UFR Weekly Newsletter #2: The Things We Carry
David Cotrone
Let’s build something. Who here likes music? I know Aaron Wolfe does (hi, Aaron).
This week, I’ve been carrying this. And a little of this. How about you? If enough of you reply to this message, we can build a UFR playlist and share it. Wouldn’t that be something? Feel free to explain why the song you can’t stop playing makes such an impact on you. Sharing more than one is okay, too.
***
Being a twin does not skew an identity. The water, nevertheless, is muddied. Once, as we approached ten years of age, I tied my brother to a tree, using a jump rope as tether, and left him. Another time, in an effort to prove my valor, I pitched a tent in the backyard, inside it set an inflatable mattress and a radio, and deemed it my new living space. I lasted two sleepless nights. My brother followed suit, lasting one sleepless night.
***
New subscribers,
Welcome. If you missed last week’s update, you can read it here.
Brian Gallivan answers a question about obstacles, saying, "You have to just keep working and improving yourself to the point where people can’t say no to you."
Don Antenen’s Richard Richard Richard Richard
Two poems by Christy Crutchfield
***
In middle school, I spent many nights in the Plimoth Plantation’s graveyard. Here, my brother and I, along with our friends, played manhunt, amidst the gravestones and the dead. Looking at the dirt and the cracks in the gravestones always made me think of my grandmother lying in a portable hospital bed in her mobile home. Withered from cancer, she could not hold a glass of water. Her voice nearly gone, it hurt here to laugh; she was breathing so heavily that it seemed unnatural.
“You boys,” she said, looking at my brother and me. “You boys.”
This was the last time I saw her.
“Be good to each other.”
***
Thank you for reading each other’s stories, for contributing, for submitting, for your support. If you have time, suggest our facebook page to your friends, tweet about us, forward this message to someone you love. That is, after all, why I’ve sent it to you.
Be well,
David