Holidays

Dear dear,

These were the holidays.

Such is a banal, limp sentence, an obviousness that would knowingly ignite even the most unaware moth. Yet it is blindingly true. These were the holidays. These were the gasps of us among the giving dishes, the bony fish, the dogs that do not feel like the dogs we have come to know, the cats who could kill a man but ask for bread instead, those tame mornings where our parents are sitting idle, waiting, almost for us to rise, their sons, the beds which no longer hold our dreams, our dreams which no longer reside in our beds, walls littered with scattered thoughts that we only seldom see and repeat the ancient language of what we will be when we will be be, holidays of friends who are no longer such, holidays of family who are the same, holidays where there are no aspect of the holiday for there is that reworking of the surface that needs to be done, the scaffolding of ourselves that is found in busyness and boredom, happiness and freedom, thousands of tribulations quieted, disgusts, disappointments, discussions on what must happen to ensure that things are happening, light, less repetitive even if the words are used similarly and the mouths who said it are similarly said and we are we are we, a common theme shared in each letter, a thing becoming nothing, a nothing becoming something no more than a banal, limp sentence that can hold a moth, ruin a cloth, clean a house that is empty after the holidays.

These were them, dear. In them, we were finally joyous and potentiated. After a long great atrophy, there was stasis in the mousetrap and the lamp. No bug flew. No mild Decembers maddened the pupas found in our armpits like leftover stench or, perhaps, sweat-to-be.

What I’m whistling insipidly, dear, is that this holiday we have found the independent heart slashed against all the carcasses of Christmas, the hearts that mumble that they will weep to a dark coming coldly that it too must swim in. We have managed to realize our talk, our type. It was simple. Glue the blood. Cuff the arm. Chop the fingers. Lack the oxygen. Then, become. Be as the moth is before it was a ground, before it looks down on the snowy larva and remembers.

Warmly, what has happened is that creeping alongside the sense that our life is happening elsewhere, that it is in the hands of someone else, and that we may not become part of the stuffed, struggling it, we have finally worked ourselves out.

For some, this takes a lifetime. For us, it takes lively work, love, and the touching pleasure of art.

Our own is no good, of course. I cannot write. You barely do more than learn in steady huffs. But again, this is what we have realized: there is that joy to grab at despite everything. There is life that can gush if we ourselves are prepared to drown.

We are coming to that buoyancy, to that same moth’s flight under distant stars. How attractive it is to be illuminated and painfully experience the world again. How lucky it will be when, after all this that goes on with your upcoming goals, you recall that these were the holidays, and that it was enough. It was all they were.

Love,
Kacper