My Dear Friend
I have been thinking about you a lot since we last corresponded. It has been far too long of course, but we are supposed to be apologising less (I mean do men apologise for not getting straight back to you?), and so I am working on accepting that this is the way of things. That life is mostly about lurching from one half-finished email to the next; about scrolling through our texts and thinking, ‘Really? Has it really been six weeks since I sent that text that said, “So sorry, something’s come up, Tuesday won’t work, what about …” then got interrupted and never come back?’
Is there a slipperier (what an awkward looking word, I think maybe it should say ‘Is there a more slippery’) concept than time? Memory, I suppose. Memory and time are equally as difficult to conceptualise, but then memory and time are inextricably linked, aren’t they?
Inextricably. I like that word, don’t you?
Do you remember that poster I had on my wall at university? The one that read: Our lives are inextricably linked by the common thread of humanity. If we break it we are all undone.
I looked it up just now, to check who wrote it. If the internet is to be believed then it was by Peter Adamson co-founder of The New Internationalist. Which makes sense, because it was a poster I’d taken out of the middle of the The New Internationalist magazine. It had holes where the staples had been and grease marks in the corners from blu tac, but I looked at it every morning and several times each day and I wonder how many times I’ve heard it in my mind?
I used to love a good quote. I wrote them on my rulers and the covers of my textbooks, using liquid paper to paint clouds around my favourites; using thick black texta to write them on my yellow canvas backpack bought from the army disposal store. It wasn’t all that long ago I wrote that one by Maya Angelou on the kitchen whiteboard, ‘My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion and some style.’
But lately, I feel like the internet has saturated me in them. The glib, twee motivation Mondays; the instagram tiles in pretty canva palettes; the earnest comments, ‘I needed to hear that, thank you so much.’ It’s like the internet has become a constant feed of fridge magnets. Do you know what I mean?
You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve been getting in people’s DMs. ‘Winnie-the-Pooh didn’t actually say that.’ ‘I think you’ll find that was Dylan Thomas not Bob Dylan.’ With a smiley, winky face of course. I always add a smiley, winky face.
Geez, I have to eat those words. Because the other day, I was scrolling through instagram (yes, I am for the most part staying away from social media, but every now and then I do check in) and that’s when I discovered … do you remember that t-shirt you said you liked, the white one with the quote (ostensibly) from Frida Kahlo printed in mirror-image writing? (You’ve noted the ‘ostensibly’ here, haven’t you? You’ve got that that’s foreshadowing?)
‘I am my own muse’ printed in beautiful blue on a white t-shirt. My beloved brought it back for me when he went to London and squeezed in a visit to the Tate Modern (obligatory ‘remember travel’ here). I was in two minds about wearing it, because you know the whole kitschefication of Frida Kahlo is highly problematic, but I’ll admit it looked really nice with a skirt that I made and have trouble pairing anything with, and I’ve always loved mirror writing. So, as you know, I wore it from time to time. I am nothing if not consistent in my inconsistencies.
Well, as I said, I was on the internet, on instagram (as I said), and turns out it’s not Frida Kahlo’s words after all. It’s from a poem, written by poet Oroma Elewa. You can read about it here and on her instagram feed she talks a bit about the impact it has had on her. And honestly, when even the combined forces of the V&A and Penguin can’t do their basic fact-checking I guess it’s unrealistic to expect that the moderators of facebook are going to double-check theirs before they post their motivational Monday, hump-day Wednesday posts.
So what do we do? Do we just accept that everything we read on the internet is wrong? Or do we get out our red markers and really go for it?
I’m really sorry about this, but I have to cut things short and leave you with that unanswered question. Someone’s just sent me a text asking me if I need them to re-send the zoom link which as you know is the 2021 way of asking, ‘Are you coming to the meeting or not, hurry up, it’s Friday afternoon you’re not the only one who has better places to be.’ I hope you’re going okay, still seeing the light through the cracks. Have a lovely weekend, my friend, and let’s catch up for that coffee soon.
With every love, Tracey xx
Dear Tracy, what lovely writing. The internet is pretty wrong. But it allows me to stay in contact with people like you. By the way, Re men, I had a conversation with the RSPCA chief inspector today, in which we agreed that castration makes males nicer in every species. No exceptions.