Open Letters

Unread magazines.

2011-11-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

Dear unread magazines cluttering my apartment,

I'm trying to get through you as fast as I can, I really am. When I started this letter, more than a year ago, most of you were less than a month old, with the exception of nearly a year's supply of The New York Review of Books. Now I'm just getting through this past April's New Yorkers, May's New Yorks, and I still haven't started in on that stack of NYRBs, sigh.

Last fall I wanted to apologize to you even when I was almost caught up on reading you before I went away that summer. Little did I know how far I could fall behind when I came home to a new 9-to-5-ish job and graduate school classes in the fall, all of which contributed to readings which competed for my attention on the subway between these various destinations... oof. Today I am less pressed for time but I'm sorry to say you now have to compete for attention with a shiny electronic device which sometimes offers me the whole fricken internet by way of distraction.

Still, reading you has its rewards, even six or more months late. Over the summer, this year's annual February "anniversary" issue of The New Yorker inspired me to read Middlemarch, which was pretty fricken great! More recently, the April 18 issue of that magazine presented me with Jonathan Franzen's essay on Robinson Crusoe, isolation, and the late David Foster Wallace. Flawed or not, that was a tough read, but one that nonetheless has helped me keep building up the courage to tackle The Pale King and Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, both of which are still daunting, to put it mildly.

Anyway, unread magazines, I think I'm catching up on you, reading one or more of the oldest issues around a week, sometimes on top of the week's issue (was I supposed to resist the annual food spectacular? Because I didn't.) Next month I'm thinking of turning my attention to the Cook's Illustrateds among you --- none of which are truly unread, mind, but too many of which are not yet cooked-from.

For now, however, I'm going to stop letting you guilt me and go to bed early. You'll be good company during this post-holidays head cold, when it's probably best if I don't spend too much time staring at screens...

Love,
-Tracy

Quinces

2011-11-26T16:00:00.001-05:00

Dear quinces,

You are such weird, wonderful fruit!

I am really excited to have found you at the farm store down the street from my brother's place in Vermont. It cracks me up that I've looked for you at farmers' markets and in stores all over New York freaking City, only to randomly run across four beautiful examples of you when I was just looking for some high-quality maple syrup as a thank-you gift for our neighbor who checked in on the cats while we were up in the frozen North for Thanksgiving. But whatever! I have three of you now, and that is awesome.

Quinces, I am just fascinated by the way you're almost inedible raw, but sublimely delicious cooked. When I first got a chance to play with you, a little less than a year ago, on a visit to my friends Christine and Kevin in Davis, CA, I accidentally gave Peter a gnarly surprise in the form of a raw piece of you. He was expecting your kinfruit apple, which is what it looked like, but got something whose only taste resemblance was the worst possible: as if an apple had gotten ridiculously mealy-overripe and dried out to the point of tasting flavorless and feeling wooly... he actually spit it out. So yeah, that wasn't good. But I scored a big recovery when I sliced and stewed the rest of you, to serve on toast with broiled Manchego cheese (a traditional pairing in Spain, I'm told).

You undergo a beautiful, almost alchemical transformation in response to heat, quinces, but you knew that and I still wanted to praise it anyway. Yes, I quite look forward to adventure-cooking with you again. And I will! Soon! Yaaaaaay!

Love,
-Tracy

Writing

2011-11-20T18:19:00.000-05:00

Dear writing,

Thank you for existing. You help me organize my thoughts like nothing else in the world, and for that I am eternally grateful. This November is another National Blog Posting Month, one with the official theme "blogging for blogging's sake," which works remarkably well for me, since it's pretty much exactly why I signed up for the event (after sorting through more than a little bit of technical difficulty, I registered as blogger #2011 on the official November blogroll, which feels very auspicious).

Anyway, over at the official NaBloPoMo site there's official prompts every weekday to inspire people to write, and of course given the month's theme, some of those have jiggled my brain as well. For instance the very first such prompt, for November 1, was "What is your favourite part about writing?" (ooh, British spelling, very fancy!) and that alone would be reason to write you right there (I know, this letter is uncomfortably meta; I don't think there's anything in particular I can do about that, so I'm rolling with it as best I can). The prompt for November 4 was, "When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?" which of course got me thinking as well. Lynda Barry's brilliant What It Is emphasizes the importance of movement, actually physically writing, on paper, by hand, that there's something fundamentally different about work produced in that way, and she's definitely on to something there. Unfortunately I type much faster than I write by hand, and whenever I go to put thoughts down in my paper journal (that's how I think of it these days, my paper journal; I think it's a relic of when I had to distinguish between hand-written books and LiveJournal) I always feel even less like I'm not quite keeping up with myself than I do while typing (which still isn't as fast as I'd like). And that's before my hand starts cramping up all fierce, which is also a problem, to put it mildly.

Along those same lines, I find blank computer screens much less intimidating than blank paper: if I fill a screen with drivel, as I worried about doing to the pages of a Moleskine back when I was writing for Everything2, well, I've just wasted my own energy and electrons. Messing up a real sheet of paper somehow feels worse, more wasteful. It's evidence of my screwing up, which I could throw out, but then there's the waste issue again, or on the other hand it could turn into wasted space in my own ever-cluttered desk and file cabinets if at the same time I want to keep that hand-written whatever just in case there was something useful there that I might be able to rewrite or recycle somehow later (and writing is rewriting for me, no doubt about it; back when I was writing poetry—hey, it was high school—I did compose almost everything by hand, and I used to start over and over again, a new page every time as I copied over the bits I liked and left out others and expanded on the words which had worked... I don't know if I've saved anything I wrote like that, but maybe I kind of miss it? There's a thought there. ANYWAY.)

In my heart of hearts, sure, I prefer writing on paper as an aesthetic and somehow more meaningful experience than typing a keyboard and seeing words appear on a screen. Don't get me started on tap-tap-tapping with my thumbs, which is only good at being a portable way to wrangle ideas I want to cast into the ether without retyping them later from paper. But from a practical, manual-labor, not-art-but-craft perspective, I can't beat using a computer. Especially when I'm freewriting out all the gobbledygook I can find in my head in the hopes of sorting some of it into usefulness or at least coherence later. LaTeX comments for the win forever! (Ok, enough of that nerd rant for the time being now.) But speaking of LaTeX, I have been typesetting these open letters into a book for some time now, and I just got around to updating it with the latest letters from this year, and you know what? 52 letters (53, counting this one) really add up to something that looks substantial. Book-like, even. Like an accomplishment. I'm thinking of learning how to format them so they'll look good in PDF form on an iPhone screen or other e-book reader, and then I might be all set to self-publish, as terrifying as that was to type even into just a blog post draft, let alone post in public (we'll how long it lasts out here). I'm left with all these fun little aesthetic decisions: should I just put them out chronologically? Separate issues organized by theme? But I'm getting sidetracked here.

Back to you, writing.

I haven't even mentioned how you make reading possible, and that's sort of ridiculous, since I love reading so much it needs more than its own letter, more like its whole library of books, my whole life and wishing I could live longer still. When I think about immortality, I know it would be lonely and sad after awhile, but I also get a little swoony with joy at the thought of all the books I could read... and the fact that you make reading possible might indeed be my favorite thing about you, writing, to tie back to a thought from the beginning of this letter. Thank you, writing, for giving me reading.

Last night I started rereading Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, and ran across this description of a character who has deliberately forgotten how to read: "You try to picture how the world might appear, this world dense with writing that surrounds us on all sides, to someone who has learned not to read." I can hardly imagine, but it reminded me of a story in Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire, from the perspective of an illiterate character who encounters writing for the first time: it is magic, pure and simple and somewhat sinister. How can making marks put thoughts into the mind of anyone who looks at them? Sometimes those mark-thoughts even make a person do someone else's bidding! Sometimes I almost feel like I'm doing the bidding of those little marks by making more of them, whether on a computer screen or in a more physical medium. Writing for writing's sake, full circle back to the ideas at the beginning of this letter.

And that is as close as I think I'm going to get to a conclusion in this letter, writing. It's hard to force myself to stop rambling on here, but the thought of other things I want to write gives me strength. To paraphrase John Steinbeck, I must believe that what I am writing is the most important thing in the world. And I must hold true to this illusion even when I know it is not true (New York Times, 2 June 1969). Writing, whether the next marks I make are important or not, I look forward to sharing them with you.

Love,
-Tracy

Soccer

2011-11-19T09:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Soccer,

I miss you between World Cups. I mean, I know you're still around, like back in 2006 when I saw a bumper sticker with a little icon of the Earth as a soccer ball that said "One World, One Game" and it made me so happy I started drafting this letter. Still, I miss watching you obsessively every day, agonizing on the days when there aren't games, watching stupid soccer news shows on TV, dressing up in team colors, planning meals to celebrate the cuisines of whatever country was playing next, and in short being insane about a sports event as I can only be once every four years or there'd be no living with me.

It was a good World Cup, 2006, despite the fact that it ended with Zidane's Head of God and freaking penalty shootouts featuring Fabien "the spaz" Barthez. Hell, it was a good World Cup even though the Dutch team fared miserably. I mean, seriously. We decorated the whole house and yard with orange flags for that? I'd thought the U.S.-Italy game was some of the worst soccer I'd ever seen, but then there was Holland-Portugal. Daaaaaaang. Fortunately, Mexico-Argentina was absolutely gorgeous, as was France-Spain and the first half of France-Brazil, before the latter team went to pieces for reasons I'm sure I'll never understand.

But for me 2006 was worth watching if only for Zizou. "It's Zidane's last World Cup," I would tell people, and they'd either know what I was talking about or shrug and wander away. And yeah, the Head of God was a shocker, but I don't have anything to say about it that hasn't been said before, which is to say in a much more timely manner.

Speaking of not very timely, how about that 2010 World Cup, eh? The Dutch finally found a way to embarrass themselves more than they did in what Wikipedia now seriously refers to as the Battle of Nuremberg — admittedly, the Spanish played the ref like a fracking fiddle, but that's mostly just an excuse for me to be grumpy about the officiating, and the play itself left plenty more to grouse about. "Put Elia in!" I kept yelling, but did they listen? Nooooo. But I'm looking forward to seeing more of that kid — every time he's on the field, interesting things happen. And surely at some point the golden old guys will retire and make room for some of the kids I watched win the under-21 championships in 2007, right? I mean, I miss Eddie van der Sar something fierce, just like anybody, and it's a little shocking that my new favorite keeper is a Yank, but OMG TIM HOWARD IS SO AWESOME. And I haven't given up on Maarten Van Stekelenburg either, it's just he's got big boots to fill. All of which is to say that I'm looking forward to watching the new Dutch team grow, and hope I don't have to choose between them and the Yanks any time soon.

I'm running out of steam here, soccer. I wanted to write about how you're the only sport I enjoy watching more than I enjoyed playing, back when I played organized sports and dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Also I thought I might talk about my friend John who officiates soccer matches sometimes and is the only person I've ever seen cheer for the referee when watching a game... but I guess my brain is too fried for that right now, although maybe I'll get around to adding some actual well-formed thoughts to that effect here someday. For now, I'm just going to end by saying: You're great, soccer. Thanks for being super-fun.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 19 July 2006, when I was seriously rocking the soccer withdrawal something fierce, last updated 19 November 2011

Writer's Block

2011-11-13T20:52:00.001-05:00

Dear writer's block,

One of the best writing teachers I ever learned from says you don't exist, that when writers say they've got you what they really have are excessively high standards. Tonight I am lowering my standards enough to publish this ridiculous cop-out of a blog entry, because dangit, it's NaBloPoMo and I am not giving up on my goal of posting every day this November. So: neener neener neener neener pttttttbbbt or however it is best to spell giving a big fat silly raspberry. I have no doubt we'll meet again, and you'll likely get the better of me some day in the future, but right now my standards are low enough to write: today is not that day.

Love,
-Tracy

Weddings

2011-11-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

Dear weddings,

More than six years ago, I started writing you a letter that began, "I hate you, even when I like the people involved." Today, I am amending that to say that now that I'm married, I still think you suck. Now to be completely fair, what really sucks is the wedding-industrial complex, but I know of no good way to separate you out from that godawful mess, weddings, and so I get the howling fantods every time people insist on referring to the way I got married as a wedding because a big part of the whole point for me was that it wasn't. We went down to the New York City Clerk's Office for a $35 license one day, then returned for a $25 ceremony and certificate of marriage registration the next ("It's like buying a gun," said the man I now call Spouse-y McHusbandpants, "there's a waiting period.") Nobody had to spend any money on clothes or jewelry, although we did take our witness out to tea afterwards (nom, and thanks Greg!) My parents, whom I'll mention again later in this letter, were more than a little delighted and amused to hear that they'd already paid for a reception by leaving behind a bottle of champagne we didn't get around to drinking at a different celebration. Pop, boom, done! Yay.

So that was my so-called wedding, an unexpected side benefit of which was that I now look at the aforementioned industrial complex with relief and a little bit of indifference along with the same old pure white-hot loathing, because at least I am off the hook for that stuff, hoo fricken ray. (I mean, we'll get around to rings one of these days — personally I'm hoping to hold out till we can afford to forge our own, because seriously, when the hell else am I going to have an excuse to try amateur goldsmithing? — but I'm in no hurry, especially what with my student loan payments starting next year.) I haven't had a chance to test my post-marriage reactions to wedding invitations, but I'm hoping they'll be a little more "off the hook, woo!" and less fight-or-flighty-y... we'll see. I suspect I will still dread the big ritualized social occasion aspect of them even if and when there are no more laws against same-sex marriage to fill me with rage.

But back to you, weddings, and what I wrote to you more than six years ago, some of which eventually spun off into letters to your invitations and the laws that make it so you're legally just a symbolic gesture in most U.S. states (side note: yay for finally living in a state with equal marriage for the first time in my life, and especially for New York's making it so I only had to feel guilty about being unequal-married for about 40 hours). I'm pretty much still on board with most of what I had to say back then, like: I hate that people take you so personally that there's no good way I can say "I don't want to go to your wedding but I'd love to celebrate your partnership some other time in a non-wedding context," and that the aforementioned statement is all too often taken as a personal insult. I hate how you make people so stupid as to become simultaneously self-centered and excessively concerned with the opinions of others. I hate how people can't seem to get it into their heads that just about everything about you is optional — that for the legal part of marriage they can just go to city hall, for the social part they can do whatever they want from big hot ridiculousness to telling no one to anything in between (posting on Facebook! emails, or cards if you're fancy, inviting loved ones to celebrate whenever the opportunity arises! whatever!), and there's plenty of priesty types who'd be happy to assist with the religious part if they're so inclined, without making it into a big stupid production. Dammit. (The part about Facebook is a 2011 addition, I'll admit, but it's pretty much in the same spirit I had when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.)

More than anything, however, I still agree with this line from my original "Dear Weddings" letter:

I guess what I really don't like is listening to people whine about the terrible hardships of privilege.

Seriously, I wrote, if the law is gracious enough to allow you to get married, and your church thinks your relationship is hunky-dory, then bully for you. (Today I would also add congratulations if your family and friends wish you and your partner the best.) I guess I felt guilty about writing: "But if you're going to whine about the pomp and circumstance, then shut up and be glad that you can afford any of it, and think twice about whether that's really what you want to be spending time and money and mental energy on," because I followed it with the low-self-esteem-y line, "God, I am such a bitch." Maybe I'm just a bigger bitch now than ever, but I don't think I'm being too unreasonable here. Instead, I am searching for a polite and loving way to send some extra bonus "shut up" messages to everyone who is somehow offended that I didn't have a wedding, much less that they weren't invited, because seriously, if I had wanted to suffer through party planning to stand around awkwardly for hours while hitting people up for presents and asking for blessings, I could have had a non-legal commitment ceremony any time in the past ten years. I didn't, because — again — that was not the point.

