Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven

Double angel day! Thank you for finding me both this morning and tonight, little sweetheart. We had a good session working on the new single. We'll release it on your Ascension Day. After we tracked, we played for a while longer and Jason wanted to do "Angels". We hadn't done it in a while and I got so emotional singing for you that I cried and cried after. I miss you so. Thank you for letting me know you're closer than I can imagine. Please help and guide me. I so want to be everything that you want of me. And take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

Please Find Me

Often, little sweetheart, I spend far too much time trying to distract myself just to get through the days. There's something in that, I suppose, that isn't entirely bad but it depends on what the distraction is and it begs the question: why am I not doing the more important things? What am I so afraid of?

In a way, the answer is simple - I don't like my life and I'm lost, so lost, without you. One of my distractions is scrolling through endless images online. Sometimes that's not such a bad thing, I guess. It did lead to my finding several of the artists we've worked with for images used on the band's albums. But it isn't always the best use of time, I know.

That said, I saw an image this morning that I've seen before and I think even saved. It's a wonderful shot of a red-headed girl leaping into a man's arms on the street. You can't see either of their faces but it makes me feel happy a little because I like to imagine it is you finding me, the two of us finding each other again across space and time and eternity - all those boundaries that I know you can see beyond and transcend now and that I desperately long to see fall away so that I might finally join you in The Forever and leave this lonely, idle, hopeless existence of mine behind. (the photo is below)

Oh, my darling, please be with me today and guide me, won't you? And take me to you just as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

A Song I Heard Today

Little sweetheart, on Fridays I often listen to a show on WFMU that plays a lot of bands featuring female vocalists (like you!). And today the DJ, Sheila, played a wonderful song by a band called Elizabeth City State (Elizabeth is a town in NJ) that made me think so much of you it made me cry. Its lyrics mirror exactly how I feel about you - the only one who ever saw and understand me, how I hurt I was, and came into my life and loved me like no one could but you.



It's late-February here but it's warm today and I have the windows open. Sometimes when the breeze is coming in on a warm day like this I can feel, can sense you in the air.



Please be near me, my little sweetheart. Please let me know you are with me, Summer, my darling girl. Help be all you want of me. And take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. Love you forever. Forever!

In These Days

Little sweetheart, I am missing you so keenly in this moment. Things have been busy of late and while that's good, I also need those moments everyday when I can quiet myself and call to you.

I hadn't been up to that little church for the candlelight service they have on Wednesdays for a while. But I went last night and sang and prayed and lit a candle for you, my love.

This is the time, these weeks, that begin to feel so heavy in my heart each year, little sweetheart, because they were our last together. It can feel the weight of your loss closing in on me and I need to quiet myself and call to you and listen for you and strengthen my faith to know you are safely in the care of the eternal and that I will be with you in the blink of an eye. But it's hard.

Help me to know, Summer. Help me please to do your will, little sweetheart. No one knows better than you. Help me do, help me be what you want, what you mean to show me. I miss you, my little sweetheart. Help me quiet myself and know that you are near - closer than I can imagine - and just to trust and love you and know.

Perhaps I need only to look at my arms where your words, in your own handwriting are with me always. The right arm: "I love you. Your Gingersnap, Summer." The left: "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased."

All my love. Forever, Forever.

My Guiding Star

Little sweetheart, there's birdsong outside my window this morning. It's too hot in here but too cold outside to turn the heat off, so I opened the windows in front and back and put in the screens. Little birds are singing sweetly outside.

Last night, I remembered a text you sent me once just before I was about to fly to California and be with you (I'd hoped, forever). I found it on my phone and wrote it down. You guide me still, don't you, my angel, even now, when I most need it. Of course, of course.

Here it is:

Don't feel lonely.

I'm right here.

Don't cry.

Nothing is wasted.

Pack the good memories

And leave the rest.

Travel light.

It suits you.

You are not damaged.

I can tell 

by the way you love me.

We're all of us 

covered in scars and it doesn't stop us from living.

There's nothing wrong with you.

Like everyone, 

You need to be loved.

And you are. 

 

Thank you, my darling sweetheart. As ever, let me do just as you say. Little sweetheart knows best. Little sweetheart knows best...

Elle EST la raison. Elle est ma conscience.

Little sweetheart, last month the new album got a very kind review in France (of all things) and today the same publication, Indiemusic, followed up with a feature and interview. It's here. They asked a lot of great questions but my favorite parts are, of course, telling people about you, my darling. How you changed and saved my life. How very much I love you. What a wonderful, brilliant, kind person you are - the best I've ever known. How grateful I am to and for you - my treasure. There's a lot about you, of course, and a couple of lovely pictures. But one thing I've been thinking about today reading it is this passage:

"...Summer isn’t the main reason BPX goes on, she’s the only reason. She is the reason. And I think I can trust that I’m doing things for the right reason if I always know the reason for it is her. Not out of any ambition other than to honor and conjure her. She’s my conscience..."

