letters to illiterates.

Dear Sweet New Kicks and Jacket That I Bought When I Didn't Have Enough Money To Do So But Did So Anyway:

You make me look awesome! Or at least feel like I look awesome! Or feel a little like I should be on a field somewhere reporting live while bombs explode in the distance, or maybe starting a revolution with a lot of scraggly university students who haven't shaved on purpose, and I don't even care that 3/4s of your pockets are fake! And these kicks - check it, they have ANCHORS on them! Why!? I don't know! Keep up with the good work.


Dear Penny:

I know you are not reading this, because you are a dog, and last time we saw one another your vocabulary included the words "suppertime" and "monkey" but little else (though we tried our damnedest to teach you "perambulation" as a synonym for "walk"). I would just like to express how much I appreciate your sub-human, don't-know-any-better devotion to me, because you are always up for hanging out, even if your definition of quality time means crawling all over the book I am trying to read and then waiting patiently at the door while I slip outside for a front-porch smoke before my parents get home. I saw a dog in Copenhagen and was reminded of you, as I am always reminded of you whenever I see a dog that I can't borrow, but this dog especially was Penny-esque, as it couldn't take more than 4 steps without flopping on its back and rolling in the grass of the Danish Palace Lawns, solely out of sheer, doggy glee. Clearly the happiest creature in all of Denmark, probably all of Scandinavia. I had a very obvious epiphany today, Penny, while the spring we'd been enjoying vamoosed, replaced with a dreary cold wind and hail, and I was sitting in my room again, looking out the window, realizing I spend far too much time alone. This is not a new problem, and it's something of a writerly burden to be cooped up in one's head continually, having the maddening capacity to re-write reality and imagine things that are always better but always unattainable, living anywhere and anywhen but in the here and now, but it's something that shouldn't be going on, not while I'm 21 and in Europe at least. And that is why I miss you so much, stupid little pig-shaped dog of mine - because you always think I'm awesome, regardless of how I did my hair if I did it at all and how I think of myself, and you are always ready for an adventure and think an adventure is a fearsome game of chase through the house. If you kick the bucket anytime soon, I really will never forgive you, and I promise we will perambulate like we have never perambulated before as soon as I'm in Tulsa again.

Dear iPod:

Holy shit, you rock! What a brilliant being you are, all pocket-sized and hand-holdable, and jam-packed with goodness! Like Spoon! I forgot I even liked Spoon! But man, I've spent the past day and a half skipping down sidewalks humming the horn part to "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" and I'm pretty sure it's one of the most idiotic songs I've ever heard, but then I have visions of Strassenbahns full of dancing Austrians! Magical! You provide a soundtrack, which then tells me the mood of the scene I am in - poignant when it's raining and I'm listening to "Take Five," hysterical when the track switches to "Bossa Nova U.S.A." You kept me going in Oslo when the solitude was about to overwhelm me, because I've come to understand Of Montreal, at last, after seeing them live twice. You kept me company in all those train rides, made it possible for me to imagine for a moment we were leaping off the furniture in Keehn again, probably with the strobe light going, rapping to "99 Problems" or dancing like madfiends to "We Share Our Mother's Health." And Modest Mouse - I have the mix CDs of my entire life in my hand! Relive high school with some Arcade Fire, the Unicorns - Freshman year and Andrew Bird. Incredible! You are astounding, like all other iPods in the world, and may you not break (by falling on the tracks of the U-Bahn, for instance, a scene I have imagined uncountable times) until I have enough money to replace you. Which will probably be never. Amen.

Dear Vienna:

Do you like me check yes or no.


Love,
Rachel