Youth Trapped in Amber
Dear Viola:
It’s hot here today, in the mid-eighties, and sticky. Not the California Valley sticky of my youth, where it hurts to breathe and your head feels as though it is stuffed with wet cotton, but sticky like wearing a cocoon of plastic wrap. I pulled another tick off the back of my neck this morning, so there’s also that on top of the unpleasant temperature. The little vampire bug hadn’t gotten his fangs in me yet, so disposal was quick and easy (plucked from my skin and straight into the toilet), but still: what a fucker.
June has felt like swimming in molasses. The days have just sort of blended into one another without a real clear demarcation between one day and the next. Is this how summer in the end times goes now? Is it even summer yet? Quick internet search reveals that no, it is not; June 21st will be that day. Spring should not include 84 degree days that make your lungs ache.
Here is the usual farmer update from our vast expanse of land: the ticks are everywhere (even on my neck while at work thirty miles away from home), the stray neighborhood cats keep invading our property and driving our dog insane, and the hens are being nicely productive. We are averaging about a dozen eggs every two days, which I can honestly tell you is a lot of eggs. Currently in the refrigerator we are storing I believe 19 dozen eggs, which again is a lot of eggs. The math says that’s about 228 eggs, which sounds right. I would mail you some, but I doubt that they would all survive the trip intact. That would be an unpleasant mess to open.
I am making some art which I’ll be sending to you soon. Actually, you can pretend that it’s just for you, but it’s also for Iris, since I’m assuming by now that she’s spending more time at your place than at her own. Do not think that just because you haven’t officially updated me on your living situation out there that I don’t know what’s going on. I have eyes and ears everywhere. Simply Lovecraftian, I promise. Fewer tentacles, however.
Anyway, how is Iris, and why haven’t you both made plans to come out here and visit yet? I would be injured at the neglect you are showing me, but I have been too busy these past few months to have the time to feel slighted. I am a busy man, Viola. Busy, busy, busy.
I have dug my old manuscript out of the files and started poking at it again. You know the one. I’m considering chopping most of the beginning and starting it about where the old chapter three began. I think it might flow a little better. I know that you’re supposed to finish the first draft before you go back and start editing, but I really want to nail the front bit first before I move on to the next. There are other things about the vibe that I’m working out, nothing that will change the overall narrative, but still. You’ll see the draft when it’s done, just like old times.
I have been digging through a lot of online archives of mine recently, cloud backups of photos and videos, that sort of thing. There are things in there I haven’t seen in years (and we’re talking a couple of decades for some of it, honestly). Where did all that time go, Viola? Where did all my gray hair come from? In my mind I’m still no older than 32 or 33. In reality, I’m a withered and pruny old man (not that withered or pruny, really, but shut up). I feel like such a stereotype, looking at all the time that has slipped by and refusing to accept it. I dislike having joints that ache and bones that creak. I would like to be able to get off the couch with fewer oof noises.
We were all very cute back then, in case you have forgotten.
Our youth trapped in amber now.
Carry on, Viola.
-S
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