telegraphs4

03.09.2026

First Notes from Home

Today,

i witnessed a wife calling to her husband in the library. Her husband was tucked behind the shelves near me. I had headphones in and could still hear her. He could have had hearing aids or he could have just pretended to not hear her for a while. I would like the believe the latter.
I waited in line at the post office behind a nice young old man who was there to change his mailing address. I was wearing my I♥︎NY tee and he commented that he used to go to graduate law school at New York University. Being fresh out of Topeka, he accidentally walked into a mob family’s private restaurant. Immediately every person stopped eating or talking and stared at him. He says he got lucky getting out without some threat to his personal well-being.
Lastly, I was driving past the block my friends lived on in middle school, and i noticed there was a new sign up that read “No Construction Traffic.” Road work had been going on around the neighborhood for years. Half of the streets in that neighborhood are paved with red brick. But not always was there the “No Construction Traffic” sign on the 600 block of Louisiana. Before it was there, dump trucks and other heavy disposal vehicles would tromp across this red brick street in order to get to main traffic artery 6th street.

The president of Lawrence, Kansas’ favorite virtual town square, Tom Harper, noticed the heavy trucks were too heavy! They were pushing the 120 year old brick further into the group, greating potholes, and therefor scraping the bricks as well. It was some real damage to an authentic park of lawrence,.
But, Anyway, passing by today, I noticed the city had listened and had forbade construction vehicles on that road. That made me so happy, to know the city appeases, and that the city loves, and that the city listens to its lovely residents.

I am at oft times so happy to be back in a town of my native language. But my coherence and vocabulary seem to be decreasing, and i am praying it is just code-switching and I will be fine once i leave again.

24.08.2026

Gates 
B67 & B66

You’ll walk past each other in the airport in 3.5 years time and all that will pass from your mouth is a “hi Milo!” You look different, stature-wise. I was reading your letter last week, about how someday you hope to hear all about my future from that past. I stopped and stared— maybe a little bit rude, sure— before you passed by with that fleeting greeting. Had you seen me walking towards you before I had seen you? And prepared to say that? Why? To sound flippant? I suppose I am not upset. Sorry if it sounds that way. I am just surprised.

Understanding from the way you did not pause your stride that there will be no conversation, I’ll continue walking too. 10 steps away I’ll stop and look back. And then one more step and then again. And at the end of this one, I see you start to turn your head back to me and I turn mine back towards where I am going.

I find myself sitting now piecing it together. I’m at the end of the Southwest terminal, where there are 6 gates with just one waiting area. I’m worried you are watching me over my shoulder. You love transit. Or did. You’re gazing proudly around while tromping down the hall towards me. You did not have any baggage with you. I had just come from the bathroom. That’s where you were going. Where I am now is where you were coming from. Here at the end of the hallway, Gate B66 is going to Chicago Midway. Gate B67 is going to Phoenix. Two years ago you guessed correctly that a photo I shared was Chicago Midway Airport. You shared that you fly through it on your way to Bennington, Vermont to go to university. You haven’t graduated yet. You don’t know much about me today, certainly not that today I am flying to Phoenix. You must think I am flying to Chicago Midway. You might not want to see me. You might avoid coming back to this waiting area until you must, and board your plane last, and spend the next 3 hours of the flight and deplaning sequence thinking about not being seen by me. I am going to Phoenix, you are going to Midway. I want to see and talk to you. I want to hear about your last three years, without you thinking I can’t comprehend any of it. 



T**** and O*** and MJB all flying out of the Kansas City International airport today.

Still in the same cohort 11 years later.

