Dispatch From The Mundane 018
When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise.
Hey Loners,
I’m sorry. I’m late to the party but I could still hear music playing when the Uber arrived and the lights were still twinkling so I hoped you’d still be here.
I’m not one for punch but in the loving memory of a time where my friends still poured everclear into Hawaiian Punch, this holiday time I’m going to make a spiced sorrel. It’s partly for Sammie. I was talking to her on the phone and she’s so excited to take a sip of sorrel. It’s partly because I have 2lbs of hibiscus in my pantry. It’s because I want you to know joy. We’ve spent 17 weeks together on Tuesday which slowly became Wednesday morning and now it’s Thursday morning. My birthday is on the 18th and it feels kinda nice to say this is the 18th one. It’s not the 100th but who knew I’d say nothing for 18 weeks? Not I! Here’s to lucky 18, baby. Maybe this is my year. Cheers! Down the hatch and one more for the road.
I’m grateful to the fact I went to Clifton Park this summer and was so sonically moved and socially devastated by the spectacle I witnessed at the Turnstile show. I sat behind a u-Haul with scraped knees smelling malt liquor and tobacco and bug spray for the first time since the pandemic. It was just this novel experience watching people bloom and decay in an afternoon after they’d locked a part of themselves away. They fantasized what it’d feel like, they watched videos and cataloged TikTok 90’s looks they’d try if they could get to hallowed ground.
I’m sure in some ways it disappointed, in some ways feel the swell and crush of people submitting to the most base of desires— well, as I said, there was something about witnessing it and feeling the pain and seeing the anguish and awkwardness. Also the joy, the cliques; I felt that I was aging and as always hurtling toward irrelevance. Perversely it made me want to connect again but I felt like a floppy disc in the time of airdrop. I got home. My head hurt from headbutting some boy who had grabbed my foot. My knees were all scrapped up and I knew it’d scab and scar. Peroxide stings. I lament how I’d always be reminded of my own expectations and disappointments in such a dumb ass way.
Lately I can’t stay hydrated. It slips my mind in a way it never used to but I’ll sit without a beverage for hours now. No coffee, no water — I’m sorta trapped on an island that doesn’t come with three coveted items. I’m eating dinner after going to visit my barber. I keep thinking I should just get a glass of water. I keep thinking I’ll do it soon. I’ll do it when I finish this last sentence. My barber lives down the street.
I had a woman scream at me about us being out of her cat’s favorite cat food last April or May and I got rejected from a job. I was sitting in the walk-in and trying to catch my breath and I felt like shit. I just wanted to feel good and get a hair cut but nothing was open. On my break I spent hours looking if anyone was screening people, taking outdoor clients and found my barber. That’s my guy. As he always says “uncurl your fists and tell me about your day or your back gotta hurt trying to hold up the sky, big head” or we will just sit and argue about the news. It’s good. I bought him chocolate tonight and said I haven’t been baking much because I’m sad. I keep promising him a lemon loaf and I don’t know if I’ll bake myself a birthday cake this year.
The last few weeks have been daunting - the highs are highs and the lows are gravel. My grandma died last week and she was a very wonderful and nice lady. She was very handsome in her youth. I want to tell you lately I haven’t felt like myself but I feel emboldened to confirm that this is feeling myself - depression is apart of me. I expect it to seem less daunting when it hits and everything compounds and yet. My last words to my grandma before I love you and it was nice to talk with you was “we’re so short staffed at work, covid, I’ll see you at Christmas.” I full of gross regret.
My stomach has been hurting since last week thinking about how I’ve been a ghost and for 17 weeks I’ve tried to explain why I locked myself in my room for three years and only went to work but now it doesn’t make sense. It never made sense but now that another hourglass has run out of sand— I don’t know what I’ve been doing with myself. I made her banana bread when she was in the hospital two weeks ago but I’m unsure if she ever felt well enough, if she ever woke up to enjoy it.
I’m listening to songs with the word “angel” in the title and it’s on The xx.
the things that no one else sees
and the end comes too soon
like dreaming of angels
and leaving without them
Listening to Sammie walk her dog in a big cold city and I’m actually here with you in this text and we are at a party and that even though I came late and everyone’s ready to leave— I’m glad I made it. Tell me about your family. Yell at me about the news. Have you gotten married lately? Did you guys break up? I don’t have a good look on. The hairs between my eyebrows and upper lip have grown in thickly. My work commute is two hours and I’ve been exhausted. I leave the house at 5am and get home around 7pm. Rinse, repeat and now I’m washed out.
Often I think in action I find myself plucky and I think of early mornings visiting my grandma in the summer and see her white hair at the top of the stairs because she’s sitting on the porch or she's taking a swim or she’s off to church. Early to rise and full of story and songs. She was a woman of faith and it’s weird because I didn’t know her my whole life. I wasn’t of her own blood and she never held me when I was born but often patted my hand or sat quietly watching me kayak around. She’d have her binoculars on because I can’t swim and she’d wait patiently for me to come back to shore. I’m sitting on dawn’s horizon listening to Kate Bush play from my zip locked phone never knowing she’d never stopped watching me.
Know often I think about God here and it may be weird to be at the punch bowl with these orange slices floating in the sorrel while we discuss angels but I believe in them. Do you? Often time when it comes to the the next life I think that I believe there’s dirt and there are trees and we are in between. I often like to think of my heart as a bright light. I like to think we’re all flames with a tired yet protective hand blocking the wind that savagely blows. I think there are people fueled by kindness and a gentle order of chaos; sorting the clothes patiently before every laundry load of our lives is balanced capriciously before judgement day.
I don’t have to believe in angels but I want to. I like to say I’ve known miracles. There was an off duty trauma nurse in the car in front of mine when my car wrecked and she explained very calmly that I was in shock and you’ll be okay. She held my hand. I love the idea that all the miracles are just trees and dirt and somewhere in-between.
My grandma always said it’s always a joy to hear from you and I wish I had let her know more with my presence. bell hooks passed today and I remember when Stefanie gave me a copy of all about love. We’d chat on tumblr messages and we’d meet up one day. It’s all so long ago. It hurts to remember because things are different now but you know, a bitch loves to reminisce in a newsletter and I’m grateful right now because I wouldn’t have ever read the last passage. I’ll leave it with you.
Godspeed Loners,
Kx
alone in my room is a once defunct and maybe weekly dispatch from the mundane from a local ficus. kelly is a writer, food himbo & serial hobbyist. you can support a hobby or buy soil for a plant here.