Note the steel capped boots.

Why so quiet Liz? Well, I’ve only got one outstanding object to write a love letter to… and I’ve roped in the song writing skills of fellow write-a-thon participant Kelly Lagor to help me with that one (I believe my words were something like “Yaaaaaargh! Help me Kelly!”). That one might take a little while, might take us a little bit beyond the write-a-thon period so that we can make it rock (sorry Les R Evil).

I’m waiting from replies from a few mighty sponsors, so there’s a good chance a few more love letters will be written and posted up here over the next few months. If you want to pick an object for me to write a love letter to, but haven’t sponsored me yet, you have a day or so to get your $20 in.

Thank you everyone for sponsoring me. I’m truly astonished by how long that roll of honor on the side has gotten. Every time I get a donation I kind of stare at the screen for a while in a dumbfounded state with a puzzled, yet happy, smile on my face. This write-a-thon/creative project has been a crazy trip and I’m excited by all the ways I’ve challenged myself.

I’m tempted to find a way for this project to go on, I’m not sure. Life is a series of experiments – one building on the other. If you have some ideas about what I should do next I’d love your thoughts in the comments or drop me a line at liz@lizargall.com

Dear Ellaroo,

An ellaroo in action

We have never met, but I love you for what you give to my dear friend. My friend is a mother now. Her life is smaller and richer and bigger and she has what she has always wanted and fought for with more grace and grit than any other I know. She’s one of the bravest people I know.

Her life is smaller now and each freedom more precious as she walks steady into the mouth of this consuming path. She is woven into community that loves her, but there is much of this adventure that is just her in the whole wide world. We are not always there for her. But you are. You let my dear friend climb mountains, her little one snuggled safe against her chest. You cradle her baby, a baby I have never held but you joyously keep safe through adventure after adventure.

I imagine you blue like the ocean, green as the forest, a rainbow of hugs as my dear one holds her baby tight.

Thank you for helping her have adventures. To walk boldly through, bush, brush and in to town. That these adventures increase the bond between mother and her small person. That to go out into the world will not create distance but connection, heart beat to heart beat. As she climbs that mountain her heart pounds with a rhythm that pulses through her child. You are there to hold, you show that nestling and walking boldly are not adversaries, they are companions on this adventure of passing life from one generation to the next.

Thank you Ellaroo, a traveling cradle of adventure, hugs and capability.

Love

Liz

Lone Sockly Love

Lone sock, whose match was lost long ago and still it lingers in my drawer.

Lone sock, I love you. What can I do to show you how true my dedication is? How can I show you that I will never leave you? That I will never throw you away

How to let your sock know you still love it even though it has lost its partner and is now close to useless as it sits in your sock drawer collecting dust in seven easy steps. 

1. Write it a short note on beautiful parchment paper covered in glitter. The note doesn’t need to be long, sometimes shorter is better. Try something simple, like “Thinking of you, loving you always.” Spray your note with some of your favorite perfume and place it in your Lone Sock’s toe.

2. Try pairing your Lone Sock with other socks, possibly breaking up other pairs. Generally this doesn’t work in the long term, because the texture and thickness will be to different. Even though it doesn’t often work your sock will appreciate you trying and when it does work you have a fashion statement that rivals Punky Brewster.

Note: this should be done with care or you might generate further difficulties. If you pair your Lone Sock with a clearly inferior sock your Lone Sock’s feelings might be hurt and it might feel like you see it as a lesser object. If you pair your Lone Sock with a high quality sock you have two risks 1) your Lone Sock might develop feelings of inadequacy (you might even start to see your Lone Sock as a lesser sock) and 2) you might then get an uneven wear pattern on your other high quality sock and might eventually create a second Lone Sock scenario.

3. Create a special drawer or box just for your Lone Sock and redecorate it from time to time. Dried rose petals or love hearts cut out of Versace dresses can make a nice touch.

4. When you’re short of cleaning rags do not consider your Lone Sock for a moment. Pick a pair of socks that are wearing thin and you never liked it anyway. The sign of devotion that you would rather use a functional pair of socks than your lone beauty to clean up your chinchilla’s vomit will be appreciated. Actions are often more meaningful than words.

