VERTIGO

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

Earlier this week, I succumbed to a case of vertigo, a sensation familiar to those people who have sipped a few too many glasses of champagne. Thankfully, the symptoms have subsided. During my spell, I experienced a subtle swimmy-ness in my head — a feeling that matched the mood of this youth letter writing project. There is a slippery aspect to addressing oneself: Am I writing you? Am I writing me? Am I writing us? Tone changes subtly between past self and present. The inevitable question arises, if I change my past actions what other events do I set into motion? The writers express an understanding of what support was available to their younger selves. As the piles of letters gather alongside the short memoir pieces, pictures are forming, we can imagine each of these writers as kids or teenagers who got swept up into a world that they are unequipped to manage on their own. We see the potential for what could have been and continue to encourage the people before us.

Amir: Letter to a Younger Self
In the end, you will persevere. Your faith and belief in God through it all, will be your true peace and prosperity. Even as I write this letter to you 38 years later (from the confines of this cell, knowing what I know now), it is the path you must take, for it is written.

Peace by Amir’Whadi Hassan
Do the scars remind you of life’s dangers?
Or do they excite you when you recall from which they came?
The burn of the bullet, the piercing of the blade,
the sting of the heart when you recall the game from which you were made.

Robin: Letter to a Younger Self
There is a great deal I want to tell you/me, many events I’d like to warn you about, many things I feel you could change in our past (your present and future) that would change my present/our future but I cannot.

Life Lessons by Robin Thatcher
I’ll never forget how he pulled out a book of matches, tore every match but one off the book and tossed them over his shoulder and handed me the book with the single match — I know now this was for dramatic effect. “You only have one shot,” he said. “Now go gather your wood. You know what to do.”

Rayven: Letter to a Younger Self
I write this message to you from your possible future. Prison. Right now, is the moment you choose whether you spend your life with the ones who matter, free to make your life what you want it to be or spend your life with regret and little control over what happens to you.

Truth by Ravyen Lotches
let your heart speak
because when your heart speaks
the weight starts to lift

Last Friday Danny and I meet one our original PonyXPress writers, Austin Clark at the gates of Oregon State Penitentiary. Austin fell at age 16 and served 16 years in a maximum-security prison. As he left the brightly lit, controlled passageway of the prison, he walked out into the cold, clear darkness of a January morning. We joined his family as they made their way along the path away from the prison. Austin carried his guitar case and friend held a plastic bag of his belongings. After all the hugs and hellos, Austin asked, “How far is the parking lot?” Since he was 16, Austin’s world has been measured by the track, the weight pile, the cells on a unit. It struck me in that moment that Austin has to learn distance. | TDS