Letter.
Excerpts from a letter to Jory (as of yet unmailed, dated 11 April 2005):
I. The theater is always cold. Sub-zero Arctic temperatures and only being close to the make-up mirrors and their blazing lights can make it seem any warmer. They can't afford heating but there are three giant LoveSacs lounging in the green room like fat, content sumo wrestlers. We sit together, all of us, the sumo and the stage, and wait for our next battle and try to keep each other warm.
II. Tonight I visited Barnes and Noble hoping to find more postcards for you. Instead I brought home an Army survival guide and a book of Pablo Neruda's poems.
III. Every day at five-thirty PM, the church bells ring. They don't even sound like bells and I never recognize the tune, but there they are, ringing in the end of the workday like some tinny nightingale up high on its perch. I can only hear it if I go to the grocery store straight from work, if I time my exit so perfectly out of the doors-- there is that sound, the sound that says someone still notices details and someone hasn't forgotten that this is a small town, a safe town.
IV. Sometimes I wonder what my last name will be, down the road, and if it makes me any better or worse than I already am. If it makes me something new and defined, or if maybe I'm just trying too hard, like always.
V. The Orbit café is in Salt Lake-- a place that I am, by all rights, not tragically hip enough to set foot in. Yet I was there on a Friday night in a place that was less a café and more a restaurant with chalk caricatures of people I did not know hanging on the walls, as if they had a right to be there. When she talks, Delanie uses her hands and her short black hair tousles on its own. Her eyes are very clear, and I know you would fall in love with her. Jeff orders an omelette and I order French toast, and somehow it turns into an amazing concoction of very wheaty bread and lemon butter. Julian talks about George and Martha and I hope he means Washington and Jeff eats with his left hand even though he doesn't draw with it. We bump elbows and the music is too loud, and I know you would fit here, now, seamlessly, and in the middle of a sentence, I miss you.
VI. Things here are okay. Quiet. . . (edited) The air here is like I imagine jungle air would be; too thick to be comfortable, but it doesn't seem to weigh down until you stop moving and look around.
I. The theater is always cold. Sub-zero Arctic temperatures and only being close to the make-up mirrors and their blazing lights can make it seem any warmer. They can't afford heating but there are three giant LoveSacs lounging in the green room like fat, content sumo wrestlers. We sit together, all of us, the sumo and the stage, and wait for our next battle and try to keep each other warm.
II. Tonight I visited Barnes and Noble hoping to find more postcards for you. Instead I brought home an Army survival guide and a book of Pablo Neruda's poems.
III. Every day at five-thirty PM, the church bells ring. They don't even sound like bells and I never recognize the tune, but there they are, ringing in the end of the workday like some tinny nightingale up high on its perch. I can only hear it if I go to the grocery store straight from work, if I time my exit so perfectly out of the doors-- there is that sound, the sound that says someone still notices details and someone hasn't forgotten that this is a small town, a safe town.
IV. Sometimes I wonder what my last name will be, down the road, and if it makes me any better or worse than I already am. If it makes me something new and defined, or if maybe I'm just trying too hard, like always.
V. The Orbit café is in Salt Lake-- a place that I am, by all rights, not tragically hip enough to set foot in. Yet I was there on a Friday night in a place that was less a café and more a restaurant with chalk caricatures of people I did not know hanging on the walls, as if they had a right to be there. When she talks, Delanie uses her hands and her short black hair tousles on its own. Her eyes are very clear, and I know you would fall in love with her. Jeff orders an omelette and I order French toast, and somehow it turns into an amazing concoction of very wheaty bread and lemon butter. Julian talks about George and Martha and I hope he means Washington and Jeff eats with his left hand even though he doesn't draw with it. We bump elbows and the music is too loud, and I know you would fit here, now, seamlessly, and in the middle of a sentence, I miss you.
VI. Things here are okay. Quiet. . .
3 Comments:
thanks for the nice comment. i like your writing... it's inspiring, as in i want to be able to write well.
No comment, really. Just wanted to say, "HI!"
HI!
mail it ho! love, elder higemigizzle,
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