Dear Saretta, 

How has your summer been ? 

Seems like you have been doing a great deal of traveling.

So curious to hear about where you have been & what you have done. 

I have spent most of the summer in a very still way while my emotional life underwent an excavation. 

I am surviving. (FRIENDSHIP). I am reminded. Grateful. 

######

 

Dear Saretta, 

At the beginning of the summer, I upgraded my phone but because I never really tended well

to my contacts. Many of them did not transfer. 

So many numbers without any names. 

Since things happened, there are people, kind people, who send me notes.

Loving notes: support & thoughts. 

You are in my thoughts they say. 

I have no idea who is sending me these notes.

At this point, it doesn't feel right to ask. 

I have to admit there is something about the mystery I like. 

It makes me believe in things that feel naive to name. 

#########

 

Dear Saretta, 

Dreaming is hard. 

All the narratives that arrive to my subconscious end with the dissolution of a foundation. 

One, we are packing the car in the middle of the night for a trip. I am nervous to be doing this 

so late but I am with love so I push my fear down. 

Despite this, a pack of police cars surround us into question. They take everyone away and leave me in the back seat alone. 

Crouching the back seat, my mouth frosts up the glass. My heart is pounding, always pounding. 

I wake. 

I am walking into a building that a man follows me into. 

He simultaneously tries to force feed me his cell phone while demanding that I tell him my phone number.

I wake. 

########

 

Dear Saretta, 

I am over socializing to exhaust myself. 

I saw Camissa play a pipe organ. 

Met a woman named Bliss. 

And went to the beach with Stephen for their birthday. 

They wore a blond wig & then I went dancing.

Stephen never showed up but I met up with others. 

My friend Charles, who I have not seen for several years wrote me on Facebook this morning.

"Cat, its time to make another movie." 

 

To: Catherine Tyc
shortdate: Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 3:39 PM
Subject: Now here you go again / you say you want your freedom …
Yellow arrow: Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.

Cat,

The day after reading your letter, I followed directions to an address sent to me from TSE, who asked me to meet with him and friends. I showed up and realized it was Jupiter (!), and there was Stephen, all blond and glorious and foul-mouthed and they said “I thought you were going to be out of town?” But I’d come home a day early.  

In Florida this summer I developed a fear of strangers. Of being alone with them & I'm thinking about this now because a guy from this building’s management company just knocked on my door and I spoke to him through it instead of opening up. He sounded agitated, but in my head at that moment, it was the only logical course of action. This makes me angry, even though I send off a check every month to preserve my right to lock a door. It’s increasingly unclear what I am protecting, and for whom.

My lover said to me the other day, quoting someone, “whenever you’re alone and encounter a demon, just remember that the demon is you.”

And I said: the demon can still rip you apart.

and she was like “yeah, I guess you really have to buy into the metaphor.”

I’m not Buddhist, but I get it and agree. Still though, everywhere I look there is a sign telling me that I am somebody. It’s hard. As you say about your dreams in your head. Narratives resulting in dissolution.

This summer I was by myself a lot. I tried to practice listening slowly, which I’ve found hard to do the past year. I feel (internally and externally) compelled to speak. The feeling was more acute when I was present on social media. Silence somehow seemed synonymous with a lack of engagement. So, yes, online (which is another story), but also in face-to-face interactions, I’ve felt that an answer—or at least some babbling—was required immediately. Once I spoke with Anna about this. Being frustrated by the terms of certain conversations but feeling that I couldn’t protest because I didn’t have anything better to say. She was like, “Sometimes the best thing is for everyone to just be quiet.”

I’ve been trying to maintain quiet back at home, to take time with what has already been said before something new is put into the air. And to, I hope, cultivate time/space for different kinds of responses (perhaps less direct or concrete) to take shape. Which is also to say that I appreciate your letter. Your speaking from a set of circumstances rather than about them. Your taking days more than you thought you might.

Happy to see you tomorrow,

Saretta

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dsh9M6qnhE&sns=em

Sent from my iPhone