Dear Anonymous,
Wait, so you're rejecting me because I'm capable of hurting you? I'm capable of hurting you, so you're hurting me?
Look, we all hurt each other. Unfortunately, that's the way it goes. But hurting someone who is apologizing and asking for a second chance? A second chance, not an eighth chance, mind you. That's ridiculous.
There is a serious emotional illogic to hurting in response to being hurt; it is the cycle that creates abused children who become rapists whose victims abuse their children, it is the cycle that keeps genetically identical people locked in perpetual war for arbitrary geographical dominance, it is the reason you and I hurt each other so much those years ago.
Being unable to accept being hurt, and thus rise above it, is not only why you won't try to be my friend again, but also why human beings won't stop killing each other.
Studies show that if you put a rat alone in a cage with an electrified floor, it'll die full of tumors. Give it another rat to fight with while they are both electrocuted and they will kill each other, but die tumor-free.
Human beings are better than rats, and so it still hurts my feelings that you won't talk to me. Maybe if I could just call you a rat I'd be done with it, but I'd rather have a tumor than the world have another Holocaust.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
I'm gonna make a mistake . . .
Dear Anonymous,
There are certain things that, if you are an informed homo sapien, are common sense about experience. If you stay up too late too many nights in a row, no amount of coffee will keep you awake. Fall in love when you are young and you will have heartbreak. If there is a potential for pain, pain will manifest itself. Our bodies will fail us when we least expect it, our lives will collapse when they seem most in place. Just because you are thinking about someone does not mean they are thinking of you, too. Friendships will fade away, with no fanfare. Sleep with someone who is “just a friend” and it will not work out.
You do not need to live all of these things to know they are true. They are depicted faithfully and extensively in literature, film, television, and music. The arts, perhaps, exist to tell the common human stories, and many are of pain. Even the good feelings have pain. Fall in love and you will be vulnerable. Move to a beautiful new city and you will feel alone. Leave an abusive boyfriend and you will still miss him.
Should we then avoid what thousands of years of culture tell us will cause pain? Should we live on farms and eat simply so as to avoid even the pain of indigestion? Or should we try to ignore all those lessons, live and not learn, fall in love with that married woman, move to that foreign city, fuck our best friend, fall hard into teenage love, run away from our no-good husbands, wave gently goodbye to our college friends, stay up late, submit poems and demo tapes that will be rejected? Should we just go ahead and make mistakes?
Yes. Because when people stop making mistakes, willfully, culture will stop. It's the same stories over and over only because we keep thinking of new ways to tell them. New references for new times, new metaphors that are sharper and truer than others. Same lessons, new methods. Throw what you feel into the big pot of experience. Here is the number one reason why you should willfully, gleefully, make a mistake from time to time:
If you avoid things simply because they haven't worked out for others, then you avoid life itself.
There are certain things that, if you are an informed homo sapien, are common sense about experience. If you stay up too late too many nights in a row, no amount of coffee will keep you awake. Fall in love when you are young and you will have heartbreak. If there is a potential for pain, pain will manifest itself. Our bodies will fail us when we least expect it, our lives will collapse when they seem most in place. Just because you are thinking about someone does not mean they are thinking of you, too. Friendships will fade away, with no fanfare. Sleep with someone who is “just a friend” and it will not work out.
You do not need to live all of these things to know they are true. They are depicted faithfully and extensively in literature, film, television, and music. The arts, perhaps, exist to tell the common human stories, and many are of pain. Even the good feelings have pain. Fall in love and you will be vulnerable. Move to a beautiful new city and you will feel alone. Leave an abusive boyfriend and you will still miss him.
Should we then avoid what thousands of years of culture tell us will cause pain? Should we live on farms and eat simply so as to avoid even the pain of indigestion? Or should we try to ignore all those lessons, live and not learn, fall in love with that married woman, move to that foreign city, fuck our best friend, fall hard into teenage love, run away from our no-good husbands, wave gently goodbye to our college friends, stay up late, submit poems and demo tapes that will be rejected? Should we just go ahead and make mistakes?
Yes. Because when people stop making mistakes, willfully, culture will stop. It's the same stories over and over only because we keep thinking of new ways to tell them. New references for new times, new metaphors that are sharper and truer than others. Same lessons, new methods. Throw what you feel into the big pot of experience. Here is the number one reason why you should willfully, gleefully, make a mistake from time to time:
If you avoid things simply because they haven't worked out for others, then you avoid life itself.
just to get the ball rolling . . .
