Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Hello weirdos! I’m writing to you from internet Station 9 at the Woodstock Public Library. Why you ask? Well, it’s not for the ambiance. Although the facial hair in this building is astounding. No, it’s because I’m a damn fool, and also I left my laptop on the stairs. The same stairs that I blindly charged up on my way to a friend’s birthday dinner last week. Turns out LCD screens don’t love being trampled? Learning all the things every day! Anyhow, my laptop is somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Smalltown, Somewhere. Shout out to my mother, who predicted my destructive tendencies and put a 1-year full warranty on the Samsung.

I hope 2013 has been exceeding your wildest expectations. Thus far I’ve managed to gain 4 lbs., spend money like life is Monopoly and shirk any form of adult responsibility. But more importantly I’ve eaten good food, danced like I know how to dance, sung all the karaoke and laughed more than I remember being possible. The sun is shining. There are poems humming in my fingertips. I haven’t cried yet this year. And yes, of course I still think about you, but only in that good aching way. The kind that reminds me I’ve still got a heart, not a dead animal sewn into my chest. The ache that leaves me clean.

Mostly today, I’m reassembling my life into some semblance of order. This includes mundane chores like grocery shopping, cleaning my bedroom, going to the gym and paying my bills. I know, I know. I’m living the fucking dream out here. But I can’t spend every day belting out 80s rock ballads until 2am and ripping paper towel dispensers off bathroom walls. It’s just not a sustainable lifestyle.

The past week was exceptionally nonproductive because 1. Lo visited this town and 2. The Stone Soup reading was successful enough to warrant insane celebration. Also I had to watch the Hunger Games four times. Had to. You guys, Jennifer Lawrence is just so perfect.

While I appreciate all of the things about Lo, I’m especially enamored of her ability to self-entertain. Namely because I worked 90% of the time she was here, grudgingly and distractedly. But each night she was there in my house, building beer can towers with Friend or waiting for me to feed her bacon sandwiches. [Note: shout out to ULOL for buying said bacon, and not criticizing the way I cooked it… too much.] While she was here she accomplished at least three goals: drinking ruby beer, thrift store shopping and eating conveyor belt sushi. I’m glad I got to participate in two of those three conquests. Lo, good choice on the blue dress. I hope you bedazzle the hell out of it.

Lo being here meant my bed late at night, talking about home. We talked about last winter, all the sad people burning their lives down. Rage catching herself with her forehead and me getting sent home from work because tequila. And it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t, it wasn’t... But we laughed because what else are you going to do? Sometimes the most absurd thing about life is just living it. We talked about the people that I know still exist because they have names and faces. Their numbers are saved in my phone and sometimes I see them living their lives through a computer screen. I wonder if they think of me, a name and a face living my life.

We ate too much, drank too much. We sang Bohemian Rhapsody twice, which seems completely necessary. We played Chuck, Fuck or Marry until we ran out of movie stars, cartoon characters and planets.

Jupiter, Mars and Saturn… Well obvs fuck Jupiter because size might matter. Marry Saturn if you like it enough to put a ring on it.  

Nostalgia ambushes me at the strangest times. Like when I’m drinking black coffee and the light falls just-so through the window and I remember Thanksgiving morning and the way my throat weighed one million pounds. Lew talks about the stars and I miss the way yard couch sagged under our weight, how we fell asleep before the meteor shower, woke up cold and covered in dew. Orion’s belt makes me crave small, bitter apples and heavily peppered venison jerky. Sheryl Crow makes me think California coffee shops and extra whipped cream, but only sometimes. Memory is a constantly shifting geography, hard to navigate, harder to predict. Lately my mouth aches for butterscotch and bananas. 

Lo, it was nice to go home without leaving my bed.

Many miles of love.

-b