(This is what I originally wrote for the previous post “Words in Action: the impassioned letter strikes again” but I held off posting it because I wrote it around 2am and I now have a {mostly} strict policy of not posting anything I’ve written in the wee hours until I’ve slept on it.  Then I forgot about it.  I realize tonight that I wrote it best the first time.  And yes, I realize that I’m showing you mushrooms and not toast.  There’s a reason for everything.)

Our individual mythologies start developing before we even realize it – is informed by so many invisible forces that convene to create the perfect fruiting environment for your own personal genius – for whatever it is you become the master of, seemingly just by breathing.

Everyone has something.  Even if they can’t see it for themselves.  It will be evident in the patterns of vapor they leave behind them.  It will be evident in the relationships they keep and the ones they choose to discard.  It’s like our DNA.  No two mythologies are alike.  We drop it all across the universe like the crumbs of an endless meal.

There is a fantastic wind tonight blowing pollen around like tiny passive aggressive bitches getting under skin, into nasal passages, and excavating previously virgin territory.  Nothing is sacred tonight.  Not even your specially curated mishaps.  All is assaulted by this disease of the season but no one will lodge complaints against the agent that brings warmer weather.

It’s a night of assessment.  Fitting, considering I won something today.  I won what should never have been a fight in the first place.  I won because I have become a master of words, of persuasion, of entreaty, and of honesty.  Bald fucking honesty.  What I have learned over and over again is that I don’t win when I try to win.  When I do what is expected, what is considered acceptable, what is considered politic, everyone smells a fraud and runs.  But when I unfold the words that are true to me in the vernacular of my own mythology – magic happens.  Doors open.  My value becomes more visible only when I throw it to the ground and dare the brave to crush it.

My dream house was sold to us because of a letter I wrote the seller telling him why he should sell his house to us even though we couldn’t offer him the highest bid.  The seller told us it was my letter that made him choose us.

I wrote letters to two of my most treasured teachers at the Santa Rosa Junior College.  It wasn’t the politic kind of letter to write.  I gave my history teacher poetry I’d written.  What could signal a social death more surely than some poetry and effusive avowals of undying appreciation?  Here’s how my teacher responded (something I’ve held so close to my chest over the years and not shared with anyone else but Philip)

“I want to thank you for both the letter and the poem – I was moved to tears by the charitable and kind words of the former and the evocative power of the latter.  You have a great gift as a writer ——- more importantly you have a fine mind and a beautiful soul!  It has been a true pleasure to gain your acquaintance.”

There’s a place for me in this mad universe.

Full stop.

I can make you care about toast because that’s one of my superpowers.