5. Some people recommend a sock puppet transformation, but this can be deeply traumatic and permanently scarring for your sock. You might think this way you can spend more quality time with your sock, but this is often a selfish form of love. If you are truly committed to your Lone Sock and love the sock for what it is you should not need to transform your sock to maintain a meaningful relationship with it.

Except for very rare exceptions socks want to be on feet. Socks feel uncomfortable being on hands for an extended period. Your Lone Sock might seem like it is ok with becoming a sock puppet, but you must remember that the dynamics of power are not equal and your Lone Sock might just be going along with your sock puppet wishes because it fears it might be thrown out or you might love it less. These dynamics make honesty around puppet transformations a fraught and difficult subject for your sock. If you truly believe that your sock wants to become a sock puppet it’s a good idea to make sure the Lone Sock has another support entity that your Lone Sock trusts that they can talk through their sock puppet decision with. Becoming a sock puppet is a substantial, life-changing decision for any item of footwear. Make it clear that your Lone Sock does not need to become a sock puppet to feel safe and loved.

6. Regardless of usage launder your Lone Sock at least once a year. This will refresh your Lone Sock and every sock likes to get out and about for a quick tumble.

7. When you’re throwing out old clothes make sure you pick up your Lone Sock early. Hold it against your cheek and purr softly, “Don’t worry, I could never throw YOU out.” Socks like purring. They do not like cat claws.

What to do if you rediscover your Lone Sock’s partner:

This can be a time of great rejoicing and celebration. But it is useful to be prepared, sometimes this can be bitter sweet reunion. Especially if a long period of time has passed or if you have a large number of almost similar socks. You might have uneven wear that makes what should be a rejoining a tragic mismatchery of what should be sole partners. At other times dust accretions, small animals or children may have caused discoloration or textural shifts. Even if to your eye the re-united socks no longer match it is important to conjoin them with a simple fold and wear them as soon as possible. You might miss the vivid purity of the lone sock cluttering up your sock drawer, but in time you will come to accept your Lone Sock’s re-pairing and be happy that once again it may clothe your feet.

Even if the reunion is joyous you must also be prepared for your Lone Sock to age at a faster rate once it has been re-paired. Lone Socks can last for decades without the wear and tear of shoes, meaty flesh, sweat and gravity. You might be shocked at how quickly your Lone Sock looses some of its luster. Just remind yourself that this is part of the natural aging process. You might prefer your sock to reign eternal as sock drawer padding, but your sock will be happier with a life fully lived that is vibrant, vital and aromatic.

Conclusion

By following these simple steps you should be able to have a long, happy and fulfilling relationship with your Lone Sock.

Next week we will cover the unlikely, but possible, scenario of having two socks missing their partner at the same time!!!

I have not yet read Jim’s book, although my parents were at the Australian Embassy in Washington in the late 70s and I’m quite curious to explore Jim’s Washington (purchasable on Amazon).

So here is my love letter to a delicious and mysterious thing. An unread book. Go to and explore something new and outside your normal reading habits today!

It is a performance poem, so it will probably work better spoken out loud with a variety of tempos, extreme enthusiasm and hand flailing.

Love letter to Corruptions: a Novel of  of Washington

Book

BOOOOOOOOOK!

Book

Reddit reddit reddit reddit

Haven’t read it

Oooooooh….

Once upon a time in a book I read the words:

“You have so many books, have your read them all?”

“No, what’s the point in that?”

A house of books where all are read is a sad decay

A chainlink fence, a dog locked in the laundry for life

The end of a life and a steady regurgitation.

Cud chewed brings fresh digestion, fresh insight

But even the cow pauses in its contemplative upchuck to find fresh pasture.

Book.

Booooooook!

Words, in a book

With a structure or a struggle

Thought, theme, reason and unreason.

Book to hold and touch and taste

Book unread, spine uncreased

Virginal on the shelf next to a battered second hand Kafka, an oversized Bizzarro World and an upside down copy of Tender Morsels

Washington book

Book about a place I have seen through windows

Always windows but never touching

Windows opening up on people and places

Revealing, concealing to desecrate and celebrate

As sacred and profane weave their giddy dance of illumination.

