Correspondence 10/24: milk carton photo

Dearest Sal,

I’m making little adjustments. Our heat here is radiant; hot water pipes run around our apartment and do *not* circulate air... it’s gotten a little humid and foody in here. The window’s open. A candle’s burning due to my belief that it will help dry out the air a little. This belief may be one of myth.
I bought pot pies at the grocery yesterday. They didn’t have any face paint left, or at least I couldn’t find it, so I’m not sure how I’m going to turn my face into a skull for the “Night of the Day of the Dead 5k” that I’ll be running soon. Of course there’s also the problem of the ever-thickening beard. And the question of how much clothing I’ll be forced to wear (and whether that will cover most of the face anyway).
But that might be the most appropriate way to move my legs on that day anyway. Face given to the spirit (and spirits) of the day, concealed by a need for warmth and the ability to breathe. After all, the only skull I’ve got to trace, at this point, is the one I found you using in a picture a few years ago. You were a little closer to the border than I’ll be. A little less threatened by cold fronts and snow.
Anyway the little tweaks are ocurring. Slate’s got to leave for work even earlier this week, so I spent the middle part of the day integrating tiny pieces of the news into my dreams on the couch. I was on a ship, somehow stumbled into the captain’s quarters. One room bright and almost pastel, then, without a doorway, moving into the other room changed it all to night, dark wood, cigar-type feel. I felt obvious and in danger, as if getting caught would mean a lack of understanding on the cather’s part. But no monsters.
Which is to say that whole quiet thing - I’m led to believe - is working. I feel so in between worlds now. Sometimes good ways, sometimes not. My posture is still not the best; I haven’t really started sitting with my little Buddha yet. But I think my ears are growing back. I’m loving people I don’t know (not all of them, certainly. Certainly. But I see sweetness there). I carved a pumpkin and now he sits here on the desk, looking out the window with me. In his case, tradition feels like simplicity. Carving him and separating seeds and baking them and throwing goup in the trash doesn’t sound all that simple (why not let him sit full of his goup and fully round?), but it feels that way. Having these things be important to me. Does that mean letting someone else decide what’s important to me? Or seeing an educator in anyone who’s lived a day?
I’ve convinced Po, my Thursday Night Literature Forum buddy who I do wish you could’ve met for real, to acquire access to the means to chat with me online (this is the Antarctic scientist of fun). Before you know it, I’ll be staying up ‘til four in the morning, uncovering the secrets of our entire experiences contained in the open space in that pumpkin or the dishes which I still have so many of to wash. Or I may just uncover the fact that Carlo now makes me very, very sleepy.
But I’ll still be up. There’s something that bleeds out through the water pipes that late. It sings for supper and a place on these pages, missing, as I do, your vicious concern for its well-being and personal growth.

As ever,

T