I love the Arts and Letters section of a bookstore. I love reading letters written between loved ones, strangers, and people separated by time and space.
I wrote this letter to a dear friend and felt like it would be fun to share. It was written on a typewriter and, as such, is completely unedited and in a stream-of-consciousness style.
So without further ado, here is a special Arts and Letters edition of Bicycle Boy.
Thank you so much for being here.
Dearest A,
I have a stack of letters next to me, all addressed to you, the years have gone on, the moments passed and I never sent them. I look at them now and I think I know why... I was caught in a web of story.
Oh my, I think I need earplugs for this activity. I bought this type-writer from an antique shop on the side of the highway a few months ago. A stupid purchase,
I've been feeling. It is heavy, highly impractical, and I just haven't used It. There is always something else to do, like make dinner, stare at the wall, or look at my phone. But here I am. I hauled this thing over to the window where the last of the day’s sun is now dipping behind the mountain, the last drags of coffee are in my cup. And the click-clack, slam ding of this thing sounds over the soothing soulful melodies and harmonies of Cleo Sol. She sings about loving well, and a kind of juicy relationship to a guy named God.
I don't have a relationship with a guy named God, or any relationship with a guy at all. No Juice. But I think I know who and what she’s talking about. I think my God is god with a lowercase g, maybe nonbinary, and most definitely not even human. I think my god is colour and sound. I think my god is in flavour and the feeling right before laughter, I think my god is in empty spaces and lack lack lack which is actually just pure potential in disguise.
This won’t be the last letter I write you.. but it will be the only one. Until you write back and I write back again and the pigeons of the post carry our words with the wind and that’s that.
What I mean to say is that I won’t edit this or try again tomorrow. I am here and I’ll give you my best.
I told you that I wouldn't know where to begin if I wrote to you. You said just start with how your days are passed.
I woke up at noon today, my t-shirt twisted around me. I laid there for almost an hour, thinking about burnout and something that Gabor Mate said in a YouTube video the night before. What he says makes sense, but I’m also tired of getting advice from the internet. I put the kettle on and prep the little bodum with grinds. Drink water, take my antidepressant, and one little Vitamin D tablet. Sometimes at this point in the morning I’ll put on a song, and move my body while the coffee brews, while the water sinks into my system.
Sit down at the window, cup steaming, and write my List. Ten minutes of gratitude. But not just any kind of gratitude. I say I am thankful for all of the things I actually kind of detest, resent, fear, or deny. I only just started his practice, and it seems like it would feel incredibly negative, or worse, spiritually bypass-y and a kind of ’fake it till you make it’ type deal. But oddly, it works to into these things and acknowledge their existence. I am somehow warming to the idea of surrender through this process. I am somehow learning what’s in my control and where I might need assistance.
After that, if it’s a school day, which 3/4 days of the week it is, I'll pack my lunch (a new thing, again) and walk about 25 minutes up the hi11 to campus. Usually running late, but so is everyone. Take my spot in the back corner by the window. Feel happy to be there. Sweaty, usually thirsty, and excited to work with my hands and use my head.
I'm studying sustainable Craft and Design with a specialty in Textile Design. It is a dream come true, and this finds its way onto my gratitude list in the most genuine way. I even feel the tempo on this typewriter increase as I think about it.
When we started sewing last semester, I was reminded so much of you. I was trying to remember that book you had gotten that was essentially a handbook for all clothing creation and sewing etc. I had no idea that I would end up here. But it feels right and deeply inspired and sometimes magical, even.
Are you making some clothing? What are you crafting? Are you growing something in a pot on the windowsill? Are you baking bread? What are you currently reading?
I remember back in 20I5 you were reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. You were always ahead of the times, or right on time. I probably thought I knew back then what makes that bird song... but I really had no idea, looking back. I have learned that the cage can take surprising shapes, and its bars can resemble loving arms, stability, structure... the cell can feel like home. And that song, its melodies ranging from painfully sweet to stark and sad. A hollow screech. It can be a low hum of something hopeful. A seed beneath the surface. Agitated, awake, ready but forced to wait.
