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Category: Letters Home

Letter Home — 29 Jan, 2019

January 29, 2019 /

“I nev­er could get the hang of Thursday”

Arthur Dent

Thurs­day is easy. It is pre­ced­ed by Wednes­day and fol­lowed by Fri­day.
Wednes­day is the piv­ot point of the week. The day of look­ing for­ward to the work I have to do and look­ing back to see how much of my to-do list I have accom­plished. Wednes­day is that ris­ing feel­ing that I won’t get it all done.

Thurs­day is the day of defeat. Wednes­day’s ris­ing sense of doom set­tles in with a detailed list of those things that will not get done. 

Fri­day is just “do the best you can.”

Mon­day is, of course, the day of hope­ful opti­mism. The day of find­ing all the Things and putting them onto a tidy to-do list and knock­ing off the first one

But Tues­day — what the hell is Tues­day? Tues­day is the day of shift­ing pri­or­i­ties as every­one else’s Mon­day to-do list col­lides with yours (con­fu­sion, anx­i­ety.) It can be a day of tick­ing the box­es on the to-do list (pride.) A day of plug­ging along on some big project (var­i­ous­ly: accom­plish­ment, bore­dom, or utter pan­ic.) Or, it can be a day of wait­ing for the inputs and replies (bore­dom and fid­gety nothingness.)

I nev­er know what sort of day Tues­day is going to be. How can I antic­i­pate my (emo­tion­al) mind set on a day with so many variables?

No, I nev­er could get the hang of Tuesday. 

Which prob­a­bly says more about my need for emo­tion­al pre­dictabil­i­ty than it does about Tuesday. 

Letter Home 4 Aug, 2018

August 4, 2018 /

Dear­est ones,

I went to a lec­ture last week. Ilya Kamin­sky, a famous Ukrain­ian poet, began by ask­ing “How is life on this shiny plan­et?” I did not know how to answer him. He taped pic­tures by Diego Rivera to the wall and read from Calvino’s  Invis­i­ble Cities. He spoke of how our work is always in con­ver­sa­tion with oth­ers and point­ed to two of my favorite artists. I was, all at the same time, utter­ly chuffed and in com­plete despair.  And I won­dered how am I ever going to find myself in the mid­dle of that con­ver­sa­tion? I remain a child stand­ing at the edge of the room watch­ing the adults play word games in a lan­guage that I am just learning.

Lat­er that after­noon while dri­ving down the hill to town I was over­come by a deep wave of homesickness.

Do you remem­ber the emp­ty lot in down­town? The one that is so deep? There is an apple tree down there. Filled with lit­tle green apples — green apples that are about to ripen, many have red shoul­ders already. Some­how this does not seem hope­ful to me. I must be deranged in some way.

Between all that and the dis­ap­point­ing lemon cake… well you can imag­ine my state of mind.

 

Yrs affec­tion­ate­ly, L

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