26 posts tagged “letters”

Dear "Orange," if that is, in fact, your real name,

Remember when I found you and your brethren in the produce section?  You were so delightfully cheap, only thirty-eight cents per pound!  How wonderful, I thought, as I bagged you and a few others.  The first one I ate was just delightful, all orangey with a very orange-like nature.  Mmm.  Orange.

How I was looking forward to eating you after my lunch!  But as I began to try to peel you, "Orange," I noticed how pithy you were, and how tightly that pith did cleave to your flesh.  Several minutes later, and with the help of a paring knife, I had freed you from most of your bitter, white bindings and was ready to dig in, but then, "Orange," I encountered another aspect of your peculiar physiognomy.  Your sections, they were inseparable from each other!  Each time I tried to remove one of your sections for the purposes of eating and enjoying, I wound up ripping off a random chunk of flesh, one bound by no membranes, one leaking juice from its innumerable tiny juice sacs.

This is a sad, sad representation of an orange you have concocted, my friend, and your cruel illusion will not stand.  As I write this, hands smelling of citrus, pith buried below my fingernails, I am concocting a plan.  I will investigate the last remaining specimen from that shopping trip, and if he, like you, is but a hollow, haunted shadow of Orange, I will go back to the grocer, guns blazing, and demand that they stop passing off out-of-season hunks of vaguely orange-like fruit as Actual Oranges, even at thirty-eight cents a pound.

Stickily yours,

Your Sworn Enemy

Dear Stomach,

We've been working together, you and I, for the last twenty-eight years.  It's been a life mostly harmonious, albeit with a few spectacular moments memorable for their techni-color dissonance.  When I was a little kid, I sometimes got sick in my own bed when I was too young to know I was going to puke and thus couldn't make it to the bathroom in time.  Back then, throwing up always made me cry.  It still does, sometimes--little feels as futile and frustrating as trying simply to digest food and not being able to. 

You know, though, Stomach, I am not here to complain about puking:  I don't do it all that often anyway.  The issue I am writing you about today is the gnarling.  You know the gnarling, don't you, Stomach? The horrible, twisting wrench that squeezes me from the inside out? Of course you know the gnarling.  Don't play dumb-- YOU'RE DOING IT RIGHT NOW.

The gnarling is almost worse than puking, I think,  in that rather than forcibly ejecting food already eaten, it just sort of stops one from eating in the first place.  It's the same gnarl that had me on a shaky-handed diet of nothing but coffee and English muffins for about two weeks after Self-Involved Sculptor Guy broke up with me freshman year in college.  Admittedly, Self-Involved Sculptor Guy was in fact a complete and utter tool, but try telling that to you at the time, Stomach.  You were all a-flutter from day one, and when you decided it was time to get gnarly, there was no stopping you. 

You have pulled the gnarl out of your box of tools countless times--when I was applying for graduate school, you haunted me with gnarling for a record eight months.  You inflict it on me every night before a new school term starts, every time I have to speak in public, every time I wake up in the middle of the night with a whirling stream of thoughts about money or deadlines or phenomenology, every time I have a job interview, every time I consider telling a boy that I like him.

Stomach, the gnarling has got to stop. I would like to eat a meal around here without regretting it, oh, about four seconds later.  I think you might like that, too, Stomach.  Come on, I am just trying to give you a chance to DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. Don't you aspire to greatness? Digestive greatness? I do.

You are a stomach. Stop acting like a pussy.

K

Hello, Shin Splints, My Old Friend,

Damn you!  You had to go and show your ugly little face yet again.  I try to keep you at bay, Shin Splints, knowing the damage you are able to cause to my relationship with Running. 

Running and I are uneasy friends, you know.  I have never really loved Running; rather, it has been a marriage of convenience.  I first began my flirtation with Running many years ago, when I was vulnerable and in the throws of obsession with my weight.  I didn't really like Running, and I certainly didn't like-like Running.  Oh, no.  What I liked was the tired, sweaty feeling when I was done with running: the post-coital glow, as it were.  Running and I--it was purely a physical relationship. 

That's when you came in, Shin Splints.  Knowing my penchant for melancholy and my tendency to blame my laziness on external factors, factors outside my "locus of control," you provided an easy excuse for slacking off on those days when I just didn't feel like Running.  "Sorry, Running, I have other plans.  As much as I'd like to see you today, I can't.  You know.  Shin Splints." 

Excuses were ready and easy, and I quit Running for a while.  A long while.  Long enough that simple factors like not being fit enough should have stopped Running and I from  pursuing our relationship.  But those other factors were easy to overcome.  Running and I, we persevered!  We were strong!  We picked out "our" song ("Get Up Offa That Thing" by James Brown)!  We even went shoe shopping together and everything!

And then there was you.  Like a burning fire in my lower regions (And not the sexy lower regions, Oh no!  Lower regions like lower shins and calves!), you tried to burn down our house.  You hung around for days, smoldering just above my right ankle.  You are still here, like an annoying house-guest or an angry, spurned suitor. 

Fuck off, Shin Splints!  You will not come between us again.  We will rest.  We will train.  We will listen to James Brown.  We will buy new shoes if necessary.  Like I told you before: Running and I are going to make it work. 