Tell me about Melbourne and the last 6 homes over the 3 years it’s been since we lived across the paddock from each other. It always seemed like you might end up in that city. Its sound and colour and coffee and beating heart. The team you love and the space to make art and meet people and practice any number of things.Are you happy there? Is your heart in more than one place? Have you fallen in love? Out of it? Which ties keep you tethered? Which leave you un-ravelled?
I think of you whenever I sit on top of someone's countertop and forget to help with dinner because we are so deep in conversation. I think of you when I drink beet juice or my hands have been in the dirt. I think of you when I return to the Night Beds album Country Sleep. Borrowed Time and driving those country roads at sundown. Sipping wine on your living room floor, watching the animals. Sipping cider at the pub... you flirting with the guy just here visiting family and me telling the bartender that he needs to watch a documentary that he has no interest in. I think of you when I question the line between romantic and platonic love. When I lift up the threads of true intimacy in my life. Everyone in town thought we were together... maybe we were. Just not in the ways that meant something quantifiable and measurable to everyone else.
Have you found love like this since? Just two souls… swimming... year after year.
Two souls sharing a bond over music and books and art and feminist thought and body positivity and sex and food and wine and going down to the junkyard and bringing garbage home and throwing love at it. Have you found traces of that kind of love? I truly hope so. Tell me about it all. The almosts, the everythings, the delusions. the projections, the return to your own home of love
every single time.
And please please please, tell me all about the plans for your physical home. The nest you are weaving all around you. The restoration, the removal. The essence of the space. How do you want to feel there? Would you actually like me to live there with you? Because I am truly considering it.
I have been dreaming of home. I have no idea where it is, but I know what it feels like. I know there will be a dog in the yard and my garden will be my chapel of love and I'll play piano and write with fervour and clarity there. It will be clean yet colourful and full of creation. I'll do my best to keep the channel clear. To let love speak and my heart listen better. Maybe it will be with you, us sat on the 70s carpet, speaking in dreams. Or maybe on the island where I feel found among the faces and the land is like a magnet. To wonder fills me with gratitude and simple peace.
Thank you for letting all these letters come at once. I promise the next one won’t be so far away...
All my love,
Mo.
The List!
a segment for sensory exploration
5 things I’m looking at:
Maja, demonstrating how to drape fabric on a mannequin and create shapes in clothing and otherwise … it was a Bob Ross experience; incredibly relaxing and seemingly magical
the collection of deadstock and scrap fabric and material we have been given to create our next assignment. raw wool, old uniforms, curtains, and much much more.
my phone, much less than usual… not waiting for a text or email from anyone.
my hair, in the mirror. When did it finally start to grow, and why?
a collection of mended objects, today. My whole cohort, about forty of us in Craft and Design, shared one object we have been mending over the last few weeks. It was so lovely.
4 things I’m feeling:
a welcome yet strange lack of stress, even though I move out of my place in one week.
the warmth of wood on my back and heels, as I lay on the hot cedar, my legs up against the sauna walls… sooo nice omg.
hopeful, having just applied for a job that I think would be a small miracle.
my limbs trying to steady themselves on top of the sheets of ice that currently cover this town.
3 things I’m listening to:
looking for new music, tell me sweet Bicycle Boys, what has been catching your ear?
the aforementioned Cleo Sol
Make Miracles in Forty Days audiobook by Melody Beattie… kinda hate that name, kinda love it….
2 things I’ve been smelling:
a deep earthy scent, coming from the piles of raw wool.
a steaming cup of instant coffee. Nescafe Gold.
1 thing I’ve been tasting:
My New Year’s ‘resolution’ was to not waste any food in my fridge. Given this, I’ve been tasting a few strange and questionably sour notes…
Songs in the Voiceover:
Intro: Station to Station - Mega Bog
Transition: American Coffee - Jenny Hval
Outro: Sad Boy - Francis Blume
Click clack click clack goes her fingies on her type writer. Thank you for sharing a piece of your life with us 🙏
❤️❤️❤️