2.26.26

Dear O, 

I miss you so much. I was feeling fine but then the sun started setting. I do feel like there is a little more room in my head though, after everybody's left. There's more space for me to feel all my feelings, including peace, solitude, and also fear, doubt, and loneliness. What am I doing here again? One step and then the next. I tried to re-read Helene Cixous' Three Steps On The Ladder of Writing but I couldn't find a good pdf online. A lot of the heart of how and why I wrote came from the feeling I got from that book, about walking towards myself in the dark. Maybe it's time for me to just buy a copy. I bought a copy for someone I loved many years ago now. I always figure that the things I love are safer in the hands of other people. Sometimes I feel like I've just rampaged as a storm would through the past ten years of my life. In the momentum I've picked up people, homes, philosophies, and communities...and just as quickly the winds die down and I have to drop everything I've picked up. I go on, a single gust of wind just blowing past all of life. 

Walking down the hallway I saw that the sisters had taken down many of Thầy's calligraphies- or maybe they got sold. One of the few remaining ones reads: Patience is a marker of true love. I guess that is what we are trying to practice now. I feel a little nervous thinking about you. It's funny that we've felt nervous around each other. I remember sitting across from each other and not knowing what to say. I feel that way now, and you're not even here. What is love anyways? All I know is that when people come together with the intention to know each other, to offer each other and themselves their full presence, love emerges from wherever she is always waiting. You told me a few weeks ago that love is an action. I was pretty taken aback. It's like you're in my head. Or how is that it feels sometimes that when we breathe, we take the same breath? And what of all the other people both of us have loved? I know I've loved you, always, even before I even knew you. And I've known you, even before we met and recognized each other. 

I've been trying to remember who I am and who I've been. I've lived in so many different communities and broken my own heart so many times. Yet, everyday I feel as if I'm just beginning. Do you remember? There was that morning all those years ago I woke at dawn with K to chase the sunrise. I fell in love with her that day. I told myself I'd make movies with her forever. I went back to the house and told everybody I think I am in love and everybody came up to embrace me. There was the summer of 2016 with H shaking the orange tree in the backyard to get some oranges to make mimosas with. All of us, H, O, M, A, N, who else...we just sat around and loved each other. We truly had nowhere to go, nothing to do, never in a hurry. A and Z made music and we all just smoked and listened to them. Z always had the heart of a poet and musician. His jazz chords still echo in my head. We climbed up on the roof. Los Angeles never looked more beautiful then from that roof. I still remember the cats and the plants and the music and the love and the heart mending and the heart aches. I still remember the drugs and the sex and the fights and the glass breaking. I still remember sleeping next to K for the last time. All the strength it took in me to walk away from that house and then her too...I got on my bike and I took one look behind me and said goodbye. I pedaled away as fast as I could, towards a future I still couldn't imagine. I weep for that version of myself, who was so afraid but knew they could never turn back after pedaling down that one last time on 28th street. I began to live in a long exile from myself that day. I made so many mistakes and still make so many mistakes. A few years later, when I was finally beginning to come back home to myself, S told me that grief never goes away, that your heart just gets bigger. One night I went with S to see the full moon in Palos Verdes and we ate peanut butter jelly uncrustables under the full moon next to the sea. I LOVE YOU I wanted to say to her. I LOVE BEING ALIVE! I felt like I could go and count every grain of sand on the beach for her happily. Maybe you can call my bluff, but I think I know a lot about how to love. And how to lose...

Now I am sitting alone here, thinking of you. The sun is setting and I feel squiggly. The snow is melting, thankfully, even though I'll miss it and everything it gave to me this winter. The magnolia buds you gave me are starting to bloom. Everybody has their own plans, worries, and hopes. The sunset today is a light pink and purple. I'll go on. All I want is to hold you in my arms. I'll see you soon. 

Yours,