A Real-Life (Love?) Letter (Email)

is not half as romantic as the ones in the books I took out from the library. But maybe slightly poetic nonetheless.



Darling,

there's no way you're not home by now. unless something dreadful happened. and i hope that's not the case because i don't think i could take much more after losing michael.

do you think we jinxed him? i mean, we have that conversation, andthen bam. mort. i think i'm cursed.

anyway, the purpose of this email is to say:

write to me dammit!

or at least write to me to tell me that you're not going to write to me so that then i can at least stop caring and go back to thinking you're a douche.

Reply Forward

Billets-doux

Whenever I'm feeling particularly giddy-in-love, or as is more generally the case, desperately lovelorn, I find a lot of solace in poetry and novels about love.

Today, while browsing about the Falmouth Public Library instead of working on my radio project, I found a new outlet: collections of love letters.

Before I knew it, I'd piled up an enormous stack, and managed only to put one down. So for the remainder of this drizzly, and, as Robin says, "blustery", day, I've been holed up in my cozy room reading love letters, written by everyone from Henry IV and Kafka to Simone de Beauvoir and John Keats.

Turns out, I'm not the only crazy person, and most people find themselves suffering through just the same level of obsession. That, or they're just really good at B.S.

I especially like this one by Kafka to Felice Bauer, with all of its defiance and sarcasm:

October 31st, 1912.

When at last a letter arrives -- after the door to my room has opened a thousand times to admit, not the man with the letter, but innumerable people whose calm expressions torment me because they feel themselves to be in the right place, whereas only the man with the letter, and no one else, has the right to appear -- when at last the letter arrives, then I think for a while I can be calm, that I shall be satisfied by it and that the day will go well. But then I have read it, there is more in it than I might ever have expected to learn . . . I read the letter once, put it aside, and read it again; I pick up a file but am really only reading your letter; I am with the typist, to whom I am supposed to dictate, and again your letter slowly slides through my fingers and I have begun to draw it out of my pocket when people ask me something and I know perfectly well I should not be thinking of your letter now, yet that thought is all that occurs to me -- but after all that I am as hungry as before, as restless as before, and once again the door starts swinging merrily, as though the man with the letter were about to appear again. That is what you call the 'little pleasure' your letters give me.

In another letter, Franz repeats his one-track train of thought:

But then I simply cannot do without your letters. I am obsessed by the need for news of you. It is only through your letters that I become capable of even the most insignificant daily task. I need your letter to move my little finger properly.


(photo taken of a Smith College student in the forties)

Say It's Only a Paper Sun

. . . Held in place by some velcro . . .

I think there's something wrong when the rain becomes so unceasing that the bank is handing out little paper smiling suns to stick on your dashboard.

Song in Spite of Myself

by Countee Cullen

Never love with all your heart,
It only ends in aching;
And bit by bit to the smallest part
That organ will be breaking.

Never love with all your mind,
It only ends in fretting;
In musing on sweet joys behind,
too poignant for forgetting.

Never love with all your soul,
for such there is no ending;
though a mind that frets may find control,
and a shattered heart find mending.

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed,
Confine some undercover,
And when love goes, bid him God-speed,
and find another lover.



. . . Okay, so I'm working on it.

I Do Believe in Fairies!

Yesterday, after a two-day break from Bookstore Land, I returned -- just in time for the long-anticipated Fairy Dancing Party.

A sort of expectant air had hovered about the bookstore all day. Carol was fluttering around planning and constructing little fairies out of left-over pipe cleaner, silk flowers and ribbon that she'd dredged up from somewhere about the store. I was amazed with the end result. She'd just made it up as she went along, and the final fairies were absolutely charming.

My very important duty was to draw the fairy-dancing circle out of pavement chalk, which was done, upon Carol's instruction, by tying string to one end of the chalk and having Tasha serve as the compass point by holding it while standing still as I squatted and scuttled around her in a circle.

It was a workout -- my legs haven't squatted for so long since I stopped playing field hockey.

Anyway, around 3, the store began to fill with tutu-clad, wing-wearing girls and their parents, and I myself donned a pair of wings and a fluffy tulle skirt.

Then Carol summoned the fairies to the parking lot, where members of a local dance school lead them in tap, jazz, salsa, ballet, rock and "disco" dancing. After, Carol lead them on a "fairy hunt," inspired by the book "The Tiptoe Guide to Tracking Fairies," and served them tiny fairy treats.

I can't wait to see what this job asks me to do next . . .

Another Label for Love

"Is it -- I'm not certain -- possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt accruing to it, alt the progression of other emotions? It can be argued that even the most decently coupled people were initially magnetized by the mutual-exploitation principle -- sex, shelter, appeased ego; but still that is trivial, human: the difference between that and truly using another person is the difference between edible mushrooms and the kind that kill: Unspoiled Monsters."
-- Truman Capote, Answered Prayers


I've always wondered just how much of love is selfless and how much is, as Capote calls it, "The Mutual-Exploitation Principle." Maybe a lot of it is the latter, but maybe that isn't a bad thing. Maybe it's just life.

Impressed

My friend Nick shows me up all the time.

He told me he started writing for a fashion website, which I found incredibly hard to believe, never having heard him say a word about fashion. So I challenged him to write me a blurb about this randomly-selected Chanel bag -- the first that popped up when I opened their website.

