why i write - for mr. a to z and junk food fans everywhere

i don't know exactly why i write to you.

it's a little weird, i know. i'm sending something of myself and there is no reason why anyone should respond. (i, myself, have been the recipient of about a million unwanted attentions...people claiming connections that seem so false to me.)

but i must admit, i do so love the small craziness of talking to strangers. i can just talk. say all the things i wouldn't say to acquaintances or best friends, because the context is entirely new. lots of times you meet someone and there is nothing to say, or you've been friends forever and there are all these things you can't say.

i kind of know this guy who recently lost a good friend and i've wanted to write about it since i read it, only i didn't, because the words wouldn't come. which seems...right, somehow. it is such a secret place, the land of tears.

i am able to say is that i understand that little stab of something that starts in the chest and plunges to the stomach...that causes you to turn around and around inside yourself...racing the years, chasing the light, until all you can do is surrender and let it erupt in whichever direction it chooses. it isn't the holding on that makes us stronger. it is the letting go. (just ask a caterpillar.)

and like him, i find myself separated from family and friends (though, as the days pass, i find that every distance is not so far). and when i need them most, my mind reaches out and finds them - a little surprise - like the cat that climbed through my bathroom window and curled up in the middle of my bed. i come home and find them there - comfortable, warm, close. the connection is so easy, so pure. and i like to think that each time they miss me, a star falls down from the sky. so that any time i look up, into a dark, starless night, i know exactly how much i am loved.

oh, and he recently wrote about giving up junk food in favor of 'palate discipline.' that is such a dumb idea. especially since i'm not entirely convinced that ice cream and movie popcorn aren't the path to enlightenment. he and i may be two of the founding members of a new religion - one where ben, jerry and orville redenbacher serve as the father, son and holy ghost.

can you imagine the communion? yummy.