But Jenny is a bad-ass who has been fighting cancer for 8 years. She almost died three times last year and always came back like a fucking champ so I sent her another message telling her how much I love her. I took this picture of her 16 years ago at a Blogher Convention.
That was the night we discovered Chambord and we poured it into every drink we had. Jenny was the kind of person who would give you the shirt off her back, but mostly to show you the enormous Wear the Wild Things Are tattoo across her entire back. She sent me a Christmas card with her beautiful family on it every year including this one even though she knew that I never sent cards or even had the energy to put up a tree some years.
Some people would really hate a memorium like this, filled with tattoos and hoarded unicorn menstruation, but not Jenny. I love you. If I have met you in real life, I love you. If I blocked you on facebook because you wrote some crazy-ass shit, I love you. It will be filled with typos and rambling parentheticals and apologies for answering several months too late. My only hope is that my constant declining of the suggestions will make the AI learn from me and spread my terrible etiquette throughout the world.
Clearly I did need help because…fucking wow. Nailed it:. Every so often I write something on my newsletter about art that I think you might want to read even if art is not for you. I suspect many of you are also feeling too much of the darkness of the world, which can be especially dangerous for those who already stand too close to the edge of the abyss.
It can be easy to burn with anger at hypocrisy and hate and chaos, but here is what I have learned…and what I keep telling myself:. You can use that heat as fuel to create change, to promote kindness, to protect yourself and those who are most vulnerable…to keep you warm when the world seems too cold. But, that burning anger can also be dangerous. It can exhaust you. It can pull the oxygen from the room.
