Dead Letter Department #22

(did you miss dead letter department #21? catch up here!)

alternatives to forgiveness

Take what has been done to you & set it alight. It’s fuel, just like everything else. They are right about fires, of course; after last summer we all know that. But if you are careful you may be able to keep your anger burning in a secret place. It will either warm your hands or burn down your house.

Plant it. Everyone keeps telling you to get into gardening, right? That’s something you’re supposed to care about. There’s probably a shovel in the garage.

Bury it. This may initially look the same as planting: you have dug a hole, there is dirt on your pants. It is different because you do not expect it to grow. It will rot. It will decay. There will be worms. If you can walk away, you will. If you can’t, come back in a season or two & dig it up to look at the bones. They might make a nice mobile.

Eat it. “Because it is bitter,” Stephen Crane says, “and because it is my heart.” Is it bitter? You haven’t tried eating it yet, so how do you know? There are spices, you know, different preparations you can try. Bitterness is an acquired taste, like sauerkraut or black coffee or deprivation. It is possible you will come to appreciate the flavor.

Give it away? Who are you kidding? No one wants it. Sometimes you can sell, if you package it carefully, one bit at at a time, & you may fool yourself into thinking it is diminishing, which would make for an optimistic evening or two. Try watching some of those wrapping tutorials, see if you can get it looking a little better before you load it up and take it to the marketplace.

Ask someone else to hold it, just for a minute. They can’t. They’d like to but they just don’t know how, so sorry, can’t be done. They will look at you regretfully, if they can manage the expression, & you will feel a little ashamed. You won’t ask again, but you won’t be able to forget how it felt to put your hand out & draw it back empty.

Feed it to something else. Not another person, not with your cooking skills, but there are creatures in this world who love the taste if you can find them. Careful that you do not leave them expecting an endless supply or this will be your new burden, to pour again & again into a mouth that never stops hungering.

There is such a thing as a heavy weight and a deep water. I can’t say more.

Hang it in the middle of your house. A little avant garde for home decor, perhaps, but if you can’t stop looking at it, no one else gets to stop either. You will make them look.

Kill it? Don’t you remember how often you already tried? It dies when you do.

Just stop thinking about it. Have you tried meditation? If you manage to achieve enlightenment it is possible you will be able to drag it along bodily, force it out of the chain of existence along with your ego. It’s a long shot, but so is everything else. Be present. Don’t you want to be present? Isn’t the here & now good enough?

Rolling it along in front of you works well enough as long as you’re going downhill; you will have to come up with something else for the rises. When you find yourself stuck on a hill it’s too derivative to be endured, but maybe you’ll get lucky on a nice long straightaway, maybe it will stretch all the way to the horizon, if you can see it from here.

Try to praise it. Try to soothe it. Try to accomodate yourself to its company.

Run a piece of tape down the middle of the room, say it can have that as long as you get this. You can live smaller, right? It’s possible to get smaller, you’ve done it before.

Give it a name.

It doesn’t want a name? That’s fine, not everything can be fettered by language.

There are places where you can separate from your shadow, but this is not your shadow.

The exorcisms failed because it doesn’t believe in god even if you’re trying to.

Carry it, carry it, carry it. There are clear cold days when it shrinks to the size of a stone & you can hold it in the palm of your hand, sweltering hot ones where it twists and swells until it towers over you, a storm system, a whirl of dread. It’s as careless as the weather.

You ask, Does it get lighter? I wish it did. I wish I could tell you it did. You get better at carrying it. It comes in fits & starts, but you get better at it.

Sometimes you’ll get lucky, meet someone on the road & see right away—same hat! Don’t waste it. It will be such a relief to not have to explain what you're carrying: oh, those are just my ghosts, oh, that's just my weather. And if they manage more gracefully, if they wear it so lightly when ours is lead in our bones, don’t forget to come back & tell me how.

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