The Dead Letter Department #6

(did you miss dead letter department #5? catch up here!)

I found this amazing cover in the tiny free library two doors down from house when I stepped out for a walk in the middle of writing this & it is my fervent hope that all of you wear one of these two facial expressions when you receive one of my dead letters in your inbox.

wishin’ & hopin’

An old friend and former high school teacher wrote me a lovely long email after a recent Dead Letter Department. She told me that one of the things she remembered most clearly was the way I would wish on the van’s clock—oh look, it’s 11:11, make a wish! it’s 3:03, make a wish—on a road trip we took that year, driving up and down the east coast to visit other small alternative schools. It sounds maddening, actually, but in my defense I was fifteen & only just barely getting a grip on self-awareness rather than utterly debilitating self-consciousness. What I remember the most clearly is sleeping on the long floor cushions in a Meeting House lent to us for the night, getting lost in DC traffic while my teacher steadfastly clung to the steering wheel and sang, and of course the army of wonderful oddities she introduced us to in every city.  There were the students at the Brooklyn Friends school, charismatic and shockingly urbane, coming as we were from a farm school in New Hampshire, there was the tired young anti-death penalty activist whose informative booklets I had until embarrassingly recently, there were artists and Quakers and witches of various stripes that I never met again but who stay in my memory as different, utterly fresh ways of being in the world.

I still wish—habitually, or maybe obsessively, although I do it in silence now. First star of the evening (satellites & planets, if identified, require a re-do), birthday candles, all the usual signposts, but also a host of weirder markers: tunnels, but only if you can hold your breath all the way through. State border crossings.

“I always forget how superstitious you are,” a friend told me once, & I was genuinely surprised. It had somehow never occurred to me before that this behavior could be described as superstition.

It’s not that I think there’s some entity out there holding a giant ear trumpet, listening in for our wishes so they can set the secret levers and wheels of the world in motion, cranking away behind the backdrop if we make them at the right time. I don’t believe in manifestation—the people who I know who are self-identified expert manifesters are also charming & beautiful so it has always seemed to me like that probably has a lot more to do with the arrival of their good fortune than any particular skill or affinity for aligning themselves with mysterious forces. The power of a symmetrical face is not actually that mysterious, you know? We can see it when we look at you.

The wishing is just a scaffolding. It’s a guardrail—this is what I want, enough to keep my headlights pointed towards it all night, enough to say it when I see tonight’s star, and tomorrow’s. It’s so easy for desire to get trampled in this world, to die of neglect, or suffocate in the airless grief of these endless pandemic days.  I say it so I remember, I repeat it so I know I’m sure.

No, I can’t tell you what I’m wishing for; that’s against the rules.

foster dog update

prominent characteristic: very soft

weight: medium bag of flour

fur: gold and grey

teeth: zero

eyes: brown, partially sighted

ears: large, conversational

likes: short walks on the beach, shreds of cheese, belly rubs, adherence to a strict schedule, the hoodie taxi, being informed of affectionate advances in a timely fashion, properly served meals

dislikes: too many birds (noise), rudeness (being picked up or set down without previous notification), when someone is standing on a stair and cannot be joined by those with short legs (inconsiderate)

favorite dance: the one performed when sneakers appear

spotify playlists: lo-fi beats for studying

special skills: supervisory napping, chore accompaniment, break reminding, light editing

He’s completed his decompression course here in the chill zone and gone back to stay with his original foster while he waits for the right home—I’m going to miss the little guy.

reading room

I just finished Full Service by Scotty Bowers, which is just as delirious and frothy as I’d always heard. It’s a whipped topping of a book, full of name-dropping and badly kept secrets. It’s nice to be reminded that history is always significantly gayer than we were taught.

Now I’m getting into Educated by Tara Westover, the story of a girl born to fringe survivalists in Idaho, educated entirely at home among her brothers & sisters, without doctors, teachers, or even a birth certificate to prove she exists. It’s violent & sharply written & I’m devouring it in huge chunks—such a relief after months of struggling to wade through sentences.

We moved a lot when I was a kid, after which I went to three high schools in three years, followed by two colleges, which means my education is generally quite spotty: super deep here, barely touching the surface somewhere else. My best boss was horrified when he realized I was doing data analysis and spreadsheets every day without having had any math past junior year of high school, but I was very good at my job. I’ve never forgotten the time a writer friend made fun of me for not knowing what a gerund was (link here if you’re in the same boat), but here I am writing to you. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m always interested in learning about what it’s like for people who are educated outside of the mainstream, whatever that body of water might be where they live.

In other reading/listening, I’ve barely touched this list by the wonderful Hanif Abdurraqib, but when my ability to listen to new music returns from the fields where it’s been wandering I plan to spend a lot of time on it. A lot of my favorite albums in the past couple years came from his recommendations.

I’m also really excited about the complicated, clear-eyed take that the writer & Rookie magazine founder Tavi Gevinson has in the Cut on Britney Spears, the distinction between youth as currency versus actual power, & the weaponization of sex positivity. The essay is called Britney Spears Was Never in Control & I highly recommend it.

other senses

Today’s perfume is The Soft Lawn, one of a set of the Imaginary Author perfumer samples that the king of gift-giving sent me a while back. Often the grassy scents I’ve tried in the past smell too contrived, more astro-turf than anything living, but this one is lovely, like sitting at the edge of a well-tended field of green, next to someone very expensive who is just about to take something nice out of a picnic basket.

write back

You can give that little heart button the firm, manly embrace of a fellow knight, click through to leave a comment, or email me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. If you like the Dead Letter Department, please share it with a friend. I hope to see you here again!