My grandmother, the first of my immediate family to die (RIP, 1915-2011), had this phone until she moved in with my mother towards the end of her life. I imagine I was the one to compel them both to keep this phone, for me, for my future self.

From the time I was in elementary school, my grandmother assured me of many things, but here are two: 1) if a UFO came down and landed on her street, she would most certainly walk onboard, 2) when she died, she would do everything she could to get in touch with me, including trying to call me on the phone from wherever she was.

When I took this phone out of a plastic storage bin that we filled at my mother’s house, my thoughts were about picking the receiver up and trying to make a call to my mother. My mother called my grandmother every single day, for years, for decades, and this was the phone my grandmother would pick up and say, Bueno.

No words could form when I picked up the receiver. My plea, my prayer, were transmitted anyway.

When I began with “artifacts 1” I knew it could go on forever. I’m still slowly going through my mother’s papers, my grandmother’s papers. I decided to give space to just three artifacts.

The last several newsletters feel covered in a grief residue. I’m not sure when that will give way to something different.

In a way, I am picking up the receiver and calling out to the void. In a way, these newsletters are a variation on the Loss Notebook I mention in Hollywood Notebook. The Loss Notebook is on my shelf next to me as I write this. Maybe all the journals I own are versions of a Loss Notebook.

Next week, next week, next week—

Next week I think (I hope) I’ll be writing about what I’m reading, and what I’m thinking about, aside from loss. Though loss is a shadow I can’t trick or lose.

Maybe next week maybe maybe next week next week maybe next week—

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