Thursday Things

Clubs, TV, internet, gaming. Those are the things that people I've talked to tonight are doing. A normal Thursday evening by all accounts. I feel like doing none of those things, but the internet is how I post this so.....

I decided to go through a stack of paper that I pulled out of a filing cabinet probably almost a year ago. It's been occupying different positions on the floor of my room since then. I move it from one location to the next when I need to vacuum underneath. Sometimes it gets the luxury of resting on the shelf. So many letters from old pen pals. You remember, the days before sending e-mails? Maybe some of you don't, actually. One letter that stands out to me is this one from Holly (Turner) dated April 2, 1995:

"My mother once told me an interesting story. No, not the one about her dream where O.J. stole her purse. This one was about her artistic talent, and why she never uses it. It goes like this: Long ago, when she was a young girl growing up in Maui, she used to walk the beach looking for debris. One day she found a large piece of driftwood and suddenly felt compelled to take it home and carve it into something. So she did, and she ended up carving it into an Asian woman's head and shoulders. My mom put it out in her garden, but soon she found that as she passed it, it would look back at her, and she would be frightened. The whole thing was scary. Why did she create this thing? Who was this Asian woman she had carved? It looked so realistic. It seemed to stare at her menacingly. Finally she grabbed it and ran to the beach and threw it back into the ocean. And that's why I always examine the driftwood carefully when I go to the beach. Well, actually it also made me wonder how many potential artists out there are hindered by the fact that their creations terrify them..."

Mine do.