Caroline

Cont. from Twitter:

A former student, kind of. Copeland was in charge of your English education, and while I stepped in to teach on occasion, I seem to know you better from your tweets and identity as a nerdfighter. First and foremost, I should apologize for the lack of letter. My bad. My goal is to write and send it before you leave England. I think I can do it. Never underestimate the power of procrastination. I always was and still am a champion procrastinator. Though in reality, I like to think that I'm just extremely good at time estimation. I understand that some people take adderall to focus their mind. I prefer the incentive that only a looming deadline can provide.

Overall, you seem to have your head on your shoulders, figuratively of course. The literal compliment of having your head on your shoulders fell out of the common vernacular after the French Revolution.

I think the best compliment I can give you is that I don't have any particular advice for you. As a teacher, a large chunk of my job consists of doling out needed (but sometimes not wanted) advice. You on the other hand, I think you'll continue to do just fine without any direct intercession on my part. If you are in need of feedback, be mindful that I don't hear direct prayers (yet), but I will respond to a tweet. Please limit any crisis  to something that can be solved in 140 characters or less.

Sadye

Again, cont. from Twitter:

So far, you're the only Sadye I've ever known. My first associations with you are of course with the Index. I don’t think we had any classes together at Truman, and if I am wrong in this assumption, then feel free to chastise my tardy memory.

You seem to manage your online identity well, with neither Twitter nor Facebook providing any blackmail worthy material. This is good in case you have aspirations of running for congress at any point in your life.

I’m going to make an inference about you based entirely on your career choice and hobby of running. Call it practice for my budding career as a cold-reading psychic. I imagine that you enjoy the world of observable action, measurable distance and tangible results. You have an eye for detail; I could move one object on your desk and the universe wouldn’t feel right until it was back in its place.

What’s fun about this is that I have no idea if any of my conceptions of you are correct, but it’s not always common that we get a chance to see ourselves through the eyes of an acquaintance. My own personal narcissism is always open to perceptions on my person. One, because I’ve been told I’m hard to read and if I’m hard to read, then what do people see? Two, because of the aforementioned narcissism.

Penelope

Cont. From Twitter. 

You are a dog. And on top of all that, a dog I follow and talk to on twitter. I’m not sure our association could be any more ridiculous. While I am well aware that you are actually unable to tweet, lacking opposable thumbs or paw/nose dexterity to accomplish such a task, I like to imagine you capable of such a feat. Most of the time, I find people creating facebook or twitter accounts for their pets profoundly annoying, but there’s a nice chord of irreverent, and neurotic here. It’s mostly neurotic because multiple people have access to the twitter: Nate, Catherine, possibly Anne. Still, were you able to articulate your innermost thoughts, twitter would be the perfect medium given a dog’s minimal attention span. 

Matt

Cont. from Twitter

The first time I met you, you were dressed up as Raoul Duke (Hunter S Thompson). This is not because you have some strange obsession with the man-- or perhaps you do and I am unaware-- but because it was Halloween and that's what people do, dress up as other people who in this case was dressing up as another person so to speak. As the years of our association have gone by, my baseline image of you always tends to return to that character. I am not strictly speaking a primacy-only person, but for you and a several other people, primacy is what I'm stuck with. In this case, my mental concept of you doesn't age, but at times it's probably a little ridiculous. Then again, who's to say that life isn't ridiculous?

Tense

I've been trying to reflect and write a little bit about my brother and his passing, but the experience has been difficult. The issue that has come up the most has been what tense do I use to describe him? I think that's what has bothered me the most about the entire event is that my brother is stuck at 21. He will always be 21. He'll never get to be more than 21. And as I write about him, the tendency is to use past tense to describe him, and I don't want to write in the past tense. I want to write in the present and the future. I'm not saying he deserves to be preserved in the present tense for now and until the end of time, but it absolutely kills me to write, "My brother was..." and "My brother had been..."

There's no future in either of those statements.

On Nights Like This

One of the things that Winter rarely affords is the ability to sit outside with a beer and forget about the state of one's life. I'm here in the moment. The temperature is perfect and with the exception of a steady hum of distant traffic or the rustling of tree branches in the breeze, it's quiet. 

I could use this time to ponder the state of my life, to reflect on these last few months, but instead I simply choose to be. Why ruin any of this with worry?

I don't remember most conversations I've had with my father, but I remember the general tone of them, thoughtful and appreciative. One of the things he would always remark about while sitting outside was how beautiful the trees would look silhouetted in the darkness-- inky outlines behind an intensely blue-black sky. A form without any texture. 

Ten Years Isn't Long Enough

Like most general life events, high school becomes a memory with vague boundaries. You remember the activities you participated in, some of your favorite teachers, and a funny story or two. But for the most part, the day to day affairs have drifted out of your memory and settled onto the pages of the yearbook where people you only now know through Facebook recount unfamiliar stories involving themselves and someone who shares your name. 

Time has passed. You went to college, got an education, and entered the workforce. Or maybe you didn't. Maybe you've spent the last five to ten years just working. Marriage, kids, possibly divorce? It doesn't much matter how you came to the future, all that matters is that you're here. 

At one point or other, you'll find yourself invited to a high school reunion. Nobody's forcing you to go, but 10 years isn't enough time to really wax nostalgic about your adolescence. Facebook has robbed your sense of morbid curiosity about the others because most everyone you went to school with is also living a fairly normal life. 

Out of boredom, you decide to have your own high school reunion from the comfort of your living room. You scroll though the profiles of people you haven't spoken to in nearly a decade. What you find is that you don't really need these people in your life, nor do you want to reconnect. 

Still, you leave them in your friend's list on the off chance that one day through the many years of time and change that you do have something to say to them. Thankfully, this can be said through an online message, and not at a high school reunion.