151: Move Into My Hairspace

Remember when people used to write actual letters?

For some reason, this popped into my head. I'm waiting waiting waiting at the Seattle airport for a (godknowswhy) red eye flight back to beautiful and comfortable Chicago. Since I shared a cab here, I am stuck... with 2 hours behind me and still 2 hours to go before boarding. So i've been thinking...

I spent a good amount of the holiday break cleaning out my closet at my parents house (physically and mentally, i guess you could say) and i was just shocked by the amount of fucking junk I kept. Now this is an area well-covered around here so i'll refrain from the usual hatred of my pack rattyness. I'll instead focus on the letters. I had a LOT of letters. Not only notes from various friends / girlfriends / teachers dating back to grade school. But a whole lot of letters with actual stamps and postmarks! Seems I made a lot of friends and penpals since 1991 or so when i decided that my life's course would take me not anywhere near good old normalcy but instead toward wild travel and abandon stopping at various points worldwide along the way. I wouldn't fucking trade one minute.

There were letters from a lot of people I still see and talk to now. I'm sure they'd be red as tomatoes to read some of this. You know, back in the day, we really fucking emo'd out our correspondence. Hand sewn envelopes. Odd photographs. Odder handwriting. Long drawn out passages about the ocean or the sun or the usual. (Hey, i'm no exception. I'm sure I wrote back with an equally spoon-gagging essay on trains or the city or snow.) We spent so much time on these things and we actually had to pay for stamps. We actually had to walk these things to a mailbox. I had an address without an @ in it!

I dunno if i long for these days again, but it sure was fun to get random mail that i didn't order. These days when something shows up for me... it's 9 times out of 10 a prize for someone else. And it's in a fancy manufactured box. And it's exactly like 10 billion other fancy manufactured boxes on the planet. Blah.

What was really shocking to me was the amount of letters I had saved from people I didn't remember. Several, actually. That kinda bums me out. One even had a book in it! And since the book was still in it all of these years later, you can probably guess how excited i was to receive it. I even found a few gems from people who are sorta famous nowadays i guess you could say. Well, i guess it's all relative really.

I saved it all. Just to throw it away. I had to. It was bringing me down. I found a bunch of photos from high school, too. God, I was such a fool. I thought I was hot stuff, too. Pfft! To the garbage with you!

And if it all sounds like the ranting and ravings of someone who has lost something, i will not hesitate to remind you why i was in Seattle. To record a 75 song double CD. More on that later. Including my feelings on your feelings.

I'm a happy guy. And even though i'm bored right now in this airport and i won't get home until 5 am whereupon I will board the El and be sound asleep in my own bed by 8... I kinda like the adventure. Still. And i'm still writing about it. Think of it as a letter to you but without the clutter to clean up years later. Now if i can only emo this up somehow...

I enjoyed Seattle. Especially the night where I exited a quiet empty night street at 2 am and woke up at 9 the next morning to look out the window and find an ample blanket of beautiful snow. Totally undisturbed because this city shuts down once 15 flakes are counted. If they only knew! My friend who drove me to the airport apologized to me saying "Sorry you had to come here during the worst winter in years." And I replied with something that would have made no sense on any of those scraps in my closet: LOL.