Take your tibia pain and get out of town.

Katra the Fleet of Foot

Dear Pyrex Bowl,

I thought we had a good thing going, you and I.  I mean, I know it was sort of a casual affair:  I'd ambitiously buy a bunch of fruit, you'd stoically hold on to it all until bananas grew soft and black; oranges' peel became weird and leathery;  avocados gently sagged, abandoned.  You were a caretaker of forgotten fruits!  It was noble!

Every now and then I'd use you to hold rising dough, a tea towel draped over your simple form.  Those were the days, Pyrex Bowl!  Just you and me and a wad of olive-oiled focaccia dough sitting in the sunny window sill.  It was picturesque!

Then I would give you a cursory wash and leave you balanced on the wooden X-frame dish-drying rack, forgotten for a few days, at least until I came home with another sack of produce. It was domestic!

But today, Pyrex Bowl! Today!  Today you had to go and fuck me!  You had to leap, unprovoked, right off that wooden drying rack in a suicide attempt the theatrics of which had never before been seen.  You hit the floor and in a frightful reverberation YOU EXPLODED.  All over my floor!  Your bits flew from the sink to the floor to the living room rug and all the way to the front door. One piece of you embedded itself in my foot, another in the neighboring bookshelf. 

You scared the bejesus out of me, Pyrex Bowl!  My heart paused for a bit too long.  You had my pets frozen in shock; you had me rushing through eighty-seven different evacuation plans so that no cat or dog would lose a toe to your treacherous, jagged, thumb-sized shards.  It was terrifying!

What a way to go out, Pyrex Bowl, you fucking histrionic drama queen!  You couldn't, like, eat a bunch of 'ludes or something? 

I hope you're happy.

Katra the Lacerated

Dear Fuckwits,

If you and your minions are so fucking interested in the amount from Box 12 on my 1099-R, it might help if, say, my 1099-R actually had a Box 12.  Hoping you

Shrivel up and die,

K

Dear MySpace, you desperately pretentious punk-ass,

Oh my god, MySpace, you are really getting on my nerves. "A Place for Friends," you bill yourself.  Then why, MySpace, do we all constantly get mysterious requests from creepy strangers who want to find out if we "like 2 party" so they can be our "friends"?  If those are the friends you've made a place for in this world, MySpace, You might want to re-think that plan. 

Worse than that, MySpace, you are like a ceaseless dick-measuring contest in a middle school locker room.  "I have thirty-seven friends!" "Oh yeah, you pitiful loser, I have three hundred forty-nine friends! And my taste in music is more obscure, and in the blank beside 'Television,' I wrote 'kill it,' whereas you listed 'Law and Order,' you poseur." It's not hard to see who won that round, is it?

Your pages are ugly, no matter how people try to edit the style in some redeeming fashion.  They load slowly and get hung up on the forty-two gabillion ads with which you insist on assaulting us.  The worst part, frankly, is when the browser freezes because of that horrible music player everyone has on their page--you know, the one that automatically starts playing as soon as we click on the person's profile.  I have only visited one page lately whose music I was happy to hear, and that is only because that guy had "King" by Belly playing, and if there is a guy out there who likes Belly enough to put it on his MySpace page, I have no choice but to wholeheartedly approve. (Congratulations, dude, whoever you are, and please call me!)  While I have grown weary of people who force their terrible taste in music on me, it is you, MySpace, who makes it possible for them to do so. 

I suppose I have made a conscious decision to take part in your little scheme, but I question that every day.  I keep thinking "That's it! The final effing straw!  I am deleting this profile right this minute!"  But then you get me, MySpace; you sink your talons deeper and deeper in as more and more long-lost, seldom-seen, old friends join your insidious ranks.  And I can hardly leave them there to fend for themselves, can I?  I wouldn't want to miss the possibility that, among the countless annoying chain-letter-style bulletins and memes they disperse like so much bacteria that there might be one interesting message:  something funny, something compelling or personal or something that reminds me that I miss them.  And usually there is, but in between there are so many pointless games that I die a little bit each time I check my inbox.

Rolling my eyes so hard it hurts,

K.

Dear Popcorn, you odious, smelly, nuisance,

I just thought I'd drop you a quick note to thank you for the way you keep ruining my movie-going experiences.  For the first thirty minutes of the movie last night, all I could hear around me was a cacophony of huge lummoxes shaking their bags of popcorn, spreading around the spooj-like glaze of imitation butter-flavored goo; the scrabbling of fat, greasy hands groping for the kernels at the bottom; and the opened-mouth, lip-smacking mastication of the huge man seated beside me.  At that point, the fact that he commandeered the entire armrest was the least of my worries.

You disgust me, popcorn.  Why, OH WHY do people refuse to chew you with their mouths closed? What is it about you that makes your eaters revert to some primitive, canine form of ur-chewing?  Why?  My mind gets filled with the revolting sounds of their teeth slowly sqeeeeeeaking through your poofy plasticine kernels and the slurpy noise their tongue makes as it wetly sidles around their molars, futilely sucking at a bit of popcorn kernel membrane now permanently embedded in their diseased gum. I am shaking now just thinking of it.

