Hello and welcome to this Newsletter, which has been on its own hiatus, a choice not entirely made on my own whim, but one that was necessary. So, welcome back to the new improved Newsletter which is not new or improved at all but instead just me, three weeks later, a living, breathing, Michigan Jo.
A lot of great things have happened in three weeks: I met another Jolie who goes by Jo, my eyebrow piercing finally healed after me flipping it upside down in a towel accident, my housemate locked our 74-year-old coworker Bruce in a walk in cooler which was not great but absolutely hilarious now that he is Fine and Okay and was only in there for a few minutes, still warm to the touch. That was weird! he said when my housemate realized what had happened in horror and rescued him. That was weird. Sometimes I start laughing about it to myself or at work or near strangers. They say, What is so funny? And I just say, That was weird!
I have been working in a cider mill, hence the cooler. At the cider mill they call me Bruce’s Right Hand Man. I wear Dickies and Carhartts to work and everybody makes fun of me for my ankles showing, just like Mikey would. I use wrenches to put together machines and to take them apart when the job is done. Wow!
Other things that have happened include taking a week off of making decisions, being secretly gay in Illinois, and driving around in my grandpa’s luxury Lexus (which is actually technically mine now) with the windows rolled down, blasting the lyric from Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Cathedral: ‘Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here’. Haha, take that people of West Michigan. I also like to listen to Lowlands by Gillian Welch which has the lyric: ‘I’ve been in the lowlands too long. Oh, I know, I know that I should go’. All those words make me laugh because they’re more relatable than I’d like them to be, yet at least there are songs that exist like this. My life is some kind of nomadic, but accidental.
Recently I’ve been wondering things like: Can you dream about things before they happen, and Do you just know when it is absolutely urgent to write a letter to someone before they’re gone, and Are the skies just always seemingly more beautiful in Michigan?
I dream, I’m forgiven, I know the skies are beautiful here. Some, or maybe all, things you just have to believe what you know.
the skies are more beautiful in michigan. give the sunset a kiss on the forehead for me :)