Here is the bag, with Nick's caption, as one might expect it to appear in an edition of Vogue or Elle:

"Imagine a Stalin-era Faberge egg. Now imagine it turned inside out. This purse presents a delicate bed of quilted fabric scintillating with Soviet icons. Enough bling to make Trotsky jealous."
Nick Nardini

Devilish Impulses

I keep wanting to eat ice cream instead of dinner.

What oh what will become of my figger?

Some Things that I Want

The mask from Breakfast at Tiffany's, bien sur.
It's Dior, apparently. Making it far trop cher, ma chere.

Something to Ponder

"Would most Type A, professional women have dated Barack when he was a broke, big-eared organizer with a funny name?"

from, 'What Single Women Can Learn from Michelle,' by Jenee Desmond-Harris for The Root

Ducks May Like Rain . . .

. . . according to Raffi, but Xtina sure doesn't.

I decided to live on the Cape again this summer to recreate last summer's months of biking around and wearing my bathing suit under my work clothes so that I could go to the beach and tan.

But I think there has perhaps been one day of sun since I've been here. This is three weeks now of drizzly, clammy dreariness, and it is very draining to my morale. If I'd known the summer was going to be like this, I'd have moved to Boston or New York to wear black all the time and enjoy the nightlife.

I'm starting to doubt that I'll ever see sun again . . .

Cape Cod -- Then and Now

I got my hands on the first CD of archives from the Woods Hole Historical Society! This means my project is truly underway . . . and I've realized that it means a lot of, well, listening. Duh, right?

There are hours upon hours of tapes, on all sorts of subjects, and it's my job to select thirty of the most interesting minutes. I guess I've got my work cut out for me after all.

Today, after bumming about in Woods Hole for a bit, getting an iced latte at Coffee Obsession, and sitting on a wall to read some more Chabon and people-watch, I met with Shirley and obtained the CD.

Then, I listened to Loretta Doucette talk about the amazing adventures of her father the fisherman, from hand-lining, to trawling, to dragging, to looking out for Nazi ships during WWII and being blown up in an accident in New York Harbor. Well, he was lucky enough to be only minimally blown up. He spent two years in the hospital, but then lived till he was a very spry and sharp eighty.

I think my favorite part, however, was Loretta talking about the time she bought twenty-two lobstahs for twenty dollahs from Sam Calhoun. I have no idea whether that is how the name is spelled -- such are the problems with audio as opposed to text research -- but apparently he was le fish-seller in Falmouth/Woods Hole a l'epoque.

After I couldn't take it anymore, I left, and did some grocery shopping at Windfall. I'm a terrible shopper -- I cannot plan meals/ingredients for the life of me, and am quite erratic and eclectic in my choices. I also realized that Loretta Doucette's fisherman father probably never ate any of the following. Interesting how two people can live in the same place and have entirely different lives.

The contents of my basket, after much picking up and putting back, included, comprehensively:
pre-made sushi for tonight's dinner
1 box of this new kind of Kashi cereal
1 box of vanilla soymilk (no, I'm not vegan) -- thought it would go nicely in my morning coffee
1 tub of roasted red pepper hummus
1 tub of tabouli
1 package of spinach wraps -- the above three might make good lunches?
1 bar of dark mint chocolate
1 pint of HONEY-LAVENDER GELATO, which I am SO excited about

We're going to see if I can actually manage to spread these things out and NOT eat all the gelato and chocolate tonight. That would be very bad, for many reasons, but all too sadly, it's happened before.

Please can the weather get nice so that I can go to the beach and be warm?

P.S.

I can hear the ferry horn from my new room.

I think it's the ferry horn. Maybe it's the foghorn? Do those still exist?

Also, I'm still reading Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and I found another quote I like:

"'Never say love is like anything, said Cleveland. 'It isn't.'"

Not that I really know anything about love. But I think this must be true nonetheless.

I'm all moved into my "new digs," as Carol called them.

My room is not quite as big as it was last summer, and (horror!) it has no closet! Well, that is to say, no closet with hanging room. Only shelves. Rather inconvenient for a girl like myself who likes dresses and skirts and cute little jackets. And what on earth will become of my first official suit that I bought to go on important interviews with?

Then again, I've only had one opportunity so far to wear that suit -- and more do not seem to be forthcoming. Though I did just apply for another Paralegal job, so fingers crossed.

Otherwise, things in Bookstoreland are proceeding smoothly and uneventfully. I've realized that the routine doesn't vary much from puttering about reading the books ("familiarizing myself with the stock," as I call it when I want to sound impressive) and assisting the occasional customer, putting stickers on and shelving the new arrivals, and going around to check that one of each item is displayed and that all are accounted for. Until the next promotional event -- fairy dancing -- nothing else tres original is going to be required of me.

But I am getting good at what I do. I was able to direct a couple looking for Fancy Nancy for their two year old granddaughter to both the picture books and the sticker sets. I also helped a little girl find "Cinderella stories from other countries." The coup de grace -- I am now in the position of explaining things to "junior staffers" -- ie, Sam, a literate football player from Bates, who just arrived yesterday. Too bad I have greater ambitions and the hopes of someday earning more than $8 an hour and affording my own apartment -- otherwise I'd be very satisfied with life as a book seller.

Tomorrow, however, I have the day off from Eight Cousins and