Dear Janeen,
Now I remember what it was. A few things actually: For one, I wanted to tell you I’m moving so I’ll send a new address soon. It’s been a decade and half in the desert now and the rent’s run out on this cactus house. Forget the insurance premiums and extortion fees, I gotta cover the coffee.
I guess it’s been a while. The stars were so blue last time I saw you. This postcard of yours that I found pressed into an old journal says you were in love with a philosopher who was then unavailable but you already knew it wasn’t going to work out. All in the space of a postcard. See, you were always wise. Even in youth you were wiser than me, before we were penpals, and so I figured you could already see that I was a pretty simple country boy. Not much new here, perhaps not as much as you’d think. I’ve learned a few more things since then. I’ve heeded what you taught me. I’ve learned that you never know. I learn that you reap what you sow, and how sometimes. I own an ascot now, just in case. I’ve learned to make do with so very little and to be grateful for what I got which is way more than what I need and in doing so I’ve found a much more productive life. I’ve learned how to make the most of going without. Just the errant whiff of waste, decadence, cat piss, hassles or sour milk mingling with the morning brew makes me ill. I felt a little dirty after touring the Biltmore last time but I also took the luxury of an extra hot shower that day. Water is one thing. Running water is another. Hot, steaming hot, running water gets to be quite a complexity. Coffee makes me more & more thankful for a column of clean water. O Coffee…I’m sure I carried on about it enough back in the day, especially while passing through the Great Northwest, so I’ll spare you the beautiful brown bean music for now. Ret says tell Nina “Hello! And Happy Holidays!” Nina’s the base stock in some of the characters we cooked up in fiction. I’m sorta homeschooling my MFA, which I figured would be a seven- to seven-and-a-half-year program but it’s been such an overwhelming effin’ joy being a broke-ass student living on ramen, a library card, two magazine subscriptions and a typewriter that it’s become more of a 12 to 15. Plus there was all that Kung-Fu fighting. Mostly over commas and other punctuation fetishes. And dancing. A couple broken feet. Skating. There’s all that reading yet to do. I’d like to go for 20 and finish in retirement but I don’t think I can hold out. I still have plenty of paper and ribbon but I’ll have to make some Bingo money for old age so that I’m not a burden on the village. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. That’s the prime directive. But I want to go for a skate while I’m still able.
Let’s see, what else? I’m still tucked quietly away down here in Skunkwerks. I volunteer in the mailroom part time, love pitchin’ ‘lopes at boxes, love the smell of everything down there. It’s a heady mixture of everywhere that flows in through the network of vacuum tubes. It affords me time to do the research, read, and think— I think I may have broken something. Which is another thing I wanted to talk to you about. I still specialize in prototyping, R&D, design & break & redesign, but I’m nearly done with test-piloting now. I still have all 10 of each fingers and toes, but barely. I’m more into research lately and I serve as a consultant with the engineers to help make sense of all those bolts, bones, and nuts I broke. They ask me all kinds of questions about how did this get that way or how did that break or this twist or what was I asking of the machine when this broke. I don’t know about asking, they have all the same telemetry as the seat of my pants, but I try to tell the machine exactly what it wants to hear until something breaks at speed. Then I have to figure out how to do magic and/or strange physics to get myself out of the predicament; real paper bag kinda stuff and sometimes sleeve tricks. And I have yet to learn how to use a semicolon. I’m cramming this month. It’s all part of the job I guess. Well, I’m going to have to stop guessing but I’m between guidance counselors right now and feeling sort of heartbroken about it. Maybe we can talk? I’ll take any advice as long as it’s yours. I’m going to have to find an honest way to earn from honest work. It’s not so easy to do ‘round here. Which brings us to… Ahh criminy! See, again, didn’t even get to where we were going. I’ve another mail run to make…
Again next time. Gosh, I miss my penpals. How’d we ever keep things so short and say so much?
Toodlin’,
-S
Image: “Some Birds Never Fly South” by my friend, Amani’.