#tealuxe

dear future rachel:

sometimes you have to write about simple things. i don’t mean definitions (1+1=??) nor the obvious (a thesis statement,your favorite novella,family history surface-level). i mean you can sit on the fourth floor of the rockefeller library trying to write what you want to write and it will take you hours,probably,until morning,so sometimes you have to settle and type out pages of what needs to be written.i mean you can wait in your dormitory for the world to spin a fraction more/sit in tealuxe for the rest of your life,or you can venture back to class with your head down. up. down again.

in this spirit:here’s what’s been happening lately in my life,this life of mine. i outlined an essay about poets,walter benjamin,and architecture; i piled up bullet points in my bedroom; i read a passage of the bible; i forgot my glasses at home; i learned rebellious and wayward children are to be put to death; i went to a doctor’s office in downtown providence to get a prescription for birth control; the streets were bleak,the lighting strange.

what bothers me most is how the things i want to write about cannot be explained. indeed i am very infuriated. sometimes it is because of name/face that i am starting to get the impression i might be running low on words.

outside[have you noticed that it is always outside,that i am reliant on indoor/outdoor binaries to place myself in this city]a man in a camo shirt is crossing the street,many of the women around are wearing white sunglasses,the shadows left by rustling leaves form silhouettes on the backs of street signs otherwise obscured by countless stickers and advertisements for a record store that closed in may,so many women have stylish coats,the bustling,the way one man holds his water bottle in his right hand,dangling it above his leg.

there’s a bus advertisement that reminds passersby that the flu shot will never give them the flu—thanks,ripta!—there’s the man next to me eating salad so loudly i think i might get an aneurysm and/or perish instantly in the sound,and all i really want is to write something that can capture the sharpness of this wednesday morning,something beyond the abstractions i know to be true about my life,something concrete as the air in my lungs.

anyway,future rachel,i hope you are well.