Love Notes / Notes on Love

(LOVE) NOTES THAT I WILL NEVER SEND TO PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW, #1

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To: Dean Young
From: Rachel Harkai
Re: Your latest book

Dean Young, I love you. I love the way that you love rabbits and clams and tell them so as if they might hear you and never think differently of it. You remind me so much of Frank O. I must have fallen in love with your poetry in the first place for the same reason I fall for most anything - it reminds me that the world doesn’t make much sense but boy, if it isn’t beautiful when a few of its pieces fall together. And maybe once you feel that and you say it, there just isn’t much more that can be done. Maybe it is only because I love your poetry so much that, as with anything I fall for, I want it to change something. Perhaps itself. Have I set my expectations too high? Probably.

But only one word lingered after I finished Embryoyo - a word that I really wish was not a word at all: underwhelmed. I’m sorry, Dean. I’m sure you worked damn hard on it. Is this the part where we stage a vicious break-up to meet everyone’s expectations? In explanation of my disappointment, I could point to a bit too much heavy-handed alliteration or to what seems to have snowballed into a slew of kitschy nonsequiters, but actually, I sort of liked those parts too. I think you explained it best when you wrote about watching Jawbreakers change color on the wharf in Clam Ode: “What does this have to do with clams? / A feeling.”

Love,

Rachel
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To: Ryan Gosling
From: Rachel Harkai
Re: Crack?

Dear Ryan,

You are so hot in Half Nelson I hardly know what to do with myself! I know this has something to do with the v-neck t-shirts and those sunglasses, but I am perturbed in that I suspect it might have something to do with the crack addiction also. What’s more, I was a little unsettled at what felt like my awkward thirteen-year old self finding solace in your ability to relate well to adolescent girls. I have not yet finished formulating an opinion on how this and the crack relate to your hotness, but keep up the good work!

Love,

Rachel
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Speaking of love, I haven’t yet offered an opinion about the Eames’ shorts screened downstairs last week. For the record, I am completely in love with the Charles and Ray Eames. These films were beautiful! Have you seen the one about tops? I was MOVED by the images of the spinning tops. And Charles’ lecture on the “New Covetables” . . . wool, wood, chalk. . . it’s enough to break your heart.

But can somebody give me the lowdown on creative partnerships? How does that happen? The two of them were so driven and so intelligent and SO in love. They were unstoppable. Perhaps it is the sort of thing that can only come with age. You can’t sit side-by-side if you can’t sit still at all, right? But Charles and Ray, like Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall, Joan Didion and John Dunne, even Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman . . . somehow they figured it out.  

Also to be added to my list of loves: Dolly Fucking Parton. How have I lived this long without her? Thanks to Derya for sharing her love of all things Dolly, including some great music and Dolly, her autobiography. I am pretty sure that Dolly is a lesbian, but who really knows?

I’m still reading through the Solnit book but also picked up Charles Baxter’s Feast of Love and Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives from the Public Library, which is outstanding, by the way. I’ve been Listening to Elizabeth Cotten and Bessie Smith. In other news, I now own a Swiffer. That’s right, I said it. SWIFFER. Who thought something with such a stupid name could be so useful?