Book

Boooook, unread book, unfamiliar author

What will you do to me book?

Upset me? Depress me? Invigorate? Stimulate? Ejaculate like I’m Rachel Bloom reading Bradbury?

Will my reading be obsessional, professional, cool collected, sad rejected, whirring past as an hour becomes a minute as I chase the page with words tumbling fumbling through fingers into brain in the fire of an afternoon gone and a book done? Will it chew so dense I’ll need a nap in the sun after five pages so filling I can’t move, crawling my way through, each word a meal?

Each page a day at the gym, synapses sore from lifting new ideas, muscles torn down to rebuild the familiar made weird from the weight of new thought as dense as time at the DMV with a baby crying.

Who will I be, what will I become, will I be changed?

All I want from a book is to fall in love and be transformed.

That’s all I want from the sweat of your brow to my eyeball scrawling your words.

All I want is to crawl inside your head and sup all that is to be supped

transformed in and out and see the world afresh.

Book of windows, of unread worlds

What will you give me when I give you my mind?

Dear Love Letter I could never finish,

You were so fine. The sky wept with the joy of it, that incandescent love that was as fierce as the storm and as gentle as starfall. You spoke of a better tomorrow. You spoke of love, a love that does not diminish or die, but burns like coals in the heart. A fireplace at wintertime, a sheen of sweat on my brow in summer.

You spoke of all things possible and impossible. You declared yourself, open to the world with every scratch every scar, every wound fresh and bright and you said, I am, this is me and I will love. You made your declaration to the world, you cannot tear my love, my heart, my ability to feel from me. I will feel and there is nothing you can do to take away my tears.

You, dearest love letter I could never finish, a string of words across the page, better than I am, better than I ever will be. You spoke of things that I am not equal to, but you put them there, so that I must live up to them, even though flesh is weak and I am frail. A well intentioned fool who thinks too much and not nearly enough.

Oh love letter, you loved him so much. We loved him so much. You the evidence still there after all these years. In my self conscious maturity I pretend that that love was an illusion, that I never cared as much as I did. That love hurt like a wound and a madness. That love was glorious and in it I found new beauty, grace and ugliness.

Desire is not always pretty. Sleepless nights and love lorn solitude at 4am are not always gracious. You, love letter, were a way to give measure to that madness. Words flowing through my pen into the page and in those moments when I wrote you I was not alone. I was connected by a filament so strong, so physical, so real that it held off the baying wolves of isolation. You gave me safe harbour when it felt real as flesh that I would always alone, raw and ugly in a chafing suit of human skin.

At night, writing you, I was my better self. And come the clear eyes of dawn I was my better self in my restraint. To complete these letters and send them would be the worst kind of cruelty in a love never to be requited and rightly so. Some things are best in their incompleteness. Better to grace the words with flame than a postage stamp. Some words are significant in their making and not in their reading.

You were the first of many letters not sent. Of love burning too hot, or rage too combustable. A passionate soul is not always wise and not always kind. Some letters have been completed and sent that should not have been, and when I pause to remember, regret pours over my head like a jug of water. Some letters have been consumed by flames and taken such bitterness with them that I can fly anew and am filled with fresh passion. Some, like you, live on in a house of cardboard, forever to remind me of what was when the world is so different now. For a time I was tempted to burn you, but I have grown to love that wisp of a girl I once was.

My alien self and your alien self touch, my hands bend your pages as a new day pulls itself into the sky. Dear one, once again I must leave you, I have fresh correspondence to attend to.

I will remember you always as the pen pulls me on.

I’d been umming and ahing over what to do for Ken’s challenge “A love letter to printed assembly instructions” for quite some time. Then inspiration for this struck me, almost physically, while I was being served coffee at Inner Chapters and wishing I had more time to work on comics.

