“Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply.”
-Eileen, Otessa Moshfegh
“It’s spring, you’re young, you’re lovely, you have a right to be happy. Come back into the world.”
-We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Dearest readers,
Hello again from the finest of months.
Six months ago it was my birthday, and so, today I am a mirror of myself. Equal and opposite, inverted and precise. My face has never been at all symmetrical, I used to worry over this at times, until one pale day back home when my little sister came to me with a compact lamenting that one of her eyes was higher than the other and I recognized, at last, the tragic despair of allowing joy to be stolen by vanity. I rather like my mismatched face now.
I’m older than before, back when I wrote to you that November about walking for miles and crying in public, about reflections in doorways and trying to feel holy, about the orange trees. I had an orange with dinner this evening and as I type this my room is thick with the scent of the peel. It doesn’t make me sick at all. It’s lovely.
It makes me ache a bit to read my words from then again now, I’m not quite far enough away from it yet to romanticize it. My memories of it are still too honest and I know acutely just how much everything hurt. I’m better now in a lot of ways, but I still do wrong most days— I still get angry, still worry over frivolous things like how many pages I have left in my diary.
Back then I had only my writing for company and thought foolishly, so foolishly, that I could make that enough.
“One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.”
- The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
I have a bad habit of trying to make things better in writing. I find myself eager to skip ahead with things, fast-forward to the part where it all becomes a lesson learned, a revelation had, a story. I’m starting to accept I’ll never really be finished with anything.
On my birthday, I went to the Museu de Belles Arts and all I could think about was a half-remembered line from somebody else's art— I’ve started getting mad at old paintings of Jesus. The endless crucifixions depressed me then.
I went back again today with some renewed grace and while much of it still bored me, I recognized some beauty there I hadn’t before. I think this means I’ve learned something. I crept close to see the detail on a Last Supper scene and when I stepped back it was in line with a man with a fixed expression. We inhaled at once and caught eyes, each of us dizzy with beholding. I think this means I was a part of something today.
I have beautiful days here, I sigh under sunlight, I make friends wherever I go. These are the things I repeat to myself.
Seventeen days from now I’ll be home and if there’s something I’ve learned it’s that everywhere is just the same as anywhere else all the time. Perhaps at first there will be excitement or relief or even love, but soon the days will do their work at burying any semblance of novelty. I’ll find all the same old things to hate. It’s hard for me to feel at home anywhere, but it’s hard to feel homesick too.
I’m trying to stop the sickness, the longing. I’m growing tired of it. Getting angry at people who take too many photos, obsessed with capturing everything. We capture moments in anticipation of their absence, before they even pass we are already made to miss them. It’s as if to say, none of this is worth it without the sadness that comes later.
I sat outside at Plaza de la Reina today, once again mere feet away from The Holy Grail. I rested my thighs one on top of the other, leaned comfortably back on one arm. Book in hand, sun on my face. I was so much more powerful than I had been in that very plaza six months ago.
An old man came by, stopped a meter or two in front of me. He put his arms up to his face and cupped the fingers on both hands into mirror image C-shapes. With an index finger, he pressed down into the air, taking my imaginary picture. It was as if to say, just me seeing you here, now, just this right here, is enough.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO
I’ve been listening to this every May since I was 16. You are lucky I’m even sharing this with you.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
Okay, not much else sense last time but I feel I should link the video I stole that old paintings of Jesus line from somewhere.
Truly one of my favorites.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING AT
Until next time,
Shea
YIPPEEEEE