Much closer to the point is that anecdote about my parents which I foreshadowed earlier. They used to jokingly promise that if I skipped having a big wedding and eloped instead, they'd help me put a down payment on a house. I took this message to heart so much that I got things out of order and bought (and later sold) a house with my partner while skipping out on elopement for years. All of which felt really good. So does having health insurance. But that's a privilege that should be a right for another letter.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 18 January 2005, last updated 27 October 2011

Global Climate Change

2011-11-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

Dear global climate change,

I believe in you. Really. Kind of a lot. You don't have to keep proving yourself over and over on my account, especially not with freaky disastrous weather, please.

Is Bangkok such a hotbed of climate deniers as to be in any way deserving of the wreckage you've inflicted there recently? It's a lovely city! Not unlike Monterosso, in northern Italy! When did anyone there ever do anything to offend you? Now my former classmate Christine has gone from writing a dreamy story about gastrotouristic entrepreneurship to documenting the damage from storms and mudslides mudslides and storms on her new home in the Cinque Terre. Harsh (and, yes, I am writing you in a public forum in part to circulate Christine's blog, which includes links to ways people can help out her flood-ravaged region, because thinking about it too long gets me all overwhelmed so I don't know what else to do).

I'll grant that it was nice of you to back down Hurricane Irene until she was just a tropical storm by the time she got to New York City on my birthday. For all everybody's whining we still got in a good round of practice on how to be super-prepared for future extreme weather events, so you were practically performing a civil service. On the other hand, did you have to go and shut down large chunks of Vermont? Was that really necessary?

On a more lighthearted note, I'll grant that it's unfortunate how so many people call you "global warming," when that's an oversimplification and "global weirding" is a much better term (more fun, too!) That's still hardly any reason to snow all over the northeast United States in October, when there's still leaves on trees all over the place, so the weight of "wintry mix" (worst precipitation ever!) breaks extra bonus branches which in bring down turn power lines and more. I mean, I hate this rhetorical device as much as anyone, but think of the children! You pull these shenanigans on the night before Halloween, for monkeys' sake? Just listen to this sob story from a 10-year-old in the suburbs:

When I found out Halloween was canceled, I was so bummed; it was the worst day ever... I went over to my grandparents’ house in New Milford because they were, like, the only people on the planet who had power. But we still didn’t get to go trick-or-treating. There were too many trees and wires all over the place. So I sat there on the couch and did nothing. I said, "I can’t believe it’s Halloween and I’m sitting on a couch!" This is an outrage!

Ok, I mostly couldn't resist quoting that, because it cracked me up, and I needed the laugh after all that other bad news. I hope that little girl believes in you now, but I promise, I know you're real. You kind of scare the crap out of me any time I think about you too hard, and I don't know what else to say except that I know you can't read this but I'm putting these ideas out in the world to share my hope that people will get better at organizing to be resilient to your effects and maybe even preventing future disasters. That's my hope.

Love,
-Tracy

Poverty

2011-11-05T13:34:00.000-04:00

Dear poverty,

So what's all this I hear about the United States Census Bureau coming up with a new way to define you? Yesterday's New York Times says the new measure erases "as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006" — because, you know, it's not like anything's happened in the past five years that might have increased the number of people struggling to get by! Ha, ha, only horrified.

I mean, I'm glad the new metric takes local cost of living into account, but what am I supposed to make of the idea that tax credits and benefits like unemployment and food assistance are counted as assets that (statistically) bump people out of poverty into what the Times calls "the hard-luck ranks of the near poor, who do not qualify for many benefit programs and lose income to taxes, child care and medical costs"? I'll get back to those benefit programs in a second, but first I've got to go on a little linguistic tear.

You see, that term, "near poor" reminds me of the scene in Why I Hate Saturn, wherein our down-on-her-luck heroine banters bitterly with a street person who asks,

...did you ever wonder who decided to call bums "homeless"? Why did that start? It seems that as "bums", we were individuals, but as "the homeless," we're an institution....

So the word "homeless" was created. It takes the stigma off. Instead of being viewed as lazy, I'm viewed as a victim of society. When society acknowledges you as one of its victims, rather than one of its members, it no longer has any responsibility to help you.

The creation of a nice euphemism (like "homeless" instead of "bum," "Native Americans" instead of "Indians," or "African Americans" instead of "blacks"), he notes, "always signifies a major fucking."

Speaking of major fuckings, eligibility for benefits like unemployment and food assistance is determined in part by income relative to the poverty line — so what does that mean under this new definition of poverty? People who qualify for enough benefits aren't poor anymore, thanks to those benefits, and since they're not poor, clearly they don't need benefits, except without them, they'd be poor again? What? How does that work?

I'm exaggerating a little for effect, here, poverty: as far as I know the new measure isn't being applied to benefits eligibility yet — because holy mother of circular logic nightmare, Batman! — but I am really not looking forward to what this new spin on the data will do to "See, there's not that many poor people after all, we can totally cut entitlements!" arguments. Ugh.

Anyway, I know I'm hardly even beginning to scratch the tip of the iceberg with this little rantlet, poverty. I mean, I've written this far and haven't even until just now mentioned the cognitive load of always being in crisis mode (I didn't mean for that to rhyme, it just did). If I got into time poverty or the social determinants of health, this letter would turn into a book for sure. All of which is to say that this is almost certainly not the last socioeconomic justice-related Open Letter I'll be writing. But for now, this is as good a place as any I've found to stop until I write again.

Love,
-Tracy

Death

2010-01-05T17:50:00.003-05:00

Dear Death,

You had better not suck, you hear me? Because my grandfather, my Opa, is inviting you to take him tomorrow — in a little over thirteen hours, to be exact — and you had better be a helluva lot better than the pain and suffering that's led him to this decision. Fuck Dylan Thomas, you be goddamn gentle. Because that's about all I can wish for him at this point. So that's what I'm asking you right now. I'm sure this is not the last time I'll write; I have plenty more to say. But right now none of that matters. Only my Opa does. So you treat him kind. Dammit.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 5 January 2011, title abridged 1 December 2011.

To Friends I Haven't Met Yet

2008-04-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends I Haven't Met Yet,

I just woke up from a long, complicated, Wizard of Oz-style "and you were there, and you were there, and you were there" kind of dream where I caught up with a lot of people, some of whom I hadn't thought of in a long time, and we talked, and some of us performed, or showed off art, or writing, or kids (who mostly showed off themselves), or other projects that have been not consuming us so much as transforming us and our recent and not so recent lives (and vice versa), to the point where maybe we haven't been in touch as much as we might like. Anyway. All of the people in this dream were very dear to me: the ones I've seen or communicated with recently or not, and the ones I know well and not so well, and the ones I've never seen or met or communicated with, let alone know at all. Those last, of course, are you. And I want to tell you, even though I have no way of writing to you, exactly what I want to tell everyone else I saw in that dream that I do have a real way of getting in touch with (and whom I will probably be emailing not long after I post this little missive).

So. Friends, it was good to see you. No matter how long it's been since we last saw each other, or spoke, or wrote, or exchanged stupid email or whatever little time sucks the Web just distracted us with, I've missed you. I hope this letter finds you well --- at least as well as you were in my dream last night, if not better (and we were all pretty great). I think you are both the best thing that has ever happened to me, and that our friendship is the best thing I do, and every time I edit this sentence it gets a little longer and clumsier when what I really mean is just: You're the best. Thank you.

There. That is what I wanted to say, or at least what will have to do until I can say it in email or on paper or the phone or in person. Everything else can wait.

Love,
-Tracy

Box

2007-04-20T21:56:00.001-04:00

Dear box of trash mysteriously left in our recycling bin,

I bet if you had physical feelings that a few minutes ago you would have been confused at all the tickling on your side. At least, I hope that leaving a note with marker would be ticklish and not painful, and either way please accept my apologies for the inconvenience, for all they're worth.

If you could read this letter, you might also appreciate this picture of you, with the note I left:

Tomorrow I will sort you and your contents into trash and recyclables and put them in their appropriate bins, but today I am leaving you out on the off chance that whoever put you in my recycling bin will see the note, and maybe even feel a twinge of remorse or something. Hey, I can dream. So thanks for that little dream, I guess.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 20 April 2011, title shortened 1 December 2011.

Compassion

2007-02-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

Dear compassion,

When did you infect my brain?

Um, I write that like it's a bad thing, but really it's not. I just don't have a better way to express my surprise at the weird-but-good ways in which you manifest in my life --- for instance, the event that inspired me to write this letter.

I was riding to work in the bike lane along a busy street, when a big, scary dog --- a Rottweiler maybe? something bred to kill --- lunged at me from the back of a parked truck, where it was tied up. I swerved, managed to stay out of traffic, was relieved to see that the dog couldn't reach me, and my next thought --- a split second after "holy fucking shit run away watch out for cars" and "it's okay, it's chained up, I'm safe" --- was "oh, that poor animal." Being tied up in the back of a truck next to a busy street with cars whipping by is not my idea of a good time. But that thought, that reflexive moment of empathy, completely overwhelmed my fight-or-flight response. I rode on in a daze, suddenly oblivious to the adrenaline coursing through my veins, marveling that I could go from "it's gonna kill me!" to "poor doggy" in far less time than it takes me to put those thoughts into words. That was when I started thinking about writing you.

Sometimes I feel like you and your friend, kindness, are in short supply in this world, compassion, and I know I'm often part of the problem. So it's okay if you've infected my heart, or my brain stem or whatever involuntary nerve cluster reacts even faster than my oh-so-verbal mind. For one thing, as stupid and clichéd as it may be to say, experiencing you makes me feel better about myself as a person, even if I'm frequently startled to find myself possessed by the better angels of my nature, so to speak. It's even oddly appropriate that I can't write you very articulately, since those possessions seem to be faster than the speed of words. Go ahead and grow inside me, compassion, not like a tumor but like an immunity to the ways in which I'm brought down by the world when the people in it suck. And please, feel free to replace that part of my brain that made me fill this letter with so many adverbs. Thank you for everything, especially good things to come.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 26 February 2007, title abridged 1 December 2011

Right Livelihood

2007-01-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

Dear right livelihood,

Why are you so hard to find?

At first it seemed like the problem was that work in general was hard to find. I still joke that the only thing worse than having a job is looking for one, but (to borrow a phrase from Dan Bern,) that's not funny, it's just true. Applying to jobs is depressing, both boring and stressful, and I take rejections personally, even when I know I shouldn't, even when I don't have to call and ask whether my application has even been received, let alone rejected. Searching for jobs to apply to is almost as bad, only in a more impersonal and desperate-feeling kind of way. I was unemployed for six months after moving to Eugene, and by the end of that time I went from sincerely looking for interesting work to applying to any place that seemed like it might take me, all the way back to applying only to jobs I was fairly sure I actually wanted, because I was so sick of hating myself for rejections from jobs that didn't even seem that good to begin with. Now that I'm back to being unemployed, it's once again really hard to motivate myself to look for jobs, let alone apply, but I'll get to that in a bit, after my flashback to those first six months.

One time I ended up relieved to be rejected after getting my hopes up that I might actually find work that was almost related to my field of study. A local company was accepting applications for a part-time research assistantship, but it turned out to be for a project on training bartenders to refuse to serve alcohol to pregnant women. Like bartenders don't have enough to do already, right? And like pregnant women are completely incapable of making decisions, like somehow it's not enough to lecture them on the potential dangers of every single thing they might do? Please. "Before I pour you a beer, would you please pee in this cup?" I don't think so. By the time I was done interviewing, I knew that job was not for me.

Which brings me to the next aspect of why you're so hard to find, right livelihood: you're hard to define. When I got my last job, at my favorite local natural foods store, it came with an employee handbook that read in places like a manifesto all about you: individuals nurturing community and each other and in turn being enriched by that experience and all that good hippie stuff. It got me really hopeful, but that hope faded after about a month, when I realized the manual didn't come with a section on how to deal with idiot customers who can't be bothered to look in front of their faces for the biodegradable compostable spoons made from corn which just happen to be conveniently placed at eye level. (I developed a theory, a bad one both because it's incorrect but also because it reflects poorly on me as a human being: people actually use the salad bar blindfolded. Either that, or I'm some kind of genius for being able to put tongs back in the container they came from, but let's face it, that's a pretty lame mutant superpower.) But whatever. After a month, when the novelty of a new job started wearing off, despite the fact that I liked all my new coworkers, I found myself wondering if I'd really moved up in the world of employment, because I still liked most of the coworkers at my old job, too. The free food was great, as was the employee discount and the knowledge that I was helping one of my favorite places in Eugene stay in business, but the work was boring and the customers? Beyond tedious and on to stressful way more often than I'd like, which, along with worrying about whether to quit my old job and when, was what got me started writing this letter in the first place.

Eventually I moved away from the front lines of customer service in the hippie deli, retreating to the kitchen, where depending on my shift I often didn't have to talk to anyone but my coworkers all day. It was great; two or three days a week, it was my job to cook whatever delicious organic vegetarian or vegan food I wanted with whatever ingredients were available, as long as it fit in well with our other dishes and could be sold at our standard prices for a reasonable profit. It was creative and self-directed and fun. I quit my other job and kept a few hours out front every week, and sometimes wished all my fellow kitchen crew did the same, as a way of not forgetting who it is we were working for out there (hint: not just our managers). But as you may have guessed by the fact that I'm writing this letter, it did not last. After about six months and a few hellish staff meetings, one of which (along with too much coffee) was good for several more paragraphs of this letter, the kitchen department was restructured, leaving me without a job I wanted, and I moved back to the front of the store, this time as head of the cheese department, four days a week. I lasted about six months before I tried to give up some of those days and instead ended up leaving awkwardly, despite all my best attempts to be graceful. It was a pretty miserable experience all around, one that summarized all of my reasons for quitting.

And so I'm back to worrying that you don't really exist, right livelihood, even though I once had a job I both liked and was good at. I know I need a job if I'm going to continue to support my reading and writing and house and cat habits, despite the part of my brain that thinks Allen Ginsberg had a real point when he asked, "Why can't I go to the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?" Having a job that forces me to get out of the house a few days a week is good on a general staying sane level, too. But I don't like the fact that even when I have a good job, my bad days at work spill over into the rest of my life, and even the good days often tire me out and leave me less fit to enjoy my house and cat and partner, let alone get any kind of writing done. And that's when I work part-time! The standard five-day, forty-hour work week is pretty much right out as far as I'm concerned. I guess you could say I'm less than motivated to look for jobs again.

What I need to keep reminding myself is that there's more to you than jobs and work, right livelihood. Which brings me back to the problem of your being so hard to define. My dreams about you are all incredibly vague, stuff like using my powers for good instead of evil, not that I really know those powers, but that's probably a topic for another letter, and all kinds of soul-searching about how maybe I'd already have superpowers but for my lack of trying, blah blah blah. You seem to be well-defined for some people, right livelihood, even if I'm 27 years old and should really know better about comparing my insides to other people's outsides. For instance, I read an article about people who work for the government agencies in charge of the horrible decisions involved in taking children away from their birth families (and of course, it's almost never the families with the privilege and resources to fight the system), and one of them grew up in a family with two or three birth siblings and maybe a dozen foster siblings, and was quoted in the interview about the importance of balancing those early life experiences with the work experiences that proved that foster care was not always that beneficial. It seemed logical, inevitable, and right for this person to be working in that field. Closer to home, I met a sign language interpreter at a work party. She was there to help one of the new kids in the kitchen, a deaf-mute, interact with his coworkers. She was amazing. Inspired, and embarrassed by all the Sign I'd forgotten, I asked her where she'd learned, only to find out that her brothers are deaf. Damn. I grew up bilingual, but Dutch isn't generally considered a disability, or maybe I'd have found a way to make speaking it my life's work. Or maybe I wouldn't have, because I'm just a slacker bitch kind of person. I don't know. Either way, it was kind of a downer to think about later on, and I'm going to move onto a new subject so I don't have to be brought down by it any more right now.