Fortunately Kristina at IC is a champion and I was able to shout “Quick bring me plain printer paper and a pencil”… shortly followed by “And an eraser!” and “And ink! A finer tip than that if you please!” (and that is why it is good to be a regular who is nice)

I scribbled away like a demon for more than two hours straight and this is what emerged! There are certain clues (including the preponderance of words) that indicate I am a writer of comics, not normally a drawer of them.

The Darned Sock Song

Process:

Some of you might be familiar with the tune, I must confess I filked one of my own songs. It was so much fun to play with my own stuff in a new way.

I had a lot of technical issues recording this beasty. I wanted to record this one at home and I don’t own a microphone stand. I kept blowing out the mic, or being inaudible. I tried to  creating some frankenstein song stitched out of the good bits of different takes… it almost worked, but the mic blowouts were still terrible regardless of filters. My frankensong attempt did help me understand the basics of Audacity (I like that software, once I grocked you have to press stop to make stuff happen. I actually had to read a few instructions rather than dive right in!).

I decided discard my frankensong and this morning I sat down to record again. After a lot of trial and error I finally got it right in one take. No editing required, no filters applied.

The secret? Changing the way I sang so the microphone could deal with it! If the mic was on a stand I could have moved my body away to protect the mic, but when you’re cradling a mic between your knees while strumming guitar you have fewer options. Limitations certainly make you think about different techniques!

Now on to fresh words!

Limerick for a stone

by William Alexander

There once was a very small stone.

Out over a pond it was thrown.

It felt freedom and glee

To skip through gravity

And learn physics it never had known.

ThingFinder.com

Name: BIF

Build: Chunky yet streamlined. Mobile, functional, spacious and accessible. Gross tonnage: 12689.

Active community oriented public utility seeks entity of substance. Seeking friendship, adventure or romance.

Name: SSN

Build: Tall with a slender waist. Bulbous yet charming head. Static tourist location (605.0 ft).

Classic Futuristic public entity seeks robust entity who is prepared to look beyond their city block. No buses or tourist coaches please.

Dear SSN

I saw your message in a bottle while checking my own entry. You sound intriguing and I’d love to get to know you better. My schedule sends me back and forth all the time, but lets chat!

- Bainbridge Island Ferry.

Dear BIF

Thank you for your message. I must confess your entry intrigued me, but sadly I’m a stationary object. My experience has been that relationships between mobile objects and static objects just do not work out. I meant that’s why my profile says no coaches or buses, they try to pick me up all the time and I’m just not interested in being one of their many rest stops. I’m not saying you’re like them but, there’s enough similarity it makes me uncomfortable.

The Washington Monument is a very friendly static object that sees a lot of “movers”, but I’m just not that kind of tourist location.

Regards

Seattle Space Needle

Dear SSN

Thank you for your reply. I know what you mean about coaches and buses and I want you to know I’m not like them. Some of those coaches drive me crazy! I hate it when think they’re so smooth and have got all the routes worked out. I can understand if you feel burned by us movers, but we’re not all the same. I have a lot more mass than those things and you know, size does make a difference.

I should let you know I’ve admired you from afar for a long time. There’s even a photo of you on the passenger deck on my port side. I was surprised to see a monument of your stature on a dating site.

I know you probably get this a lot, but I want you to know I think you’re incredible. You are so evocative of a future where jetpacks are real. A time when we’ve all learned to co-exist with our ecology and brought an end to war. Where no one hungers because we have transporters, replicators and are able to transmit our love of human kind to each other through psychically charged headbands.

Anyway, enough making a fool of myself. I might be mobile, but I can be as steady as a rock. I have a steady route and I know what it’s like to have a lot of visitors. I know this great little Italian place near the water if you want to give it a try.

Yours

Bainbridge Island Ferry

Dear BIF,

Thanks for your sweet words. It’s very kind of you to associate me with a magical future filled with possibility. I was refurbished in 1999, but I was built in 1961. That’s pretty young by monument standards, but makes me feel quite old when compared to your date of manufacture. I think that’s one of the problems between movers and statics like me. You… you will probably live a firefly life. They’ll probably keep renovating my crusty behind until an earthquake shakes me down, and even then they might rebuild me as some kind of symbol. Humans are like that. My self will shift as they add resteraunts and remove them and constantly twiddle with my insides. My self will shift but I will just keep going and going, not as monument of what I do, but just because I have existed for an extended period and I am part of the skyline.

