And Maybe You Would Understand Me A Little Better If I Was To Write You A Letter

While I was battling a cold during the weekend, I realized the perfect weather we were having that day—I was freezing cold, due to my fever, but sitting outside made me feel incredibly lazy and warm and it made me feel like going up to my neighbors and telling them how much I love them and appreciate the fact that we live next to each other, regardless of all the times their children kick their soccer balls into our backyard.

Inspired by this, I took out my mom’s old typewriter and wrote a friend a letter.  I didn’t feel like writing nonsense, but I didn’t want to write a serious, emotional meltdown about how she was the light of my life or the reason I woke up each morning.

If you can tell, by reading what you can read, using a typewriter to write out things is not always that fun.  It is, most of the time, except when you 1) mess up, 2) press a key that mixes up the functions of the keys for you, or 3) accidentally move the space you were in and have to calculate precisely the line you were writing in (or else you end up with a mixed-up word, like the I in “In this envelope…”

The stationary was my mom’s in the 70’s—how sweet is that!  She never used it so she gave it to me.  That was my special account of the day.

A Modest List of Things

… One of the things that I’m forbidden from eating because of my braces is apples.  As a child, I used to think that, since every single one of my friends hated apples, it would be terribly quirky of me to eat whole apples, and—get this—not even slice them into eighths (seriously, people who slice their apples—what are you doing?).  After a while, I got into the habit, and I ate them all the time.  Once I got my braces, however, unless I wanted to die from severe aches or wasting my money, I could never bite into a whole apple again.  It’s all I miss.  It’s all I want.  I miss biting into an apple and having the juice dribble down my chin and the slurping sound I made when I obnoxiously wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.  I miss wiping my sticky hands on my tights.  I miss pretending to have to tie my shoelaces simply so I could run my hands through the dirt to clean my hands, in a strange sort of way.  I just miss biting into apples.  After I get my braces taken off, the first person to buy me an apple will be awarded with the Secret to Life whispered seductively into their ear by myself.

…Another thing that I wouldn’t mind being gifted is a pack of cigarettes.  Along with a speech.  Allow me to explain.  Recently, I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars and (trust me, this isn’t a spoiler) and in it, the other main character, Augustus, puts cigarettes in his mouth, but never smokes them.  He calls it a “metaphor”—he puts the killing thing between his teeth, but doesn’t give it the power to kill.  When I first read this, I almost threw myself out a window, for I had been thinking for such a long time—cigarettes seem so mysterious to me, so alluring, so sophisticated, so hypnotically sensual, but they’re such horrible things that kill so many people (every time I see a picture of George Harrison smoking, I want to smack it out of his hand).  I want to be given a pack of cigarettes by someone who loves me enough to teach me why they’re bad for me, and finally convince me that they’re not something I want to make a habit out of, and then trust me enough to let me figure it out for myself that I can acknowledge something bad for me and push it away.

…I would also like to be given the Gift of Confidence.  I wonder what it’s like to be comfortable being by yourself.  I was having a sarcastic conversation with my dad about the things he wants me to do in my immediate future while he created my five-year plan at the same, and in that conversation I discussed the fact that I’m unable to be on my own, left to my own thoughts.  I am like those superficial girls that need people around them, reassuring them that they are loved, unfortunately.  I have a difficulty walking by myself because, through my head, thoughts like “How should I fix my face?” and “I’m suddenly hyperaware of the way I am walking right now” and “Why am I walking so fast?” fight against each other in my brain, and I’m pretty sure it’s apparent on my face often.  If someone could teach me how to be alone and happy at the same time, I’d appreciate for the rest of my life.

…A Rock-Skipping Lesson would come in handy, for sure.  I know this for a fact.  I need someone to give up an entire day of their life to teach me how to skip a rock.  Those kids at the lake think that they are all that because they know how to throw a rock out into the lake and make it bounce, and I’m growing quite tired of their happy dances all of the time while my stones simply blend in with the rest of my failures at the bottom.  And then, if you don’t have to leave our good time for some more important things, I’d love if you could help me get a head start and help me find the good, flat stones.

…A bar of Chocolate.  A big bar of Chocolate that is cut into nice, handy squares so that I can break one off the bar every time you smile, and then I’ll keep it in my hand, even when it starts to get warm and I feel it melting in there, and I’ll wait until you laugh—that’s when I’ll allow myself to eat it.  Every time you smile, I break one off.  When you laugh, I eat it.  If for whatever reason I catch us looking at each other in the eye, I’ll eat two squares.  I, of course, don’t get to cheat or provoke you.  But I will reciprocate these kind gestures with total honesty.