23.08.2026

In Antibes in the Castle

Excerpt from pocket notebook, 21.07.2026

Like everyone, I find pleasure in bookstores and museums. But not normally because of their transient content. Instead I enjoy these places because of the way they make my mind feel, and how they make other people act. The nature of a museum or bookstore is centered around a few things, but primary in my conception of them is their reverence for human experience and thought. Museums and Bookstores (and their compatriot, Libraries) are cathedrals to human thought perception and learning. I am attending the Grimaldi castle Museum of Picasso in Antibes today. There is a special exhibit by some french man who studied economics before turning into an artist who works with light. He spotlights walls, openings, perspectives, voids, translucencies, patterns, et cetera. It is stupid but I so love it. Picasso’s things here are okay too. But humans all think complexly, and want to share it. And moreso, the interactions at these places have great propensity to cause dreaming or irrational hope, because the imaginer is surrounded by great monuments to experiences and thought.

18.06.2026

Party of 6


Accidental Triathalon

Rural Magyarorszag

Today we crossed a little more land than i expected to. I traversed it all with my sister who is 2.5 years my senior. We wonder and worry about our family. We only get to see them once or twice a year now (despite our young age) (I felt like that is a sentence only a married or grown-up person should say). So when we do meet, and we have to get used to the things we forgot were irksome about our family, it is nice to have someone else to talk to about it. It never gets easier, the farther away you live. Do we get better at handing the stress of being with the family? perhaps. Perhaps more annoyed too, because I (speaking as a newly minted graduate) am now so used to not having to worry about living or doing daily tasks with anybody else. Perhaps i’d be better at that if were I actually to begin some relationship, but that surely hasn’t happened. And so I remain uncomfortable with anything more that solitude. And will procrastinate developing that skill for another handful of years. Glad to have my siblings, though, who better understand how unnecessary our parent’s bursts are. But then if other siblings around you are causes of the problems, then you ought to have a very reliable sibling; and for zoë, i am glad.

Today our group started as 6 but progressively fractured into just the 2 of us.


30 miles biked, 8 miles walked, and two rivers swam today. whole tub of ice cream consumed during lunch. dinner dürüm kebab eaten in 4 minutes. i’d consider the day seized and throttled.

25.05.2026

When I was twenty, I took a bike, train, train, ferry, ferry, train,

bus, &

train 

To get to an island that my dad lived on, alone, when I was three. 

Nobody lives on the island anymore. Population 0. When I visited, it was just me and the caretakers. They mowed lawns and unlocked the church and lighthouse for me. It feels and felt like a secret. And my dad. Did he really live there? Could he have? 
The island is the size of 100 of my bedrooms, and about as tall as one, too, except for the lighthouse. It felt like it, too, except for the two concrete bunkers.

My dad lived in a stone cottage. One night he heard someone closing his kitchen cabinets but never saw who. When I visited I opened them all back up for him. While he was there, there was one couple who lived permanently on the Island year-round. They cooked him fish and promised him that they were not the ones closing his kitchen cupboards. They died a year before I visited the island. that is why they have to ferry in and mow the lawn once a month. I guess I should say it is not much of a ferry: it is a cabin for the captain/lawn mower, and a bench on deck for you. 
You can walk the perimeter of the island in about 30 minutes; it is miniscule. I completed my sandy lap an half hour before the ferry left back for Fredrikshavn. After a day spent on Hirsholm, it was now indeed a family secret. I found two tall stones on the north beach and left buried treasure under them for future visiting posterity. If you are visiting ever, the treasure is at 57°29'11.3"N 10°37'29.6”E. Please re-bury it and leave it for my kids. 
I grew up eating breakfast next to photographic prints of rocks and dirt of this island. My older sister in fact still gets to eat her breakfast next to them. They are, in fact, not good photographs. 