I want you to know I’m not a size-ist. I dated a cell phone (a gorgeous imported Nokia who was having a few issues adapting to America). I’ve dated a Boeing 747 for a while. It just didn’t work out – I should probably change my profile. Movers can be lovely and charming and you clearly are all these things, but I’m just not up for that kind of heartbreak. I don’t know why I registered for this site in the first place, maybe I’ll take down my whole profile.

Thanks you for your interest, but please don’t ask me again.

Seattle Space Needle.

Dear SSN,

I’m really sorry if me writing to you made you feel uncomfortable about having a profile online. This is just a quick message to say I won’t hassle you and I totally respect your decisions…. Ah fuckit, how can you respectfully say you’re not going to reply and you’re not shitty about it?

<- Message deleted unsent ->

Hi SSN,

<- Message deleted unsent ->

Heya SSN, don’t worry, no problemo!

<-Message deleted unsent ->

Dear Biff,

Thanks for being the only non arsehole on this whole crazy site. I’ve taken down my profile. And thank you for respecting my wishes for no more contact. I still don’t want contact, but thanks. Here’s my new secret profile, but don’t contact me, it’s…what am I saying?

<- Message deleted unsent->

Dear Biff,

Tourist season has been rough this year. I don’t know if it’s the weather or the general socio-economic context. I haven’t felt like an object of delight. I’ve just been feeling like a milked for profit object. I don’t feel like I’m anything like a dream of the future. Your words have been more of a comfort than you can know. It’s nice to have words that are nice and sincere in a world of glossy brochures.

I feel so empty of meaning right now. It’s hard when all you have are your looks. At least you have a practical function.

I’m sure I’ll get over it – I’m just tired and grumpy. I’ll miss the blue skies of summer, but I’m really looking forward to winter this year. The nights are long and Seattle at night is so beautiful. I love all the glowing dots of light and it will make it easier for me to spot you as you travel across the water, like a string of glowing pearls gliding through the water. I have your route memorized, I know when to look for you. I see how you treat the other seacraft. My hearing is very delicate and when I listen, when I really listen I can pick the sounds of your engine above the roar of the city, the tugboats and tankers.

When tourists wander through me sometimes they talk about you, how comfortable you are. How expertly you take them to the beautiful island and back again. When they buy postcards or plunder souvenirs from me I like to imagine they’ll be going to you next. I like to think that. Sometimes I imagine what it’s like to be a ferry. I imagine moving through that water that I look at so much, serving a practical function, being so deeply part of people’s pleasure and practical daily living. I’m just a shonky monument slapped together in under a year for the purposes of separating tourists from their money. Real monuments take decades, sometimes centuries to be built. I’m just some neo-monument wanna-be that serves no real function.

I wish I were you, I wish I were worthy of you, but I’m not. I hope you find someone more meaningful than some empty headed representation of a dream that never was.

This is just to say thank you for your words and I hope you’ve found someone wonderful.

-Needles

<-Message deleted unsent->

Dear Biff,

I’ve been thinking about your offer. I don’t know if you’re free or anything, but if you still want to meet up at that little Italian place I’d love to.

Best

SSN

This Girl is Made for Boots

Boots of mine, I love you. Even when you make my feet stinky.

Boots of mine, I love you. Even if your toes are chipped and you are so heavy that I can jump two inches higher when I am freed of you.

Boots of mine, when I close my eyes I can imagine you with greater clarity than my own face, even though I have not seen you for two years and counting.

I wanted you when I was seven. Grubby kid, walking to school in bare feet jumping from dry cowpat to dry cowpat on the rocky ground. Imagining that my life was writ in books. I, the perfect study of an urchin, shoelaces clumsily tied to hang sneakers around my neck.