Back to definitions. When I talk about you in terms of using my powers for good instead of evil, what I mean is that I want everything I do, including what I do for money, to make the world more awesome. I also want to be good at what I do, but most importantly, it has to be something I like enough to want to do it, or it won't get done. So freelancing is a possibility, provided it's work I like and finding it isn't too painful. I know I'm the worst boss I'll ever have, both micromanaging and never there to help when I need me, but again, I can set my own hours and get stuff done fine if the goals and deadlines are well-defined. (Secret confession: I want to be a rogue scholar when I grow up. Mercenary nerd-for-hire, with a whole string of arguably-useless advanced degrees and a truly fearsome command of all kinds of possibly-relevant information. I'll charge a flat daily rate plus expenses, like a private investigator, only geekier. Ask me a question, let me loose in a library, and see what I come up with. Like the guys in Foucault's Pendulum, only preferably without the madness and conspiracy theories and death. Also I want to fight crime and the forces of evil. And while I'm dreaming, I want a pony. And a punk rock teahouse of my very own, to share with my friends.) Meanwhile, I have a job interview this afternoon, for work that may or may not be awesome but would be most welcome for relieving various and sundry financial pressures.

You see, right livelihood, I need the money to force my own hand. Last term I took a class at my friendly local university, and I'd like to continue this trend, in the hopes of creating a more grad-school-friendly transcript and GPA. Worst case scenario, it's another notch in my rogue scholar utility belt, but who knows? Maybe I'll discover some heretofore unknown to me avenue towards more actively making the world a better place. Maybe. I hope I'm not just lying to myself, right livelihood. It sure would be great if you could give me a sign that you're out there. And wish me luck on that interview.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 15 February 2005, published 2 January 2007, edited 6 January 2007, title abridged 1 December 2011.

People

2007-01-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

Dear people,

Whenever I start writing a letter to the world, it always turns out I'm writing to you. In the words of the late, great Bill Hicks, I'm a misanthropic humanist: I think you're great, in theory. I'd be a member of his People Who Hate People political party if that brilliantly self-defeating oxymoron of an idea could ever get off the ground. Still, even though some of you are stupid restaurant customers, guys with loud car speakers, or responsible for cars parked in the bike lane, others of you are my friends, who — like green beans, cats, and David Bowie — are so awesome as to convince me the world isn't all bad. So people, here's to you: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 2 January 2007, edited 6 January 2007, updated 28 October 2011, title abridged 1 December 2011.

Sundance

2006-11-15T17:47:00.000-05:00

Dear Sundance,

I stopped by the warehouse on Monday 13 November, only to hear from Ron that I'm no longer welcome to begin training for the stocker labor pool, due to concerns about my customer service abilities after my conduct during the apple, pear, wine, and cheese tasting of Sunday 5 November. What an unpleasant surprise. I'll be the first to admit that I spoke too soon and too loudly that Sunday, within earshot of customers as well as coworkers, and that my word choice was poor. That said, and speaking of unpleasant surprises, I would like to explain the heat of the moment in which I spoke.

I did not work a full week before the tasting, only the preceding Tuesday and Wednesday, and I believe that the fax orders I placed that Tuesday were lost in transmission, including one for Willamette Valley Cheese, one of the companies whose products we had planned to sample on Sunday. I left Oona a note to this effect on Wednesday evening, after having been unable to reach anyone at WVC by phone to determine whether or not the orders had been received. Oona had said she would call me that Friday to let me know if she had successfully hired a new cheese person (I wanted to train my replacement and do whatever I could to smooth the transitions in the department). She never called.

When I arrived at the cheese department the Sunday of the tasting, I found out that Oona had ordered from Willamette Valley Cheese to replace the lost Tuesday order, and that Liz had driven to Albany and back to pick up the new order. What we got, in addition to the WVC cheeses we already carried, were four brand new products, none of which were programmed into the scale or Expressions, and no invoice from which to determine their price. Furthermore, all the WVC cheese was in blocks too big to sell --- they would have to be cut and rewrapped. I called Oona about the unpleasant surprise, but she was busy with her daughters and there wasn't much she could do from home anyway. Liz and I were on our own. Now fortunately, the other two companies we had planned to feature at the tasting, Fraga Farms and Silver Falls, had sent us not only products but people, actual human beings to help with the tasting. We could have been fine sampling out their wares and the already-programmed WVC cheeses (many of which were still in stock and could have been sampled without an emergency order or Liz's heroic retrieval efforts). Unfortunately, Liz had already prepared all the cheeses for sampling, including the new ones which we literally could not yet sell, and which customers were thus unable to find as the tasting got into full swing.

Those were the circumstances when I said what I did that Sunday. Maybe I should have just gone home. Instead, I invented prices for the four new cheeses by guessing based on WVC's other products, programmed them into the scale and Expressions, cut, packaged, and stocked all the new products, all while trying to help with the tasting and perform a semblance of a normal cheese shift's responsibilities.

By the end of that day, I was ready to compose, choreograph, and perform a major song and dance of complaint to Renee. Some kindergarten-level notions of not being a tattle-tale helped me wait almost three days to cool down before visiting Oona in person last Wednesday. She was very brief with me, essentially saying that the tasting was a big success, so everything that happened on Sunday was worth it. I wish I could say I'm glad the ends justified the means, but I don't believe that's true, and I'm certainly not glad about it. Based on that exchange, which also included the fact that a new cheese person had been hired, I guessed that Oona wouldn't be calling on me for cheese labor pool any time soon. It didn't occur to me to guess that I'd been disqualified from the warehouse labor pool as well. That unpleasant surprise came on Monday, as previously mentioned.

The worst part about everything I've described here is that so much of it feels exactly like the kind of problems I was worried I would cause when I resigned the cheese buyer position, and which I wanted to prevent. I wanted to be the cheese department's labor pooler so we wouldn't always be stretched too thin staffwise; I wanted to take shifts so that Oona wouldn't have to cover all of mine on top of her other responsibilities, including interviewing my replacement, whom I wanted to train. Most of all, I wanted to leave Sundance on good terms. I'm sorry I failed to the exact same degree that I'm not sorry I tried.

I always want honesty, respect, and good communication. I did not want tears and a tattle-tale letter, but I feel better for having written. Thank you for reading.

I still love you all.

Love,
-Tracy

Written in the early morning hours of 15 November 2006, when I couldn't sleep, and delivered to my former place of employment at a more reasonable hour later that day. I know, I've been really good about only publishing unanswerable and in most case unaddressable letters here, but I'm making an exception for this one. Maybe someday I'll write a letter about breaking rules I made for myself, but meanwhile this letter will stand as a reminder that I can do it, even if I'd rather not. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Passive Aggressiveness

2006-11-14T19:52:00.000-05:00

Dear Passive Aggressiveness,

Bite me.

Oh wait, you won't, because then you wouldn't be passive anymore, now would you?

Love,
-Tracy

Started 14 November 2006, last updated 1 December 2006, oh so very to be continued. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Apple

2006-11-08T04:02:00.000-05:00

Dear Apple,

You're a dream, I know. But sometimes I still think it would be cool to get together with my friend Allison to start a punk rock teahouse, and we both agreed your name would be Apple, in honor of Eugene Mirman's "Punk" sketch, and there you go. On a scale from one to ten, how punk are we? You guessed it.

I daydream that you would be a huge old Victorian house, like the Pied Cow in Portland, with a yard that we could use for extra seating when the weather's nice. Live music could happen outside, too, and how extra-mega-super-awesome would it be if we could garden parts of the yard and make teahouse treats using fruits and veggies grown on the premises? Aw, yeah. The ground floor would be the teahouse, serving fair trade, preferably organic tea, and of course scones, and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and other treats. For people into occasionally eating things bigger than the palms of their hands, we could run meals Moosewood Daily Special-style: soup, sandwich, and salad. I would be in charge of the soup, which would almost always be vegan, because I'm so proud of the many vegan soups I made or invented during my time as prep cook at Sundance. Sandwiches would be a little trickier, but I think I could manage them, too. We'd have to hire somebody good at baking for the scones and similar treats, especially the sweets. Penny maybe, while I'm dreaming, since she's good at both the vegan baking and the punk stuff. Also she's up for just messing around with food till it works, and we could sell her less-successful experiments at half price, or at least make a display case of them as decoration because a sign that says "eat me at your own risk" is punk rock. (Hell, we should sell T-shirts with that slogan.) Also of course, Apple, you'd be an art gallery, if only for Penny's stuff and whatever else we feel like sticking to the walls. Damn, I really get into dreaming you.

Besides Penny's spectacular baked goods, we would of course do high tea with all the trimmings. Allison would be in charge of costuming, hats and gloves and safety pins and zippers and of course lots of black eyeliner (she pointed out that since I'm the hippie, Penny's the punk, and she's the goth, we have to keep an eye out for a kickass raver to join our crew... of course, we're all giant geeks). Back to the food, because I'm obsessed. I wonder if a cup of soup would balance on one of those three-tiered high tea serving contraptions. We'd have to hire kickass waitstaff, I guess. Not that I'd want anything else. I can't really fully express my high opinion of kickass waitstaff, nor do they ever believe me when I tell them they're awesome on a level that I will never achieve, so I mostly just tip really well. But I digress. Apple, only your ground floor would be the teahouse and restaurant (we'd have coffee, too, something locally roasted and organic and fair trade, like Eugene's Wandering Goat, only I don't think you'd be in Eugene) because Allison and Penny and I would live upstairs. Ideally we'd also have an attic, nice and roomy enough for someone to live in (or studio space?), and a basement for storage, although mostly deep storage --- it would sort of be a logistical nightmare if we had to put the kitchen or walk-in fridge down a flight of stairs. Eek.

Before I forget, back to the staff. Like I said, they'll be awesome. So awesome that I wouldn't ever need to talk to customers, except of course if we needed to bounce someone. That kind of customer service I'll perform with pleasure. At Apple, we'll explicitly reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Period. First of all, we could hardly be punk fucking rock without being able to tell people to go to hell (with spitting if necessary), and second of all, it's in our religion. Allison and I are the founders of the First Discordian Church of Don't Be A Jackass, after all, and it seems only fair that all of our enterprises, including the fantasy businesses, proceed in accordance with those principles. (Did I mention that our menus will be more like manifestoes? They'll change a lot, with waitstaff of course fully authorized to edit them with black marker whenever we run out of stuff or they get sick of describing the specials, and would include lots of room for people to draw and color and whatever. Crayons on the table for everyone, and paper tablecloths in case the menus aren't big enough. In my "unlimited funds" daydreams the tablecloths are fabric and we give everyone markers and paint pens, but I digress.) In keeping with our proud Discordian heritage, we'll serve hot dogs on Friday at Apple. (Yes, your name is very fitting here, too.) The special should be veggie dogs with bacon, for extra bonus points. Hail Eris!

What else? Well, Apple, you love cats. My Iggy Pop and Otis and Allison's Lilith and Penny's Samantha all live in and around you, in whatever way we can get away with and not get busted by the health department. (Penny's law degree could come in handy all over the place!) And because you are a dream, I hereby declare that any and all cats associated with you will live forever, which is all the more reason for you to magically come true already because Samantha is not doing very well, but she is a fantastic sweet lovable kitty and I love her and don't want to miss her in a permanent way and if I'm saying this having only met her the once, you can probably imagine how much I'm freaking out wanting to hug Penny every time I hear about how Sam is doing. Wah.

And while I'm complaining about reality, Apple, I should probably mention that it's the biggest obstacle standing between you and me. Stupid reality, what with the fact that restaurants run super-tight margins and all our fair trade and organic and local ideals aren't exactly the cheapest around (and do NOT get me started on how fucked it is that ethically raised animal products are so expensive). Our ideal clientele couldn't afford to patronize us, and even if we lucked out and punk rock "the customer is wrong, bitch" service was trendy for like a week, that'd mean we'd what, break even for like a day? Yeah, that's not so good. Stupid reality.

But enough ranting about reality. Apple, you're a beautiful dream, and I enjoy fantasizing about you to escape from stupid, stressful, boring old reality. Thank you for always being there, in my imagination, and for growing steadily more awesome with every re-imagining.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 23 October 2006; published 8 November 2006, way early in the morning, when I should have been sleeping, last updated 6 January 2007. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Management

2006-09-16T13:57:00.000-04:00

Dear management,

I saw a bumper sticker about you the other day that made me laugh. It said:

MANAGEMENT:
The folks who brought you the labor movement.

I'm sure you probably recognize this as a parody of the slogan: "The labor movement: the folks who brought you the weekend", but I like that saying so much I repeat it every chance I get, so there you go.

But here's the really funny thing, and the thought I'm not entirely sure that funny bumper sticker was meant to inspire: When I think about what was needed to bring about the labor movement, I think about organization, motivation, and a sense of fairness adding up to a collective pursuit of social justice. But organization, motivation, and fairness... these are all qualities I want in anybody I work with, not just the managers but maybe them especially.

Maybe that is what that bumper sticker is all about: the fact that it took awesome managerial skills to direct a movement that created major political change. Maybe it says, enough with the "us versus them" rhetoric. Or maybe it's a little more ambiguously corporate newspeak than that, something like: "Bad management makes you want justice; good management helps you create it." Heh.

Either way, thought-provoking stuff, in that ha-ha, only serious way I seem to have about me all the time lately. It's been four months since I started my new gig (like a new job, only at the same employer) and people are still referring to me as a manager, although I keep explaining that really, I'm not: I just do lots of paperwork, I can't hire or fire or even schedule anybody. And I try to do my job the same way I've always tried to work: responsibly, with intent, good organization, and fairness. And I guess to be completely fair and honest, I should admit that I saw that bumper sticker over six months ago, before my job was anything that could be described with the word "manager", before my sort-of promotion, which more than anything else was just an escape from a department in turmoil brought on by — you guessed it — new management.

I don't know what else to say. I'd like for this letter to end with some kind of clever remark, maybe a quotation from whatever philosopher or philosophers famous for discussing the difference between "should" and "is". But (since I'm writing this letter mostly for myself, and you're an abstract concept, and thus unlikely to complain), as manager, employee, and customer of my little writing project, I'm willing to let well enough alone for this particular chapter. If nothing else, there's nothing to stop me from coming back and fixing the ending later.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 8 March 2006; rediscovered, rewritten, and published 16 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Internet

2006-09-09T00:51:00.000-04:00

Dear Internet,

(or internet, if you agree with what Wired has to say about you; I'm guessing the jury's still out)

You are awesome. I mean that both in the late-20th and early-21st century meaning of "super-cool" as well as in the more old-fashioned "fear-inspiring" kind of way. That said, thank you for helping me keep in touch with friends scattered far and wide, old and new, close and just-this-side-of-acquaintance. I suck at talking on the phone, and it's hard for me to finish paper letters, let alone mail them, and even my emails have a habit of going unfinished for as long as years before getting sent, but thanks to this new-fangled "blogging" that's all the rage, I can (metaphorically) talk to myself in public, or a semi-filtered facsimile thereof, and be (again metaphorically) heard if people are bored enough to (metaphorically) listen in. Also I can read what other people have to say to themselves albeit in this same self-conscious "somebody might look at this" kind of way, and I like to think that as a result we all grow closer as a group, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Bill Hicks ("it's cathartic, it's a spiritual thing"). But I digress, or do I? I like the fact that you make it difficult to determine what, exactly, is a digression. Sure, it's distracting as hell sometimes, but so is life, so whatever.

I seem to be waxing philosophical, to the point of boring myself and wandering off to look at other websites than the one that hosts this and other unanswerable letters of mine, so I'll finish this letter and get to the real point. Internet (if I start sentences with you I need never worry about the capitalization issue because unlike so many of the punk kids using you on MySpace and beyond, I still give a semblance of a crap about grammar), thanks to you and Title 9, I need never shop for bras in normal stores again. For that service alone, I will honor you forever.

Love,
-Tracy

Started and published on 8 September 2006; last updated 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Feminism

2006-07-22T19:41:00.000-04:00

Dear feminism,

I have a lot to say to you, but the idea that got me to writing this particular letter, its point, is a pet peeve of mine: the incredibly stupid way in which people talk about you as if you're just one thing. For those parts of you with a bit of a background in linguistics or grammar-wonkery, I'll put it this way: feminism is a mass noun. There is no singular feminism, just like there's no singular weather. Just like there's lots of kinds of weather, changing day by day, place by place, just like there are lots of schools of thought but not so much just one thought, there are lots of different flavors of feminism. Duh.

