My Dearest T —

(news reel)

I started working out again.

I missed boxing.

(My bones felt like rods wrapped in rubber bands and rope then.)

Feeling that strong felt good.

I can’t jump rope (shin splints) but I row instead.

I hated sports as a kid.

(go figure)

Writers are fighters, though.

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(short)

I love my new job.

Especially the writers.

(they are insane)

Imagine a writers’ room at any film or television studio.

(yeah)

Whatever they think, they say — unfiltered, unselfconscious, unhesitatingly.

(Puns, analogies, ironies, metaphors, similes, jokes, references — obscenity.)

I laugh all day long.

I belong.

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(feature presentation)

I thought I would try to write something light this time.

(I can’t.)

So then I thought, why don’t I share with you the second most valuable thing I’ve learned.

I don’t remember who suggested it but in college I joined a pottery studio.

For some reason, my girlfriend who came with me and I would always go at night.

We would walk — in winter, in Cambridge, Massachusetts — 

from the North Quad…

through Harvard Yard…

past the River Houses…

across the bridge and over the river…

along the Business School, and then…

into the warehouse-like building that housed the studio.

I don’t know which I loved more — the class or the walk.

At that season and hour, it was an entirely black and white world:

The black of the sky and the water and the white of the snow and the streetlamps.

We snuggled as we went.

The teacher looked like a Mother from a 19th century religious order.

(I never saw her without her beige smock.)

I loved everything about it — the smell, the feel, the quiet.

I don’t know why I quit.

To make a pot you use a wheel. It’s called throwing.

Set the clay. The wheel spins. You shape it.

It can go haywire but —

Keep a steady hand and the clay will go where you want it to.

(Like a rock in a river, ushering the water, it goes where it must.)

I won’t over explain but —

It’s not, stay true to your dreams; it is, you can shape your life.

We are both clay and hand.

This made me.

(if anything did)

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(epilogue)

I’ll visit Boston soon.

I haven’t in years.

I wonder, will it feel familiar, foreign, or freaky?

I had the best and worst times of my life there.

Perhaps it will feel new.

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(bonus material)

I go to this coffee shop.

The other day I saw an elderly couple, mid 70s, there.

They stood at the bar with the cream and sugar.

He carefully added cream to his wife’s coffee.

She stood and waited patiently beside him.

She could have done it herself but —

He wanted to do it for her and she wanted him to.

He gave his love and she received his love.

They positively glowed.

It didn’t then but writing about it now made me teary.

—I’ll have what they’re having…

— All my love (plus cream and sugar), D

P.S.

I think you picked the right career.

Until you feel it, fake it.

— or —

Fake it to feel it.

P.P.S.

As a kid, I felt free, unmoored.

This evening, I watched the yellow-gold light climb the wall.

Nothing else mattered.

Nothing else existed.

Finally it disappeared.

I knew then, I was fine.

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(teaser)

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