All The Parts of Me
Am I being impossibly sentimental again? Probably!
I’m sitting at a bar at the Detroit airport drinking an overpriced gin & soda and starting a new book. The book is called The Visible Unseen, by Andrea Chapela. The last sentence of the introduction reads “Perhaps the pages that follow are simply an attempt to cling to all the parts of myself and never let them go.”
Maybe it’s just the gin & soda, or the recent trip to Portland (aka my former home), but I feel that this sentence could be the thesis of my entire life. An attempt to cling to all the parts of myself and never let them go.
All the parts of me (in no particular order):
Driving home from the studio with the sunroof open because the air conditioning in my car doesn’t work.
Being pressed into Robbie’s chest every night.
Walking into Solabee in the morning, unlocking the door and starting to work with before the lights are turned on and the music starts.
The muscle memory of putting flowers into a vase, crossing stems, twisting the heads of blooms until they sit just right.
Amber lights in a darkroom, the gentle slosh of a tray of chemicals as an image develops from nowhere.
Sitting around a table with my best friends, passing food back and forth and laughing.
Making art on the floor of my messy teenage bedroom.
Standing in front of a camera. / Feeling the click of the shutter.
Reading (in bed, on the couch, at a coffeeshop, in the hammock, on a plane, at a bar, in my studio.)
The red neon bar sign reflecting into my martini at my old neighborhood bar.
Falling in love.
Falling out of love.
Breaking my own heart.
Having my heart broken.
Jumping from the dock into the Willamette at dusk, looking at the city upside down and floating.
Pulling the chain on the studio window, letting the humid air and the birdsong in.
I could keep going forever, because everything that’s ever happened to me is a part of me. All of the lonely nights, the kisses, the men who’ve ghosted me, the ones who loved me. The art that I’ve made and the art that I’ve longed to make. The drop in my stomach when I’ve messed something up, the quiet happiness when I’ve done something perfectly. The friends I’m not friends with anymore. The dance floors I’ve jumped up and down on. All of the cameras I’ve held in my hands are a part of me, all of the pens I’ve used up and every computer I’ve ever owned.
Some of the things that are a part of me, aren’t mine anymore. Maybe they’ll be mine again someday, maybe not, but for now I just have the memory. Of something belonging to me, of a relationship that was important to me, of art I used to make or things I used to do.
Like Chapela writes, maybe I only care about these things in an attempt to cling to all the parts of me. Sometimes that attempt feels heavier and harder than it might be to grieve what’s not mine anymore, let go, and move on. But I keep clinging. And that inclination—to save everything, my tendency to be impossibly sentimental—might just be the biggest part of me.
Unrelated Things I’m Loving From The Real World:
Favorite recent read was A Horse At Night: On Writing, by Amina Cain. A lovely little meditation on writing, literature, and creativity.
R planted a bunch of clover seeds, and he keeps finding four leaf clovers. The other day he brought me a little bouquet of four leaf clovers.
Swimming!!! I’ve been having a very anxious/depressed few weeks1, and water is the one thing that always clams me down. In any form really—baths, showers, the pool, but now that it’s warm enough to swim outside, nothing beats floating in a creek.
Lastly, I decided to start a new little personal project taking a photo every afternoon at 3:33 (I’m turning 33 this year, seemed appropriate.) Will be posting them to my instagram stories most days probably!
Xo,
B
Hence only one newsletter for May, sorry!!
So lucky to have a part of you.
This was beautiful and I enjoyed it and related to it so much