You know this and I know this. And I wish to hell I had a clue-bat big enough and powerful enough to beat this idea into all the heads that need to learn it. Especially the idiots who talk about postfeminism without meaning it as an abbreviation of postmodern feminism, the latter phrase being shorthand for a cloud of ideas I actually often kind of dig (ooh, this weather analogy is useful!) Post-feminism. Hah. Post what feminism? Usually it's about the aftermath of the so-called second wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, wherein relatively privileged mostly upper and middle class white women decided they wanted the same privileges as upper and middle class white men instead of staying home as mom-bots. Never mind that the job of mom-bot was a relatively recent invention, historically speaking, and one that wasn't really a readily available option for minority women like the ones whose families couldn't afford to have a full-time mom-bot staying home, many of whom also happened to be not white. But I digress. I think if the second wave refers to that particular sociopolitical storm (and look at me again cleverly tying things back to that awesome weather analogy!) then suffragettes and suchforth were the first wave, but from when and where I'm sitting in the third wave or whatever, I have to say this numbering system is pretty stupid since I'm pretty sure as long as men and women have been different, people have generally been making more of a big deal about those differences than is really entirely necessary, and some people (some of them even the same people making the aforementioned big deal) have been complaining about it (in case it wasn't obvious, I'm personally of the "really not such a big deal" school of thought, but not all of the complainers, not even all the ones who describe themselves with the word "feminist" in some way, agree with me). All of which is to say, albeit run-on-sentence-style, that postfeminism, even just in the sense of whatever comes after feminism, has been around since, oh, maybe about a second after the first feminist thought was expressed. Again, duh.

I have a lot more to say to you and about you, feminism, but that idea, and in particular the clever mass noun phrasing/framing thereof, and also the weather metaphor I'm digging on so deeply, was suddenly so loud and clear in my brain that I had to write it down before I could forget it. But hey, we're always in touch, even if I don't always have time to write, so I hope we're cool. As always, sweet sisterhood to the fantabulous bell hooks.

Love,
-Tracy

Started and published 22 July 2006; last updated 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Green Beans

2006-07-21T19:53:00.000-04:00

Dear green beans,

I love you. According to my mom, I always have — when I was a little kid, our garden never seemed to produce you, but I always seemed to make happy little crunching noises when I came back from picking you only to report that I hadn't found anything. Now that I have a garden of my very own, I can't seem to plant enough of you to bring in more than a handful at a time, but I still make those happy little crunching noises, so it's all good.

When I do manage to bring you inside, sometimes I cook you like my mom did, and my grandmother (although I usually make you a little crunchy for Oma's taste) — simple boiling or steaming. I'm also a big fan of garlicky green beans, sautéed in olive oil or butter, and often a splash of balsamic vinegar as well, which is what led me to the preparation I can't seem to stop snacking on tonight.

To start, we got 1 1/2 pounds of you in our CSA box this week --- oh darn. After much snacking, I think we had a pound left when I got around to cooking this afternoon, and because I was feeling lazy I skipped the boiling/steaming step in favor of a mix of sautéing and steaming, like so:

After I got the beans and garlic cleaned, I heated a few tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat in a pan big enough to hold all the beans. I added the garlic and cooked that until it foamed and the smell reminded me why garlic, like David Bowie and purring cats, is proof that the universe can't be all bad. Next I added a splash of water and the green beans, lowering the heat as soon as I saw the water boiling. I let everything cook for a total of maybe four minutes, stirring occasionally and testing the beans frequently for doneness (by eating them, of course; quality control is Job One!) At the end of this arduous task, the beans were bright green, and I added a splash (a few tablespoons) of balsamic vinegar which dulled their color somewhat but the delicious gained more than justified the sacrifice in appearance. I let everything cook for another minute, so the beans could absorb a bit of the vinegar, then lifted them out of the pan into a bowl, only to discover that quite a bit of watery, garlicky vinegar was left in the pan. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste, so I did a trick that makes mediocre balsamic taste much better, and left it cooking on the stove while I pondered how to turn it into a sauce, which I eventually did by adding maybe two tablespoons of honey and a little more water and letting the whole mess boil and thicken into a stickily delicious glaze. The glaze was done after another minute or two, after which I returned the beans to the pan, where a quick toss coated them nicely (and got the pan pretty clean, too, although I still hurried it over to the sink to soak after I finished putting the beans back in their servingbowl).

I call this latest incarnation of you Garlicky Green Beans in Balsamic-Honey Glaze, and I'm thinking of eating it with a garnish of toasted nuts, perhaps on a bed of salad greens, maybe even as part of a salade Niçoise if I'm feeling fancy later. I'm also thinking it might be time for me to plant more of you in my garden, because making happy little crunching noises while I pull weeds and tie up tomatoes ranks right up there with David Bowie.

Thanks for everything, green beans. You're great.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 21 July 2006; last edited 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Alcohol

2006-05-22T23:29:00.000-04:00

Dear alcohol,

I think I love you. Not just because you come in many forms which are delicious, but that doesn't hurt. No, I love you because I have learned to coexist delightfully with your effects as a drug, by which I mean your mood-amplifying qualities. I wish I could call them mood-enhancing qualities, but the phrase "mood-enhancing" has come to describe substances whose effects are generally positive, which in your case isn't necessarily true. You see, I've managed to figure out that you take whatever mood I'm in and make it more so. Which means I don't get to use you when I'm in a crappy mood, or even when I'm in a so-so mood, but you're fine when I'm happy, or even (like today) when I'm tired but otherwise okay, because you make me even better. And that's just groovy, baby.

I like that being aware of your effects makes me feel like a super-genius, because I can avoid being a total asshole simply by avoiding you when I'm in a lousy mood. Now if only I could spread my genius to the entire world and furthermore instill everybody with the wisdom needed to prevent themselves from using you as an excuse to be the assholes they secretly are all the time... but I digress. I like how you lower my inhibitions, although to be fair I was already in a silly talkative saying whatever's on my mind kind of mood today, so perhaps your effects were even more entertaining than usual. Or maybe I'm only funny to me. Whatever.

I also like how you make me feel good about riding my bike everywhere. Tonight, for instance, I would not have been safe to drive a motor vehicle home after a long shift at work and delicious grilled tempeh sandwich and a quart of beer over the course of dinner at the pub (and note how it sounds much scarier to say "a quart of beer" isntead of "two pints" --- what's up with that? I digress. Again.) However, because I was riding my bike, I felt fine. Who was I going to hurt, really? No one, that's who, except maybe myself, and the latter probably not so severely as to adversely affect the lives of the people I love, which is of course the point at which self-injury becomes unacceptable, and yet again I digress. Back to my recent bike ride --- as an added bonus, you made it feel like I was going really, really fast at a piddling 13 miles an hour according to my nifty bike computer/odometer toy. That was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

I thought I had more to say to you, alcohol, but I seem to have forgotten them in my glee at riding home safely tonight. That's cool. I'm going to sit around drinking lots of water to stop you from giving me a hangover, and perhaps meditate on how incredibly easy you are to consume in the form of Anderson Valley's summer solstice ale. It's like cream soda with a beer aftertaste, I tell you what — but I'm sure you already knew.

Much love,
-Tracy

Published 22 May 2006, title abridged Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Hail

2006-05-21T21:47:00.000-04:00

Dear hail,

Please for to not have just completely destroyed my garden, okay? As always, you came and went quickly, but I'm not used to hailstones being much bigger than peas, and many of these were as big as grapes, so it was actually a little scary for a few minutes there. Also, I definitely wasn't into the part of the storm where it would have hurt to go outside and so I had to just stand and look helplessly out the window while my poor little sunflowers got bent in half. Finally, you were loud enough to make at least one of the cats go hide under the bed, so I hope you're happy with yourself. Me, I'll only be happy with you if my plants recover. Dang. Maybe I should build those cold frames after all.

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Mad Cow Disease

2006-05-13T23:30:00.000-04:00

Dear mad cow disease,

I love you. Not just for your name, although it is fabulous, and not just for the beautiful poetic irony of your very existence. Seriously, thank you for pointing out the almost mind-numbingly obvious fact that maybe forced cannibalism is a bad thing, especially for herbivores, and even more so when those herbivores are livestock that's intended to be slaughtered for eating... seriously. It's pretty much impossible to write to you without snickering a little.

Speaking of snickering, I love you despite the fact that people's fear of you leads me into stupid conversations like the one I had at work today with a woman who won't buy our macaroni and cheese because it's made with cheddar that comes from England, home of the original cases of mad cow disease in humans if you don't count all the cannibals who've gotten it throughout history. I mean, good lord. You're awesome and all, mad cow, but the prions thought to cause you are still found mostly in brain and nerve tissue and only very occasionally in muscles and so the odds of them turning up in milk are pretty miniscule, right? I'm going to do more research just to make sure I'm not being some kind of crazy Pollyanna optimist, but really. Like I told the well-meaning lady at the hippie grocery store today, if prions are getting into milk, we have bigger problems than you, mad cow disease. (And it's not like you're only happening in England, but it's probably a good thing I didn't remember to mention that this afternoon, because there was enough to worry about in that conversation as it was.) Anyway. I can understand prions getting into ground beef, because slaughterhouses are basically sweatshops and mistakes are hard to prevent even under humane working conditions, but I don't want to imagine what the hell kind of dairy could slaughter a cow while milking it, and in such a splattery way as to get brains in the milk. There's a whole new book of kosher rules to be written about that problem, I tell you what.

But back to my love for you, which is also not just because prions are awesome in the good old-fashioned fear- and awe-inspiring kind of way. I mean, proteins gone wild! That's terrifying and beautiful and pretty much completely beyond my comprehension to the point where I give up and revert to making sand castles --- oh wait, that's the ocean, but it's similarly huge and amazing and I mean the analogy as a sincere compliment to you both. I love you for a combination of these reasons and more, mad cow disease, like how I could have you and not even know it, so I'd better hurry up and write these and all my other letters because my brain could sprout holes and turn even spongier than usual any day now if you've been incubating in there for years. Sometimes I worry that humanity is going to destroy itself by something as crass and boring as war or pollution, and then something like you happens, and I realize that the universe could just as easily help us along to our demise by using our own incredible stupidity against us. And that's a grim thing to laugh at, sure, but I don't know how else to respond. So thanks for being one of my very favorite dark jokes, mad cow disease.

Love,
-Tracy

started 8 March 2006, published 13 May 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Dear Uterus

2006-05-11T16:12:00.000-04:00

My dear uterus,

Thank you for more or less making peace with the new foreign object inside you. I know you've been wondering about it, or at least I've felt you cramping, and I choose to interpret the resultant discomfort as bewilderment and confusion on your part, which is about as good as our communication ever gets. You seem calmer now, and that's great. Please don't go back into uncomfortable spasms just to spite me for writing that; I've left this letter unfinished for over a month because I didn't want to jinx anything by getting too optimistic. Maybe I should have gotten up the courage to write sooner, but I was worried, and also I didn't want to interrupt what seemed like some pretty productive discussions with our mutual friend ibuprofen. Now that it's been a few weeks and a menstrual period since we got what I've been calling our radical new piercing, and as of yesterday the awesome nurse lady at Planned Parenthood says everything looks and feels perfect, I'm finally feeling confident of everything I have to say in this letter.

I'll start with the basics: helpful information. The copper and plastic contraption you feel is called a Paraguard IUD, and it's supposed to keep us from getting pregnant, even if nobody's exactly sure how. I know, that's a little freaky, but so are all the side effects we've experienced with hormonal birth control, and I'd rather talk to you and ibuprofen about cramping than to my head and even more ibuprofen about migraines. Also I'd prefer to make my own mood swings instead of going crazy from drugs for awhile, and as an extra bonus, the Paraguard could be good for as long as ten years, which is pretty freaking sweet. If you hate it too much, I guess we could switch to an IUD with hormones in it, but really if I'm going to go back to messing with my biochemistry I think I'd prefer to use drugs that I can quit myself, without the help of a nice nurse lady.

Speaking of which, wasn't it great to see the nice nurse lady again yesterday? Remember how much it hurt when she gave us the Paraguard piercing last month? Since I sort of doubt you were listening to her at the time, much less understanding, I'll just tell you that she said that cramping then was a bit like a labor contraction, and joked that if I'd thought I didn't want to have a baby before, that pain probably made me more certain. She was ever so right, and I hope that you're coming to agree with me. Meanwhile, I'm still here to help however I can. I don't have a heating pad, but I can always fill my belly with nice warm tea, and sometimes I can persuade one of the cats to sit on my belly and purr. I'm sorry if it was wrong of me to go on a big bike ride when you were still in the first throes of shock, but maybe you'd been freaking out all along and the ibuprofen wore off at an inconvenient time? I owe exercise a thank-you note at the very least, but I could probably turn it into a whole letter without too much trouble. But I digress.

Back to you, uterus. Are we cool? I don't want to jump to conclusions or take you for granted or anything that might send us back into a world of not severe but persistent and annoying pain. Like I said before, I'm here to help. But meanwhile, in a spirit of cautious optimism, I hope you don't mind if I thank you once again for being awesome, as always, in this exciting time.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 5 April 2006, published and last updated 11 May 2006.

Ibuprofen

2006-04-05T15:48:00.000-04:00

Dear ibuprofen,

Please address yourself to the discomfort in my lower abdomen as soon as possible. It's been an hour since I took you at noon, and I know I should've gotten around to that earlier, since I've been awake since 9 AM and my last dose was at 8:30 last night, but I did get some pretty glorious sleep in between those times and I'm sort of a macho idiot about pain, especially the kind that's more annoying than incapacitating, which is what I've got going on right now. Still, we've got about two hours before I have to go to work, at which point I'd really like for my uterus to be less of a distraction, but until then I can take it easy and sit around folding laundry and drinking tea and watching trash TV on DVD while you kick in — hint, hint. Also I can walk to work instead of riding my bike if a little exercise is what you and my body need in order to get along. Just start working already, wouldya?

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Fertility Treatments

2006-03-22T17:47:00.000-05:00

Dear fertility treatments,

Quite frankly, you give me the heebie-jeebies. Not just because my experiences with hormonal birth control suggest that modern medical science might be even more mystified by my reproductive system than I am, but that's a good place to start. I could go on for longer than even I care to read about how said medical science reflects a culture that's ambivalent at best about women exercising control over their own bodies, but I'll try not to go there too much. After all, you're part of a whole cloud of technologies that for better or worse are changing pretty much everything about reproduction for people who can afford the state of the art, and now that the metaphorical genie's out of the bottle I've got to learn to accept the good as well as the bad, just like everybody else.

Speaking of that cloud of technologies, it occurs to me that you're in many ways the flip side of contraception, of which I am a big fan, and it's an interesting thought, maybe even a useful one. What would it do to discussions of birth control if they addressed the kinds dedicated to causing births as well as preventing them? Intellectually, I'm forced to recognize that true reproductive freedom should include both, even if my emotions aren't quite on board with the idea. Maybe my knee-jerk negative reaction to you isn't all that different from the feelings driving the so-called "pro-life" activists who want to ban contraception as well as abortion, even when it seems painfully obvious to me that the former prevents the latter more effectively than laws or protests or any of a number of things that make me so angry I don't know if I could even write a letter about it. Then again, it's not my goal to impose my beliefs on others — I write letters to abstract concepts instead of people who might answer, and that mostly because it helps me to express and understand my own feelings and opinions, which are so obviously and sarcastically always right. But I digress. I wish I had something clever to say about how I hate that modern medical science inflicts you — and your mirror twin contraception, for that matter — almost exclusively on women. Sadly, I don't see a way around that problem until some badass invents the artificial womb, and I don't have the money to sponsor that research or otherwise help make that kind of thing a higher priority everywhere. Dangit. Also, I really didn't mean for this letter to turn into such a rant about patriarchy in medicine, but it was hard for me to avoid the subject. Sorry about that.

