Dreamland

Please answer me one terrible question

I wrote a story about myself. There was a mint green house down the road from me. It had a porch looking out on the ocean and this kind of windowed entranceway. There was no grass just sand and beach for a yard and I went there so often, regardless of season, that I was pretty sure it was abandoned. No cars were ever there and whatever was inside the garage had never been unpacked. A bike wheel visible through some cobwebbed glass never moved. I got in my head one day I would buy it. People always buy houses around me just to tear them down to build something that doesn’t quite fit in with the shabby beach neighborhood. Grand estates or else modern to a fault architecture. I wanted the house as it was, run down and mint green like the ice cream. A couple of years ago I went to look at it and found a different house there. I hadn’t been in a while it was not shocking to me someone got to the plot of land before me, but I went home and I wrote a story down, about myself and buying it, about love and memory. 

My imagination is not a thing of beauty. It only extends so far. I write what has happened or what I would like to happen, and even what I would like is hardly far from what has already occurred. Which is why if you read my work it is a repetition of mundane daydreams. Kitchens and early mornings, beds and open windows, those are the places I find love because it is where I have already had it. Non-fiction to me is a place where I go to figure things out. I write a story and I don’t know really how it will end because I’m still deciphering why this story should be told to begin with. There is some question haunting without words and waiting at the back of my mind pushing the words out.

 A daydream is not thought of the same. Or else it hadn’t been when I began to think of owning that mint green house. I wasn’t writing to figure anything out. I was only trying to imagine what I had for so long spent my time imaging. Creating a story and finally finishing it, living in that world long enough to get a sense of what was there or what it would be like. My mind is so easily distracted and I had time for once to focus in and finish what had never quite even started. 

Of course, I wanted the story to be good, good enough to turn back to at times I was too tired to think of a new one. I edited and rewrote, pushed my characters to be real and flawed while simultaneously good and loveable. And without really trying my real life began to bleed into the margins. It's something that can’t be helped if you can only really write what you know. Characters who were not me were jarringly reminiscent and familiar. We shared fears and obsessions. If I wasn’t writing about myself in my mint green house then someone was always swimming. Wading out towards docks buoyed in the bay and wondered where I was or dipping beneath the surface where the world couldn’t see them. Characters were always seeing me even if I wasn’t in that moment seeing them. It was the answer to a fear which was impossible to say aloud and yet clear in the writing itself. I afraid I could not be remembered, that I wasn’t even real unless I was standing in front of someone. Could people see me if I did not see them doing so?

Writing this all down though, was the first I had ever tried to make a tangible story of my often dreamy state of mind. I had walked down avenues pretending, closed my eyes and fell asleep to fantasy worlds but none were quite so real as the one I made from the mint house. At the time I had no ulterior motive. I wanted to know really if I was capable of making things up even if it were largely based on things I had already experienced. I had been disappointed by the way my life was unfolding, but I believed more than anything that life was good. This story was the possibility that this good could occur in spite or even because of my original disappointment. 

Though my motives were not to explore this facet of my mind it occurred anyway which I think often is what daydreams do. We spend time inside a world that we want, a world that we construct under controlled and perfect circumstances and the consequence is we put words to our greatest desires. Which is often difficult to do even when these things are only being voiced to ourselves. 

Every daydream asks some terrible question I have that I am too afraid to speak aloud. My characters are the answer. Their reflections of me are often the tedious and unlikeable parts that come with being dynamic and real. Every romance, every storyline, creates a space where these things of me are allowed to happen and even are explored without denying that they are there. In doing so you write of love and falling into it enough times that some part of you learns how to do it. I come into my own kitchen over and over again just to say I love you to myself. 

Daydreams are the buffer. It is easier to let your likeness want something than to ask for it yourself. Late at night in bed, I sit writing down the story of someone who is remembered. I imagine from experience the fear of showing yourself to be understood. I am the author and I am not afraid to say this is, at my heart, the very thing I am. I know how it all ends. I know how I will be received. Even writing a betrayal, one that has already happened, promises that someone somewhere else will be the very thing I feel in this story I need. I get a glimpse of possibility a touch of hope that this world is not so far from my own. If I can love myself then so could someone else. 

These stories, they go abandoned. My life enters a new chapter where their own is incapable of following. What pained me now pains me so much less. I have seen the truth of what I know even if at times it is difficult to believe, to put my faith into while I’m awake. 

 I have started new dreams. Hundreds of pages long looking at other things about myself. The mint house is an unfinished work but I know how it ends.  Every story has forgiveness and complexity. Every story has a flawed character who, despite their fears, allow themselves to be understood. We learn we are deserving of love even if we act badly. The hands are revealed, the strange workings and mundane hobbies are taught and enjoyed to people we want to love us. Bird watching or green thumbs. The people who thought they didn’t exist are always remembered. Someone sees them on the street and asks how they are doing or else someone tells a memory and for whatever reason and even without reason it clicks for them. One late night when the lights get turned out and the world is quieter than it has ever been someone, with a kind of certainty I can’t describe as I haven’t experienced it yet, says: you, it's you I choose. Then I open up a new document, pleased to have found something new to explore, and ask myself again the same terrible question. Can anyone love this terrifying part of me?

(Forgive me I left my apple pencil at home and must reuse some art for my banner)

I recently started a new daydream world. Stretching my imagination muscle and writing about a fantastical place where nothing of my real life exists. I won’t go into too much detail. I’d sooner let you read my diary than a daydream like this, but I did immerse myself a little more than normal. I have a playlist. When I feel lost or can’t figure out what to write, when I want to remember that the answer to this terrifying question is yes, I put it on and I coast. Like being there and being here all at once. This is it. Don’t worry. you won’t be able to guess the plot even if you tried.

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

“You’ve seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. do you have to tell yourself every time that it’s an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?” Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

I have been reading his book nonstop therefore he has taken up most of my inner monologue.

I suppose what I am is tired of my own blindness. I want to see people with complexity and allow my love to take deeper root. June 29th, 2022 9:38 AM

That made me mad. Outsiders said he cared. I have never in my life felt the desire to treat anyone I cared for like this. I suppose it’s possible, and I have my sympathies for him but none extend so far as to this. I hate him for what he did. I love him for everything else. June 27th, 2022 2:39 PM

I’ve liked this song and have been nonstop playing it for a month. I like the bravery of saying what you want. Especially the lines “Sometimes I wanna talk dirty and be embarrassed by it.” I think it captures the inherently embarrassing things of being ourselves. Some parts of us I think will always make us blush. I do not think that’s a bad thing. Daydreams though, they made me get this song a little better. I want those things too.

Welcome to the dreamland. Here is July’s moodboard.

Next Friday my Paid newsletter comes out where we will finished our book club book Glass castle. It is a newsletter full of romance, some art, and dreamlands. To continue the journey of this theme subscribe. A good story awaits and more words, etc etc.

If not, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

Here is My Twitter and my Instagram is @chloeinletters  where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.

My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, our dreamlands and our walking life intertwined and equally valuble

Love always,

Chloé