I'll Send My Winter To You

It's Winter Now. Cold, etc. An open letter of tribute to Winter-Wear, My Winter Essentials:


Jeff Buckley:

He (not Jeff Buckley, but My He, an Illusive He, He Himself) told me in one of our first conversations that he wanted to play Tom Waits at his funeral, "Take it With Me," to be specific, and I've listened to it a million times since then and I think I agree, mine too, maybe he and I will go down together, that would be easiest, you could just play the song once. But what gets me about funeral songs (those of us who've spent years feeling morbid, staring into voids of emotion or aspiration, know this) is that people can't sing at their own funeral, you know? But if the ghost of Jeff Buckley could've sang a song at the funeral of Jeff Buckley I would like for it to be "Lilac Wine." Listening to Jeff Buckley is like flirting with Death, except that Death is fashion model with expensive skin and eyes like bullets and she is wearing a white t-shirt and Jeff Buckley's underwear. Listening to Jeff Buckley is the closest we can get to unbridled pain without having any unbridled pain in our own lives. "Everybody loves Jeff Buckley," a friend said to me yesterday. "Not people who want to be happy," I said. In grey freezing January, you have no choice about happiness. Crank it up. Cold and broken Hallelujah ...

Lovers in Hoodies:

Maybe you like them naked, which is obvious, I guess, and makes certain things quicker, and maybe the fact that I'd rather see my lover in a hoodie is the kind of thing that indicates premature aging, perhaps the shriveling of ovaries or that my kind of love is less like Maxim and more like Good Housekeeping but when I see my lover in a hoodie I want to curl up next to them and stay there, possibly forever, or at least until March. I want to laugh while I stick my head underneath the billowy stomach of it and then push it off. I want to see you in a hoodie and then I want to take it off.

The L Word Day:

I remember when the boys complained 'Why isn't there a "Take Your Son to Work Day?" and I thought Because every day is Take Your Son to Work Day, because that's how it is, you take him there--THERE--or you raise him to believe he deserves Assigned Work and he takes himself somewhere like THERE, and The L Word is Our Day, like Our Chart. The L Word Day is because everyone else got Christmas. The straight people got Christmas, because they had swollen bellies holding babies and man holding wife. But too many homo-people didn't get Christmas, didn't get real questions about their lives which are words that mean I Love You, instead they got the cold stare people deliver instead of saying I hate you you make me nervous and they didn't get rings that later go with certificates to announce at cheering tables of families lost already to the abc family channel and so you come back to where you've set up exile and you wait and in six days, it is Your Holiday, it's The L Word Day, where lesbians are beauty queens and straights are serving punch and crackers on folded tables, it's The L Word Day you deserve it, everyone else just had Christmas, goddamnit.

The Seasonal Affective Disorder Playlist

how to fight loneliness/wilco. lilac wine/jeff buckley. please please please let me get what I want/the smiths. incredible machine/fiona apple. take it with me/tom waits. so jealous/teagan and sara. virgin state of mind/k's choice. good enough/sarah mclachlan. dream brother/jeff buckley. most of the time/bob dylan. five string serenade/mazzy star. yesterday/the beatles. marrow/ani difranco. hold on love/azure ray. about a girl/nirvana. latter days/over the rhine. hurt/christina aguilera. the promsise/tracy chapman. exit music for a film/radiohead. hazey jane II/nick drake. hold you in my arms/ray lamontagne. hallelujah/rufus wainwright. when doves cry romeo and juliet/prince. shadowboxer/fiona apple. no woman no cry/bob marley. witness/sarah mclachlan. strung out again/elliot smith. s ick of me/ani difranco. proudest monkey/dave matthews band. where did I go wrong?/martin sexton. wish you were here/pink floyd. ghost/indigo girls. after you're gone/mary gauthier. fly away/poe. ill take the rain/r.e.m. does he love you/rilo kiley. the weakness in me/joan ardamtrading. nowhere to go/melissa etheridge. fighting chance/melissa ferrick. fade to black/metallica. porcelain/moby. will the night/low. blue/joni mitchell. ghetto gospel/tupac with elton john. bother/stonesour. evolution/cat power.

mr. burt and your bees and your affordable line of moisturizing products in small containers

Remember when we thought it was addictive? Maybe it is, I guess, like water. I wish you could protect me from other things too like how you protect my lips from the elements with your chapstick. I wish you could protect me from other things too. I like what you've done for my skin, but you could stick around a little longer, I won't go crazy, just make a commitment, protect and protect. I wish you could protect me from waiting for the bus in the windy cold for thirty minutes when I could have walked in ten. They probably don't have busses where you're from. Burt, you don't need the m15 because I feel like you know how to fly, all raincoat-yellow grease and water cutting against ice-blue sky.

children in a lot of winter gear

I make animal sounds (gentle animals, animals with fur who can't run too fast) of approval and Hallmark quality cute overload for small children who have little limbs sticking out of their boxy winter parkas. I think it is funny. It makes me laugh and smile and want to be a child or have one, and if I have one I want to drop it into a big green puffy coat like a pea into a fleece pea-pod with gortex lining. Like a marshmallow.

empire corner

You are only two corners away from me but I am too hungry to walk. Maybe I passed by you on the way home but honestly I've never been inside, I don't want to smell like Wok Night (wok night, we had that at interlochen, the teachers made stir fry in a wok and all night long our clothes reeked of soy sauce and sesame oil just from that thick air in the cafeteria). I find it amazing that you ride your bicycle through snowdrifts. My fortune is a snowflake, all lucky numbers, and the cookie is only a little stale.

sleeveless coffee

Maggie and i just had a 10 minute conversation about ways to get Starbucks delivered here (car service? homeless person? courier? submissive man from craigslist?). I am thinking of my fingers on the coffee cup without a sleeve. In the summer we have shirts without sleeves. In the winter we have cups without sleeves. It feels like the cardboard might be searing away the lines of our fingerprints, but it feels like so much good heat all at once, I'm willing to burn my tongue or my identity just to taste it.


top song for s.a.d:
"I'll Send My Winter To You"
by Saturday Looks Good to Me

Holding together with glue
he says the particles are entwined
a presentation past due
outdated misshapen valentines
I'll send my winter to you
with the last of the ice early april melts
No point in being confused
over old months collected and times we've spent
spring has been harder to see
then at one point I might have believed
Light pulls itself into view
weary eyes watched sun rise over fall
sleep for an hour or two if only in respect
for the principal
Written in rain in a coat designed to be unbreakable
At the bottom of the lake
in the center of town
still covered with snow
Elected scraps
and artifacts
of some unsung history
dragged from frozen deeps
while the neighborhood sleeps
silently leering
I'll send my winter to you
if only to have someone to send it to.