I think I can be honest now.

Where to begin? I feel so distant (?), far away (?), separate (?) from you all, but desirous of your company and missing you (what we were? what we may have meant?) (more on this later), so I feel I should say. Oh, I know know, ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:

Resolving the new year.
1. Do one thing at once.
2. Do not speak the words "I am tired" aloud.
3. Speak and write simply. Try not be honest, but guileless.

I feel like I am finding an even keel. This is not happiness, this is a becalmed sea. Sure it is slightly ruined by the snow that splays out my hips as I walk down the streets and makes me ache through the day. It scares me how easy it is to shatter, but also so how easy it is to get back. So, I worry that I am becoming cold again (once I moved through the world so lightly no one could touch me, but it meant I missed all the good things). And then I worry that I am only worried because people do not think it is good to be cold. People don't aim to die alone. It's not what they do. But as I say to William as he has a nervous breakdown in the Golden Apple diner, "Who are these other people?"

Griffin asks, "Do you want to be different? What does your heart say, your stomach say, your head say?" "They all say stay the same, but I want to want to be different." Griffin doesn't have an answer even though he usually always has something to say. "Now that's an interesting problem," he says and kisses me.



My life has gotten small. Or circumscribed. The boundaries between things are no longer fuzzy. My relationship to events, to books, to food only occurs when I am in them. My time is taken up. I like this. Sleep looks for me actively for maybe the first time ever in my life.

Realizations in this the new year -
1. I like structure.
2. I don't want to punish myself because it doesn't mean anything. I want you to punish me.
3. I do not do things for myself.

Well, abstractly, of course, I do. I am a member of a one woman death cult. Death is the all-flattener, everthing-eater, illogical, undefeatable because you can only defeat something that has a will. Death is hungry. Death's strength and (ultimately fairness) deserves my respect. So I do things because I want to feed Death. If Death were a restaurant critic, she would rate me fives stars. I realize why there are no people in my dreams really. I dream of landscapes buckling, stretching, sinking. Because I am reaching out to death, saying "When you're ready for me, I'll be here, shimmering in hot oil waiting to be eaten."

This seems a callous abstraction when a man is shot outside our apartment. Eight harsh cracks, presumably in the chest. I wasn't scared for more than a second and I think I understood my privilege better than ever before. There are no bullets for me.

This is beside the point. I have a will of my own of course, but it might be that my only desire is to burrow into the folds of other people's lives. Because, my blood sings and my bones lean forward when Chris and Griffin both crawl in my bed and grip me on either side, asking for my hands on their faces. When Elle cries into my chest and thanks me for being the only one to know that she just needed to be encircled by arms. When Bonnie and Rebecca can't keep the schedule they set themselves and I have to keep it for them. When I say words for Jess that she wrote but can't speak. I do not mean to say I love tragedy or hurt, but that I am there to lessen it. A human shock absorber.

We all know that the monarch exists in a dual state. This is how I feel most days. Everybody gets my body/Nobody gets my body. I try to be so gentle with them. This seems a grandiose abstraction in the face of the million mouse clicks and swooshing emails and boring Excel spreadsheets.

But I do think about my "we" and my "us" more than anything else (when we were the baohaus, the 24 hour gaze, UT, those kids). I try every day to understand what I mean to other people. Why are people always smiling at me in the street or talking to me on the train? Why does this not happen to other people all the time? What is my kind of love? Will one person come along one day and demand that I love only them? Will I be able to tell them that is entirely unreasonable for someone like me? Will we strike up some sort of treaty? Why do I need so many rules enforced by other people?

And also, I think I am ready to say that I feel very different to all of you and I think I always have. But, I feel so grateful to have known you though and the way you live your lives is beautiful and when I push myself I do it because I know, through you, that much more is possible. Thank you for letting me dig into the cracks of your lives and try to play inside your rules.

I think this is mostly a thank you and a hello. You're all so good.