Week of letters
May 19, 2001the idea, like all ideas, came in a flash. no! a lightbulb, flickering above my head, on tuesday night. and then it floated — right? because ideas float — into my head where it’s been floating ever since. until this morning, when i got one of the best letters ever from my girl ani, which convinced me that i need to do this.
before my reading spot at the café, they introduced me as ‘writer and creator of maganda.org’ and i felt kind of dorky, like
“hi, i have a website.”
“so what’s it about?”
“well, me.”
and i had this sinking feeling everyone would go home thinking i had the typical homepage with pictures of my cat and a list of my stats. i wondered what they’d think of me, reading those words, after meeting me. did i seem self-centered? did i misrepresent myself? did i seem like the same girl who stood before them just hours before or was i a complete stranger?
then i started to think about what i write and the layers of meaning and context and privacy and everything, like i do way too often. and i played devil’s advocate with myself for a moment and asked, “why do i do this, anyway? why do i say what i say and why do i say it to a million people? would i tell my best friend what i write here? would i write here what i’d tell my best friend? isn’t this all sort of warped and twisted and weird?”
that’s when i had the idea: i am going to write letters for one week, and i am going to post them here. it’s an experiment, if you will, to see what it is i choose to tell the people in my life and whether i feel comfortable posting it to a public space. i don’t know what the goal is, except for maybe to try it. (sometimes, that is goal enough.)
tomorrow, it starts.
one week of letters.