Where was I? Right, getting the "patriarchy in medicine" rant done and over with as quickly as possible, so I could move on to other stuff. Really, even so-called natural reproduction is fraught with dangers and weirdness, so I shouldn't be surprised that the artificial kind is problematic, too. A big reason you're so upsetting to me, of course, is that I can't shake the feeling that there's already enough people in the world, maybe even too many, and it feels like a terrible waste to devote the aforementioned state of the art to making more people instead of learning to get along with everybody who's here already. As always, I'm trying to speak only for myself here, just like I was with all that scary radical feminist stuff in the last paragraph. That said, I can't get behind the idea that my genes are so special that they need passing on, even if a nagging voice in my head screams, "I could shit a better baby!" at the sight of some little darlings I meet. No, I'm not particularly eager to add to the teeming mass of humanity that so often looks to me like the source of all the problems in the world (by which of course I mean my world, because I'm completely self-centered like that). Speaking of those world problems, don't get me started on how you're only available to a small and incredibly privileged segment of the world's population, fertility treatments, and how if everybody consumed resources at their incredibly privileged rate, we wouldn't have a world left or we'd all have starved to death already or something equally dire and irrelevant because in reality we don't all live the same way and there's still a long way to go before we can even say that everybody lives well. See? Don't get me started, or I go off into run-on sentences and useless apocaphilia.

I think it's a good thing that we don't all live the same way, and it's an especially good thing that not everybody thinks like me, or I probably wouldn't have made it to the point of writing all this, for lack of ancestors both close and distant. Furthermore, whether I like it or not, some of the people who think differently than I do are women so determined to have children of their very genetic own that they'll submit to you, fertility treatments, even if just the idea of that is alien and horrifying to me for all the reasons I've described in this letter. Sigh. No matter what else I say on the subject, at least I can hope that you and the aforementioned insane-to-me determination produce people who feel loved and wanted, even if I'm still more concerned about the unloved and unwanted people currently inhabiting the world than with anyone who might potentially come to share it with them someday.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, fertility treatments. If I ever decide I want to be a parent, it won't be with your help. In fact, given my ambivalence about my own genes, and aforementioned concern for the people who are already here, I might enlist the help of an adoption agency. While using what I've got might be cheaper, if that doesn't work out for any reason I'd rather pay the cost of adopting than the price of technologies I don't trust --- especially who knows what risks with my body. Besides, as far as I can tell, kids, like all people, are complicated and expensive no matter what.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 25 January 2006, published 22 March 2006, last updated 24 March 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Biscuits

2006-02-13T00:44:00.000-05:00

Dear biscuits,

Turns out I've been wrong about your savory form for some time. Too much Bisquick and its ilk will do that to a person, I suppose, and you're the kind of starchy bland food I'm prone to being snobbish about anyway. But enough excuses: I don't mind being wrong when I'm disproved by tasty treats, oh no, and tonight my housemate made you according to the Flaky Biscuits recipe in the January/February issue of Cooks Illustrated, and well, wow. I guess if you're at all into self-knowledge you were already aware that you're completely wonderful in that form, with a bit (okay, a lot) of extra rolling to give you an almost croissant-like texture. We ate you for dinner smothered in the leftover mushroom-leek gravy from a meal I'd made earlier, and it was fantastic.

Given the less-than-kind things I've had to say about your mediocre savory forms, I feel I should make it clear that this incredibly flaky and delicious version of you was easily good enough to eat on its own instead of just as a vehicle for rich, creamy sauce, and this is high praise, because (if I do say so myself) that gravy is almost good enough to eat as a soup, except for how it's maybe just a bit too thick. All of which is to say I have once again seen the error of my overgeneralizing ways and sincerely apologize for all the times I talked trash about the savory sorts of you for so many years, biscuits. I know this kind of revelation shouldn't be news to me anymore, but like I said before, it's the kind of thing I don't mind being wrong about, even to the point of publically renouncing my past mistakes. Hence this letter, in which I'm happy to admit that as with just about every food I've ever claimed to dislike, you have ways of being awesome.

Now your sweet forms, those I owe no apologies, except maybe for whatever part I've played in the dialect confusion between U.S. and British English as to whether or not those are cookies. Tea biscuits are a thing of beauty and a joy forever and I promise I'll continue to enjoy them with delicious tea wherever I live, regardless of whether it's a country that's biscuit-literate.

Finally, biscuits, it occurs to me that the recipe my housemate followed tonight could be probably adapted to create sweet scones, the thought of which fills me with a joy so great it's a bit difficult to express. Suffice it to say such an invention could be the best of all possible worlds, biscuit-wise, and delicious with tea and clotted cream and jam on top of all that wonderfulness.

Here's to many happy future teatime experiments!

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Flowers

2006-01-27T14:08:00.000-05:00

Dear flowers,

While I prefer you outside, as part of living plants, even the chant of "look what's dying in a vase in your living room!" from the most sarcastic parts of my brain isn't enough to stop me feeling like you brighten things up a bit even indoors. And while those morbid thoughts are more than enough to stop me ever buying you (also I'm a cheapskate) I've still been known to scavenge through the dumpster by my work when the florist next door gets rid of the less-than-perfect specimens of you at the end of the day, and this week it's paid off with four or five very happy days of thinking, "Yes, they may be dead but they're still nicer here than in a dumpster and unlike the flower place I'll compost them afterwards."

So thanks for being pretty even as you slowly die in my living room, flowers, and though I can't promise I won't cut any of you from my garden this year, I think I can keep it down to a reasonable minimum. Just a few of you are often enough to make me smile.

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Pasta

2006-01-21T23:34:00.000-05:00

Dear pasta,

I love you. My housemate Allison doesn't, which is why I haven't been eating you several times a week as was my usual practice for years. But tonight I was home alone, and that meant I could make whatever dinner my greedy little heart desired, and that turned out to be you, oh yes.

I love many things about you, pasta, but one of my favorites is how I can usually whip up a sauce or sauté of some sort to accompany you in the time it takes to boil water and cook you in it, which is to say quickly. Since I'm the kind of person who gets a little freaky when her blood sugar is low, this particular attribute of yours can be a lifesaver, to put it mildly. Tonight I was a little stupid with hunger, which meant I prepared you with an even more haphazard approach than usual, but the results were spectacular nonetheless.

I love how hunger makes everything taste extra-good, but I think the way I cooked and ate you for dinner tonight would be delicious even under less urgent circumstances. I started by putting a small pot of salted water on the stove, enough to cook what I thought was a smallish handful of spaghetti (more about that in a bit). While waiting for the water to come to a boil, I found a frying pan and used it to heat a few tablespoons of olive oil, into which I sliced slightly more than a handful of cremini mushrooms. Next I added a small onion (diced) and several cloves of garlic (crushed). I also had a green bell pepper and some pesto, discovered in the fridge when I first started foraging for dinner, but I decided against these after I had the idea of using sundried tomatoes.

I love the fact that cooking is one of the few things I'm intuitively good at. My original vision for dinner was pasta with mushrooms and onions and peppers and pesto, probably with some feta and maybe asiago cheese as well, but when I lit on the idea of sundried tomatoes, I threw out most of my original plan without looking back and tossed a big handful of sundried tomatoes into the pasta water, which was now almost at a boil. (The sundried tomatoes I get are cut finely enough that I probably could have gotten away with adding them right to the other sautéing vegetables, but I figured softening them up in hot water couldn't hurt, since they do get a little chewy and dry sitting in their jar on the shelf. If they'd been the oil-packed kind I probably would have just cut them into the sauté, but whole sundrieds definitely require cutting up and usually softening with boiling water as well. Then again, I prefer the taste of sundried tomatoes to their texture, and tonight I was cooking explicitly for my own idiosyncratic tastes.)

I love making impulsive decisions that turn out to be awesome. As the sundried tomatoes softened in the boiling water, they gave it a nice little reddish tinge, and when I fished them out with a slotted spoon and transferred them to the sauté, the water they brought with them turned quickly to steam that helped everything cook (a cheap trick but a good one). Since the water was boiling, I added the spaghetti, and then gave the sauté a generous sprinkling of oregano, thyme, salt, and a fresh grind of black pepper. I also added a little more olive oil, since the mushrooms and sundried tomatoes had absorbed most of the original few tablespoons. Then while the pasta was still cooking I diced up a regular-sized Roma tomato and added it to the sauté. Finally, I crumbled in a few tablespoons of feta cheese (less than a quarter-cup) and used all my self control to keep from stirring the mix one last time, because it was fast threatening to turn into mush. Fortunately, the pasta cooked quickly, so I didn't have to be self-controlled for long.

I love how, if you're undercooked, pasta, and then added to a pan with hot sauce, you finish cooking there and absorb the sauce and get extra-flavorful. Tonight's spaghetti already had a headstart on tastiness because it had been cooked in the sundried tomato water, some of which I added to the sauté along with the noodles when I combined the two (another cheap trick; I just didn't drain the pasta completely). Wham, steam, melting cheese, deliciousness, and a very good dinner was had by me. I'd gotten out some asiago cheese, but I ended up just putting it back in the fridge since the melted feta was more than salty and creamy enough for me (though not unpleasantly so, oh no). Of course, it turned out that I'd made too much food, but I might just be a greedy pig and have a dinner and a half tonight.

I love you, pasta. Thank you for being awesome.

Love,
-Tracy

Published 21 January 2006, last updated 22 January 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

2005

2006-01-20T03:30:00.000-05:00

Dear 2005,

I wasn't sure about writing you, what with having already done a year in review letter for your predecessor (and also I could whine on for pages better used in other letters about writer's block and how the dead of winter is generally a slow time for me to put it mildly but I will limit myself to this one parenthetical comment here). Then Merriam-Webster Online released their top ten most-searched words of the year:

integrity, refugee, contempt, filibuster, insipid, tsunami, pandemic, conclave, levee, and inept.

I mean, damn. Even given the fact that the south Asian tsunami disaster was actually in 2004, and you didn't produce anywhere near that kind of nasty last-minute surprises, it was impressive enough to rock me for a day. (The taking weeks to finish writing about it, I did that part all on my own, along with plenty of whining about having no motivation to write.) Don't get me wrong --- it's not that the word lists for previous years haven't been sadly telling as well, in a "check out the state of U.S. news and especially politics" kind of way. But even discounting "tsunami" from your list, you've still got Hurricane Katrina and the abandonment of New Orleans, avian flu, a scary new Pope, and in general entirely too much political obnoxiousness of the sort that makes me say "no more stupid please, I am full." Now if only I could say something to undo the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor from the U.S. Supreme Court, maybe the 2006 word list wouldn't reflect quite so much of that last... but no, we've already had plenty during the Alito confirmation hearings. Dangit.

But of course, life keeps going on in any case, and I'm personally still glad I saw you through, 2005. I traded the best job I'd ever had for an even better one, successfully converted large chunks of my front yard from lawn to garden, and generally lived really well, to judge by the various scribblings on the calendar and Slingshot planner I used during you. I'm oddly fascinated by the contrast between those scribblings and my memories, but if I come up with anything more interesting or coherent to say about this phenomenon it'll probably be fodder for at least another letter. Speaking of writing, I'm quite pleased with many of the open letters I've finished over the course of a year, and a little intimidated by the number of letters I started but have yet to finish. All of which is to say that it's about time I finished addressing you, 2005, and got on with a new year of living and writing.

Thanks for everything, and goodbye.

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Started 29 December 2005, published 20 January 2006.

Astrology

2005-11-18T19:43:00.000-05:00

Dear astrology,

I don't believe in you in any meaningful sense of the word, but sometimes I wish I did. For instance, it sure would be soothing to explain away all my hyper-introspective troubles of the past August in terms of Mercury retrograde in Leo. It's appropriate that I started writing you this letter --- a letter I was fairly sure could never reach you anyway --- during said retrograde period, what with Mercury being a messenger god and his planetary namesake the astrological ruler of all things communication. Even more appropriate is the fact that I couldn't finish this letter during that retrograde period or the weeks afterwards when communications were supposedly back to normal. No, I had to wait until Mercury went retrograde again, because that's the kind of person I am. Okay, maybe that's just silly, but it amuses me.

The troubles that got me to start this letter began on July 23, a day marked "GOD HELP US ALL" in big black letters on at least one of the calendars at my hippie job, where I can actually get away with saying "I blame Mercury retrograde" and have people laugh not just at me being an astrology freak, but also with me, because they feel my pain and whatnot (it's actually store policy to avoid making major decisions during Mercury retrogrades, I kid you not). Extra bonus: word has it that since I'm a Virgo, I'm ruled by Mercury, so it was amazing I could get anything done at all during this period, which reportedly peaked out on August 16 and was completed (with Mercury's movement relative to the Earth looking normal again) on the 30th. Normal at least until the next cataclysmic cosmic convergence, which is just another way of saying "things may be bad, but the only way out is through, and if you just keep going you'll get there" --- which isn't too bad as far as advice goes; I'll buy that at least, and I don't have to subscribe to any of your stars and planets song and dance to appreciate that message.

Still, it would be nice if I could believe in you just enough to justify stuff I can't explain, at least to myself. The problem is --- and I'm pretty sure it's not just you, but divination in general --- I'm a little too aware that your only meaning comes from how I read you selectively to describe my particular situation, and eventually I have to recognize that fact. Like earlier, when I learned about Mercury retrograde and it so conveniently explained so many of my problems of the mid-July and August, especially when I factored in Leo contributing extra bonus weird crazy ego issues... only then I got too far into the ego thing and found a Web toy and computed my birth chart, which I read as being full of things I didn't want to hear about myself. Not only was that not as fun as blaming all my troubles on a distant planet, it got me thinking that I probably wasn't reading my stars and planets optimistically enough, which in turn reminded me that I could read them however I wanted to, and wasn't it a good thing that I don't really take any of this stuff seriously anyway?

Yup, you're kind of a load of hooey, or at least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself, except when you're useful. It's nothing personal, I'd just rather not turn into one of those people who can't shut up about the stars. And on that note, I'd better quit rambling and finish this letter.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 16 August 2005, at the peak of one Mercury retrograde period, published 18 November 2005, five days into the next, last updated/proofread 16 December 2005. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Cars Parked in the Bike Lane

2005-11-18T03:22:00.000-05:00

Dear cars parked in the bike lane,

Because of you, I used to wish for stickers that said, "I park in bike lanes! It's illegal, dangerous, and rude!" On good days, I'd imagine such stickers made with some kind of easily removable glue, and I'd promise myself that I'd only put them on glass. On bad days, I'd wish they were made with marine epoxy, for extra permanence and property damage. Sometimes I'd leave angry little notes on your windshields, when I had the time to stop, and little bits of paper to write on. But recently, I've had a change of heart.

Clearly, if you're parked in the bike lane, it must mean that your driver is involved in some kind of emergency. (In fact, some of your drivers are wise in the ways of using your emergency lights at these times, and I'm thankful for that, if not the fact that I still have to swerve precariously out into traffic to pass an illegally placed vehicle.) Still, from now on, whenever I encounter someone in a car parked in the bike lane, I'm going to stop and solicitously offer my assistance. I know a little first aid, and I'd be more than happy to call for help, even if it means ringing doorbells in a residential neighborhood until I find somebody who's willing to lend me a phone. I've almost been hit by police cars while trying to avoid bike lane parking jobs like you, so I'm pretty sure our local cops don't care about this problem, but we can always hope for a better response to an emergency call, right? There's really only one way to find out!

I will miss the petty satisfaction of kicking your car doors from the street as I pass, risking life and limb because your drivers were too inconsiderate to find a safe and legal place to stop. Those drivers always gave me the best shocked looks, like deer in headlights, only more offended. But no more. Now they will give me shocked looks when I try to be helpful. And I guess I still want those stickers.

Love,
-Tracy

started 7 November 2004, first posted 20 January 2005, updated 11 March 2009, after reading this lovely comic here. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Coffee

2005-09-10T16:27:00.000-04:00

Dear coffee,

I love you, but I love sleep more.

Really, I'm sorry we haven't been seeing more of each other recently, but for the past few months it seems like whenever I drink you, I regret it about twelve hours later, when I'm tossing and turning in bed.