I took my sweet time getting back to the ferry. They blew the horn at me. But I very well might never be back. There is something majorly magic about this island. It can go to sleep for weeks or seasons at a time. And it is only really known by its caretaker, and the tiny group of people who were privileged enough to have lived on it for a small time. My phone ran out of battery when the ferry arrived back into Fredrikshavn’s docks.
I wandered. It was my mom’s birthday, but I couldn’t call her. I kept walking north along the coast. I took a right-hand turn, under train tracks, and I found myself in amazing saltwater marshes while the sun was setting. The clear sky made mirrors of the tiny puddles in the grass. And the sun made each tip of blade of grass orange. Therese are my favorite colors. Now I wandered, crossing a half-moon bridge made of industrial pre-cast steel. I sat under a grassy  dune on the lip of the beach  and read my novel while the setting sun made the sky rosy over our island on the horizon. My phone being dead I took no photos. All I have is a pristine memory of the sight. You know those sights that you will never forget; the mental image shutter click. And I have the sketch in my pocket notebook. It is on the last page of the notebook that I had for that season of life. A finale, and a conclusion to a chapter. Perhaps feeling like a question was put to rest, although I don’t know what the question was. What I do know now? I love my dad. I love my family’s stories. I love that drawing. I love that island and the ferry captain. I love the rare seabirds that call the island grasses home. I love the heterochromatic eyes of the two dogs who found me sleeping under the sand bluff. I love that I never saw where they came from or where they went. I love that day, and how it could have been a dream. It wouldn’t matter if it only was- a real dream is just as valid.

portrait by

28.04.2026

Under my Spotify Eye

Today I got to share the pleasures of Spotify reconnaissance with Kitsi. There is a lot of knowledge to be gained about a person from their music curation habits. And even more giggles when you find their account. 

You can out a lot from somebody’s Spotify account. You may not even have to listen to their playlists to find out what you want to find out. In fact, listening may distract you from the prize you are supposed to have your eye on. And eventually, you’ll know all the typologies of Spotify users. Most music is clumped into a big group of other similar music (obviously) and you start to notice all of the categories as you find more and more people with similar accounts. The outliers are the ones who are the most fun. It is very rare to find someone that defies all categories. They always stick in my mind. There are just three of these people for me. As someone who has looked at a lot of profiles maybe this is a bold claim of mine but I think it must be only three.
There is so much to be learned from the date of which a song was added to a playlist, and then that song’s placement in the playlist; maybe the first song in the playlist was added 3 days ago, and the second song was added 3 months ago! It means you should probably then listen to that newly first song to see if it represents how they’re feeling. It also means they don’t shuffle their playlists. 

Sometimes I get fomo if I look at someone else’s Spotify. I imagine how they have all these memories behind every single song (as I do) that I will never know about. And heres the flaw in this thought of mine: if they don’t have a lot of saved songs, then I think they must not have many memories. Like not fully transformed into a human yet. Did you know you have to pay Spotify a memory in order to save a song? Yes, you are required to make or retrieve a memory/feeling/reaction in order to properly bookmark a piece of music. It is only fair. Otherwise, who is to say, but that it could all remind you of the same thing! Or it could all be in the name of conformity. 

I don’t think, for the record, that I am sharing GOOD OPINIONS on the topic of Spotify usage. This is just gained through years of experience. 
Today Kitsi and I disected her ex-boyfriends Spotify page meticulously, and I gathered by the end the he would not be very tall, he would fall into occasional pits of self-loathing and despair often, that he likes the idea of a dance floor. Dean Blunt, smerz, French jazz, etc. 
And then we found the next man’s, but i cannot fully divulge his name for her privacy reasons. His was really funny though and changed the way I saw him when he walked into the place next. But nice to walk under the dying electric blue of the sky cut out by the jagged shelf of Prague’s turrets and be giggling about some one’s life on Spotify.

And just like that, slowly, slowly, my taste is coming back. i’m tasting something sweet.

and trying to remember where i am

some where dusty

where time is stopped

Recall listening to Blonde by the Enos after thinking the world was going to end the night before. And drawing a dream I had on a mail envelope in green ink, and just feeling like the truth is all out there somewhere in the world and I just don’t know how to decode it. And now the secret is tucked in a wall, flush.

and these were my grandparents in the dream. they still are, in the dream.