…The last thing I would honest love from anyone ever is their favorite book.  Their favorite book, the one they have read seven times already, the one with the folded cover and the coffee spill on the thirtieth page and the tear stains on the last one.  That book with their annotations and scribbles on the margins.  The book with the highlighted paragraphs or underlined passages with hearts next to them.  I’d like for someone to give me that book, for me to read, for me to understand and read it just like they did.  They’d let me keep it, and I’d read it the same amount of times they did, and I’d treat it like it had never been opened before, and cry with that person where they cried, and write in the times I cried as well.  I’d most likely cry on the spot if anyone ever gave me this.

Weekend Links

• I keep flipping through this gorgeous Flickr full of beautiful portraits.
• This girl sneezed with her eyes open and her eyes did not pop out of their sockets.  Laws of nature, you’ve been defied.
• Oldie but a goodie (God, I can’t help rolling my eyes when someone uses this phrase, so I apologize)—how to live a beautiful life.
• Learn simple French phrases online because you know it’s the hardest language to learn, but you still want to.
• Look at this Lolita t-shirt.  Look at it.  Look at it.
• A girl interviews the first boy she ever kissed ten years after it happened.
• Seventy-one covers of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ put on YouTube were made into a mash-up that gave me chills the first, second, and third time around.
• Perfect post by Chelsea Jade in which she photographed people’s perfect style around Nottingham  All of the props.  All of them.  Ask me if I would ever be able to gather up the courage?  No, don’t ask me, I’ll tell you—I wouldn’t.

This has been such a happy week.  I’d have to say it’s primarily because I’ve finally gotten my crap together and started blogging again, definitely.  I missed it.  It’s definitely therapeutic, and I’m over-romanticizing the idea that it’s lovely to put yourself out there, and then look back into your lovely archive and see how you’ve changed.  This is my first will and testament—I need to blog for myself.

That felt good.

We Speak in a Store, I’m a Sensitive Bore

Sleep used to be my friend.  Sleep, dear sleep, we were friends.  But you’ve betrayed me.  I had a dream last night that my little sister, Casey, died, yet again.  This is the second time, and it got even more disturbing.

The first time, which was a couple of weeks ago, we were in a car accident and she flew through the windshield.  I don’t know, I won’t try to make you, but…  imagine a five-year-old little girl flying through a windshield window.  And it was terribly terrible, how it played out in my mind.  In my dream, the days went on and I cried every day, and I went into her room multiple times.

You know that strange feeling you get; those couple of seconds after you’ve woken up from a dream, that you think your dream is still reality?  Well, that first time, I woke up and I cried into my pillows for a good two minutes before I went to go check on her, and there she was, asleep in her room.

Well, I dreamt of her death again.  And I told my mom about it, again.  This time, I wasn’t sure exactly how she died (in my dream) except that we were in the hospital, and my mother had just come out to tell us that she was officially dead.  Sabrina and I cried in the lobby.  On the ride home, my mom asked me if I wanted to stop at McDonald’s to get something to eat.  I didn’t even look at her, but I started growing livid at such a question.  I howled in the front seat.

Then I woke up.  And it was over.  And Casey was alive.  And when I went to go wake her up so I could hug her and kiss her and let her know I love her and am so happy she’s alive, she groggily looked up and told me to get out so she could sleep some more before our mom realized she was awake.

A Multitude of Hands in the Twilight

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,
No other picture. There’s no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended
Religion or magic, or made their tracings
In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful
Signs-manual are now like a sealed message  
Saying: “Look: we also were human; we had hands, not paws. All hail
You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters
In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down
And be supplanted; for you also are human.”

Robinson Jeffers, Hands

Hands are strange.    Hands are beautiful.  Hands are sad.  Have you ever seen a person with trembling hands?  Don’t you just want to hold them and tell them that you love them?  Or, have you ever seen a person that talks with their hands?  Don’t you even more want to hold them and tell them that you love them?  Holding hands is so magical.

I’m going to need to marry a man who will allow me to intertwine our fingers together all the time.  Also, he must have a beard.  And a giant parka.  And a wool hat.

Hands can be so irrelevant, but there are boutiques dedicated to making them look pretty.  Because they’re not irrelevant at all.  Soft hands, rough hands that need lotion, hands that caress, hands that strike.  Sweaty hands, firm hands, tender hands, funny hands.

Don’t you simply love having your hand?  Pat yourself on the back with your hand.