I really loathe you, popcorn, and that's saying a lot.  I love almost all foods.   All except you, Brussels sprouts, and licorice.  Ew.  Licorice.  But that's a subject for another day, popcorn.  Let's focus on how much I hate you. You taste like butter and salt--too much salt.  It's always too much salt!   Do not try to change my mind with some sweetened "kettle" corn version, or some crazy fool cracker jacks! 

I do not like you buttered or salted; I do not like you peanutted, caramelled, or malted.  I do not like you in a bag; I do not like you in a can.  I do not like you shoveled into the mouth of a noisy, porcine man.  Stay out of my way, popcorn: I do not joke. I just want to enjoy the film and sip this gallon of Diet Coke.

Fuck off, and take that Redenbacher dweeb with you.

K

Yo, assbutt!

I hate you, five a.m.  You, much like four a.m., are a complete and total cunt.  I loathe and despise you completely--every single minute of you, five a.m., is like poison to me. 

The worst bits of you, though, are the bits between five twenty and five forty.  For this portion of you, I alternate between disturbing dreams that vex and perplex, and frantic, heart-pounding panic and hyperventilation. 

Five twenty and the alarm rings: my chest explodes.  Guh-gung, guh-gung, guh-gung! I am breathing too fast, I can't move, I don't know where I am, and for the love of god what day is it and am I already late for something?

Then, just as soon as it appears, the panic abates and I return to the nightmare in which all my teeth are falling out and I am in my underwear trying to drive a car with no steering wheel while finding derivatives and differentials and directrices and, in some terrifying meta-plane, asking myself why I always dream about math.

Until five-twenty-seven.  When the horrible beeping recommences, and I wake in a panic again, wondering feverishly if I can afford to sleep for another seven minutes and whether I could legitimately  skip a shower today.

I wish I never had to meet you, five a.m.--so filled with the angst of disorientation!  I prefer to see you, if I must, from the other side:  at the end of the night, when I barely notice you as I leave a trail of clothes from the front door to the bed, and my disorientation is the sweet fruit of a long, long evening.  Otherwise, five a.m., please keep to yourself.  I simply can't abide you and your wretched, ignoble ways.  Back off already; I mean it.  I don't get mad, five a.m.; I get stabby.

See you later!  (Much later.  Let's try noon, shall we?)

Katra

Dear Pants,

I realize we've just met, what with my buying you mere days ago and everything, but I think I am falling in love with you.  I hope I haven't freaked you out by saying that, pants. It's okay: don't feel like you have to say it back or anything. You will when you're ready.  I just can't help what I'm feeling--there are so many wonderful things about you, not least of which is the fact that you are the exact same shade of gray as my cat:  her hairs, they do not show up on you, pants!  You are like a miracle!

But, dear gray pants, that is not all.  You are the coziest of soft-yet-sturdy fabrics, delightfully warm, and you've arrived just in time for Freezing Fog Season.  No chilly leg will blight my step when I am wearing you, pants!  No freezing, wet ankle will ruin my afternoon walk, either, for pants, you do not drag in puddles.  You are the perfect length!  You have flouted the clothing industry once and for all, pants, by defying their illogical prescription that all persons should wear a thirty-four-inch inseam.  How ridiculous!  But you and I both know, pants, that a thirty-two-inch inseam is perfect.

Your zipper never gets stuck; your pockets are in just the right place; you cradle my backside like a sleeping baby.  We are perfect for each other, I know already.  You will see this in time. Just stick around and I promise I will do everything in my power to make you as happy as you have made me--even if that involves Martinizing.

Still comparing all other pants to you,

K

Dear Waiter Who Just Stands There and Looks at Us,

I hope you are well.  I am writing from the cozy warmth of my office, where I am enjoying a coffee I purchased and fetched for myself--no waiter brought it to me and then just stood there and stared at me.  No waiter stood there, staring at me, and refused to take my money.  That, friend, is what makes this coffee unique among the many foodstuffs I have consumed outside my apartment in recent weeks. 

You seem to be everywhere, Waiter Who Just Stands There and Looks at Us.  You are at the new Mexican place, trying to convince me to opt for the pricier margarita; you are at the new Caribbean place, explaining the alligator entree.  Is there no fledgling international restaurant at which you will not whore yourself? 

You seem very normal and waiter-like, AT FIRST.  But then, Waiter Who Just Stands There and Looks at Us, you change.  You cross over to the dark side.  You begin making trips to our table just to stand there and look at us; finally, perhaps a full minute later, you mumble something incoherent before lingering a minute more and then sort of shuffling off like one of the un-dead. 

When it is time for us to leave, you ignore the credit card protruding from the receipt folder on the edge of the table--rather, you collect our plates.  You collect our glasses.  You walk by, pausing, standing, and looking.  Yet you refuse to let us pay and leave.  Are you lonely, Waiter Dude?  Are you in love with me? Have you lost the powers of sight and speech?  More importantly, is the curried goat really goat, or is it actually just rump roast?  What the fuck, Waiter Dude?  What. The. Fuck.

No, I do not want to hear about the goddamned specials!

K