ON COLLAGE COMPATRIOTS, FOUR SQUARE DRAMA, AND TIPPING MORE EXCITED THAN ENVIOUS
Thursday September 16 and Friday September 17 2021
Dear Sarah,
A fair quantity of this week has found me with a very tight muscle running along my right shoulder blade and into my neck, the place where I tend to get a tight muscle. At night I am a right-side sleeper and during the day I hike my shoulders up around my ears even though I also remind myself again and again to let them down, physically forcing myself to relax. What are the hiked shoulders all about? It’s my hunched-over gargoyle pose, my pose of action. I’ve treated it with yoga and stretching and hot water bottles and I’m still feeling it almost a full week later.
Last week you described that you had finished a full draft of your project for your niece! I am so excited to hear this! Also the tiniest bit envious of you finishing a full draft (!) of something, but definitely tipping more excited than envious. You have been working at it in your early morning hours and across your days and weeks and months and now you have a full draft! That is the way a full draft happens! Congratulations, my friend!
I scratched out some notes last week in response to your letter as I prepared to post both letters online, saving my notes for this week. Here is the truth: I was glad to hear (in my mind’s ear) that you were trying to make sense of my dramatic turn about the future of the letters; I backed off when I read about your grief at the prospect of ending the letters; I wanted to remedy your grief, make it better instead of letting it be, letting it run its course. In the face of others’ (your) potential sadness or disappointment I am quick to make an about-face; I too love the letters; we can continue them indefinitely! This is my instinct when others express such emotions. I fear rejection! I was changing my mind as a reaction to your grief! Your words left my head spinning: There is nothing cruel about mentioning the end of something, and there is no action required in response to a feeling of loss. I wondered, did someone teach Sarah this? How does she know? It is true, but how does she know it is true? Your words were a gift, for which I thank you.
In other news: I have recently (just about three weeks ago) stopped taking The Pill, not in a “now I’m trying to have a baby!” way, but in a “wow, nineteen years is a long time to be taking a hormonal pill… is this still a good idea?” way. I am fascinated as I pay extra attention to my moods and energy levels, and think about whether any perceived changes are because I’ve stopped the pill, or if they are just a part of my regular flows of moods and time. It’s like when I get sick from what seems like food poisoning and I want to pin it on a single item that made me sick: was it that takeout, was there a weird grubby vegetable hiding in my salad, should I have washed that one apple instead of rubbing it against my thigh in the car in a semblance of germ riddance? Now I want everything to be tied to the pill: was every bad mood I had over the last nineteen years related to that pill?! Unlikely… but still! In these past few weeks I feel like I’ve been clearer-headed and able to move through projects and processes more cleanly; I wondered to myself this week, is it possible I’m able to execute the steps of a recipe more easily now? Is this because of going off the pill?! …or is it just that I’ve cooked a lot more in the past year-plus, and then during the summer I was cooking less, and now it’s getting to be cooking season again, and my skills are coalescing in a new and more apparent way as it’s time to break out the Le Creuset? (Most of our meals are made in this trusty red enameled pot!) The transition out of August and into September was rough, but now here we are.
I had the second of my two collage classes this past week, and I enjoyed making another round of collaged works. I even spent time last weekend messing around, cutting out shapes and objects, folding and taping them down to their substrates. This week I was a bit freer in my compositions while also having more of a plan, if that’s possible: I was working with an idea and executing it in different ways. (Hands and vegetables, but not precisely hands working with vegetables. I’ll have to send you some photos.) One thing that has been fascinating in this two-week course, in a class with other individuals again (finally!) has been the opportunity to show things to people and to see how they all react differently. At the close of each of the classes we’ve cleared our tabletops of all the snips and ripped edges of paper and tape and laid out our creations to share with our collage compatriots; we’ve made our way around the room and explored what other people have been concentrating on over the course of the class’s three hours; we’ve seen how differently we all think and work. A collage of mine that I personally deemed the least formed and perhaps the least interesting was another student’s favorite work of mine; M had a completely different favorite when I brought them home and showed him my second week’s creative output. (He also said, Any one of these could be one of our Christmas cards this year! So if you see something funky in your mailbox come December, you will know where it originated.) I love the in-the-moment reinforcement of the fact that we all think so differently, that tastes can vary so widely from person to person. It is ever important to remember that individual tastes are a part of everything in this world, and that what gets known or popular or generally elevated started somewhere with someone saying that’s the one that I like best. We all like different things best!
Turning once more to your letter of last week: What New Yorker fiction were you reading? Was it an old issue? Or the newer issue last week which was itself an archive issue? (Were you reading the Murakami spaghetti story? Or the Nabokov about Pnin? For some reason I gobbled up that archive issue, reading most every article!)