In this land both loving and hard we had two donkeys. And I loved them. They were beautiful, part of our people, somewhat elusive and mysterious. Goats were better friends, easygoing, uncomplicated yet fiercely intelligent. Our mad saluki dog was loving, impatient and sensitive. Roxy was a hound of effortless grace and wildness, the desert incarnate.

Our donkeys were shy, powerful and had a potential to be anything. More than that they were new and hilarious to feed bananas to. They had little patience with humans and to hold the attention of a Donkey was a prize sought and difficult for a clumsy child.

I rejoiced in any attention the donkeys gave me. This rejoicing came with pain when they leaned their shoulder against mine and slowly squelched their hoof down on my bare feet. I did not want to flinch away. I wanted to be strong and overcoming pain was something that made you strong… besides the shoulder leaning companionship of a donkey was a rare prize and I did not want to lose the moment just because I was weak. Stalwart or not a donkey squishing a child’s foot on sharp ground could hurt a great deal.

And that was the moment I decided that there was a second kind of strength I wanted. I wanted armor strength where it wasn’t a matter of rising above pain, but a matter of invulnerability and that was when I decided I must have you.

I asked for you, again and again, mighty steel-capped boots, protector of feet. I asked for you at 8. I asked for you at 12. I asked for you at 14, and although by then I had hardened leather workboots (and they were good boots) they were not you. Although my elastic sided leather workboots were not you I took this apprenticeship seriously. Here was a chance to prove my devotion and the singular love a true owner of working boots must have. These were not boots for show, these were boots for hard yakka, for second skin, to boldly go where other feet dared not.

I wore my hardened boots everywhere. I wore them when the soles split in three places. I only sought a new pair when winter came to the stables I volunteered at and liquid manure flooded my socks with every step. I had worn those boots long, I had worn them true, and surely, surely I was worthy of steel capped boots now.

It was not to be. A twin of my leather hardened boots, but of a darker hue, replaced my cracked and weary shoes. Rather frustratingly these elastic sided boots were more suited to my needs, for truth be told when riding horses steel capped boots are not what you need… not even when mucking out the stable of a grumpy clydesdale.

I did not have you, for every reason rational and wise, but still I longed for you, the strength, the invulnerability I would have when you embraced my feet.

And so came the days of work, of own income, of this is what I chose and buy and of coming into autonomous being. I drove my car (perhaps not mine in ownership, but I called it mine). I drove my car to the Working Men’s store. The store that had given me all my other boots. The store where I’d fallen in love with moleskin pants and where my parents purchased for me the clothes of men and carved out my own defiant femininity – for women’s moleskin trousers were so ugly, limited and impractical I had been infused with rage.

I drove myself, in a car still wobbly with new found freedom and dizzy with the ability to drive anywhere. I drove to the Working Men’s store. I took myself there without parent or friend, money of my own making in my wallet. I commanded the sales guy to address my feet not my sex and on that day I found you.

You, with your perfect snub nose and robust eyelets. You with your perfect cushioning around the ankle and a thick sturdy heel. I can tap your hard nose, I can feel the steel cap underneath and think, “If a barrel of bricks falls on my foot my toes will not be crushed, they will be neatly cut off by the collapsing metal and have a better chance of reattachment.”

I feel strong walking around. When carrying furniture I rest the sofa on my toes as we wrestle for a better grip as people I love say “arrrgh, stop doing that!” When walking through a dark alley I think, my running is slower, but boy can I kick. I do not notice when someone steps on my toes… and oh my loved one, you do lead me astray here… I have grown to assume the same and assume there is no damage when I tread on the toes of others. In my mind we are all strong and we are all steel capped. I do not know how many toes I have crushed and not noticed.

Dearest boots, I had a dream of you, of having you, of wearing you and I did it! Perhaps it was a humble dream, a silly dream to some, a strange dream that doesn’t breathe as well as sneakers and can develop a funk. But I sought you, I wore you and it was just as good as I hoped. Sometimes you can buy armor. And sometimes that armor rocks.

Thank you for your years of good service, I will love you always.

I sign off in the name I wanted to call myself when I was 8, as I write of dreams fulfilled and the ones best left as memorable desire.

Loving you always,

Dog