Archaeology.

Yesterday was frustrating. I spent most of the day digging through an old hard drive, finding compelling stuff, having all the emotions these old journals and letters and what not bring up, without the reward of finding anything useful for the work at hand.

Today I’ll spend what’s left of the day trying to make some headway on a short essay I’m writing for a journal. It won’t exactly get me away from writing about tender personal subject matter — I don’t seem to be able to write anything anymore that isn’t tender and personal — but it will at least be a chance to work at a more circumscribed task for a bit, which is, if not easy, at least a relief.

Here’s a thing I found. Category: interesting but not immediately useful except as an oddity to share on my blog. It’s an excerpt from a letter to a close friend. For a chunk of 2003-4, I was renting a room in a sprawling Victorian house in Nashville while I made my film. I don’t think I saw it this way at the time, but reading it now, and all this stuff I describe in the letter is vividly accurate, I realize just how, well I’m not going to use the slur but it rhymes with “slight rash,” my life was then. It''s one of the periods of time I enjoyed most in my life, and I did know and feel that at the time, and the memories are sweet.

There’s no indication as to whether or not I sent the letter. (In case you’re curious, “my car” was a Fiat I got for I think $250 because it had been sitting in some guy’s yard for like 100 years. There was a hole in the floor on the driver’s side that you could put both feet through, if you wanted to, and there was moss growing on the seats. Eventually (as in, about a week after I bought it) it stalled on the road one too many times, and I pulled over onto the shoulder, got out and walked away.)