lately, with love
snippets from seattle
So much of my life recently has been moving with change, living with the flow of new city, new program, and learning to live without the same linear markers of time. I am attempting to find new friends, and trying desperately to keep the old ones. It is the most clichéd of post-grad experiences made more difficult by my avoidance of texting as a form of correspondence. I’m okay with being the friendly neighborhood ghost.
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Letter writing has brought back a lot of the joy that I find missing in texts. I write silly letters and include my art experiments and add my beautiful little wax stamps. I enjoy receiving letters and sketches in return. It’s wonderful and cozy and somehow feels like less effort to write in a form that flows so naturally. Pen on paper like a voice on a mouth.
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It could be the abundance of nature or the want of a new feeling, but I find myself playing with more physical and organic forms these days. I collect snippings of plants from my walks around the neighborhood (shrub club!) and make prints of carved stamps and ferns. I worry about the rain in Seattle since I was raised on an abundance of sun. My roommate loves the rain. How I desperately wish to see a fraction of what he does. I paint a little window of sky every day. If I can’t have the sun, then I want to befriend the clouds.
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I carved a stamp to sign my letters. Originally meant to be “Late, with love.” A late response, as always, but still full of love. But it’s not late, not really, just at a different speed.
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E sends me a picture of a poster, L emails me an artist he thinks I’d like. I text A snippets of the essay that I love.
I have an average of three accounts on every platform I am on. I group by topics, but I think love is the best curation, to group by people. A would love this project, this outfit is what I’d send to N. I feel really lucky to have all of these containers, no longer worrying about which is the best container for a snippet but knowing that each item has multiple homes it could belong to.
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In Victorian London mail was picked up and delivered up to 12 times a day. One could have a real-time conversation through letters with friends.
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My physical space feels small, but my digital space is so wide. Nothing too precious, but just precious enough. In this way I have become a compulsive collector: gingko leaves, snippets of sky, articles and words.
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My body has yet to mold Seattle. I think I was incredibly lucky to have lived in Boston, to have been taught how to love a city. It felt so easy to fall in love with Boston and Seattle will take some time, but I know what I can make it into. I wrote a poem as a soft farewell to Boston, with the idea of taking you through my memories, originally inspired by the interactions in this piece. When I first saw another rendition of the idea, it began to feel unoriginal. Then another, and it felt okay again to do it, to add to the growing body of work. K was right when she said isn’t it wonderful to be able to share your work alongside friends?
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Can I be a container for you?
Things I’ve done
Finally said farewell to Boston 💓
a poem: but it’s multiple poems and they grow and die and seed new poems. Published in Syntax alongside such wonderful contributors.
Things I’d like to do
(to start the new year with concrete events, many of which are in search of community and friends and find better ways of keeping correspondence.)
I love the idea of sending emails - it feels the same as sending letters to me. I’d like to continue writing on paragraph.club. Can I write you an email? Send you a letter? Make you a stamp?
Seattle winters are rough, so a winter happiness plan is needed. I think everyone should have a seasonal and applicable-all-the-time happiness plan.
Host a stupid shit hackathon.
Cozy crafting more & going absolutely unhinged once I start my pottery class.
Create some sort of newsletter/poetic tech group for Seattle. The communities here are so siloed and underground, so it’s hard to tell if I just haven’t found these people yet, but the ones who have been around a while say there isn’t one. I’m nervous and it’s necessary and a lot exciting.
i love this so deeply <3
💛🌸