An email that gives advice. We Think Alone, Week 2: A Review
Pauline 11:40 AM (2 hours ago)
to me, Thalia, Clara
Also, fuck. off. lena. dunham.
Thalia 11:36 AM (4 hours ago)
to me, Pauline, Clara
Also, this:
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Kirsten Dunst was unable to locate an email that gives advice.
Sarah 11:30 AM (4 hours ago)
to Thalia, Pauline, Clara
I am glad I bit the bullet and typed my email into that pink blob if only because Sheila Heti is the only writer who thinks exactly the way I do now. Case in point:
2. loving someone means loving their ugliness. if you do not love also what's worst in them, you do not really love them. it's hard in a new relationship because every bit of ugliness is a surprise; but these are the parts that must be loved. or else it's not love. it's icon-worship or something like that.
Which confirms my suspicion that, despite boyfriends, the only two people I have ever loved have been my best friend from high school and my best friend from college.
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From: Miranda July <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 9:00 AM Subject: An email that gives advice. We Think Alone, Week 2 To: [email protected]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Catherine Opie Date: March 12, 2008 10:17:10 AM PDT Subject: tutoring an stuff To: K Cc: R Dear K. Was on the phone last night with your dad, heard you being somewhat upset at this tutoring idea. First of all, you know how much I love you, and this isn't about punishing you or that you are not smart, it is simply about the fact that you will leave high school with an abysmal GPA, you are not going to take the SATs, which you need even if you are going to a JC, to go onto a four year college. So sweetie, I am just going to be frank with you, because that is how I am. Your dad and I are just simply trying to help you, there are many kids out there who have parents who don't even care, we care. I am not your parent I love you a ton. This isn't about punishing you or anything like that. This is simply about offering you more opportunities. I will pay for a tutor for you, I want you to spend two hours a day on homework if possible with or without a tutor. You have now one more year to get your grades up and after that, there are no more chances. I review over 400 undergraduate applications a year here at UCLA, I read the essays, look at the schools they came out of, and look at the SAT scores and their GPA. I know you have no desire to go to a four year college out of high school, that is fine but a Junior College isn't going to be any easier in terms of academic rigor. Also to transfer to a four year college you need to have great and amazing grades from a JC. We take all of the transfer students into consideration from JC's as well. I have no desire in life to be the evil Aunt who is making you do anything, I am hoping that at this point you can take some responsibility in life for your own future. R and I didn't have any family support in terms of our high school education. I failed my SATS and graduated from Poway High with a 1.8 gpa, and barely a hope to go onto college. Fortunately art school only cared about your work at that time. This is not true at this point, it has gotten so highly competitive in academia, that you need a least a 3.5 gpa to compete in todays schools. Why do I care? Because I see myself in you and wish someone had stepped in and stopped the train wreck as I perceive it today later in my life. That if I had one person who sat with me that even art school would not have been so difficult. maybe I am projecting too much onto this, but you should have seen my papers that I wrote, I could barely get through them and all I had ever needed was a tutor. At 16 I had way to much freedom, I partied, hung out with friends, quit swim team to party more, and all my friends were the smart ones who got straight A's, but that still didn't influence me. I just hope that you can take more responsibility with your own future and what is being offered to you, I do not want to pay for a tutor for you if it is: the dreaded experience, it is a waste of resources and time for both the tutor and yourself. But if you can enter with excitement in making your life better than you have my 100% support. If you want to graduate from high school in the bottom ranks of your class, it is your choice, you have to make these decisions for yourself. Let me know what you decide and your dad and I will set things up for you. I love you K Your Aunt Cathy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rodarte Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 3:03 PM To: V Subject: RE:! whiskey sours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Etgar Keret Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:42:31 +0200 Subject: RE: THINKING OF YOU To: K Hey K., I think that cracking this writing business is something I've never really figured out. I've been a writer, a script writer, a tv writer, a film director, a pop lyric writer a journalist, a comic book writer, a children book writer, Wrote commercials for TV and I'm teaching in the university and all these only in the last decade. And i have no real clue what's my next project is going to be or from what I'll make my family's bread next year. This is both beautiful and tiring, depending on the day. I can tell you that the two things that had helped