Dead Letter Department #24

(did you miss dead letter department #23? read about frozen pipes & Joan Didion here!)

weather report

It’s hard getting up in the dark. My body makes a great protest about it every morning, totally convinced that I am doing something unnecessarily strenuous. I must have gotten it wrong about the time this alarm is set for because it is clearly still night. If I just turn it off this loud violin music for a few more minutes, I will see the error of my ways, & the solution to this problem can easily be found—it’s right over there in that nice warm pillow. It’s like starting the day with an argument: no, you really have to. Yes, today too, and tomorrow.

I’ve been working on a hard reset of my most load-bearing habits, trying to sweep them all up into a neat little pile that might stand some chance of being a foundation (on a particularly good day, one with limited fault-line activity).  My friend & I did the YearCompass project together on the first of the year. Doing it together was for the best—last year I couldn’t stand to do any kind of assessment, didn’t want to look back & mourn so much lost time, & this round I really don’t think I would have gotten through the questions if I hadn’t had her sitting across the table from me, both of us putting whiskey in our coffee & trying to figure out if our dreams still live in this atmosphere. It’s a repetitive process, but the repetition serves a purpose, forcing you to keep restating the same things, reminding you of their importance.

There’s a TikTok sound making the rounds right now: you must break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow. You must break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow. The voice is slightly robotic, menacing in the same way as an empty, fluorescent-lit hallway stretching out ahead of you, and it plays in my head when I’m veering towards the cliff of a meltdown. Sometimes anxiety manifests as drive, & I can use it as fuel. Sometimes it’s superstition—the simultaneously unshakeable & unprovable belief that if I can just figure out how to navigate exactly the right way through the various hidden shoals and currents I can avert disaster, despite the fact that disaster is utterly unavertable & we have all been living right on top of it for several years.  Often it’s just a crushing wave, arriving at the most inconvenient time possible—just as I’m trying to fall asleep, or sit down to work with that faintly optimistic, early morning take on the world. The window only lasts a couple hours so I’m trying to make the most of it.

perfume unreview

Well, the real problem is I didn’t read the copy carefully enough. Part of the thing about perfume is the story: the packaging, the lore, the thing you tell yourself as you put it on so you can carry it around with you. I was seduced by a shiny website & also the prospect of getting mail—the occasional small delight arriving wrapped in cardboard is one of the few ordinary joys I can still access. I ordered from a company I was unfamiliar with & when I got the shipment & started reading the little stories about the scents I realized I had totally misfired.

There were references to Bob Dylan, who I have no interest in emulating odor-wise—I suspect he probably smells expensive, because he’s rich, but the mind honestly refuses to go farther in examining the possibilities. There were some of the usual LA fantasies, which I usually enjoy (jasmine & freeways & crowded clubs, etc), but trodding closely on the heels of all that were the references to Sharon Tate (seems wrong to use her as marketing copy) & Roman Polanski (absolutely not), at which point I lost all interest in the scent & also the company.

If you can recommend some new perfumes to try where the copy won’t make me grind my teeth after I open the package, please do write to departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com with your suggestions.

one good thing

Re-learning tarot has been slow going, not least because of the isolation. When I was super into it the first time, in my teens, there was a constant stream of people around me wanting someone to tell them how things were going to work out with any number of urgent, daily problems. I learned on the fly, sitting on various curbs & gym floors and flipping through the little booklet that came with the cards, taking a thousand variations on ‘I have a crush’ & making sense out of the symbols we drew.

Now I spend most of my time at my desk, & while I’ve done a couple three-card readings for friends over the phone, I’d sort of gotten to the end of where my casual, pull something in the morning & let it inform the day practice could take me.

Enter this new journal, a gift from the same friend who did the YearCompass project with me—she is apparently a one woman influencer for organization & habit building in my life, so thank god for that. It has a million different types of spreads to use & tons of little explainers on the various suits & symbols. There’s also a lot of stuff about astrology that I haven’t really gotten into, except for the moon’s cycles, which I tend to keep an eye on. My feeling about star signs is generally a little suspicious, or maybe just contrary, in that I don’t like to be told that my spectacularly individual woes & foibles (not really, they are utterly ordinary) are immovably linked to the movements & circumstances of planets I can only identify with the use of an app on my phone.

What I do like is building a narrative, making sense out of things. It’s what I’m always working on in the various larger writing projects I spend so much time staring at, only the narrative in tarot is your own life, clarified, organized, shuffled into some kind of understandable shape instead of being the diffuse mass of intractable problems it so often feels like. We have to divide the world up somehow, figure out how to interpret it, and the suits & elements are a beautiful way to try, a pool that keeps getting deeper every time I dip into it.

For those of you playing along at home, today’s question was how to deal with the rest of the work week without sliding back down into the slough of despond. Here’s what I drew:

Situation: Ace of Swords. A new take on the problem, mental rigor. You will find your way through. Obstacle: Eight of Swords. Stuck, no hope, imprisoned by your own doing, can only be freed by yourself. Lesson: Seven of Cups. Get away from magical thinking. Plan & work, engage with the real world.

Now I’ll try to make it into something I can work with.

talk back

If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend. Write to me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com & tell me about any particularly necessary habits you’re working on for this new year. I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon & in the meantime may you break the pattern today so the loop doesn’t repeat tomorrow.