A Love Letter to Tangible Things.

Amanda Eagleson
5 min readSep 16, 2020
A stack of letters bound with string. One letter open with a photo under it.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood

Everything is grey.

The wildfires in Oregon and California have formed a fog of smoke that sits over a city resigned to its existence.

It’s easy to be resigned to our failures.

I sat on the beach with an old co-worker on Sunday. We got stoned and stared out at the ocean. The horizon hidden behind a dull veil.

In January this same beach hosted the 2020 Polar Bear Swim. Everyone decked out in speakeasy swimwear.

A mass of people pressed together in bizarre ritual.

Three months later I would be grabbing one last box of donuts from Cartems on my last day of work at the office.

Not long after this, I would be laid off.

I started a Covid diary. Sloppy sketches, random thoughts, a daily record.

It seemed important. To have something that could be held. Pages tracking days, artistic ‘progression’, failures, frustrations, worries. I don’t keep it daily anymore (I’ve gained two part-time jobs and an exhaustive list of responsibilities since then), but I do still keep it.

six photos of a drawing journal done collage style

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Amanda Eagleson

Poet, Writer at Optimistic Learner and Digital Economy Forum. Board member at Vancouver Poetry House. www.optimisticlearner.com