me the most in the US were that they've made a film adaptation for one of my books and that NPR's This american Life radio show had started using my stories in a few of their shows. I didn't initate either of these things but i think that with film adaptations one can be active and either write a screenplay or pitch the ideas to film makers both through an agent or directly. I also think that a teaching position is always got if you can find one because it brings stable income and allows you to be more adventurous in your artistic projects. For me it is like some safety net. As for the last conflict in the middle east. I've written two pieces about it the one I've attached will only be published in the UK on Sunday so please don't post it or anything. I'd also love to talk some politics with you and give an interview. I'm flying to Mexico tomorrow for two weeks and then will be another week in the US with my wife and son. So It would be easier for me to do it when I'm back on December 18th, but we could also do it earlier. Best, e ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sheila Heti Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:54 PM Subject: Re: fridge To: Kathryn Borel sprinkles the wonderhorse is the best thing you've ever called me. i haven't read the piece yet -- i'm sorry. moving around, writing, self-involved. now in the motel. i wish i had words of advice about S. i have been thinking about M (and N!) excessively for the past week. how exhausting. i know just how you feel. these are the things i have been thinking / doing to calm myself down. here is my wisdom so far. 1. why am i so anxious? i've been feeling like half a soul without a man. so i'm realising that maybe who i want to meet is actually myself, and not some guy. this has been a pretty relaxing realisation. i sort of see my face in front of me (not as in a mirror, but in a soul or metaphysical way) and it cheers me up. i am not alone. i don't need anyone. 2. loving someone means loving their ugliness. if you do not love also what's worst in them, you do not really love them. it's hard in a new relationship because every bit of ugliness is a surprise; but these are the parts that must be loved. or else it's not love. it's icon-worship or something like that. 3. i sort of feel exhausted; like i have had so many years of relationship anxiety. i want to be on the road for six months, going from place to place and developing no attachments and forgetting all the boys that didn't work out. 4. what do you really *feel*? do you really want or need him? 5. are you staying in it to be a *better person*? you are a good enough person. i learned from my marriage (and from watching mark with michelle) that remaining in a relationship to make yourself a better person usually makes you a more odious person; it also can't hold up very long. I met an amazing choreographer at Yaddo -- an 80 year old woman; Sally Gross. From NY. She told me that I was young. That there was enough time in my life for everything; being alone, being with women, with difficult men, with not-difficult men. This was soothing. There's enough time in my life for everything. But I don't know what you are finding so hard about S; is it the distance mingled with you losing respect for him cause he's not a good writer? If you can't find a way to love that about him, then maybe he's not the person for you to love right now. But why twist yourself up into knots about it? You are a curious person, you get excited about people easily (as I do), and you're desirable, sexy and beautiful. There will always be men who want you, which means that you have to call time out when you're not ready. Of course, it could be the book that's getting you down and you're taking it out on S. My head is not so clear that I can give you any good advice. I always am temperamentally in favour of breaking up, but intellectually in favour of the rigours of going on. Who knows? It doesn't seem like an easy situation, what with the distance, and if the distance is not going to end within the next two years, it's hard to see why it's so necessary or worthwhile. It happens all the time, doesn't it, that people meet, but they don't live in the same place, so it doesn't work out. Do you, deep in your heart, feel like he is absolutely so special that these two years of distance are worth it? Or is he simply another amazing guy, of whom you can say, It's really too bad we didn't live in the same place so we could see what a relationship would have been like. The only thing I can advise is to be a bit easier on yourself. It is not a moral failing not to continue a romance with a man who you knew for two weeks, who lives across the world from you. Unless one of you can move, it seems like a terrible strain. Another piece of advice: Don't make any decisions when you are overly emotional. Like, don't break up with him in the midst of this feeling. Wait until you have some equanimity, or you may regret any actions you take as impetuous. Try to ride this panic out. You don't have to decide anything. You're not going to miss anything -- the man of your dreams, etc -- by delaying thinking about it in the midst of your book turmoil. love, Sheila ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: KAJ Date: January 15, 2013 3:03 PM Subject: Becoming a Pro Basketball Player To: Max Hi Max, Thank you for your recent email. I’m glad you enjoyed my visit to your school and