Not lamplight, ambrosia

02 March, 2004 8:36 p.m.

Dear Bobby

A lot of my favorite diarists (diahrrists?) have stopped writing. I'm starting to think that the glory days of online journaling are long over. It's a shame; I think that online diaries are one of the best forms of free speech possible. When well written (as yours was), it's better than reading a good novel. It's like what Holden says in "Catcher in the Rye" about wanting to call up the author of your favorite book, but better. These people whose lives we get so involved in are _real_ people.

Sometimes calling up these perpetual note takers works. That's how I met my boyfriend, who kept a mildly popular site for a time, most chronicalling his struggles with depression, girls, and depression from girls.

Lots of girls fell in love with him just because of the things he wrote. I was one of the masses, with a difference, somehow, because we wrote awesome letters to each other, or because we both liked space ghost, or because we were the type to make inappropriate jokes at funerals. But anyway, he's the one that told me about you, and we would discuss your diary sometimes, who you were, whether a kindred spirit, or just a jerk. I always argued that you were just another guy, which was cool, but another guy whose life I listened to in fascination. You and Michelle fell in love around the same time Jordan and I did. We all made the same bad jokes and boys sucked on girls lower lips and people said we were cute couples. But that doesn't mean it was easy.

Because, I think, love is a struggle of personalities and trying to overcome the past and it's never easy but usually worth it.

I don't know. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I hope things are going well for you and MIchelle. I hope she's getting better and that you're both learning lots about yourself and each other. I like to think that out there, you guys are being kindred spirits, jerks, and just other people. I hope your story continues.

I'd like to ask for the new address where you've been writing, but I don't know if that will be an intrusion. So I'll just wish you well.

All my love,

Phoebe North

Today was a spring day, not obscene May bursting with flowers, spreading sex and pollen everywhere, but the kind soaked with perspiration behind a gray field. March, the sun little more than a winking eye of light.

I've come to the conclusion that what I need is a muse and a partner, not a mirror. Our life will be like knitting a sweater, one link on top of another, a process.

But it will keep us warm in winter, even after it's been thrown in the mud in March in favor of the feeble sun on our skin.

Yeah.



previous next

twice sixteen - 14 January, 2016
Hey--what's going on? - 11 April, 2008
I wasn't cool - 30 July, 2004
something you wouldn't believe if you saw it. - 11 May, 2004
Going to 17th and U - 27 April, 2004

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