My current theory as to why this happens is that my life's gotten a lot more low-stress since I got a new job and quit my old one. You were necessary at my old job, and fortunately free in espresso drink form, at least in limited quantities... eventually someone posted a sign on the coffee machine reminding employees to limit themselves to four shots per day, and I don't know what's funnier: the thought that management thought we were all too tweaked out, or the possibility that our coffee consumption was actually costing the restaurant too much money. And then there's the possibility that both were true... wow. Any which way, I needed you at that job, which kept me so strung out that I hardly noticed the effects of caffeine. Now that I'm not cooking there anymore, I'm much more mellow, and my theory is I've finally relaxed enough to respond to stimulants, because boy howdy, I do like never before. Unfortunately, my new job has introduced me to new and exciting varieties of you, coffee, through former coworkers who know and love you professionally, bless their organic and fair-trade bean-roasting hearts, which they followed to their own coffee business, more power to them. Believe me, I want to keep buying their products, but I can't bring myself to try decaf, dammit.

So I've been trying only to drink you early in the day --- at first my rule was before 4 PM, but that became 2 PM, and eventually noon --- but my tendency to stay up too late and sleep in even later makes it hard to stick to this plan, and caffeine-induced insomnia doesn't help, either. Still, don't give up on me, coffee. I haven't given up on you, and I haven't stopped loving you. I had to work way too hard to acquire a taste for you to lose it now. But if there's a way I can reliably enjoy you without having to develop a drinking habit to counter your effects, write back soon, okay?

Love,
-Tracy

Started 23 June 2005, updated 3 November 2006, title abridged 1 December 2011.

Newborn Babies

2005-08-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

Dear newborn babies,

For what it's worth, welcome to the world. I want to apologize, over and over again, for the state it's in. I know it's not all my fault; for one thing, the way things are now is the product of everything that has come before, less than 26 years of which had me in it, but still. There's so much wrongness that most of the time I can't even think of anything to do to make anything better. I'm just one person, and there are so many people, and speaking as just one single solitary mess of a human being I get overwhelmed by my own stupid petty little problems, let alone those of the entire human race. Some days that makes me angry, some days it makes me sad, and some days it makes me wish I'd never been born. But life isn't something you can choose for yourself, little ones, which is perhaps its greatest irony. The good news is that despite the fact that life is in many ways one long cruel joke, there's a lot to enjoy. Let's start with you.

I hope you're healthy, that you were born with the standard number of eyes and ears and arms and legs and fingers and toes for a person of any size. I also hope you're relatively free of genes that'll make you prone to illness, both physical and mental. But whatever state it's in, that body you've got is a marvel. People have been trying to understand it and things like it since as long as there were people, maybe longer, and there's plenty that's still a mystery. But one of the good things about being a person is there's all this history and exploring and understanding for you to build and grow on if you want to learn it. And that's getting on to the next great gift you've been given, which is your mind. You can think about anything with it, even if you can't always understand everything. Maybe someday you'll think that's pretty awesome. I sure hope so.

Now I want to take a paragraph to write about your family, by whom I mean the people you'll live with at least until you're old enough to wonder why you live with them, but probably longer. It's likely to include the people your immediate family lived with until they were old enough to wonder, too, even if they're unlikely to define their families in quite the same silly cynical and all-inclusive way I do. Anyway. What I'm going to write now is something I wish someone had told me sooner instead of leaving me to figure it out: your family are the people who will see you at your worst, and you will see them at their worst. If you're like me, and I know I am, there will be times when you will hate your family for being such a bunch of freaks, but the fact is no one's normal and everybody's pretty good at hiding it most of the time but not all of the time and comparing your insides to other people's outsides is a surefire way to make yourself feel bad about not just your insides and their outsides but the whole world in general. What's more, since your family are the people you can't hide from all the time, you'll get to know their insides a bit, and comparing what you see there to other people's outsides isn't going to be a picnic, either. Dang. None of that sounds very reassuring at all now that I've written it, but it's still important, at least to me, as a way of keeping things in perspective, and I really don't mean it in an all bad way. What else can I say about family? Well, like life, you didn't choose them, but you're mostly stuck with them, too. And at times you will love them even if they are such a bunch of freaks that it's hard to imagine that just about any other group of people would be at least as freaky if they were stuck together all the time, and I hope the times you love each other for no reason outnumber the bad times by far.

But while I'm talking about the other people in the world, I shouldn't stop with your family. Neither should you. At some point some well-meaning older person may try warning you to never talk to strangers, but like all rules, that's really just a guideline. It should be more like, "Be careful when you talk to anybody, not just strangers, but don't be too careful, because living in fear is no fun." If you never talked to strangers, you might never make any friends, and believe me, friends are way up there on the list of things that are just plain awesome about being human. Maybe more than anything else I could wish for you, I hope you'll make and cherish many good friends, and I hope they become just as close and dear and in their own way impossible to you as those family freaks I was telling you about a bit earlier.

What else? I could've sworn I had more to say than this, but then again I started this letter months ago and I didn't keep very good notes on all the topics I wanted to cover. That said, I wish you luck in training your memory and learning in general and of course figuring out ways to sort through your thoughts and decide what's important to you. There's no pause button on life, unfortunately, or I'd spend a lot of time between moments, thinking, hiding, and generally missing all the good stuff. Go ahead and live all your moments, because there's no way of knowing whether or not the life you've got is the only one you're getting, and you might as well make it a good one even if it turns out I'm wrong about reincarnation. All our lifetimes are full of countless chances to live right, and all we can do is make the most of those chances as best we can.

I know this is a silly letter to write. By the time you're able to read this, you won't be newborn anymore. Even if someone were to read it to you right now, before you got too old to be considered newborn, there's no telling how much you'd understand and absorb, much less remember. But I think about you, little ones, and it fills me with a mix of envy, and relief, and hope, and despair, and love. I guess that's life. Again, for what it's worth, welcome to it.

And happy birthday.

Love,
-Tracy

P.S. I tried to write this letter in the most general terms possible, but I would be a big liar if I said the idea of writing it arose full-formed in my brain, unprovoked by events in my world. That said, "Dear Newborn" is dedicated to Stony Raine Lohr III and her parents, Stony and Janelle, on her birthday, 5 February 2005, even if it took me a really long time to write. Hey rugrat: good job on those teeth! I was sort of arbitrarily waiting till you'd been around 6 months, but I appreciate the reminder that it's well past time I declared this letter done and sent it out.

Started 10 February 2005, text updated 14 October 2005, title abridged 1 December 2011.

Plants

2005-07-28T19:27:00.000-04:00

Dear plants,

You're really weird. I mean that in a good way, though, and on all kinds of levels. For one thing, many of you are delicious — or maybe I'm overestimating and it's just some of you; I'm not sure. I should probably find out what percentage of plants are edible in some way, just to satisfy my geekish curiosity, but I digress. Many of you are also quite beautiful, and as I learn more about you I'm developing a greater appreciation for your different kinds of beauty, which in turn makes the world a cooler place to be just because I can look at you and smile just about everywhere I go. You're weird in big and loud as well as small and quiet ways, all of which add up to something strange and wonderful. Plants, you reaffirm my belief that if there's any life in the universe beyond the planet Earth, it's quite possible we silly human animals won't be able to recognize it even if we found it. I mean, you're so different from life as I understand it in my silly human animal ways. It boggles my mind how I can cut big pieces off you to eat, or just because they're in my way, and you still live! Sometimes you even grow back stronger and healthier than before! Wow!

True, I wasn't always this enthusiastic about you. I'm still not much into biology on a microscopic anatomical level, what with all the chemistry that goes on there — yuck. But since buying a house and trying to tend all the plants on the property and starting a garden in which to grow vegetables to eat, I'm starting to think that maybe botanists aren't all that on crack, after all. Now granted, I'm deeply fascinated by my bean and tomato and spaghetti squash plants and so on because if all goes well they give me food (or they already have, hurray!) but I can see how even non-food plants might hold similar fascinations, for sentimental or aesthetic reasons perhaps, or just geekery. Roses are pretty intriguing, I gotta say — most of the bewilderment I expressed earlier at plants that respond well to even my ruthless and possibly incompetent pruning is based on my experiences with the rose bushes in my front yard. Their rhododendron colleagues are even more of a mystery to me, but I don't have as much of a use for them, though that might just be because they confuse and bewilder me, I'm honestly not sure.

Plants! You are so amazing! Before I forget, I should express my gratitude to you for producing the oxygen I breathe as a byproduct of photosynthesis, which is about as miraculous as anything else I can think of, and about as full of scary chemistry too, all at once. I had to study that mysterious process and the one we both share, respiration, in high school, but fortunately I've forgotten most of it since then so it's okay except how maybe it stopped me from learning more about you for a while, during which time I missed out on so much joy and wonder.

The good news of course is that I'm back to the joy and wonder of learning (albeit in a more first-hand and less textbook manner) and planting, and watching in awe as you grow, plants. Symbiosis rocks, even if I'm really misusing that term and trying to stretch it into a metaphor for talking about how all life is interconnected, even life that's completely foreign to my understanding of how anything works. You rock, too, plants, and I'm not just saying that because I eat so very many of you. Um, I hope you're okay with that last, although since I'm pretty sure you can't see this, let alone read it, I'm not sure how I could ever hear back from you either way. Sorry about that. And finally, while you sometimes seem alien enough to have come from other planets, and I think it would be pretty cool if you had, I'm mostly just happy knowing that the Earth is full of things that are just as freaky as I am, no matter where any of us came from.

Love,
-Tracy

started in the early AM hours of 27 July 2005, published 28 July 2005, updated 4 February 2006 with a link to this Dinosaur Comic, because I could not resist. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

FreeCycle

2005-07-18T14:26:00.000-04:00

Dear FreeCycle,

Please stop sending me offers of kittens, especially ones with pictures. I want them all, and my Iggy Pop probably does too, but I hope I'm still several decades away from turning into a crazy cat lady, so yeah. In the meantime, if you could just remind everybody to spay and neuter their pets, that would be great. Thanks!

Love,
-Tracy

published on Epistolography on 22 September 2005, title abridged 1 December 2011.

Rain

2005-06-06T17:27:00.000-04:00

Dear Rain,

Don't get me wrong. I know you're good for my garden, especially the carrots I thinned out and the brand shiny new green zebra and yellow brandywine tomatoes I planted today. I'm down with not having to water my plants with the garden hose, although I'm still going to mulch them lovingly with grass clippings in an effort to retain water (and as an added bonus, keep down weeds). But couldn't you wait with starting till I'm at work instead of making it hard for me to get there on my bike? I would've liked to keep pruning my roses and make a run to the library, too... but I'll settle for the fact that you seem to be slowing down a bit. Hold that thought! Thank you!

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Laws Against Same-Sex Marriage

2005-05-05T00:13:00.000-04:00

Dear laws against same-sex marriage,

I used to dream that I would get married someday. That's not too surprising; I grew up in a society with lots of ideas, images, and assumptions about marriage, the kind that get repeated rhetorically by the politicians who claim we need laws like you to protect the foundation of a stable society. Big deal. But regardless of what I absorbed or learned, or whether our society is stable or not, I didn't have a stereotypical little girl's dreams about my wedding day, ceremonies, spectacle, big fancy dresses that would never be good for any other occasion, or even about cake. I'd learned from my parents pretty early on that the ceremonial parts of marriage are a big hoopla mostly for the benefit of the friends and family of the couple getting married, and that people who sign papers at City Hall with a minimum number of witnesses are just as married as the folks who shell out big bucks for a celebration with all the trimmings. My parents got married because otherwise my mother wouldn't have had very many rights in the United States when she came here with my father, and because it made my grandmother happy — though I don't doubt that Oma had been quick to point out the pragmatic benefits of having their relationship legally recognized. My mother never had a white wedding dress, but instead a brown one she wore to many other occasions, and when she was unhappy with the hairstyle inflicted on her by a salon staff over-eager to cater to a bride, she washed it out. That's the kind of woman my mother is, and although we have our differences about plenty of other things, I admire her for this story. I have relatives who lived together in longterm committed relationships that lasted years before legal marriage. One pair of family friends married when he was drafted to go to Vietnam, so that she could collect widow's benefits if the worst came to pass; years later they divorced and continued living together when that arrangement proved more financially beneficial. My family didn't go to church, so the question of whether a marriage was civil or religious wasn't really an issue. So my view of marriage was never religious or romantic, but more practical. And my dreams of marriage were less about ceremonies and flowers, and more about sharing my life with someone and living happily ever after, more or less like my parents did (just don't tell them I said that).

My dreams began to turn sour in 1996, when former U.S. President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act — and when I started to realize that I could be attracted to females as well as males. It was an eye-opening experience, realizing that the law would recognize and support my relationship only if I loved a member of the opposite sex. (And if you'll tolerate one more brief flashback to my childhood, I'd like to point out that the first time I can remember talking to anyone about homosexuality, it was defined in terms of marriage: "gay" was when a man wanted to marry another man, or a woman wanted to marry another woman. Chew on that awhile.) Anyway, I was angered and disgusted by DoMA, and like I said before, whatever sweet marriage dreams I might have had gradually turned sour, and finally bitter, in the following years, as more and more states passed discriminatory laws to limit the definition of marriage to "one man, one woman". These laws prompted me to learn more about the other ways marriage discriminates (why can't bureaucrats create paperwork that separates us into "married" and "unmarried", instead of assuming that the opposite of "married" is "single"?) and better understand my dissatisfaction with the legal and social institution of marriage (again, the religious aspects weren't really relevant to me). In 2000, when the state of Vermont created its same-sex civil unions, the state of California, where I was living at the time, passed its own law — Proposition 22 — so it could refuse to recognize even marriage-like legal relationships created in other states. Today the United States government spends millions to promote marriage as an alternative to welfare, as if somehow it's better for children to suffer poverty as long as their parents are wearing wedding rings — I could go on and on, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In 2004, almost the present day, the United States Senate debated a proposed Constitutional amendment that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples. (I won't say "once and for all", because Prohibition was struck down, but that took a Constitutional amendment, too, and years of misery in between.) Needless to say, the proposed amendment would have been an added layer of redundancy on top of all the unfair laws passed over the years since DoMA, but I wasn't as angry or disgusted as I was in 1996 or 2000. Instead, I was disappointed and sad, even after the amendment failed to pass. Later that year, the state of Oregon, where I live, responded to the city of Portland's decision to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples by passing its own "one man, one woman" referendum, Measure 36. Five months later, I still can't bring myself to take down our sign protesting its injustice.

In 1996, marriage was just a hypothetical possibility for my future. In 2004, after six years with the same partner, it broke my heart to know that although we, as an opposite-sex couple, could have our relationship legally recognized, we could have at best a pale imitation of such protections and support if we were a same-sex couple. I still hope that someday things will change, that laws will be rewritten to treat all couples equally, but for now all I have is hope. Same-sex marriage is still only legal in one state in the U.S., and it still isn't enough for its opponents to know that same-sex couples are largely excluded from the rights and privileges extended to married people, even by the highest law of the land. Even civil unions, domestic partnerships, and reciprocal beneficiary status are controversial, and as if to highlight their separate but hardly equal status, laws providing such limited legal alternatives to marriage routinely exclude opposite-sex couples like me and my partner. I don't dream of getting married anymore, and it's largely because of laws like you.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 23 February 2005, posted 4 May 2005, updated 20 October 2005. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Guys With Loud Car Speakers

2005-04-06T15:20:00.000-04:00

Dear Guys With Loud Car Speaker Systems Who Insist On Showing Them Off All The Time, Especially In A Way That Involves Too Much Bass And Not Enough Music,

I'd say I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but actually I'm kind of gleeful about the fact that no amount of noise pollution is ever going to make your dicks any bigger.

Love,
-Tracy

Okay, so this is kind of a cheap shot, written and published in a fit of pettiness and poor taste on 6 April 2005. Title abridged 1 December 2011.

