Unthinkable Thoughts and Favorite Questions

10 Months of Writing and Reading New York City’s Unsent Letters

Credit: Elly Viazy a.k.a

This has been the year of making room for unthinkable thoughts and a true exercise in questioning what makes us human.

I picked up woodworking in September 2023 when little else made sense — a collaboration had fallen through, and I was left feeling, again, like a failure. I found myself in a familiar muck — questioning my belonging in this world that felt at once too small and too large.

Around that time, a friend gave me a copy of “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” In it, Clarissa Pinkola Estés unearths feminine archetypes and lessons hidden in old folk tales. One of them read, “When you feel like you want to die, it’s not because you physically have to. Rather, a part that no longer serves you must die.”

I let the aspiring entrepreneur die (the part of me that craved recognizable success), settling for “craftswoman” instead — one who works with their hands. I’m not a good craftswoman by most standards. I lack a sense of distance, making it difficult for me to make measurements. That’s how, in January 2024, I ended up with a mailbox twice as large as any functional one — an accident that allowed me to call it an “urban installation” that I painstakingly dragged to the center of Washington…