To A Pen Pal
I want to take your drawing of a Grand Cherokee, with bumper stickers and a bicycle on the back, and hang it up somewhere I will see it everyday. But then people will ask me about it and I’ll have to use words and that would ruin it.
I know what you mean when you say that Lake Superior feels like an ocean. It’s the perfect place to recenter and feel small. I hope your weekend up there was peaceful. Although I don’t think I could spend years living in Duluth, I’d like to buy some property near the lake with a few friends that we could use like a timeshare. A few miles out of the city. A canoe in the garage. Emergency whiskey in the kitchen. Campfires in the backyard.
Work on creating your alias. I have loads of ideas on when and how to use them. Most of these include drinking while pretending to have more money than we do. I told you about the Saint Paul Hotel Lobby Bar. Keegan’s Pub is another prime location because there’s an upper level where you can scope out the lay of the land before making a move. I love this part, looking out over a room and ready body language like a play. Please join me for it sometime. We’ll have a ball.
This image of you driving down the black pavement on a cool night with the windows down feeling the air is a good one. It makes my insides smile.
(Here is what is unsaid.)
.
In the same letter, you told me you have a fickle heart and then asked what my greatest fears are. I’m not sure what to make of that. Ask me later?
What do I believe in? I believe in Nature. The stars, the sky, the dirt, and great big bodies of water. But most of all, rivers and mountains. We can learn everything we need to know from these things, no matter the size or speed.
I believe our society of materialism and fossil fuels is perverted and blind - although I love so many pieces of it.
I believe in love, of course. I believe in massaging the muscles of someone you have a spiritual affinity for and listening to the stories that come out of their knots.
I believe meaning can be extracted from anything.
I believe that life is paradoxical and everything that exists has an opposite that exists just as well.
One of my favorite qualities to find in another person is authenticity. People who bring themselves to any table and are sure of their place there - these are the people I admire so greatly. People who are in touch with their inner realms and can integrate that with the world around them astound me. I’m growing particularly impressed by people who use words wisely.
Here is another absolute truth: People talk too much and listen too little.
Some honorable mentions:
Intellectual Curiosity
Emotional Intelligence
Non-narcissistic Self-awareness
Absurd Sense of Humor
Great Buns, Hun
Mad Play-doh skills
Finger Painting Chops
Bold, Daring Individuals
Willingness to Feel Small
Imagine this:
In August of 2015, I was sitting on my mattress, which rested on a bed frame I built myself in a crappy one-bedroom apartment I shared with a dude who slept in the living room. On the floor, next to the closet, where two packed suitcases, a stuffed backpack, and a hard shell guitar case.
I had just finished an 11 week-long fellowship, I wasn’t enrolled in any classes, and I was in a relationship I knew was coming to an end. I had $900 (give or take) to my name, which I had managed to scrape together after losing all of my savings after returning to California and working for a $2,000 stipend that averaged about $4/hr.
On my computer screen lays a decision that alters the course of my life. All I have to do is press “submit” and I’m on a bus down to Nashville in two days. All my payment information has been entered. I just have to press the button and I’m gone.
I chickened out.
All these things our beloved protagonists know how to do: navigate by following the map in the sky, operate any type of vehicle or machine, tell a lie, outsport anyone. It makes me think of all the odd skills we pick up in our lives that might one day come in clutch.
I’ve been considering going to a wilderness survival school after graduation. How empowering that must be.
Superpowers
I’ve been thinking about power in a new way recently. Not the power of the social sciences. The power within ourselves.
I met a man named Turby (yes, really) in the parking lot of a coffeeshop in California called Hardcore. Tom Waits hangs out there. Turby came to California when he was 20 (he’s now in his 60s). He grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. One day, he and his friend went to see a country singer he saw a flyer for. He was entranced by her. He had to meet her, so he convinced his friend that they should stay after the show. His friend obliged and they ended up talking to this seductive singer outside of her van, which had lace curtains and a mattress in back. This singer took a liking to Turby and whispered in his ear that if he could get rid of his friend, he could steal away with her for the rest of the tour.
Turby couldn’t resist. He ditched his friend and spent the next three months as the singer’s groupie, making love to her in the back of her van the only way a bayou man can: loud, sweaty, and full of pleasure.
Eventually this country gal got sick of Turby (or maybe just company in general) and left him stranded somewhere in the Central Valley. Turby’s been in California ever since, reading geology textbooks in the libraries of colleges he never attended and going up in the Sierra Nevada range to collect the blue jade he sold on the market.
The one time Turby went back to Baton Rouge something extraordinary happened.
He was visiting his sister and mother when he found out that his sister’s fiance was a drunk and would beat her after coming home from the bar. Filled with rage Turby ran out to his truck (that he bought with the blue jade money), slammed the door shut and floored it to the bar. He burst into the bar and - immediately and all at once, as if a giant wave had crashed into the room - everyone in the bar backed up against the wall. Everyone, except his sister’s fiance, who sat there drunken and frozen.
Turby spent the night in jail, but he learned something he would never forget: He could create an aura so powerful it could act like a tidal wave.
Everyone has a superpower, he told me, you just have to learn how to activate it.
Remember I told you about the woman who drew the trauma out of my side? Superpower.
We all have our own way to be Wonder Woman.
I pay a lot of attention to energies, not necessarily the New Age-y “my stomach Chakra feels like it needs some lemon grass & quinoa” kind of energy but more in terms of intensity and the way our interactions with others affect energy levels in each person.
Remember when I asked you about your way of getting people’s attention? This is what I was thinking about. I’ve been thinking about your response - how you tend to be assertive rather than using some roundabout technique - and I’m thinking this is really the only way to go, because rather than being dependent upon / manipulating the energy of other people, you are using your own energy to open up, to be vulnerable, to stand strong and bold, to be honest, and to let whatever energy the other person may lend to you come freely. To me this is profoundly beautiful, like a flower blooming so that it may be pollinated.
You are correct when you write that forgiveness is the ultimate form of love. Forgiveness can only come after acceptance (sort of). When you forgive all the layers of hurt and anger and resentment fall away and you are relieved. You can uncover your head. You can stand up straight again. I have seen far, far too many friends crushed underneath the weight.
Here is another trick I learned from a woman who is among the wisest souls I’ve encountered. She noticed that my shoulders had been driven all the way up near my ears from the constant nagging of voices inside my head telling me about what I should regret. She told me to take each of these voices and drop them like flies into little mason jars, labeled and everything. One for worrying about the future, one for regret, one for fear, one for disappointment.
Then I could say to them: “Thank you but I won’t be needing you right now, but if I ever do, I’ll know where to find you.”
My shoulders dropped and I could think clearly again.
Don’t let these voices dizzy you either.
Will you teach me how to do something? It could be anything, really. Just teach me something you know how to do.
I know I’m well on my way to writing a novel now, but I’m going to Colorado at the end of August and I want to give you a lot of food for thought. Maybe I just don’t want you to forget about me when I’m gone. But please, write back so I can read your letter while I’m traveling.
Here is one thing I fear: That in all the time we spend thinking and talking and longing for love, we forget about the soul. That in all the dreams we have about who we could be, we forget to love who we are.
You are someone that deserves a lot of love. Please remember that (even if you forget who told you).
Love,
Roman
P.S. You never have to apologize for being drunk and loud unless it’s at a concert I care about.