July 2019 – Page 3 – ☆ STARSAILOR ☆

thanks alayna~

the little grumpy star reminds me of one of the star kids from paper mario. i remember the main star kid is called twink. i love him:

yeah~ ☆彡

p.s. back in portland, when i was destitute and physically falling apart, and inhaling black mold and permanently rained on, and so on, i sold a bunch of sentimental things that were now useless to me. it was a very sad thing to do . . . but i was hauling little boxes all over the country, every city i had lived in in the 13 years since i left virginia, and now they were more like jacob marley locks and chains than things i needed to continue to haunt my closets. i was three months away from moving back to oakland, though i didn’t know it yet . . . and feeling weird about my whole life and pretty much everything in it, i decided to halve the amount of possessions i owned, which i had been doing for a decade during all the many times i had moved, halving everything each time until i absolutely only had what i wanted and needed.

anyway: one of the things among a few other things was my nintendo 64 and all the games i’d had as a kid. i had not turned it on since i’d lived in baltimore many years before. i held it in my hand and wondered if i ever would again, and deciding that i probably wouldn’t, and wanting to get rid of as much ancient plastic as i could, i decided i was going to part with it. and i would turn it on again, one last time, to make sure it still worked, and to look at all the save files that were still on the cartridges.

there was one game i felt very sad to give up and it was paper mario. i loved paper mario. i remember the day i beat it. years later my sister would tell me she remembered this day too. i don’t know. it was a day that was important to us i guess. in hindsight i realize it was the last winter we spent together in that house.

i wondered if all the time and dust that had collected inside the cartridge would have destroyed my save file, which was at the top of bowser’s castle just before the final boss. i turned on the console and there it was:

i remembered i had named my file ‘zepp’ after my little grey kitten . . . and there were the 29 hours i had spent playing this game 15 years ago! seeing this filled me with dread. this is all that remained of that day so long ago!! i did not dare load the file!! no way. to gaze into the face of the past is to know the horror of the lies you have told yourself to keep your memories from fading in the sun. my memory of this game, which is forever tied to that day i experienced with my sister, is sacred. i need not look behind the furniture—the visions in my head are all it ever needs to be.

IN CONCLUSION: all this is to say that alayna’s cute little letter reminded me of my own past. alayna: i love the grumpy little star on your cute little letter. he’s cool. the letter is cute. thanks girl~