I've been cleaning my studio space up a bit this week, rearranging books and shifting dust from one bookshelf to the next. I took down this wood box where I have all my old letters in and set in on the couch. Later that evening Olly was sitting on the couch talking to me and she started to finger through the letters. She asked if she could look at them. I said sure, just a part of my past - I'm not jealous of them if I'm there. It was interesting that she didn't want to read the Italian letters, only the ones written in english. As if the Italian was too real for her while the english was part of some sort of life I'd once had. She wanted to know about the gay best friend I lived with for a year and the boyfriend that I had for so many years that succumbed to ALS in his early thirties and also my little brother who used to write me a letter once in awhile. Very short, very sweet.
"How come these people used to write to you?"
"Because, Honey, when I was younger the internet didn't exist, as well as cell phones with sms messaging. We would sit down with a pen and paper and write a letter and then the other person on the other end would wait anxiously for the postman to deliver it." She laughed at that.
The world has changed, for the better and for the worse.
So yesterday I was listening to some music I had downloaded and inexplicably started crying for like fifteen minutes. All I could think about was my brother and how much I missed him. I re-read his letters and thought about how I used to read them all the time and that in actuality the pain of his not being here has lifted ten fold during these years. It used to seem unbearable. Now I just get really sad.
This morning P and I went and had a cappuccino together at the local bar while we read the paper. I looked at today's date: 29 june 2008.
A ha.
Yesterday was the anniversary of his death. I didn't even remember that, but maybe that why I was somehow drawn to the letters and the box and the tears. I feel better now, as if I needed to do that. I'm glad I remembered in some way.
Tomorrow we're leaving for a week down south where I plan to
I turned the television off for today. I usually like to clean the house or iron while I watch some trashy show that's not worth sitting down to. Lately I've been questioning how much garbage gets syphoned through my head. Especially the news. Triple that for Italian political news. Lately they've been covering Vatican ties with the mafia, including kidnapping agreements and bodies being buried with illegally within church walls. Then there's the President who owns three television channels and asks political favors in exchange for putting girlfriends and wives into soap opera roles. It just all makes my stomach turn and look in total horror at this society I've chosen to live in. I'm sure it's better and worse around the globe, but right now all I want to do is hike into the Sierra Nevada mountains for a month and cleanse myself from all this b******t.
Today is Ev's last day of day care, he starts again in mid september when he enters into the "5 year old" class. He's really excited about that, big boy at the school and all. Olly is taking a remedial class for geometric design. She has to re-take a test in september before being promoted to the sophomore level so she'll be on pins and needles for the whole summer not knowing which class she's in.
I've been having a lot of problems lately with concentration. My mind weaves back and forth from one activity to the next and I can't seem to find the focus to finish anything unless I totally and completly put all my energy directly into it...which seems like nothing at the moment. It seems like I get interrupted every three seconds by one of the kids...or it's time to fix the next meal or do something like, I don' t know, sleep. I don't know what to do about me, myself and I. I've tried every trick in the planet except totally seclude myself which at this moment in life I just can't do.
