noting

it started in jr high, slipping notes in through locker grates. in high school we had mailboxes.... in went the intricately folded pieces of paper with little love notes, little hugs in a wadded up piece of paper. usually into the pocket they went. when i tood a year off before college, i got a few postcards from a lovely lady.... to whom i never wrote back, but her cards were one of the few things that pulled me through that year.

i stopped sending notes. i had an almost friend who would send me packages. with letters type writen, pieces of tree branches hidden in the folds of the paper. scenes of juniper bushes and cacti, never ending landscapes i can only imagine from the words woven on those pages. i never told him how much those meant to me.

one night, before groundhog day, a friend and i baked a three leafed table full of cookies.... acknowledging our friends' allergies and dietary restrictions... gluten free, vegan, no nuts... and wrote secret notes on them and drove them all to the houses of the people we loved to be found in the morning.

somehow they all knew they were from us.

when i moved away from the city, we sent letters back and forth, talking about our days and how much we missed each other.
and now that we live together.... well. i miss noting each other.

also miss having the people around who deserve secret packages and notes.... i mean i know they are all around me... we all deserve secret love messages. but somehow i feel like we have all grown apart, and don't know enough about each other. some of -you- i haven't seen since i moved from the western part of the city. which was almost two years ago. but i still think of everyone all the time, and occasionally try and figure out how to make it over there, and run into the people i once confided everything in.

i fell like this is a larger issue than just me and my own silly desires for a connectivity besides those fleeting moments. my pie in the sky is a place where skills and thoughts and food are shared beyond just the house. where many people come together to form a space where childcare and friendships and support and bartering skills and needs manifests into a community.

maybe it exists here.... if it has, i haven't seen it yet. it seemed to exist where i lived two years ago.... where we could all walk to each others homes, where we could bike to a farm to get our produce, or to the local food co-op. where folks lived in huge houses, and shared chores, and cooking food, and shared spaces, and gardens. but it only lasted a short while. and it's too expensive to live there in a semi-permanent way. and maybe that's why we all have to work towards those things together, but here instead of there. and yet here we are.... all working so much that we barely see each other in our own home, where we can't even have full day together, but to be cut short my obligation, work, and the need to sleep a bare minimum. and now i only speak of two people. and i wonder why i don't see other folks anymore, as i can't even to get it together to spend time with my partner in the house we share.

maybe we just all need to slip each other notes, little hugs slipped in the folds of the paper.
texting just doesn't suffice. there is nothing to keep, and look at later, and see the craft put into each letter or note.

by the way---- i still have every note. i have the poem you wrote for me about saving me from my spanish teacher, i have the one where you told me i was beautiful, i have the one you wrote about sante fe, i have the one you sent from utah, i have the one written on a typewriter in a nearly empty room in a squat in new orleans. i have the one you wrote about how we need to do spring-thrifting. i have the one you wrote about wanting to meet the person i finally end up sharing my life with... my true love. i have the one you wrote me about how you fell in love with me. i have the one about how i broke your heart. i have the one about ow beautiful the desert is. i have the one you wrote about our time in new orleans. i have the one you wrote in the childrens book.
i have them all.
every.
last.
one.