Dead Letter Department #105

weather report

Some days are just going to be harder than others, I announce to myself as I claw my way out of bed, after having been up until 2:30 in the morning. A Blues Traveller song plays inexplicably in my head for hours, which honestly seems like insult (harmonica) sprinkled over injury (insomnia). It’s the blaring “WHHHHY you wanna give me runaround” that seems to repeat as I brush my teeth & take my medication. It’s new notebook day, which is always a nice fresh start—I numbered the pages yesterday, which is how I keep track of the extracts I write down, with a key in the back, and looking at that thick stack of blank white pages feels good. Most weeks, recently, I’ve managed to do more things I write down for my daily & weekly task lists, which feels both like progress & like breaking the unhealthy aspirational habit of listing wildly more than is beyond my current capabilities, thinking that will help me bully myself into doing something I’m struggling with. As the feel-good Instagram accounts say, if beating yourself up about something was going to work, it would have already.

I went to the boardwalk Sunday morning, knowing if I didn’t decant myself from the house first thing, like a particularly stubborn jarred pickle, I likely wouldn’t do it at all, and immediately rediscovered just how bloody popular it is down there: dozens of people, running, biking, walking their dogs, trying to train their reactive dogs, shouting the same commands over and over again ineffectually at their dogs, walking their unleashed dogs straight down the middle of the path while regarding annoyed leash-walkers with smug bafflement. A trio strode past me, jogged merrily all the way to the end, and then two out of the three stripped down to what the law requires in public and dove into the icy water, with much shrieking. I think all of us up on the boardwalk turned to watch & admire their bravery. It actually sounded good but I think it would have taken me twenty minutes to get my coat & hat & gloves & heavy boots off, by which time I would have certainly chickened out again.

I sat for a while on a sandstone rock & tried to think about waves, but instead I found myself speculating wildly about the passersby based entirely on five second snippets of overheard dialogue & how they walk together, which is honestly a frequent pass-time for me. When I was down at the granary building earlier this week to get a sandwich, there was a couple passing, a guy in his 60s with a white, wild beard & his much smaller wife, comfortably sweatered, slightly bent over, and clearly pressing the very top of her comfortable pace range to try to keep up with his long legs, despite which he was constantly at least four strides ahead, too far for them to even speak each other as they went.

As a self-consciously slow walker, I immediately decided all kinds of unlikely things about what this meant about their relationship, but they turned out to be going to the same deli I was, and the man was inside bellowing across the counter to the restaurant owner in Italian while his wife beamed at him with such tremendous love I found myself slightly bowled over.

The deli feels like a little slice of the east coast to me—they make focaccia, and black & white cookies, & perhaps most importantly, cannoli, which are impossible to find in these parts. The owners are harried in a friendly, deeply familiar way that I miss out here in the eternal Seattle Freeze of it all, & I can only imagine how much more thrilled I’d be to go in if I could also speak my language & hear it coming back to me across the counter.

I got the mozzarella, prosciutto & arugula, on the focaccia, & it was delicious. The nap I took afterwards: also delicious.

one good thing

I’m a Kendrick Lamar fan from way back—not a completionist, but definitely a listener, & I had the Super Bowl on my mental calendar for him & him only. Football never really seems to grab me, although I suspect an impassioned fan who could make it sound as gay as hockey can go far, and in the world of streaming, network commercials are infrequently encountered & loom so loud & large & annoying that I usually mute them, even on this high holy day of supposed inventiveness, but it was worth even having to sit through the row of weirdly similar sportscasters to watch, a little breathlessly, as Kendrick fucking killed it. Serena Williams c-walking to They Not Like Us! Sza all in red slithering gorgeously around the stage! Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam, narrating the whole half-time like a movie! A couple of times Kendrick looked directly into the camera & grinned like a gunshot, & I thought, I forget sometimes that he’s not just a genius, he’s a star. The charisma was positively intoxicating.

Here’s a link, if you missed it—and imagine how much more relieved you’d be watching if it also meant you were done watching football for the year!

Thank you for reading. The last Secret Dead Letter was about bad habits & the multiverse, & if you’d like to read the paid-readers only letters but can’t currently swing the subscription, send me an email at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com & I’ll comp it for you. More soon, and in the meantime, may all your enemies be laid as low Kendrick’s surely are this morning.