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Met this kindred spirit Claudia, on the plane to Chicago. She said physically said she would lose her hair because it's not apart of who she is, although it is apart of her appearance, it isn't apart of who she is inside. And also that she would lose the ability to feel annoyed. And then she told me she would rather have me take a selfie of us together. Thanks for making the plane ride awesome! -t #thingswerewillingtolose #loneadventure #claudiarules
This is Brooklyn. He had a know awesome bike and said he wants to lose his social anxieties #chitown #thingswerewillingtolose
Evan and Eddie. Eddie said he would lose his shoes, and Evan said he would lose his eyes -t #thingswerewillingtolose #lolla
MichiganAvenue, Chicago. Sammy the artist. "I can't lose anything because all the things that make me miserable and fuck up my life, they're what drives me." #thingswerewillingtolose
Meet Ron and Christy. Ron said he would like to lose his car, and Christy said, "my insecurities." #UW #thingswerewillingtolose
Downtown Madison, Wisconsin Record Shop. -M #thingswerewillingtolose
Inspiration
My Opa (Grandpa) James R. Nyland and a lot of other humans too, but this ones about Opa.
There are journal entries from when you were in seventh grade about Wall Drug, and South Dakota. How you purchased fire crackers for eight dollars and how you bought a gnome, only later to have a gnome graveyard in the storage area above your garage. That’s where all the bent and broken gnomes get thrown to the side to be pieced together later. You used to pull into our driveway with gnomes strapped into the front seat with circus peanuts for us. A gnome cookie jar was a present one time and my sister and I snuck mini marshmallows into the shopping cart, and when we got home up to the room. We ate them every night and got to them with Liv’s bunk bed ladder. The next time we went to the dentist they gave us the nickname of “The marshmallow ladies.” My mom still thinks it’s the funniest thing.
I read you a story I wrote when I was probably only eleven and I remember you saying, “You’re such a good writer Taylor.” That’s what even still encourages me to be a writer to this day. But I know in whatever field I go into your spirit will be right alongside me encouraging me to do whatever it may be that makes me happy. You sold type writers too at one point in your life much earlier than selling gnomes. I like to think that someday I will be sitting in my house with a nice desk somewhere in a corner, next to a big window, with gnomes about, and a type writer there, and maybe even some fire crackers too. All of these things inspire me in a strange way, but don’t we all get inspired by strange things, moments and people?
I have lost something Number 3-M
farm house overgrown used as a hell raiser base wild weed growing spray paint on the walls 420 blaze it they tell me I can't do anything about it now mad this isn't a home anymore.
[I used to feel like I never fit in with my home, never pretty enough, athletic enough, smart enough, thin enough, fun enough]
People are home.
[Jealous of the people in my home all-star basketball players and choir kids and beautiful people and successful doctors and teachers and police officers]
This isn't really about something I am wiling to lose right now, maybe it'll turn into that but right now this is something I can't lose, something that's weird and funny and something I hate to love but also love to hate.
[I used to want to lose them lose this family I didn't fit in to a family I was't enough for]
There's a farmhouse out past a town of 607 people in the 605 and it's destroyed. It makes me so sad, and mad. My great grandparents lived inside of it. My aunts and uncles did too. My mother played in the fields and my grandfather passed away in the grasses. This farmhouse matters to me. It symbolized something like family to me. Something like a place to call home where I sat on the porch with my Great Grandfather imagined this house in it's glory days.
[Spent so many years so mad that this house went to Hell, resented the people who let it, mad at the people who broke in stole the memories destroyed the home, related to the farmhouse because it wasn't good enough for the family either it was broken. I was an empty art kid and they were all so picture perfect and popular and athletic]
Driving through this small town and to the cemetery I see where my ghosts live. I look at the graves, I hear their stories of the people I am similar to and the people who share the same fundamental values as me. I understand.
[I am enough I fit in family isn't about what you do it's about who you are and you don't have to be anything but yourself because being yourself is enough]
Genetically, we are all very loyal. Stupidly loyal. Always defending one another and always fighting one another. I don't know what I would do without them, without the history of where we came from, how we rose up, and how we've fallen in love and out of love and we've gone through grief and birth and mental illness together. There's some of my favorite people in the world. I don't want to lose that.
[I AM ENOUGH MY FAMILY LOVES ME I LOVE THEM AND I AM ENOUGH AND I HAVE LOST THE FEELING OF BEING NOTHING IN THE GRASSES OF THE DAKOTAS AND THE COWS HAVE TOLD ME I AM HOME, ENOUGH]