Dear Procrastination

2005-03-31T03:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Procrastination,

Because of you, it's too late for me to write Robert Creeley fan mail, even though I've been a great admirer of his poetry for almost ten years. Serves me right, I know, but still. I dislike you most when I'm regretting opportunities I missed simply because I put them off for too long.

On the other hand, you're not always a bad thing. Maybe sometimes I wish I'd taken a little more time to do stuff, because postponing my responsibilities to the last possible second can get pretty hectic and stressful, but oftentimes I stress myself out just as much over a longer period of time if I try to get a head start on, say, making an important decision (or even an unimportant one). And since, in the case of decision-making, I tend to delay as long as I possibly can before I more or less impulsively choose the option that secretly appealed to me all along, waiting awhile and avoiding the problem can be a good way of saving myself the long, drawn-out stress of agonizing over all the possibilities, right? Right.

For instance, the deadline to register for spring term continuing education classes at the University of Oregon was March 7, and I didn't start looking at the course schedule until three days before that. With two days left to go, I made a list of 17 interesting-looking courses, of which at least 9 had prerequisites that I haven't taken yet. Now, if I had started looking sooner, I might have had time to contact some of the instructors for these courses for permission to take courses without the prerequisites, but as it is I narrowed down my decision quite a bit already.

Furthermore, because I waited so long to even peruse the course schedule and catalog, 10 of the 17 interesting-looking courses on my list were full before I even started! And not all of those 10 were the classes I can't take due to prerequisites! Score! That narrowed my decision down to one of four classes. and left me with slightly under 48 hours to pick a class and jump through the hoops required to take it, or forget about the whole plan until I can register for fall term classes, like ANTH (Anthropology) 365: Food and Culture (so awesome!) Either way, I didn't agonize over it endlessly! Go me!

Furthermore, thanks to you, procrastination, I tricked myself into taking a crash course in the University of Oregon's course offerings, and it looks like my current academic interests more or less all revolve around cultural studies in some way. That's broad enough to satisfy my um, shall we say, diverse academic interests (really, I want an advanced degree in "What's that over there?") but it's enough of a unifying theme that I could probably weasel my way into a semi-structured course of study about it, somehow. Maybe. But I can put off thinking about that for a little longer, right? That's what I thought.

But finally, because of the awesomeness of procrastination, I ended up obtaining a U. of Oregon ID number and not using it because a better opportunity came up. I'd been working two jobs for some time, and taking a class was going to be my excuse for quitting one. However, while I was postponing the decision of what class to take, I got word of an opening at my second job that fit the description of "I'd quit my first job for this" that I gave when I interviewed. Long story short, I now get to spend two afternoons a week making delicious vegetarian food, including vast quantities of basically whatever I want as long as it's not too expensive --- and it's all possible because I waited so long about signing up for class.

Sometimes, procrastination, you're the best. But I still wish I'd written Creeley before he died.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 5 March 2005, when "maybe I'll take a class!" was sort of a super-secret plan for me, published/last updated 31 March 2005 after my second day of training for the new job of awesomeness.

Dear DMCA

2005-03-06T02:14:00.000-05:00

Dear Digital Millenium Copyright Act,

I knew you were a bad law from hanging around with geeks who care deeply about intellectual property and freedom, but it wasn't until recently that I found out exactly how bad you really are.

You see, it turns out you're the reason I can't listen to live internet broadcasts of Vin Scelsa's freeform radio show Idiot's Delight, because Vin's prone to stuff like playing the entire B side of an album when it suits him, which is just too... oh, I give in, it's too free for some people, never mind that it's exactly that freedom that makes it good art, and if you don't think deejaying can be art then clearly you've never listened to Vin on a good night, which is why I want to be able to hear him here on the West Coast though the signals don't carry that far and for a brief shining moment I thought maybe the marvels of technology might be able to help me out. But no. Vin's show is too free-form and too free for the likes of laws like you, and so he can't be broadcast online.

You suck.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 18 January 2005, published 5 March 2005, last updated 25 May 2005, a few happy weeks after I had been advised as to the whereabouts of online archives of Vin's shows (yay!)

Dear Head Cold

2005-03-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

Dear head cold,

Please go away now. Please. It's been less than a day and already I'm sick of my whiny cranky crappy "I don't wanna be sick!" mood. Yeah, sure, the actual physical symptoms are annoying too, but my reaction to them is far worse. Bleaugh. Please go away now.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear Migraines

2005-02-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

Dear Migraines,

I'm sorry I tried to ignore one of you for too long this past weekend. Really, really sorry. At first I thought it was just caffeine withdrawal, but then I'll admit I was stupid and thought I could be strong and keep hanging out with all the friends I hadn't seen in far too long despite the dizziness and pulsing pain, and then I tried to take ibuprofen but by that point it was far too late. So then I finally found myself a quiet, dark place to lie down and sleep, but unfortunately just as that seemed to be working out I woke up and my whole body gave me the "Aw, hell no."

As I told some friends the next day, after I'd more or less recovered, I didn't know I was a migraine puker. As voyages of self-discovery go, that one more or less completely sucked. I can joke about it now that it's been a few days, but I'm also still wondering if maybe I should see a doctor, even if as far as I can tell medical science is almost as baffled by you as I am, only in ways that involve more thinking and less excruciating pain. Dang.

But back to you. Again, I'm really sorry about last Saturday. I'll try not to be so neglectful in the future. But uh, if you could try to happen at less inconvenient times, that would be okay too. Really.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear Hunter S. Thompson

2005-02-22T02:52:00.000-05:00

Dear Hunter S. Thompson,

I lack your eloquence with insults, or I'd be calling your dead self some pretty ugly names right about now, or would have this morning when I first read the news of your apparent suicide. As much as I'd like to believe that you faked your own death to laugh at us all like we so richly deserve, I'm more inclined to think that the bad joke that is life finally caught up with you in the form of some awful incurable debilitating disease and you decided not to give our stupid sick sad world the satisfaction of watching you die slowly, in which case good on yer, if only because I can't stand the thought that you lost the spite and malice that rocket-fueled your larger than life adventures (and this is the part where I tell myself that I just cynically and intentionally wrote all those clichés on the off chance that you're in hiding and this makes it onto the list of obituaries you laugh at, really, it's not that I want you to send me letter-bombs with no return address perhaps from beyond the grave and it certainly isn't because I resort to triteness in response to sentimentality on my own part). I don't know whether to be inspired or scared by the thought of finding hope in hate, but there you have it. And now I'm worried that the next time I read a Transmetropolitan comic, I'll cry. Hell, even a good Doonesbury Duke strip might do it. Dammit.

It's too late to say this, and it's not like we knew each other anyway, but goodbye.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear Wedding Invitations

2005-02-16T19:29:00.000-05:00

Dear Wedding Invitations,

You stress me out so hard. I mean, it's bad enough when you're an invitation to a wedding that I clearly don't want to go to, because it's hyper-formal, tons of nested envelopes requesting the pleasure of a reply, return address is someone's parents and not the couple (I don't care if it's proper etiquette, it's archaic and downright creepy to pretend like the people getting married aren't consenting adults capable of announcing their own commitment celebration, and if the party's so huge they need their parents to help foot the bill, that's another sign that I don't want to play). Some of you have obvious scary church stuff warning me to stay away; I don't need to go to any more weddings where the bride promises to obey her husband and be his appendage instead of her own person, and God blesses it six ways from Tuesday. Invitations like those are bad in their own way, but at least they're fairly easy to deal with, because I can just be snarky about them and be happy I don't have to go.

On bad days, I think all wedding invitations should say something like:

In case you don't get enough daily reminders of heterosexual privilege, here's a big huge party to celebrate just that! If you're extra-lucky, it'll be super-formal AND in a church, for all the bonus alienation points! And maybe if you're a girl you'll be invited to buy a big ugly dress that's no good for any other occasion, just so you can be part of the scenery!

Come, pretend like this archaic ceremony and adjustment of legal status also changes something about this couple's relationship to each other, even if they've clearly already made these promises and commitments in private! They're having a party so you can witness their vows, but do they celebrate the fact that you're participating or do they pretend that it's just between them and maybe their God? The only way to find out is to come to the party, grin and bear it, and suffer through heterosexual supremacy hell!

I suppose, wedding invitations, you could say that on bad days, I don't much like you at all.

But then some of you are the occasional good wedding invitations, coming from dear close friends whose love I truly want to celebrate, invitations that aren't hyper-formal or churchy or addressed from anyone's parents and maybe even straight-out answer the questions I'm not allowed to ask, like "Why are you getting married when you already love each other and live together and everyone who knows and loves you is happy about it? Is there a legal need? Couldn't you just have a party and a preacher person if that's your thing? Do you really have to deal with the law? Couldn't you at least put it off until the law's a little less sad and messed up?" Good wedding invitations are the ones that really hurt. Because despite all of my discomfort and disgruntlement with weddings, which in turn make me twitchy because they all too often reflect the most glaring and horrific flaws in the institution of marriage, at the end of the day I still have the best friends in the world and if anyone can change both marriage and weddings for the better, it's them. I don't have the strength or the stubbornness to subscribe to a system I hate and change it from within, but I can wish my friends the very best in doing just that, just like I wish them the very best in everything else they do. And so the good wedding invitations break my heart even more than the bad ones make me sick to my stomach, because I want to raise my glass in salute to all the happy couples that I love, but I wish it were easier to do so in a way that makes it clear I'm drinking to them and only them, and not to any church or state that blesses their couplehood while refusing to recognize other committed relationships.

And so my stomach churns and my blood pressure rises every time I read one of you, wedding invitations. I've only just started to recognize these feelings as the fight or flight response, and the more I care about the people involved, the worse it is. And sometimes it's just alienation at the reminder that I'm completely from-another-planet out of touch with what feels like most people's opinions about weddings and marriage, but sometimes it's an all-out battle between the parts of me that rejoice and thrive at seeing friends and especially friends who love each other awesomely, versus the parts of me that die inside when I bite my tongue through the part of the ceremony that asks if it's right for the couple to wed, the part that makes me want to get up and beg "Just don't sign the papers! You can be partnered without reinforcing the hateful, wrong laws!" But I digress.

Sigh.

I think these thoughts and feel these feelings every time I encounter one of you, wedding invitations, but there's almost no one I can tell about them, and there's almost invariably somebody who's going to take it really personally whenever I mention this stuff in the wrong place or at the wrong time. If I'm lucky, it's just the people who most recently sent me an invitation, which makes me wish I could be writing this letter in like 1984, before anyone I knew was getting married. And so I'm writing this letter, addressing you instead of the people who send you, because I am a giant coward, and you couldn't read this even if I found a way to send it.

Love,
-Tracy

started 18 January 2005, posted 16 February 2005, last updated 16 May 2005.
This letter is dedicated to Mark and Sara Betnel, because on very rare and lucky occasions sometimes I don't have to be a coward. "What more can you share than your whole self, your whole life, all the nights and all the days?" (Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed.)

Dear Toothpaste

2005-02-09T04:53:00.000-05:00

Dear tube of toothpaste from my bathroom counter,

I think my partner has had you since we were in college, perhaps even since before we were living together, but I'll get back to that later. You're Crest Fresh Mint Gel, and you're an insipidly sweet artificial flavor that tastes sort of pastel green, rather than your actual color, a truly terrifying shade of translucent blue, which in turn renders my teeth blue on the rare occasions when I brush with you.

Tonight was one such occasion, because I'm out of my regular kind of toothpaste, which is actually not a toothpaste but a weird liquid gel that's apparently only for sale in Europe, but which my mom likes and so occasionally gives to me, but whatever. I'm out, and I have a dentist appointment this Thursday, so I've been brushing and flossing (my first attempt at typing that turned up "blossing") with far more regularity than I can usually muster in an effort to demonstrate a semblance of dental hygiene. It's been years since my last dental checkup and professional cleaning, and I'm a little freaked out, but I know I should stop putting it off while I still have teeth left to save. Anyway, I was out of toothpaste, and so I used you.

You're much grittier than my usual toothpaste, and pastier. Then again, as I've mentioned before, my partner's had you a long time. How long is that? Well, I suppose only you know for sure, but while I was standing around with my mouth full of minty foam anyway, I checked your labeling for clues, and found your expiration date.

December 2002.

Even I give in. After I finish this letter, I'm adding toothpaste to my grocery list. Wow.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear Stress

2005-02-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

Dear Stress,

I know I ignore you a lot. It's my coping mechanism or whatever, and it's gotten me through many a tight spot, which would be a good thing if I dealt with you afterwards, but mostly I don't. Which is bad. For one thing, your effects, combined with those of boredom, often leave me crushingly depressed, which is probably a topic for another letter. Lately, however, I've been becoming more aware of the fact that when I tune you out with my mind, my body takes a beating.

Headaches, sometimes even migraines, nausea, upset stomach, diarrhea, and most recently a return to menstrual irregularities the likes of which I hadn't seen in a few months, since before I switched birth control hormones. I just finished a notebook, which meant rereading it, which in turn meant revisiting all my health complaints of the past four and a half months. And with the exception of a particularly wretched bout of stomach flu, just about all the health problems I complained about coincided neatly with the times I had the most to complain about stresswise.

Usually work was the culprit. But whatever. I mostly don't have to work with the guy who it turns out literally makes me sick anymore, and I've started a new job that's much more mellow and self-directed, with coworkers who are at once friendlier and less immediately involved with what I'm doing. Somehow it's easier when I'm responsible for everything, which I guess makes me a control freak. No big surprises there.

But meanwhile, stress, you haven't been getting as much attention as you deserve. It'd be one thing if I wasn't paying attention because you weren't around, but you're definitely out in force, and I'm probably building you up in my mind even as I pretend you're not there. And it's not like you can advise me on how to deal with you better, though that sure would be great if you could (while I'm dreaming, I want a pony). My head-in-the-sand habits might make more sense if you were always a bad thing, but you're not, and while I'm acknowledging that, thanks for all the fight-or-flight endorphins. They've come in handy from time to time, even if I suspect they've got something to do with why my body hates me so much sometimes. You're really not to blame here; my response to you is. So I'm going to have to learn to recognize you instead of ignoring you, and deal with you in a more responsible way than pretending you're not there and getting sick later.

Exercise might help. It's good for all kinds of things, and there's far worse ways to burn off those fight-or-flight hormones I thanked you for earlier. I'm thinking of taking a yoga class, maybe even learning to meditate. Writing letters like this one, letters I can't send but need to address, seems to be good for my heart and my head, which I hope will translate into fewer headaches and less physical trouble on the whole.

Can we work together, stress? I hope so. Because making myself mentally and sick for lack of a better way to cope with you is pretty miserable.

Love,
-Tracy

Started 28 January 2005; last updated 1 February 2005

Dear Restaurant Customers

2005-01-28T04:54:00.000-05:00

Dear restaurant customers,

You may or may not already know this, but there's a good chance that the last meal you ate out was cooked by someone like me: someone who, without even knowing you, personally hates your guts.

Okay, so that's not exactly true. Most of you are probably pretty cool, but some of you are such whiny bitches that they make the rest of you look bad. For instance, some whiny bitches waste time and money by sending servers back and forth to the kitchen to ask questions instead of simply reading the menu. The ones who don't read the menu are among my favorites. "I didn't know this had bacon in it" when that's the first ingredient listed among the fillings in an omelet? We get to deal with you bastards, and you're why I can never be a server because at least in the kitchen you probably can't hear me cursing your mothers. In fact, I think I hate you extra on behalf of the floor staff, who aren't allowed to cuss and throw things nearly as much as I am back in the kitchen. The servers don't seem to believe me when I say I could never do their job, but it's true. I would laugh at stupid customers constantly. I know part of why you people come out to dinner is to have someone else take care of you, but that doesn't include remembering the details of your diet or reading the menu for you. Nor does it mean putting up with your shit when you're having a bad day, especially if you don't tip well. Waitstaff are simply not paid well enough to pretend they're your best friend, or your mom, or your shrink. But back to me in the kitchen.

