53. Writing

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 minds of people who look 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 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

Started and published 20 November 2011, last updated 6 June 2014.

52. Soccer

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 is 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 Zinedine Zidane's Head of God and freaking penalty shootouts featuring Fabien "the puncher" 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 while 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, published 19 November 2011, last updated 6 June 2014, when the next World Cup was only days away, woohoo!

46. Friends I Haven't Met Yet

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

27. Flowers

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.

20. Plants

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 you 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, last updated 6 June 2014.