May you always be, my little sweetheart. May you be with me and guide me and take me to you just as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love forever...

February 14th

I've been thinking all day of Valentines with you, my sweetheart, in 2009. Our trip "to the snow" - to Lake Tahoe with your folks. We drove up into the mountains after your last class, in your car- everyone else had gone the day before. The drive was lovely and the whole weekend was wonderful. It was magic then. We'd just discovered Bon Iver, and we sang the songs to each other full of tears and passion, in the fullest bloom of true true love. We rode a snowmobile together, you taking your turn at the wheel first with me holding onto you behind, and you were, as ever, fearless. We cooked delicious meals in the enormous kitchen of the gorgeous house your dad had rented, played board games in the dining room, watched "La Strada" in the basement screening room, pulled giant icicles off the snowed-in back porch, napped on the lower bunk bed in my room. The day before we left SF, we'd walked past a window display of Valentines-themed lingerie. You saw a pink-polka-dot-heart-on-black set of bra and panties, and mentioned how cute you thought they were. So I sneaked back while you were teaching your class and bought them for you, handing the gift-wrapped box to you in the car, my eyes full of love. We stopped on the way up for gas at some point and I bought you a hot chocolate (coffee for me) and a pair of Valentine sunglasses. I embarrassed you a little when I asked the cashier if she'd ever seen so beautiful a girl as you. On the last day, after we packed up and everyone except your mom and dad and you and I had left, they told me, with you chiming in, the full story of your double-organ transplant, the surgeries that saved and changed your life (and mine too, now) just the year before you and I met. We drove back through the mountains in your battle-scared blue Prius, stopping at a roadside pass to have the chains taken off the tires. We'd gotten 60 inches of snow the day before. Hours later, we'd be in sunny NorCal again, your dad pulling a couple of tangerines from the tree in your backyard and handing me one. "You're a much better driver than Summer," he said. "Don't tell her I said that." My darling, it's Valentines and these are some of my thoughts. I miss you so. I ache to be with you. Still, I feel you with me. Help me do things right, won't you? And bring me to you, come for me soon. With all my love, my little sweetheart... xM

Your Heart, Darling. Your Heart.

Little sweetheart, I watched a documentary a few nights ago, just on a whim, and I was so moved by it, I've watched it again twice more. It's called "One Day Since Yesterday" and is about the filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.

I'm so dumbfounded that I didn't know more about him. I only thought of him as the guy who directed "The Last Picture Show" and maybe another film or two in the 70's. But he has had a much bigger and more storied impact than that, an enormous body of work and been a huge influence on many of our favorite contemporary directors including Wes Anderson who simply reveres him.

But perhaps more crucially -  and, indeed, the larger point of the film - he suffered great and tragic loss. The love of his life was taken from him, senselessly. I knew strands of this story. Even knew the tragic story of the woman (Dorothy Stratton)'s passing. But I hadn't put it all together. I didn't know about the two of them together and what they meant to one another.

There's an exchange about a third of the way through the film that has struck me so deeply that I've watched it repeatedly and even transcribed it. I'm posting here below. It's a friend, his assistant, and then Bogdanovich himself talking about her, about the two of them, about the tremendous healing presence she was in his life.

It sounds exactly like the gift you gave to me. How you called me your treasure and told me how you longed and aimed to heal me and grow my heart and how you would always always keep our love safely. "I promise! I promise!",  you whispered to me as you curled up in my lap holding me close with all your might, kissing away my tears. Doesn't this, too, sound like you and I, my little sweetheart?

“I think one of the reasons that there was so much power behind their love is that she answered everything that was missing. Everything that had been hurt. Every part of him that was insecure. It infused him with energy and joy. It made this very serious… sometimes very serious… man be giggly and warm effusive. So, she had a really great, warm spot in his life.”

“Well, I was in love with her in a way that I never had been before or since. It just seemed like we had wings. Ya know? Every little thing had power. I mean, we just sat and watched some kids play baseball. Or walking through the park or going to the carousel. And… When I would get upset… in a meeting or something or she would hear me start to raise my voice, she’d come over and whisper in my ear, “Your heart, darling. Your heart.” (pause, laughing lightly with love and awe and the weight of great loss) It never failed to knock me out. And I’d say, “Yeah, you’re right”. (pause, remembering) “Your heart, darling. Your heart…”