ASSIGNMENTS:
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Gabrielle
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA
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REPORTS:
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advice to gabrielle at 25
1. when you leave for maine, make sure you bring the paintbrushes that aren't ruined.... or have you ruined them all? tell s. in the strange motel room near albany what you are really thinking: tell her how terrified you are. tell her how she always makes you feel stronger and that you are afraid of that and that is why you need to go in the first place. you have to understand yourself alone, stripped down, without. you have to be more vulnerable sometimes. you have to use words. she is so afraid too. notice. give to her. keep her with you.
2. just take your stitches out yourself. you don't need an x-ray. you use your hands everyday to paint and make the set of 36 hives. you will always have rough looking hands. and that's ok. some one recently even told you that your hands are beautiful and strong.
3. do not drink whisky in the dimmer hours. do not sob relentlessly in the late summer fields where monarchs move around you. center yourself.
4. when you are sitting across from s. in the diner in rockport tell her when you will come home. it will become too cold with the woodstove alone and you will run out of money for wood and supplies. you will become destructive and lonely. you will fear yourself, again.
5. do not make impulsive decisions. NONE. you are not in a state to make any decisions, actually. you will regret all of your actions to follow. you will find your decisions from here on out empty, weak and insufferable. it is never ok to sacrifice s.'s comfort. i. can wait forever to see you. he is sad and seeks only a distraction from his house of sadness. you are not that distraction and do not desire to be.
6. pack up nicely. leave most things behind. bring your food to bernadette's house. if you don't she will never remember to come and get it. tell her how much it meant to you to learn to drink cheap beer and listen to the birds. tell the green store you need to go back to pittsburgh. they will understand. you tried to help as much as you could.
7. come home to s.. spend the winter making love and learning to bind books and carve with simple tools. be appreciative and bring what you have learned about being alone back into being together. take more and better care of yourself. show yourself more respect.
8. when you don't follow #'s 1-6 don't listen to the haunting music. don't move to the hillside that catches fire. actually, don't move to any your last four addresses. live alone and work hard. grow an herb garden. read novels even though you are used to thin collections of poems. cook with fresh vegetables. play records of indian classical music. continue and deepen your practice in iyengar yoga. don't get off track with that. you know how deeply healing it is. don't take lithium or any other drug. they create more of a fog and grey rain. write s. letters with bamboo ink pens. send her drawings. do not cling to the bricks of her (your old) house crying, drunk, EVER. breathe. breathe. hand wash your clothing. learn to write a sufficient cover letter even if it breaks your heart. maybe s. will forgive you so that i can stop making this list for you.
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