💌 Love Letters 💌 no.1

To February, with love

Welcome to Love Letters!

It feels appropriate to start this series with a love letter to the Love Month. I relish the idea of romanticizing my life and dedicating a little nod to the things I love that showed me a little love back.

When I think about life and living, I think about energy. After all, that is all we are— energy. Living is the act of exchanging energies with people, places, and things over the course of time. But I wouldn’t leave it at that; after all, I’m not a buttoned-up university professor sipping piping hot coffee, black, preaching about molecules and lightning strikes.

Living is also love. And creating love by making the most of all those people, places, and things while we have them. When I think about it that way, I’m much more intentional about where, when, and with who I exchange energy with.

Oh, to be loved by the people around you, to feel safe within their space, is a delicious feeling.

In February, I spent time with a dear friend of mine, Brandon. If Brandon was an object, he would be the shiniest gold foil star in my sticker collection. Foil and not glitter, because he’s polished that way. Brandon has a gift for listening, not just to other humans, but to Spirit. He knows better than to claim wisdom as his own, and because of this, he is the perfect ear (as in, the kind found on a head). He is the perfect conduit for love because he is patient and slow with his energy and he speaks with the most intentionality I’ve ever seen someone use.

one of the most beautiful messages I’ve received in a long time! A bee! I cry!

My Valentine took me on a train ride to New York, and it was an adventure I’ll cherish forever. We boarded the train at 11 PM on a Thursday. It can be cheap to travel by train, but as a bougie Valentine’s Day gift, he splurged and got us a “Roomette”. Pro tip: Amtrak gives you a last-minute option to bid money and upgrade from a Roomette to a Bedroom. So he bid $50 and we got it. We had a full-size bed to share and our own private bathroom and shower. But before your mind runs wild, the reality was: this “luxury” was about the size of my closet! We weren’t necessarily there for luxurious comfort, we were there for the adventure of it all.

The train ride was a little over 16 hours which, yes, is a long time to be in one place, but the scenery is beautiful, there’s free wifi, and the novelty of crossing state lines by train had me feeling like my life was a movie. Our time in New York was short and sweet, we ate good food (including greasy, cheesy iconic NY pizza), saw Wicked on Broadway, sobbed my face off at Wicked on Broadway, and stayed in a beautiful hotel! What a treat and the sweetest man that’s ever loved me!

New York recently won my heart a few years ago. I’d spent years loathing her for kicking my ass every time I traveled there, but really, it was just my fault. No one but me told me to overbook and cram a million activities and jobs and opportunities into the trips I took. I exhausted and burned myself out every time, and this magnificent city always took the blame. But grace! Oh did she give me so much grace! Welcoming me back with open arms every time I cursed her and said “I’d never live here!!”. Now I have a fondness for her grit, her loudness, her ability to never sleep.

While I wait for my film to be developed, here are some pictures from past New York Trips— when I first started to see the city with grateful eyes.

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Precious Seeds

Painting

making

falling deeper in love

driving around the city at night and watching the light blur around you

pomegranates are in season

and i love to take the time

to take each seed out

one by one

it’s an act of love

to take the time

to do something so tedious

just for my own enjoyment

I will eat the whole thing in minutes

the process is longer than the enjoyment

but the savoring and the love

it lingers

just like hugging my mother

and squeezing my dog’s tiny paw

I make myself tea

only in whatever mug

feels right that day

and I eat on my fancy pink glass plates

there’s no “saving it for someone special”

I am her

the someone special

to February, with love

I didn’t watch the Grammys this year, but I was thrilled to learn that Miley won her first Grammy for “Flowers”. I saw a snippet of her speech the next day and this part stuck with me:

“And so there’s a story I wanna tell that sums up this moment… So there was a little boy that all he wanted for his birthday was a butterfly. And so his parents gave him a butterfly net, and he was so excited. He just went outside out in the sun and started swinging and swinging. But with no luck, he sat down on the ground, he finally let go, and he surrendered, and he was okay that he wasn’t gonna capture this beautiful butterfly. And right when he did is when the butterfly came and landed right on the tip of his nose. And this song ‘Flowers’ is my butterfly. Thank you.”

Poetry Purgatory
Chloé in Newsletter is one of my favorite substacks I subscribe to. Chloe has a beautiful, soft, poetic view of life and she regularly moves me to tears with her words. In her newsletters, she often has a section titled “Poetry Purgatory”. It features out-of-context bite-sized pieces of poetry from her archives. I love that she offers no further explanation, just a couple of beautifully written lines, that we may interpret as we please. In the attempt to purge all the writing from my notes app, I think I will try this on for size.

Love cuts in ways glass doesn’t shatter. -August 2016

I never found it difficult to dream. -2020

People
I recently discovered the artist, Emily Furr. She is an incredible painter and her work comes to life in the way she presents it. While she could choose to stay within the confines of a canvas or a box, her paintings are often times the shape of the object she has painted. It’s whimsy, it’s play, it’s sheer magic. I traveled an hour out of my city to meet her and bask in her colors.