dear liz,
i think you’re in thailand. maybe you’re in indonesia? i forget. in any case, why are you on facebook? and googlechat? i don’t understand. i wonder what it will be like to travel to a far away place and be reminded of home when i look at my gmail inbox. is that why you are in an internet cafe? i am so confused.
last week i finished working at the coffee shop and began working at farmers markets full time. in the span of a week, my life no longer involves waking up at 5 o clock, having three bosses all of whom are the kind of bumbling folk i always seemed to get paired up with during junior high school math class, or making lattes with coffee that reeks of oppression and colonialism with lopsided rosettes on top for anyone. my hands smell like broccoli instead of coffee. you would think broccoli doesn’t have a smell, but everything in the brassica family smells a little bit like hearty, older gentleman farts. it is like recognizing the scent of an old lover years later in a weird place, except it happens to me every year, and they’re vegetables. not lovers.
which reminds me, i am very much without love. of the four people living in my house, three of us are single, and we talk too much about wanting. we want to have terrible relationship drama, like our fourth housemate. we want to get bad love poetry sent to us by post, we want to fall asleep during morning sex, we want someone to put sunblock on our backs at the beach without making any jokes. i guess you would tell me to shut up and go on a date, because i’m in a country full of queers, and next weekend is pride and i’m going and i’ve never been to pride and if i threw a rock into the crowd and said ‘kiss me i’m lonely!’ someone would probably oblige me (if i remembered to brush my teeth, which, truthfully, i work on). really, i am not without love at all. for the first time in my life, i feel like i am constantly surrounded by people who want to love me. if i was really lonely, i wouldn’t complain about it on the internet.
i can’t believe you’re wherever you are. that is so far away (wherever it is)! do you think about that? do you think ‘right now i am x thousand miles from where i had my ninth birthday party’? i feel like i think about that sometimes and i am only in seattle. for example, it is three thousand and twenty six miles to my parents’ house. actually, they moved last week to a house four miles down the road in the general direction of i-90, so it is three thousand twenty two now, but i think about numbers and facts like that and i get mired in all of the statistics. my head might explode when i am in new zealand. i know you saw it on facebook, and i swore i’d never update my friends via facebook, but it is so easy, and i am officially one way ticketed to new zealand! i am leaving four months from tomorrow, i have saved enough money to actually pay off most of my student loans in one lump sum (again with the boggling) except i am going to spend it slloooowly on things like transportation and hostels and trinkets for all of those people who love me (you’re all getting postcards). things i feel a lot of: pride, initiative, lucky, crazy, afraid, and like i’m indiana jones, without all of the training and special skills. for two years i think the people in my life thought i would never get the cojones or the dollars to do what i’m about to do, and now that i have a little from column a and a little from column b i feel like i’m saying ‘i told you so’ to folks who would respond ‘well you’re still an idiot’.
on saturday i wound up with 20 pounds of strawberries (things like this happen to farmers market workers more often than you would think) and with the help of two friends, made a dozen large jars of no sugar (as per the marne friendly diet) honey maple strawberry spread. this references both my new job schedule and my wanting love (ergo wanting someone to spread strawberry spread upon) so i put it in its own paragraph.
and that is where i think i will end.
come home safe, liz. and tell me everything.
marne j
