I wrote this yesterday
Twenty four hours away from Abby and Roby and I’m on a binge of sad music that’s hard to shake. Most of the time I listen to ambient music or liturgical music that sets the mood of our house to something beautiful and timeless and tender and matching the warm lights we use. When I’m working and I need to be working hard and getting things done I’ll listen to metal or electronic music that moves quickly. I don’t often get to listen to sad music, even though I kind of like it. If I hear it, I’ll often make fun of it. But I’m enjoying it a lot and not telling anyone but you about it.

Writing “You” there reminds me of the idea I had to turn this blog into a place to write public letters to Abby and Roby, mostly Roby, for her to read later. It might be nice to use this blog as an excuse to write letters to other people, old friends, prisoners, who knows, and to publish them here. Maybe I’m just bored of this stream of consciousness journal.

Dear Roby,

I saw you yesterday before I came to this class. I was taking a drawing class around the time twenty four hours had passed since I saw you. We didn’t talk while we were practicing our drawing, and we didn’t listen to music. After the class and after dinner I had some time in my room to relax and play some games and listen to some music. I found myself listening to sad music. I’m not really paying attention to the lyrics, just enjoying the sad guitar and the sad voices.

When I was younger I would listen to sad music and think about how sad I was to not have certain things. I’ve got most of the things I wanted then, now. So, listening to sad music is mostly a forlorn kind of thing, a reminder of how deeply glad I am at what I’ve got. There’s an element to reflecting on what’d be like to not have this near-perfect life for longer than the four or five days I’ve volunteered to be away from it, but it’s not worrying, really. It’s pretty nice. It makes me feel like I’m in a movie or something.

We’re going to learn how to sketch with a paint brush and egg tempera tomorrow. It’s fun to learn new things, though it’s really tiring. This is a good reminder of how tired you must get learning everything that you’re learning every day.

I think this icon will be nice when it’s done, I hope it will be. I’m working hard on it, even practicing at night alone in my room. Eyeballs are hard and I haven’t gotten them right just yet. I want this icon to be nice because it’ll be in your house and it’ll be the icon that dad painted way back when at some class he took at that monastery we go to sometimes, and I’d like it to be nice because it’ll have more baggage than your average thing hanging on the wall. Assuming it’s good enough to hang on the wall.

Apparently we’re all going to stay up late on Saturday to finish our icons before the class is done on Sunday. Most people plan to stay for Liturgy here, because it’s early, but I think I’ll get up early so I can rush home and see you at church. I’ll have to hit the road at 6:30 ish, that’s not so bad.