I have a terrible time writing in first person. It’s a long, dark walk into the night to find the place where you can spill yourself. It’s high and hard to climb. It’s where you exist as: “Me” but where you no longer belong to yourself. First person exposes you. The wind blows harder here.…
Taking the Bagel
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The truth about life lies in this pat of butter. We can ask for what we want. We can even PAY for what we want. We can desire and expect it. But we won’t always get it. Here’s the bagel I had for breakfast at my favorite Milford cafe. I order it in this way.…
What Comes out as Drivel…
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… Is Beauty Disguised. This week, I launched here the inclusion of more and different writers in my blog. I desire to propel myself into a different place with my writing, and to create a wider community of conversation around experiential writing online. “Beautiful writing” — on blogs, in books, and in print media– seems…
Guilt: The Fruit of the Loom?
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A guest post by New Haven writer Chris Dawson I bought new underwear this morning. Socks, too—both white and dark. And for good measure I threw in a ribbed blue tee shirt. Altogether it came to $45, give or take. And now here it is five hours later and I still feel guilty. I believe…
On Being Brand New
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Only once do we have the chance to ACTUALLY be brand new. We arrive on the earth, sticky and discombobulated, completely unprepared for all this light and noise. From then on, we are experienced. We’ve seen it all. So we have to do all manner of contortions to reinvent ourselves. The book I am reading…
The Guest Book
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So, new ideas are bubbling up around here. I’m fanning my desire to have guest writers at Letters. So today I am going to create a new page called “The Guest Book” which will include bios of my guest writers, as they appear. It will also include my guest writer Wish List, with such names…
The Monochrome Summers
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Shopping at Target for school supplies takes us into the arms of August, summer’s last great hump. I smell the Ticonderoga pencil shavings already and summer’s great keening begins. The season is nowhere over, yet it is aging. Surrounded by the lemon-yellow-forest-green-cornflower-burnt-sienna colors swirling around me in the all-new-all-same-mass Crayola aisle. Even as I buy…
Untangle Me
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My desire to untangle runs deep right now. In savasana last night, I imagined myself going “technology free” suddenly. Saying goodbye to the phones and the televisions, the blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts that hang on me like screeching monkeys. I imagined what an evening would look like– the savanna of night time from washing…
Hipstamatic, and Other Faux Nostalgia
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I’ve fallen in lust with Hipstamatic on my iPhone … All made possible because the iPhone 4 has a decent camera. Hipstamatic is the app that allows previously young people like me (who refuse to believe that status has changed) to believe that we can still be the great photographer we dreamed of being when…
Minivan Seeks Same for Meaningful Relationship
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On the road, so that means many hours enclosed in our van as a group. Somehow I keep thinking that the more time we spend on the road in this Odyssey, the more it becomes a part of us. Sort of like growing roots only with no chance of growing vineyard vegetables any time soon.…
What Happens While Driving…
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One of Colin’s and my favorite things to do is a road trip. We are at our most relaxed on the way to somewhere, with him driving, and me organizing whatever podcast or playlist or wrong turn is up next. Our first road trip, en masse however, had me on edge. I had sweet-fond memories…
On Being Midwestern: Nice
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While I’m traveling around Canada and New England, I’ve put together some thoughts on HOME. Here’s today’s installment, ON BEING MIDWESTERN, Part 1. Nice. In my scan for ideas, I stumbled across this Columbus, Ohio message board, where a fair number of Midwesterners in that area of the country give their thoughts on what happens…
An Hour of UnShopping
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I just got back from what I like to call “unshopping” — a painful and ludicrous part of consumer culture. This is when we de-stuff-ify ourselves. In this particular hour, I made four stops: To the church recycling dumpster, which takes cardboard and #5s, so I don’t have to throw them away. To return cans…
All These Distractions
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I recently joined a Facebook group that is a group and a game where points are awarded for posts, pics, links and comments, based on their wittiness and hilarity. The group’s moderator however, really prefers somewhat crude jokes, so I have to dip deep down in the barrel of my wit repertoire to get points.One…
Please Accept This Spider Drawing as Payment
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Artists are basically fucked in America. They work their asses off, often all day and all night, spend heaps of money and thought on their craft and at the end of the month, they still have nothing with which to pay their water bills. So can they flush their toilets? NOOOO! One of the offspring…
