28 months after abruptly forced out of her home, Marn returns. She stitched herself a present, an armadillo, to help her reconnect to what’s lost.
***
Hi there.
I’m now writing to you at the same teak dining table now sun bleached after 28 months since I was last here. I’m home. Shit happens. And shit happened.
Time passed. Shit passed. I survived. I am my home.
Today I wrote a love letter to myself. I didn’t cry. I just dabbed my eyes a little.
The year I turned twelve, I became afraid of receiving birthday presents.
The love letter to myself shall come with a present.
I’d better get started, don’t have all 100 years, I’m not twelve anymore.
***
From one of the few items that wasn’t mold eaten. I tore out the elastic from our 12 year old bedsheet, too stained untreated, too fragile to rub out.
A few unconscious twirls next to a shell that’s been stewing for 28 months in the sun makes what is obviously a tortoise.
Tortoises show up often as beakies. I didn’t know then, but I do now, that they kept appearing to teach me the tortoise spirit. I gave them names, I brought them to the park, I even tried to matchmake them. But I didn’t listen.
Then, I added a piece of old-curtain-turned-quilt-turned-just-scrap and it is obviously not a tortoise anymore.
More bits of this and that, and that and this.
The yellow on the face began to shed. Is it Ninja turtles’ Master Splinter?
If Chinese crested is a dog, and sphinx is a cat, a hairy faced rat-cow is an armadillo.
He is quite colourless, made from everything broken down by time, put together to give life, to him and to me.
Why is an armadillo presenting himself to me? What gift is he bringing that I was afraid of receiving?
I don’t know yet but this time I’d listen, I’d better.
***
If you’re new here,
thank you for scrolling to this line. I wish I could tell you what this letter is all about but I can’t say for sure because I’m starting fresh, forgetting everything I thought I knew, to find my own beat, my own people. If you like what you’ve read so far—though I have no idea what I’ll send next, it will come from the same place deep in the bones—subscribe & like so sharing get shared and I know I’m on the right soul path. And happy.
***
If you’re not new here,
thank you for not having dumped me.
Numbers aren’t important. I say that because I’ve lost count of how long I’ve been absent. Not the platform reminders of how long I have not logged on or posted, but the amount of time I’ve felt I’ve been emotionally exiled from everyone around me.
I will however be dumping my old promise of every Sunday which by the 80th letter or so has fallen off the wagon and followed me to abyss which I’ve now flown out of and am well recovering from such. Right now I’m feeling comfortable with once a week plus additional mail between, because I’m feeling excited to be alive and you gotta know. If it gets too much or too little too soon, hit reply, let me know and I’ll meditate on it.
***
Later my people,
yours
***
I’m Marn (noisybeak.com). I make animal soft sculptures (aka beakies) from old clothes while learning to be a person. This letter is a way to share the spirit that keeps surviving and thrives, because otherwise why the hell did I go through all that for?