The History of Love

A few days ago, I finished reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and it was the first book to make me cry in such a long time.  Surprisingly, I didn’t know why I was crying.  It wasn’t really because I was sad, and I wasn’t happy, either.  I guess you could add a third category, on why you cry during books—it was almost like I was hit with the sudden reality of humanity, and that things aren’t easy, but there’s no reason be sad about it.  A combination of joy and sadness.

Everything seems to be tying together—my New Year’s Resolutions included "Learn How To Be Alone".  I’m still no expert, but this book made me feel like the process could be quick.

The book is told in a sort of three-part narrative which ties together at the end.  First, we’re introduced to Leopold Gursky, an eighty-year-old man who often wonders who will be the last person to see him alive, and tries really hard to get noticed everywhere, even if it takes embarrassing himself, ever since his neighbor died in her apartment and nobody noticed for three days.  Seventy years ago, when he still lived in Poland, he fell in love with a girl, and wrote her a book.  Then there was the war and she ran away to America, then he did a while later, and the book was lost.

Next, we meet Alma Singer, a fifteen-year-old girl whose mother gets a letter in the mail from a man called Jacob Marcus, who asks her if she could translate the book The History of Love, written by Zvi Litvinoff, from the Spanish to English.  He offers her $10,000 and promises to pay her in parts as she sends chapters, back and forth.  Alma sees this as an opportunity for her mother to find love again, after Alma’s father died when she was seven.  She writes her own secretive, flirty letter in hope of starting a relationship between her mother and this mysterious man.  Alma also has a brother, nicknamed Bird (after he jumped out a window, believing he could fly), who believes he is one of God’s “chosen people”. 

Thirdly, we find out Zvi Litvinoff’s background, how he came to acquire the “idea” of The History of Love, his young life, and his relationship with his wife.

These stories all intertwine and come together in the end, in the most magically, surprising manner possible.  I remember when I had about sixty pages left, there was a total plot twist, and I screamed so loud, it was quite annoying, even for me.  I had to put my book down and walk it out for a few minutes.

This book was totally A+.  If you’ve read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close or Everything is Illuminated, you might know that these two authors are married.  And people complain that their writing style and plots are too similar.  I disagree.  I think that a book is a book is a book and its quality depends only on how it made you feel at the end.  I loved EL&IC, but I also loved The History of Love, and their different plot lines both made me feel all of the feels.  I definitely cried the last fifty pages, and I couldn’t stop.

A few months ago I wrote just a short post on hands and someone mentioned that I wrote like Nicole Krauss.  I had heard of her, so I ordered the book to familiarize myself, and now that I’m done, I’m so incredibly flattered, I could cry.

Do I recommend this book?  Yes yes yes.

Will I read it again?  Most likely, but not in the near future.

Do I love it so much I’d be willing to take it among two other books as my only source of entertainment on a stranded island?  All of the yes.

I am Grateful for Roaming… I Rest Tonight

Today was a terribly sunny day, yet another reminder that California is too pretentious for actual cold weather during the winter.

Because I don’t know how to make the right type of life choices, I thought it would be a great idea to look at scary movie trailers.  Last night’s compilation included watching When A Stranger Calls, Scream 1 – 2 – 3, and Prom Night.  I, unfortunately, didn’t sleep a wink—only when it was starting to get just a little bit light outside by five o’clock in the morning, did I finally doze off.  Perks of being afraid of every single thing in the universe?  You don’t have to pretend to be an insomniac, because everything keeps you awake!

Especially because the heater in our house turns on and off at night, and every time it turns on the air pushes through my door and it does this horrible creaking sound for five seconds that make it sound like someone is standing right outside my door, leaning in.

I drank a disgusting amount of coffee today.  Maybe this means I won’t sleep tonight, either.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

The day the skies opened, the Hallelujah chorus sang, chocolate rained, the sun helped grow chocolate flowers—this all happened on the one fateful day that Hulu decided to allow people to watch Amélie for a few weeks.  Finally, no more having to hassle the lady at Blockbuster or having to settle for crappy links.

I had to prepare myself a few days in advance to watch this movie.  At first, I didn’t want to just click the link and watch it, how unprepared and not special was that?  No.  So, on the one day that I had the house to myself, I wore an old button-down I stole from my dad a while ago, I tied my hair up into a scarf, I poured myself some cranberry juice into a wine glass and had some Toast, which I marked as “French” with a neon green Post-it note on the insides.

It was the best evening I had spent in such a long time, and it left me with a yearning to learn even more how to be alone.  One day, I suppose, one day!

“You could never be a vegetable, because even artichokes have hearts!”