Podcast
 

Episode 23: What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?
July 25, 2011

Living the Questions Podcast, Episode 23 (What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?)

What would you want to tell your younger self, given the opportunity?

Play.  Or download now.  Subscribe in iTunes.

Resources:

Links to bloggers referenced in podcast:
Cassie Boorn’s Compilation of “Letters to Your 20-Something Self.”
Karen Walrond.
Lisa Belkin’s “A Letter to My Younger Self” in the The New York Times.
Jessica Gottlieb.

Books:
What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, edited by Ellyn Spragins.
If I’d Known Then: Women in Their 20s and 30s Write Letters to Their Younger Selves, edited by Ellyn Spragins.

Poem:

“Antilamentation” by Dorianne Laux.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Episode Artwork:

Beach Dream by Bella on stock.xchng.

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One Comment

  1. […] From my podcast of the same name. […]

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