On stretching time, 30 weeks, and an activity that is wholly human
Thursday May 29, 2025
Saturday May 31, 2025
Dear Eva,
It is a joy to be writing the words “Dear Eva” once again! It feels like the outset of a journey. We are both headed out into the wilderness with our walkie talkies, going separate and different ways but committing to conjoin our exploration through correspondence. You have referred to The Letters as a tool we can call on when we need it, like a Ouija board or tarot cards. I love this analogy because it is true; The Letters do take us to new terrain, reveal invisible truths, unlock uncharted paths. Yet I also feel compelled to call out just how intrinsic this practice is so we don’t unduly externalize the magic. We are engaging in a slightly ritualistic practice of thoughtful written communication with another human. The magic comes from precisely what makes us human, what makes us each who we are, and from the commitment we make to each other.
I spend much of my time these days thinking about artificial intelligence, so I particularly relish the chance to engage in an activity that is wholly human. Now, I am certain there are ways to exchange weekly letters with an AI. We would probably even learn some things in the process, even if mostly about ourselves as the AI mirrored us back. But the hollowness of it all is depressing to even contemplate.
Recently, I heard on a podcast that many religious leaders are expecting a resurgence of faith in response to human grappling with AI. At first this felt like a surprising twist to me. But the more I think about it, the more obvious it seems. As AI gets better and better at all of the cognitive activities we humans undertake, it is only natural for it to prompt us to question our role. That line of thinking very quickly gets existential. I have a hunch that this is precisely why I am so captivated by the work I am doing right now, thinking about the future of human creativity in the age of AI. It is a side door into the type of existential pondering I have been doing all of my life. What is this (human life) all for?
It feels like a relief in a way to have more people thinking about this. It reminds me of the pandemic, when suddenly it felt like the rest of the world woke up to the reality that our everyday busyness is a meaningless construct. I realize contemplating mortality gives many people angst, but I think it’s largely a good thing for more people to do it.
–
It is now Saturday morning. I have the splendid soreness in my muscles that signals I was active yesterday (bike ride and beer!), and the light grogginess that comes from sleeping longer than usual. I feel summer in my body. I have said it before, and I will say it again – this is my favorite time of year. It’s that precipice of summer, where the temps are gradually rising and all of the summery delights are on the horizon. To quote you, it’s pure possibility.
I have just finished a 12-week sprint interspersed with 26 days of work travel spread over 4 trips. This appears to be just about my max. On the whole, these trips were positive, at times even exhilarating in different ways. But each time I find it takes me several days to reorient when I return home, like finding my footing after spinning in circles like a child. I am just finished wobbling after this last trip, and I am delighted at the knowledge that I’ll be with my people (B, J, and S) without interruption for the entire month of June. We have a few little jaunts on the calendar for camping and soccer, but we’ll mostly be right here at home.
One of many aspects of The Letters I appreciate is that they help me stretch out time. When we are writing them, I find that I gaze at moments a little differently, explore my various trains of thought a little longer. Last night before I fell asleep, as I was nestled in the crook of B’s arm listening to the sound of the dog snoring, I wondered to myself whether there was anything about those silent minutes that might be worth noticing and putting into my letter. That nudge to notice is a gift. There may be nothing else I want to say about those quiet moments as our human-and-dog pile contentedly drifted to sleep on a Friday night, but I am grateful to have consciously observed them. This is my interpretation of what Thoreau meant when he talked about sucking the marrow out of life.
I feel like I could easily keep writing all morning, but this feels like a natural place to say goodbye for now. I am eager to hear what is going on in your inner life these days! I’ll await your letter with much excitement!
Until next week(ish),
Yours,
Sarah
Saturday May 31 2025
Dear Sarah,
Did you realize we exchanged six months of letters last year? I peeked in at our latest letters when we recently decided we’d begin writing them again. I reread the letter we parted upon in August of last year, and I said aloud Oh no! when I read of your hope (and mine) around Kamala Harris and the election. What a surprise it was to see those words on the page — to feel the presence of our past selves so strongly, past selves who thought that the world might be different at this moment in the future (i.e. the present, now). In our letters I could see us writing to each other as if in a bright and hopeful cinematic flashback. That particular thread of hope seems so very distant now. And yet we keep existing!