I'm not really trying to write this letter for you customers who are good enough to know your dietary requirements and pay attention to the menu descriptions of food, and order carefully based on what you know you can and will eat, and make small changes before the kitchen's already started your order (more on sending plates back in a bit). Even people who, before ordering, send servers back to make sure a given food doesn't contain an allergen or whatever are okay in the grand scheme of things. I'm fine with "I'm lactose intolerant; please hold the cheese and sour cream"; in fact when I see orders come back asking for no cheese, I check for other possible trouble ingredients in the item because it would be really rude to accidentally put mayo on a vegan's soyburger, especially when the new menu's got a typo so it looks like the avocado burger doesn't have mayo on it. But ultimately we have a menu for a reason; it describes what the kitchen is set up to produce. If we wanted you to make shit up, we'd just give a list of ingredients and tell you to go hog wild. But it would slow service down even more than you people who put back nonstandard orders ("No toast, no home fries, substitute three strips of bacon and a side of sausage links? I can probably get you a whole dead pig, you Fatkins freak.") And we'd definitely have to charge you more for the privilege of writing your own menu, and then you'd probably complain about that instead. There's no winning with you people, is there?

Now. About sending back a plate. It's one thing if I made a mistake; most of the time it'll end up becoming somebody's employee meal for the shift and I'll remake your food correctly at no charge. But if you didn't read the menu right, or better yet you changed your mind about what you wanted after the food got to your table, then that's your mistake and it cost us money. It probably cost us more money than we'll make on your whole party, unless you ordered some really expensive drinks. And that's just ingredients. We're not talking about the time it cost to send the server back and forth, and for the kitchen to remake the order. And then of course there's the karmic cost of all the hate you've generated, which is pretty huge.

Long story short (too late!), part of going out to eat is that you have to trust the people cooking your food to do their job, not second-guess their every move. If you're so particular about your food that you don't trust the kitchen to make it right, you're in the wrong restaurant, or maybe you shouldn't even be going out to eat when clearly you could do better for yourself cooking at home.

Love,
-Tracy

P.S. Tip your servers well or be destroyed.

started 18 January 2005, published 28 January 2005, last updated 13 April 2007.

Dear Tobacco Smoke

2005-01-25T19:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Tobacco Smoke:

Thank you for all the times you weren't created around me. I really do appreciate those, but I don't think enough good thoughts about them. Also, I am sorry for being a smug bitch about the fact that I don't smoke, but there you have it. I don't smoke, but I feel so smug every time I think about it that I actually feel guilty about it sometimes. Which means that every time people don't smoke a good time for me, if only in that I don't have to remember how horrendously smug I am about my non-smoker status.

Why am I glad? Because I'm bad at smoking, for one. I tried it one summer with some friends, and embarrassed myself by coughing and choking and getting a runny nose and watery eyes from just a few puffs. That sucked, so I quit trying. Why waste the cigarettes they were giving me, right? More for them, better for everyone. Smoking is expensive, which is another reason I'm glad I'm not so addicted I have to do it. Unfortunately since first trying to smoke and failing I've only become more and more intolerant of the smell of cigarette smoke, to the point where I'm, as mentioned before, a horrid smug bitch about the whole smoking thing. Which brings me to the final reason I'm glad I don't smoke: I'd have to put up with intolerant nonsmokers such as myself. That sounds like it would be a total drag.

So yeah: tobacco smoke, I don't miss you. It's okay if you don't keep in touch.

Love,
-Tracy

started 6 December 2004; first published 25 January 2005

Dear U.S.A.

2005-01-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

Dear United States of America,

So as of today, George W. Bush is sworn in as President, and even cynical little me has to admit he was probably elected this time around. At least this time we didn't have to get the Supreme Court involved, right? That's got to count for something, right? Okay, I'm grasping at straws here.

I've been meaning to write you a letter since November 2004, of course, when the election happened and I couldn't bring myself to call it a re-election, but I also couldn't bear to think that we averaged 70,000 votes worth of fraud per state this time around. Of course, most of my letters started out, "Dear U.S.A., what the fuck?" and didn't get much more eloquent from there. It was the popular vote that really turned my stomach. I mean, I was glad it matched the Electoral College results for a change, not that I particularly like the Electoral College, but that's really a topic for another letter. But G.W.B. didn't win the popular vote in 2000, and carried on like it was a landslide anyway, so the thought of what he and his team would do with even a slim majority was pretty sick-making. So was the thought that a majority of people cast "Please sir, can I have some more?" votes, and wondering what the hell was going on in their minds, and feeling like an alien maybe a little more than usual even. Also I really didn't like the thought that people with opinions and ideas like mine (and a lot of people with opinions and ideas a lot less extreme than mine, for that matter) were going to be thorougly ignored for another four years. I wrote about wanting to leave the country, like a lot of people did when post-election despair was strongest, but then I found, to my surprise, that some parts of me actually identify with the United States after all.

I've always been something of a foreigner here, from the fact that I was born with dual nationality and grew up speaking two languages, to the fact that my family didn't go to church. On the other hand, I always had the reassuring knowledge that there's another country I could easily call home if I so chose, even if as I got older I gradually learned that the Netherlands was not the land of gifts and unconditional love --- that was just my grandparents' house, which happens to be in the Netherlands. Still, the growing-up realization that I would probably never fully fit into either country didn't particularly make me like the United States any better. So why was I suddenly discovering in myself this sudden refusal to leave?

Part of it was just stubbornness, and the knowledge that if everybody like me left the U.S. it would make the administration's job that much easier. Part of it was the fact that damn it, my house is here. But to my everlasting surprise, there was more.

Dear United States of America, you're my country, too. I may be a second-class citizen in a lot of ways: I'm a woman, sure, and to make matters worse I'm a woman who's had an abortion. I'm an atheist, I'm a foreigner, and I'm a queer. But despite all those things, I was born here, and that makes this my country even if I don't like it, and I'm not going to cut and run just yet. I've made a list of things that would make me leave: another war, one that threatened to draft my partner; a national law against same-sex marriage; a national law making abortion illegal. Even the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court might not be enough to make me leave you, U.S.A., because if Roe went down I'd have work to do, making sure that women in states banning abortion had ways of getting to free states. I might form a new Underground Railroad if that's what it took to keep women from dying from unsafe illegal abortions again, okay? And (I know this is getting off topic and it isn't even addressed to all of you) shut the hell up about abortion being dangerous and traumatic, because 1) it's still safer than childbirth and 2) I for one am living proof that they're not going to leave every woman who has one crying and wishing for the child they could have had assuming they stayed safe and healthy and didn't miscarry. Okay, I can get back to my main point now.

Long term, I'm worried about my ability to keep living here in the United States because the writing on the wall seems to be that we might soon be paying taxes only to support international imperialism instead of to take care of our citizens. Call me a socialist if you want, but I'm not particularly interested in being ruled by a government that thinks guns are more important than feeding and sheltering and providing for the health of its citizens. Maybe that makes me an anarchist, too. Whatever. My point is, United States of America, I'm still a part of you, even though I'm not a rich white Christian male imperialist capitalist bastard, which seems to be what we're stuck having in charge today. And for your information, I'm by far not the only non-white, non-rich, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-christian, non-capitalist, non-imperialist motherfucker out here. I'm pretty sure we're the majority, even if the popular vote didn't reflect that too well.

Have you noticed that I haven't once yet called you America? It's tempting, don't get me wrong; I want to quote that Ginsberg poem with all my heart, but that abbreviation happens to ignore the inhabitants of all the other countries on this continent and the one to the south, and that's pretty poor form if you ask me. Just a thought.

I'm running out of steam, so I'm going to finish this letter here and send it as is. Long story short, U.S.A., is "Howdy. I'm still here." For now, we're stuck with each other --- can we play nice, or am I going to have to take my ball and find a new home?

Love,
-Tracy

started 2 November 2004, first posted 20 January 2005

Dear dogs...

2005-01-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

Dear dogs,

I know you can't read this, but would you please stop shitting in my yard? I want to turn it into a garden someday, and I'd really like to grow edible food in it, so yeah. Quit it already!

And while I'm dreaming, if you could please tell your people that it might be better to take you out for a walk, like for instance to the dog park less than half a mile north of my house, instead of just letting you out at night to roam the streets unsupervised, so you're completely free to shit in my yard because you couldn't read a "no pooping" sign even if I posted one? That would be great.

Love,
-Tracy

started 8 November 2004, last updated 19 January 2005

Dear God

2005-01-19T21:26:00.000-05:00

Dear God,

I can't send this letter for obvious reasons, but I probably shouldn't even be writing it at all because frankly, I don't really believe in you. Which is not, as far too many people seem to think, that I think nothing is sacred --- more on that in a bit --- it's just that I'm sick and tired of people shaping that sacred in their own image, and not even all that well, or maybe too well. I don't know.

Fact is, as far as I'm concerned the universe is just too big and awesome and complex for our puny little human minds to understand, but we don't like to admit it, so we invent order for it, even if it's an order that can't possibly be big or complex enough to be anywhere near the truth and simultaneously be something we're capable of understanding. That complexity thing's a bugger for sure and I had more to say about it which I've already forgotten. Maybe I'll remember and add it in later, or maybe I'll just have to write a sequel to this letter, even if Alice Walker already did the "letters to God" thing way better than I'll ever be able to in The Color Purple. For now, I'm done with the part of the letter that addresses the idea of the god I don't believe in, a guy in the sky who's all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-knowing, though it's a little unclear if he's all-caring or even a little caring, and people somehow still keep going to church and fighting wars and making each other's lives miserable over it.

The next part of this letter is addressed to what I do believe is sacred, and when I say what that is it'll be clear why this is a letter I can't send. See, as far as I'm concerned at the end of the day the only truly sacred thing is our human capacity to be good to one another and bring out the best in one another. If you want, you can call that love, and then you can say that God is love if you like to quote the Bible and banter around with really loaded words. There ya go. If anything is sacred to me, if anything gives life meaning or whatever --- which is probably fodder for at least another paragraph --- it's the fact that despite all the awful things that people do on a daily basis, to each other, provoked and unprovoked, so on and so forth, we also do good to each other, just as reasonably and unreasonably. Who needs an ineffable, inscrutable Lord that moves in mysterious ways when we have each other, friends? Not me.

And so yeah. Dear goodness which I sincerely hope is inherent in all us humans --- please don't stop. Please don't go away. Please, continue to give me signs that you exist, because stupid little things like that are ultimately what give me hope that maybe the human race won't destroy itself and maybe it actually shouldn't destroy itself. Please, let me continue to find that God-nature or Buddha-nature, or love, or whatever, in real people. And maybe let me continue to hope that we can all begin or continue to find that goodness and love in each other, instead of projecting all our hopes and dreams and fears into an imaginary friend in the sky. Let me continue to dream that people are capable of being good and loving without priests who tell them to impose their beliefs on each other, and that someday maybe we can all at least act as though there's magic and sacredness in all of us, and there's no need to complicate things with a not-so-shared hallucination of holiness separate from this physical world we inhabit. If you ask me, not that anyone did, that idea of a god that I don't believe in is at once too simple to explain the universe and overcomplicates human affairs all at once.

I don't know how to end this letter. I don't want to go back to addressing the idea of the god I don't believe in, much as I'd like to ask protection from Its followers. Nor do I want to address specific gods I don't believe in, or the religions that claim to follow them, because this letter is probably offensive enough without getting personal. The one idea I keep coming back to is a sentence I've seen attributed to the radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, one of those people whose story makes me think that maybe organized religion isn't always all bad, but I digress. "Deliver us unto each other," he prayed, and that I think is a hope worth praying and dreaming for. Imagine freedom from the guy in the sky, the great cosmic daddy who tells us how to behave or else, and instead living with the knowledge that all we've got is each other. I guess it's a bleak way of looking at the universe, the thought that we're the only god we've got. On the other hand, it explains a lot that's wrong with the world: We humans suck at being God. The good news is that we're all that's stopping us from getting better.

I guess that means it's go time.

Love,
-Tracy

started 22 November 2004, posted 19 January 2005, last updated 16 February 2005

Definitions, an introduction.

2005-01-18T17:57:00.000-05:00

epistle ...A letter, esp. one of a literary, formal, or public nature....

epistolary ... 1 Of or pertaining to (the writing of) epistles or letters.... 2 In the form of a letter or letters; contained in or conducted by letters.

epistolography n. letter-writing

from The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Lesley Brown, ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon (Oxford University) Press, copyright 1993 Oxford University Press.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my letter-writing project, the initial goal of which is to write and publish letters that are impossible for me to send. I like writing letters, but I often never finish them, which makes it hard to get them in the mail. Sometimes I find myself composing letters to inanimate objects, or fictional characters, or abstract ideas, most of whom can't read. But enough excuses! Regardless of the many reasons I might not be able to send a letter, I hate to let that stop me from writing. So my hope for this project is that having a place to post those unaddressable letters (puns intended) will free me to write them.

Think of these letters as works in progress; I'm likely to rewrite anything I post a few times even before I publish it here, but likewise nothing I post here is by any means final. Part of the point of writing this stuff down is it gets me thinking about what I might have missed, other thoughts to include in my letters.

Another nice aspect of this project is that many, in fact most, of the letters I will be posting here are letters to which I do not expect to receive replies. If I can't send a letter, it's unlikely to reach its addressee, for one thing. For another, abstractions are unlikely to receive, much less respond to, my messages, and I'm fine with that. These letters are intended to be one-sided, even if that somewhat defeats the purpose of framing them as correspondence. (A fancy rhetorical name for this trick is "apostrophe", but I've already cluttered this introduction with enough dictionary definitions.) The one exception to the unsent/unsendable rule is, of course, this introductory letter, because it's addressed to anyone who reads it. As such, it is guaranteed to reach its intended audience.

On that hopeful note, on with the futility of the letters I can't send.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear 2004...

2005-01-11T20:18:00.000-05:00

Dear 2004,

Goodbye. I know, I know, technically you've been gone a week and a half, but I only got around to the traditional New Year's Day meal of blackeyed peas and collards on Sunday, and anyway you're still on my mind.

I want to say you were a pretty good year, but I can't exactly ignore the fact that you ended pretty poorly. I mean, first there was that stupid U.S. presidential election --- that wasn't very 21st century, was it? I hope not. (In fact, it was a pretty bad election year overall for the U.S., but I've got other letters to write about that.) And then there was the South Asian earthquake and tsunami disaster, eclipsing ever so much other news both good and bad. We're all going to have to wait and see, of course, but I think that last is most likely to put you in the history books, which is a bummer, to put it mildly.

Personally, ignoring the troubles of the world, I did all right in 2004. My partner and I bought a house, for one thing, and I'm still loving it into this new year. Also I held a job for an entire calendar year, January through December, something I'd never done before. Not a full-time job, but then again I don't really want one of those. And sure, it isn't a job even remotely related to my pricey college education, but so far it's a hell of a lot more fun than any job I've had that did relate to all that schooling and stress. Hrm. A hint of bitterness there, something to think and probably write about, but not in this letter; it's way off-topic.

Back to 2004: I began and ended the year in the company of good friends! My friends are awesome, no two ways about it. I got a piano! I started a garden! I lived with people and cats that I love! Despite all of these good, exclamation-point-worthy things, I was still prone to fits of severe depression! Okay, that last was a sarcastic exclamation point. Back to 2004.

Is it even fair to judge a year by its events? I suppose they're really all I've got, and what I'll remember the year by, which in itself is a kind of judgment, memory being selective and all. Besides, it's not like I'm blaming the events on the year; that's almost as pointless as a writing project based on letters that can't get replies. Okay, enough with the self-referential cutesiness.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment of 2004 was the fact that I didn't do anything lasting and creative. My job throughout the year was playing with food, and I made a lot of awesomely tasty things outside of work, but I didn't really get any writing done. I did, however, get the idea of writing letters, even letters I couldn't send, so at least you helped me find the seeds of something, even if I didn't get it started until 2005. For that, 2004, I thank you.

Love,
-Tracy

idea: 14 December 2004, writing: 11 January 2005, posting 18 January 2005, last update 31 January 2005