my life, quite literally, just this second, figured out how to get good. even though I've said that so many times before. there I stood, ten minutes ago, with a hundred dollar bill on my table that's my desk, sobbing, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, breaking open, saying, "this is what it must feel like, for things to get real, to have your dreams start to come true." and I cried and I cried and then I had to go to the bathroom, which seemed so unpoetic that it upset me, that it was the first thing that happened after this epic moment in my life -- and then I threw open the computer to write it all down.
my dreams have just became tangible, for the first time in my life. that picture of myself in the apartment with the photo studio, the images in my mind I don't know how to get to (but hold onto regardless), all of a sudden, they were down the hall. no longer in some lofty stratosphere shoot-for-the-stars place, but for the first time, in a real place. a thing to work towards. a thing to touch, almost like a coffee cup. an attainable, legitimate, real, concrete dream. with windows I can press against, and views I can see, and ideas... ideas that could turn real. and it's right there. and I'm practically high from it.
I will shit in a bucket to get to this. I will do whatever it takes. I will wear my clothes until they disintegrate, I will not spend a dime, I will eat rice and beans and hot cereal for breakfast that costs me two dollars a week, and only the vegetables that are on sale. because I don't need anything. I don't need anything the way I need this. because it's like I'm feeling what real need is for the first time, not want or desire or boys or shit wrapped up in some other thing so that I can convince myself it's something else -- this is real, and crystal clear, and utterly undeniable.
fuck. it's right fucking there. and I'm not scared. in fact, I can't hardly wait.
so here I am. sitting at my table that's my desk, on the fifth day of february, 2009. thirty-two years old, one hundred and eighty square feet, one cat, riz on the radio. opposite coast. pictures under glass tabletops, a million brilliant visions of faces in the sun from the windows where the magic is going to start to shine through. fake plastic backdrops and people wrapped in tiny lights and real things and real -- real everything. it's like a secret, I don't even want anybody to know about it. except for this letter that will never get read, and a funny slew of stories about how we got here.
and off I go. a bucket in one hand, kristin's hand in the other. camera around my neck, head bursting open with dreams, twenty pounds of potatoes and a thing that's all mine. I don't care who's done it before, or what it means to anybody else. I've already got a sign for the front door in my mind, cross-stitched slang. this is for every lunatic idea I've ever had that I had nowhere to put. it's literally everything.
I can't wait to see what happens next. I'll keep you posted, all crying, all cryptic, all finally unearthed me.
xx
V.
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