Dear Mother,
I have not met you and yet I already admire and respect you immensely based on solely your son's recounting of your life and personality.
It is difficult to produce a lovable man, I would imagine. It is hard enough to grab one who is already part-grown and try to shape something decent out of him, let alone mold one properly from the ground up amidst the chaos of your own life. But you, somehow, have done it. Of course, he is only half-grown himself, still flawed and awkward and headstrong, but learning fiercely, and only getting better.
I know that, as time goes by, whether he and I stay together or split apart, and whether he breaks my heart or I his, he will continue to be a good man for the rest of his life, steadily improving himself and those around him. I know that this is true because, despite his sometimes thick head, he has the most important quality a man can have, one that is invariably the result of an extraordinary mother -- an open heart.
Maybe, when we finally do meet, we won't even like each other. But even if we become the kind of domestic in-laws who spit drunken insults at each other over every Thanksgiving dinner, we will always have this one thing in common: a beautiful boy that we love the best that we can, with all that we've got, each in our own way.
Because you are his mother, I know full well that I will never be able to love him as much as you do. But I hope you take it as a comfort, and not a challenge, that I am damn well going to try.
-Girlfriend
P.S. Of course, your influence might also be the source of those personality traits of his that I would rather do without, but, if you prefer, we can agree to blame those on his father.
I have not met you and yet I already admire and respect you immensely based on solely your son's recounting of your life and personality.
It is difficult to produce a lovable man, I would imagine. It is hard enough to grab one who is already part-grown and try to shape something decent out of him, let alone mold one properly from the ground up amidst the chaos of your own life. But you, somehow, have done it. Of course, he is only half-grown himself, still flawed and awkward and headstrong, but learning fiercely, and only getting better.
I know that, as time goes by, whether he and I stay together or split apart, and whether he breaks my heart or I his, he will continue to be a good man for the rest of his life, steadily improving himself and those around him. I know that this is true because, despite his sometimes thick head, he has the most important quality a man can have, one that is invariably the result of an extraordinary mother -- an open heart.
Maybe, when we finally do meet, we won't even like each other. But even if we become the kind of domestic in-laws who spit drunken insults at each other over every Thanksgiving dinner, we will always have this one thing in common: a beautiful boy that we love the best that we can, with all that we've got, each in our own way.
Because you are his mother, I know full well that I will never be able to love him as much as you do. But I hope you take it as a comfort, and not a challenge, that I am damn well going to try.
-Girlfriend
P.S. Of course, your influence might also be the source of those personality traits of his that I would rather do without, but, if you prefer, we can agree to blame those on his father.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
initial epistle
Dear reader,
I love to write letters. I compose them in my head all the time: to people I love and hate and barely know, people from my past, present, and future. Sometimes, to vague groups of people ("those who think berets look cool") or to inanimate objects ("the coffee pot I forgot to turn off"). Usually, though, it's to a person I have actually known, or hope to know someday.
These letters are all, in some way, unsendable. But I write them anyway, and I have to put them somewhere. I still want them to be read, even if not by the intended recipient. Frequently, I find them beautiful, funny, interesting, or, at the very least, cathartic.
Many people mentally compose things in their heads, but then there's nowhere for them to go. Well, I'm utilizing the world's largest dumping ground (read: the internet) to put all these things out there. If you are currently wishing you'd thought of this first, then know I would love to eventually add more authors to this blog.
Names will be altered to protect the innocent.
Sincerely,
Vi
P.S. The blog address comes from a combination of "anonymous," which most of the letters will be addressed to, and "apostrophe," which for you non-English majors is "an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically one who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified)."
I love to write letters. I compose them in my head all the time: to people I love and hate and barely know, people from my past, present, and future. Sometimes, to vague groups of people ("those who think berets look cool") or to inanimate objects ("the coffee pot I forgot to turn off"). Usually, though, it's to a person I have actually known, or hope to know someday.
These letters are all, in some way, unsendable. But I write them anyway, and I have to put them somewhere. I still want them to be read, even if not by the intended recipient. Frequently, I find them beautiful, funny, interesting, or, at the very least, cathartic.
Many people mentally compose things in their heads, but then there's nowhere for them to go. Well, I'm utilizing the world's largest dumping ground (read: the internet) to put all these things out there. If you are currently wishing you'd thought of this first, then know I would love to eventually add more authors to this blog.
Names will be altered to protect the innocent.
Sincerely,
Vi
P.S. The blog address comes from a combination of "anonymous," which most of the letters will be addressed to, and "apostrophe," which for you non-English majors is "an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically one who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified)."
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