I’m closing this letter out late on a Friday after a dinner of linguine with clam sauce, a friendly helping of white wine, and a few squares (ok, six) of an indulgent ruby chocolate bar, and as I just heard the 9PM curfew siren go off it’s time to hit send! Looking forward to reading your words not long from now!
Until soon,
Yours!
Eva
P.S. Regarding your inquiry last week: We made the Food Network’s eggplant parmesan, in a smaller quantity than the recipe calls for (one eggplant, four eggs, maybe three cups of sauce and a couple cups of breadcrumbs, spread out in our appx 9x12 inch Pyrex in a relaxed fashion). ‘Twas made with homemade breadcrumbs and an exacting attention to the effective weeping of the eggplant, because I typically get an itchy mouth when I eat eggplant; here I salted thoroughly, then rinsed, then actually wrung them out a bit over the sink before then blotting them dry with paper towels. The end result was very tasty, but I am not sure it was because eggplant is tasty; I think it was tasty because food fried in homemade breadcrumbs and doused in sauce and cheese is very tasty! Still, if an eggplant is haunting your fridge like it was haunting mine, parmesan that veg and gobble it down!
September 17, 2021
Dear Eva,
In the family that raised me, anything can become a significant tradition—a particular dish served on a particular occasion, a particular spot to buy fresh Christmas trees even if it is hugely inconvenient, a particular story read aloud on Christmas Eve while sipping hot cocoa dotted with marshmallows. The best example of this extreme practice of attaching significance to everything is the family “tradition” — and this is true — of stopping at The Container Store at a specific outdoor mall in the Chicago suburbs on the long drive home from the annual family vacation. I mention this to give context to what I wanted to write about in this letter, which is my realization that I was leaning right into this inherited tendency these past few weeks after you raised the possibility of completing this wondrous letter project. It felt—temporarily—like you were saying we should end our friendship, or that you were wanting to take away something joyful in my life that I was not sure how to replace. I think it has only been a few weeks since that fateful call (that’s a joke), and I have traveled a full journey of emotions during that time. Shock, agitation, grief, calm, and now excitement about what might be next. It has been interesting to realize I was putting so much stock in the letters, almost anthropomorphizing them into an embodiment of our two lives or our friendship. And even more interesting to suddenly see the thread from my family background appearing here. It feels satisfying to leave that behind, to try out just being okay with letting something good go, knowing there will be other good things around the bend.
Speaking of which, I felt downright tingly when reading your description of collage class. Like we discussed this week, I am excited about the thought of exercising new creative muscles, putting idea nuggets into new shapes. Different constraints will undoubtedly lead to different outputs, and I am excited to see what might emerge for us with new experiments. I also keep thinking about what we discussed this week, about putting together a visual exhibit of some kind based on these letters. I am ready to give it a go!
We spent the evening at a high school football game tonight. I fully detest the sport of football; it seems objectively terrible based on the science that has emerged in recent years. And yet, I still love a good football game in the crisp night air. Oh, the hypocrisy. Oh well. It was “Hubbell Elementary Night” so the kids got in free, and the fourth graders were there in full force. S, on the other hand, saw one kid from kindergarten who said hi to him, and he couldn’t stop talking about it the rest of the night. (“I definitely saw Teddy tonight.”) He has a friend already! J went down to say hello to some kids from his class a couple of different times, but each time he returned quickly, usually twirling his long hair nervously with his hand. He has had a hard return back to school, seems to be floundering a little after 18 months away from elementary school. I know this is normal, predictable even. Yet I am still having a hard time not feeling it in the pit these past few weeks. He was thriving last year at home, in our little bubble. It was artificial, in the conditions of our happy home and largely problem-free year in our tiny orbit. Now he is in a new context, facing different circumstances, different people. There is four square drama, bullies in art class, a feeling of invisibility, a packed schedule that leaves little downtime. Sitting in new and different contexts is so important, and I am glad that he is thrown back into this challenging but safe context of fourth grade. I know the only and best thing I can do is listen when he wants to talk about feeling like he has a black box around him, or giving a little advice when he says he doesn’t have any friends. I know his life is not a math problem to be solved, but let me tell you, that doesn’t make it easy!
What are you up to this weekend, I wonder? We spoke early in the week and not again, so I am not sure what you have on your plate tonight and over the free days ahead. Collage class perhaps? I cannot wait to hear more about that, and then to get to work on some small collage projects of our own. Let’s put this baby to bed and try out some new creative adventures. There is no reason to just play it safe, who knows what may lie in the unknown that awaits!
Your friend,
Sarah