the sympathetic vibration

It’s hard to say what kept me away for so long, or even what I hope to do now that I’ve gotten things back up and running. I guess I thought it would take too much work to get things looking nice and shiny again, but honestly it was about a 5 minute install (as Wordpress promises) and now just a bit of fiddling around with this theme.

I want to write here…. about projects I’m working on… about life as it comes to me… about my difficulty in processing transitions… but I think I’m not much of a writer any more.

The last week I’ve been cleaning out closets and trying to get things organized so that moving will feel less overwhelming in June. I’ve been shredding old letters, dating back to high school, and I find it hard to believe how much MAIL I used to get and must’ve sent as well. There are some amusing letters I’ve found - one where a close friend through high school writes to me that I’m the BIGGEST BITCH she’s ever known. It’s all just dripping with the kind of drama I find hard to stomach in my life right now….. and felt good to fully leave behind by turning it onto a pile of paper scraps.

I wish I still wrote to people now as much as I did then, and perhaps I’ll start a compaign of doing it again. I remember a few years ago, I sent postcards to just about every person I knew. Not a lot of writing on them, but at least something to get in the mail, which I know always makes me smile. I’ll have to think about how to implement that now… but goodness knows I’ve got plenty of stationary and postcards to make it happen.

I’ve realized how many people in my life I’ve lost touch with, and wonder why I haven’t lost touch with others. I found one particular letter (which I’m NOT shredding) from a friend sent in August of 1988. Seriously…. almost 20 years ago.  He and I are still friends, and while our context for each other in 2008 is more set around holiday parties and occasional emails back and forth (and reading each other’s blogs), there’s still that connection that remained.

In contrast are the letters from people whose names I can hardly recall as familiar telling me “we will always be friends” and “I just love you so much, Lara.” Strange. Either people were more outwardly encouraging in my life before I turned 25, or I was a much cooler person, but I swear I was overwhelmed by all the outpouring of affection that I read in much of these letters (okay…. aside from the one where I get called the biggest bitch in the world….)

Anyway, my point was that part of me wants to get back in touch with these people who meant so much to me at some point, but find that that is easier said than done. Everyone has moved on, changed, gotten new last names and dangit…. not enough people have Facebook accounts. [Not that I’m all that big on Facebook, but it is a good way to reconnect].

Then I remember that I’m not hard to find at all. One google search for “Lara Conrad” turns up tons of links, 80% of which relate to me, at least on the first 4 pages or so. I really think that anyone who wanted to get in touch with me would be able to… so sometimes when I think about writing to someone I haven’t talked to in ages…and I can’t find them easily online, I realize that if they wanted to get in touch with me, they probably would already. Kinda sad…. makes me think twice  before I write “forever” or “always” in reference to a friendship.

So anyway…back to the shredding. (And welcome back to withinwithout.org… I’m pretty excited about it).