I am in a long-term reexamination of how I spend and make money. I’ve been keeping a daily dollar diary of sorts, a spreadsheet where I log every purchase, no matter how small. Rent and parking meter payments. Health insurance. Tickets to clown shows, newsletter subscriptions, late-night takeout chicken rice. In a handwritten draft of this letter, I catalogued all the things I spend money on. As I type up my notes tonight that feels less like what I want to talk about, but know that my catalogued finances are waiting in the wings should you ever want to see them.
I started therapy two weeks ago and ended it at the start of this week, after two sessions. I had recently added myself to a waiting list for sliding scale therapy at a provider nearby, and an opening came up. The group providing therapy had an online portal where I filled out forms and shared information about myself. There was a section of the portal called Appointments. I had mentioned in an introductory phone call with my therapist-to-be that I had conceptually budgeted for us to meet every other week, and the therapist suggested (urged, really) that for the first couple of months, at least, we should meet every week. This ended up feeling clarifying for my intentions in this moment, both in terms of my time and how I am spending money.
Do I want to sit in a room and talk about myself in the therapy way for an hour every week for the next two months? My overriding sense of time lately is that every moment is precious, even if I would simply like to be sitting, thinking, writing, noodling. In the therapy group’s online portal, in the Appointments section, I saw that I was booked out for weekly appointments until the beginning of December. This was surely an administrative functionality: Eva occupies the Thursday noon therapy slot. But it also carried a feeling. I counted the weeks, and there are something like 30 weeks left in this year. 30 weeks of therapy sessions spread out before me like a dotted line in time, like a job, like an academic program. It felt like Meetings. Weekly deadlines. Weekly conversations. About me, from me, what I want to work on in that setting. As I looked at those 30 weeks of scheduled appointments I felt dollar signs accumulating, the amount of money I would spend on 30 sessions. Even though we’d talked about moving to twice monthly in the near term, I felt the financial commitment of this new relationship up front, alongside the time commitment.
The way the therapy group’s website functions is almost purely an administrative concern. I feel like they shouldn’t have shown me, in this way, that I held that slot for weeks and weeks into the future, but they did, and it was helpful to me in making a choice: the choice to end therapy before we’d hardly begun. I went into therapy thinking I wanted to talk about relationships, and I immediately felt that I did not want to be in a committed therapy relationship at this time. We essentially went on two therapy dates.
The last three weeks have been very strange. My energy levels were off and I was having a strange exchange with my new doctor that I will venture to say felt like I was being gaslit, which is not an experience I have often had. I did things in this window of time that I don’t usually do, and I didn’t do some of the things that I do usually do, which had the cumulative effect of making me feel that I was living inside out, upside down. I had pulled a muscle in my calf, not from running, but I had to take a break from running while it healed, which immediately put a dent in my mental health and physical sense of myself. I had a week off from my clown class for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and I missed the social aspect as well as the creatively activating performance aspects of the weekly gathering. I went to the aforementioned therapy appointments, twice. There were some other miscellaneous out-of-the-ordinary happenings. The criss-crossing of what I usually do and the doing of things I don’t usually do left me feeling intensely for a short period that I was living a kind of false shadow life. I am pleased to tell you that I appear to be on the other side of this brief but strange time.
I think I have decided that I am going to have a leisurely kind of summer in relation to paying work. I have some work on deck for the month of June. I am not going to look hard for additional work. If things come my way I will consider them, but otherwise I am going to focus on my own projects and on rest, leisure, relaxation. I have some accessible savings-type assets; I’m going to focus on my creative work and myself and tap the savings a bit as needed, and we’ll see where we are come Labor Day.
I realized this morning that I need some new summer rituals — both in terms of living in LA and in terms of habits. I have basically stopped drinking, which cuts out the summer joy of a gin and tonic, but perhaps I can acquire some juniper essence or something similar to achieve that crisp piney flavor on a warm, sunny evening. Welcome to meteorological summer, a time of quiet experimentation under the sun’s beams. I mean this figuratively, because I will wear a hat or get out from under the sun. All I want is to float in a pool, drink tonic water, and write you letters!
I’m excited to read a letter from you now and to hear what’s on your mind! Until soon!
Yours,
Eva