The Dead Letter Department #3
(did you miss dead letter department #2? catch up here!)
end of year
It’s the time of year when I would usually be doing some pretty intense self-assessment. I have a midyear birthday, so it’s become a habit to do a round-up of goals & habits & projects right around my birthday & then again as we slide towards the last page of the calendar. I don’t celebrate any winter holidays (usually just gesturing with damp, irreligious hopefulness at the darkest day of the year as a turning point is as far as I get) so the bubble of time when most people are either frantically wrapping up work or spending time making merry has historically been pretty good for evaluating & planning.
I have no idea how to do either right now. My habits are all shot to hell; the duolingo owl & I aren’t even on speaking terms anymore. My exercise bike has started making an alarming rattling noise, just another thick slice of difficulty pushed between me and getting on it to bicycle semi-vigorously towards nowhere. How do I evaluate a year in which I saw almost no one, in which most of my personal forward progress was arrested, while we collectively were crushed under a criminally mismanaged global catastrophe? My complaints seem so small when stacked up against the unforgivable pile of death, my achievements embarrassingly few given how lucky, overall, I’ve been throughout.
So I’m just not going to do it. No end of year evaluation, no measuring how I could have done better, no ambitious lists. I’m furious about what we’ve lost, what we’re still losing, every single part of it. I swing wildly between grieved shock at the people who have been utterly unwilling to change their behavior when the other weight in the balance is literally the lives of other people and unbearable anger at the systems that refused to protect us. The first of my friends are scheduled to get vaccinated sometime next week, and one of them asked me if that made me any more optimistic. I wish it did. It’s all still tunnel, friends.
other windows, other views
Beloved reader Pancake sent us this photo. She works with too much important & secret information for us to see an actual picture of her desk, but after years at a job with no window (& a lot of intra-department fighting over ambient temperature) she now has this very nice windowsill, decorated for the season, in her very own office.
If you’re sick to death of the sights from your own workplace, you can take a minute to look at hers instead. My view now is all mossy rooftops and bare tree limbs, but I’d love to see where you’re working these days. If you want to send me a picture you can find me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com
(try to) have a feeling
If you’re part of my other weird little project (called why am I like this, an unpredictably mailed mix CD & letter) then you already know I have intense opinions about the Mountain Goats. They’ve released two entire albums during this whole horrifying mess, and while Songs for Pierre Chuvin (was just the thing for what the people on social media were calling Pandemic Season One, Jordan Lake Sessions is exactly the music for my head right now. I’ve been listening to it in the car & definitely alarmed a fellow driver just this morning with my fervent stop sign rendition of ‘This Year,’ a song that gets more relevant all the time.
This version of ‘Getting Into Knives’ is perfect for humming ominously as you plot the downfall of those working against us. If you like the song, or if you just need to hear John Darnielle talk about plague songs and wishing, with his intoxicating sincerity, that we were all in the same room together, the album is great all the way through.
do better
There’s been an ongoing camp protest at Bellingham’s town hall the past few weeks to draw attention to the growing & profoundly underserved houseless population. This very visible protest has forced the city to step up their efforts and they finally designated a site for a new tent encampment that will become a second (temporary) tiny house village, enabling 28 community members to get off the streets and into safe housing for the winter. It’s being run by HomesNow, a local homeless advocacy organization that also runs Unity Village. Our unhoused neighbors are only going to get more vulnerable as winter rolls on and the economic axe of this disaster keeps hacking away, but we can help. You can learn more about their efforts & donate money or needed household goods here.
the only good thing
I think it was a king tide today, or close to one, so the waves were rolled almost all the way up the deserted beach & there were a lot of smallish black & white birds riding the waves, bouncing up and fluttering their wings & then diving back down. There are so many islands between the coast here and open ocean out there that the bay is usually pretty calm, but it was louder today, crashing just past my sneakers. Imagine what it would be like to be out there in the cold grey water with your best duck friends, knowing just when to put your head under to catch a fish.
write back
You can give that little heart button a gentle kiss on the forehead, click through to leave a comment, or email me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com.
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 | The Dead Letter Department #3
I miss talking to you. |
Top First
 | Incidentally, The Mountain Goats may go down in history as the last live concert I ever was fortunate enough to attend in person. They played my town in November (I think) of 2019, and I was there screaming along with “This Year” just like you at that stop sign. Little did I know then that it might be forever before I got to do that again and how much of an anthem that song would shortly become. <3 |
| i am so jealous that you saw them live, what an utterly perfect last show of the Before! |