Love Letters to an Octopus

Journal entry, Page 1

Dear Lexy,

First of all, hello and welcome to this memoir. Pull up a chair and make yourself a cup of tea or Barnie's White Christmas coffee and grab your Spotify. The song going through my head when I wrote this and painted this was Peter Murphy "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem"

"My mother loved it so she said
Sad eyed pearl and drop lips
Glancing pierce through writer man
Spoke hushed and frailing hips
Her old eyes skim in creasing lids
A tear falls as she describes
Approaching death with a yearning heart
With pride and no despise

Hot tears flow as she recounts
Her favorite worded token
Forgive me please for hurting so
Don't go away heartbroken no

 

Just wise owl tones no velvet lies
Crush her velvet call
Oh Marlene suffer all the fools
Who write you on the wall
And hold your tongue about your life
Or dead hands will change the plot
Will make your loving sound like snakes
Like you were never hot

 

Hot tears flow as she recounts
Her favorite worded token
Forgive me please for hurting so
Don't go away heartbroken no

 

My mother loved it so she said
Sad eyed pearl and drop lips yeah
Glancing pierce through writer man
Spoke hushed and frailing lips yeah
Old eyes skim in creasing lids
A tear falls as she describes
Approaching death with a yearning heart
With pride and no despise

 

Hot tears flow as she recounts
Her favorite worded token
Forgive me please for hurting so
Don't go away heartbroken no"

 

I think the part of the song I highlighted above is one piece of the facet of the WHY I am writing this. I feel like words are best captured from the source. Whether you are talking about relationships, politics or anything really.

 

I remember when you were little and you would grab my Peter Murphy CD and take it and hide it. It was also the first concert I took you to at age 6. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best parenting decision since the opening band was definitely not kid appropriate. But that has always been the way of it with us, right? You were always a little wiser than your years and I was always a little more lax than the average parent. You even told me once when you were VERY little that "a long time ago that YOU were the mother and I was the daughter a long time ago before you were born". I definitely believe that we have shared other lifetimes together and that is probably true. You always said "weird stuff" like this as a kid.

 

The other reason I am writing this is because this year I plan to try to love more. Others and myself. Sometimes this isn't an easy task for me.

 

This project was a tangible way I could express to you how much I love you and I love you a whole lot. I want to show you a level of unconditional love and acceptance that I felt I never got from my own mother and just show you how much you mean to me.

 

My plan is to tie a song and a journal entry to each page of the art journal I had made. You can also use the #loveletterstoanoctopus to find all the visual entries in one place on Instagram or Facebook.

 

I hope I can create a RFID code and paste the code on each journal page. (and in the Instagram post) so you can easily find everything.

 

Love you honey,

 

You are definitely my "happiest accident" and the world would be far worse off without you in it.

 

-Mom