ASSIGNMENTS:
|
|
Kat Y.
Paris, FRANCE
|
|
REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
|
|
Advice to Kat Y. at age 17 in Idaho, from Kat Y. at age 21, elsewhere.
1. Instead of telling Mike to stop putting you on a pedestal, tell him you'd rather be friends. Tell him you love him and you're worried about him. Tell him it feels like he's lying all the time. Tell him he has shit to work out. Instead of crying in your room, cry in front of your mom and dad.
2. Please, please pay more attention when you're driving. Don't look at the map. Look at the road.
3. Dare to talk to those beautiful people you're afraid of. You always think they're beautiful, you never say anything. Secretly they want to know that they are amazing, and you would feel amazing if you let them know how amazing they make you feel.
4. Go up to those very same beautiful people and ask for a cigarette. It's a good segue. Ask what shows they go to. Don't be self-effacing and don't be pretentious. Tell them the truth. Stop thinking about what you're saying. Don't even worry about whether or not the sentence will start with "I" or "Maybe" or "Yes." Just say what is present and honest.
5. Turn away from school. Don't think about the future. Don't think about who you have to be. Continue to study the things that spark your interest, but don't show it off, because it's not the only good thing you've got to offer. Remember that you are a person. Despite what you may think, people are as vast and important as they seemed when you were three. You are one of them.
6. Based on the previous advice, reclaim your nickname, Trinka. It always suited you better. She can be the main character in those comic books.
7. Take up sculpting again because that first one was good. It doesn't matter that you were too scared to show it to anybody. Furthermore, stop destroying your own artwork.
8. Be proud that you have no idea where you're going to college. It's not embarrassing. You're not even 18 yet. When you tell Adria that you're not sure if you really want to go, and she says "What else are you going to do?" say, "Everything."
9. When you go to Manhattan, don't stay at the audition. When the man says the thing that tips you off that this was all a bad idea, walk out the door and buy some cheesecake on the street. Again, cry in front of your mom, tell her you have no idea what you want, can you please just explore the city and think about what a wide open future isÐwhich is exactly what the city secretly represents to you anyway.
10. Send poems to your brother. Showed poems are better than secret poems as a rule from now on.
11. Take one last, long look in the mirror. Look at every bone. Look at your skin. Instead of thinking about how much you weigh, think of how little you weigh. Remember that Trinka is supposed to be a superhero. And right now Kat is frail. Break the mirror. Write that last poem about the time that you only ate cherries, and then show it to your parents and make them order you a pizza with anchovies. Invite friends over.
12. Don't deny that you love anchovies, either. You are quite possibly the only teenage girl in Idaho that has ever tasted them. This is the sense of adventure that you can't seem to remember when it showed up and don't know where it came from or where it went. It's in the girl who moved to a foreign when she wasÊ14 and tried anchovies.
13. Good job exploring Caldwell. Now, as you walk, take pictures because the vision that you are collecting will only be yours forever. When you return, it will be gone, no one will have shared it with you. Pick up a map and highlight the paths of your rambles. Make little sketches on the map. Tell yourself stories of this place.Ê It helps.
14. Graffiti something on the waterboxes, just like the gangstas.
15. Before you tell Tera that she can't get pregnant while she's on her period, do some research. Or speak with less certainty. Speaking with certainty is what gets you into trouble.
16. Breathe deeply in every room in the house. Cover yourself in your brother's clothes, in your sister's toys, in your parents papers and shoes. Roll on the carpet. Press yourself against the screen of the kitchen window. You were born in the summer. You think of the years beginning an ending here, where it is warm, where it is a desert, where you can hear crickets and beer bottles breaking, where you seem to be in the tiniest, most obscure place imaginable. What makes the world immeasurable is this. This magic universe is as small as a seed. Think of what could happen if you don't plan to abandon it forever. You have to remember all of this, because it will make everything make so much sense, and you will be happy. This place is the picture of the beginning of you.
17. Everything that you ever messed up, forgive yourself for right now. Forgive everyone who ever messed you up as well. Do this instead of taking up smoking bad clove cigarettes. Sit on the kitchen steps at midnight when you would be smoking the clove that would make you feel guilty, and instead, look at the stars and the neighbor's lawn and the houses across the street. You will always think about this neighbor's lawn, you might as well get a good idea of what it really looks like. There are more stars where you are sitting than you realize. The stars here are many, and what's more, they are good to know for adventuring. Wish good wishes to the people that live across the street, even though they don't always make the best impression. Don't deny that you love it anymore. Now you are free to make the first plan you will ever make wisely, and this way, you won't feel like you're running away from home.
|
|
|
|
|
|
