisked you off to my favorite Karaoke bar where being left of sober is dangerously easy and fun. Where, if pickles and martinis aren’t making things better, things weren’t ever really going to get better anyway.
I’m off to be the low battery smoke alarm hunter.
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| Rooftop of the Duomo, Milan photo by Morgan Moller |
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