that I was able to autograph your book. I’m just happy kids your age know who I am let alone ask me for advice. You wanted to know the best way to become a professional basketball player. The first part of my advice you’re probably not going to like very much. Ready? Here it comes: Go to college, study really hard, and get good grades. I know the life of a pro looks pretty glamorous with fancy cars and lots of money, but the truth is that money doesn’t make life interesting and neither does just playing basketball. What makes life really fun is interacting with all kinds of people and if all you can do is talk about the shot you made or the ball you stole, you won’t be very interesting to people. Also, life is long but basketball careers can be short. Injuries, age, or just better players make the average length of the pro career about six years. Mine was twenty years, but that’s unusual. Even with my long career, I’ve been retired from the game longer than I played it, which is why I’m so grateful I studied so hard at UCLA. My studies in history and English have made it possible for me to become a writer rather than just a guy who used to play basketball. Now, if that scared you off, then you never really wanted to be a pro, because a pro can’t be scared off. He or she can’t picture anything else but themselves playing on that court night after night. There is no one path to becoming a pro, but there are some general guidelines that might help: 1. Practice every spare moment you can. 2. Never neglect your studies for basketball. 3. Don’t rely only on the moves you’re already good at. Keep developing new skills. Each skill you have that someone else doesn’t makes you that much more valuable on a team. 4. Go to college and play your heart out, but don’t go to college just to play. Treat it as an extra-curricular activity—one that you love, but that’s not as important as your studies. Hope that helps, Max. Good luck to you. Kareem ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lee Smolin Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 2:12 PM Subject: Re: Advice To: J Cc: Lee Smolin Dear Joseph, I'm not sure of my schedule tomorrow, but at worst I can look for you at lunch. My basic advice is to think about writing popular science but delaying doing it as long as possible. Its very challenging and extremely time consuming to do well. It will take a lot of time away from your research. My sense is there are two good reasons to do it: 1) you have an new and disturbing idea you need to think through in your research and need the challenge of explaining it to a wider public to focus on it. 2) You want to stop doing research and begin a new career as a science publicist. My own reason was the first and the end result for my research was positive in that writing the book opened up new ideas and directions for my research and clarified some worrying issues. Otherwise it would not have been worth the huge amount of time and effort it took. Sorry not to be entirely positive. There are a lot of unimpressive popular science books out there which are forgotten quickly, so I think anyone who goes into writing one should do it with the aim of making a book of truly lasting value. This is much harder than writing good science papers. Probably this was not the advice you wanted, in any case I'm happy to talk. Take care, Lee ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: danh vo Date: June 29, 2009 4:26:40 PM GMT+02:00 Subject: FGT on the 'gold field' of roni horn p. 148 To: dominic And it's precisely here were the radical right and their allies in the religious industry have been so brilliant in their strategy of deflecting meaning by using charged symbolic images of homosexual acts (among others). why bother with the destruction of the environment or lack of adequate health care when we have a black and white photo of two men kissing? now thats real meaning. Unfortunately, we in the cultural left are more than eager to play the role assigned to us. we are invited to participate in a debate that has never really been a debate, but a travesty, a red herring to keep us occupied. we should not reply with the first amendment and so called freedom of expression, we should redirect the circus toward our agenda and expose what they really want to avoid mentioning. We should fight hate and the dissemination of ignorance and fear with the effective use of history and fact. ideology cannot stand it when we make connections. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lena Dunham Date: Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:42 PM Subject: Re: facebook To: K Listen to me. I am a woman who loves and adores and, I believe, understands you. You did nothing wrong. He is NOT NICE. He says not nice things in a nice voice so they seem nice but they are not. He isn't kind or careful with you, he wants to suck the kindness out of you, and if he's like this after 10 years of group therapy then G-d help us all. He's not for you bc he's not for anyone. Do you hear me? Good. I understand SO much the appeal, but he's not worth your energy and someone like art guy may not be perfect or right but he's starting on a good foot by offering some of himself to you and wanting to give you pleasureful times Ok my lecture is done Love ---------- Note ---------- Kirsten Dunst was unable to locate an email that gives advice.
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