Dead Letter Department

a list of petty grievances

there is no mechanism by which i can hit some sort of toggle and turn off the entire concept of read receipts, across all platforms and apps, ensuring that i never have to wonder if i have accidentally hurt someone’s feelings by, for example, not responding to a beloved’s persons in-app messages that i clicked on before i was actually ready to respond to them, and, crucially, preventing me from getting weird about your read receipts to my messages

i got four hours of sleep again last night & seem to be in a little insomnia bout, which has happened before & will again & always passes, but in the meantime the dead quiet hours of the morning are a terrible time to either a) contemplate the various failures & embarrassments attendant upon being a person or b) look at your phone, & unfortunately those seem to be the two settings available to me at such times

the parking at the fruit stand is annoying sometimes, and it’s the time of year when i go twice a week

pride was yesterday (our late, post-season parade) & now that means pride is over for the year which is always a touch melancholy & also i spent a lot of the parade thinking about the kids there, how all the adults are so gentle & kind & handing out stickers & candy, and some of the kids, like my niece, have grown up with it, every year, and that’s a beautiful thing but also we are in such a terrible time. i think about that post i saw on how we raised these guys on candy colored steven universe worlds & now we’re sending them out into the increased violence & persecution, the chipping away of our rights. i could see the hypervigilant among us keeping a steady eye on anything unusual in the crowd, and i thought about the generations, and the older queers telling me about the days when all the bars had a back door to escape through when the cops raided, and i thought about the violence at the san francisco trans march. fucking san francisco. if you thought you were safe, anywhere.

i spent a couple of weeks on a work in progress before bouncing off of it in a rather spectacular fashion & so i set it down again & am deep diving into another, which is clicking better, but it is hard not to feel like i wasted good working hours on something it was the wrong time for, and good working hours are hard to come by

i have an increasing pile of junk in the backyard, unsightly & growing, and i have to call around & get some quotes on junk removal & please just explain to me why phone calls take so much energy, or, even better, simply rewire my brain so that is not a problem any more. i would be so much more efficient. i would do all your phones calls for you!

speaking of phone calls, there is just nothing like being told you have access to something, and experiencing a great deal of cultural and personal pressure to access it, having to frequently articulate why you are not doing that, and then when you actually try to get your hands on said thing finding that you can’t. yes, this is vagueposting, i’m sorry but this particular subject is so fraught that i would spend the whole dead letter bitching about it and getting even angrier, so please feel free to insert in your fertile imagination whatever might be appropriate and we’ll just say that it’s close enough for government work, as my dad used to say

also my dad is still dead, will continue to be dead, will not call me on my birthday, was not available for father’s day this year, you know, on account of being dead

the perfume sampler that i bought for myself with great ceremoniousness and delight as a reward for completing a step in a major project has turned out to be a disappointing whiff. the scents are very good immediately, interesting and deep-noted, but then almost immediately dry down into a pleasant enough but rather dull skin scent, almost indistinguishable from each other regardless of what they started out as. feeling very emperor’s new clothes about all the reviews i carefully read beforehand, and no reminders of individual skin chemistry will improve the fact that my little gift to myself was mostly a failure

there’s a small wasps’ nest in the trunk of my mom’s car that i will have to deal with before i can even think about getting it repaired. outer trunk, not inner, but still

my doctor would like to know my opinion on how we ought to deal with something. on the one hand, i appreciate the fact that she is trying to include me in the decision. on the other, i am utterly without an opinion because while i have read a billion articles, i have crucially never been to med school & do not know what the hell i am doing. in fact, literally while i was writing this her office called & i very politely asked if she might be able to give me some recommendations. a starting point. something to go on here

speaking of healthcare hell, there’s nothing like going into a routine appointment that you have finally managed to schedule feeling a little smug about how you’re finally getting your shit together & temporarily cosplaying as a functional adult only to come out with a minor but chronic condition, a reading list, and a vast feeling of overwhelm about your aging body. seems like it would have been easier simply not to go!

several of my friends continue to live really really far way, and i cannot simply stop by for dinner or noodle around with them whenever i want to, and while to some degree the fact that doesn’t get easier is a testament to the depth of our friendship, i am just here to complain about it anyway

this is worsened by the fact that i have not made much headway in getting my responsibilities at home to the point where i could travel and making that happen is going to be labor intensive and emotional

my reading stamina has been bad. there are so many things i want to read, but i haven’t been making much progress & have in fact not even bought the new books by a couple of my favorite authors even though i’ve been anticipating them for ages. this will pass, feel easy & exciting again, and i know there is no point in feeling weird about it until that happens, but still

my eye clinic has still not managed to merge the various records they have for me so i am essentially having to come out as trans to every single person i encounter there, from the receptionist to the doctor to whoever it is that blows those little puffs into your eyeballs, and while it has gone mostly fine so far i am tired and do not want to be braced for weirdness while i also have my eyes dilated so far that i resemble a whippet who has just seen the void. yep, name change! i say brightly, and try to keep it pushing. i have updated my legal gender myself on the online chart thing several times. it does not seem to help

also the orcas keep visiting the bay at times when i am not down on taylor dock to see them & i think that’s rude

as a reward for being here, wherever that is for you, on this monday morning, here is something for your brain to chew on: john waters used to work for mary oliver! just imagine these two icons in a room together, my god.

more soon, and in the meantime may you also be able to air out some of your petty grievances and give them a little enrichment time in the sun before we trudge onwards.

you can write to me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com