Francesca Lia Block | Weetzie Bat | 1989

Dearest Weetzie Bat,

I hope you've got a cotton-candy, looking-glass sky tonight, so you can see all the sparkling lights and stars above LA. My side of the sky is across the country, but after all, it's the same sky; and I wish the same for it just about every night so I can gaze up, and look, and dream, and wish.

And that's why I'm writing: to say that ever since I read about you, I've learned to wish a little more than usual. I've made a lot, and almost none have come true, but you're fearlessness makes me keep on wishing. You weren't afraid to ask that genie for your three wishes at all. On the spot and spot on, you knew what you wanted and you wished. When your cottage and Duck and Secret Agent Lover Man came to you, you took them in and made them a part of you. You kept the best that the world gave and rolled over the bad like a dune buggy on a beach full of rocks.

I feel a little bit like Witch Baby sometimes--wild and mad and crazy about everything. But she has you and Dirk and Duck, and Cherokee, Raphael, Coyote and Angel Juan and Agent Man, and tumbles through. And now I have you and your family too, to think about and dream with.

It's funny, because you're younger than me, and older, and the same age all at once. I'm still a mixed-up girl just graduated from her teens, but your strength and bravery to do and dress and say what you believe will be with me for awhile. You keep making those movies and loving your friends, and I'll do the same (with a slight difference in day job).

Your Hopeful Solar Sister from the East Coast,
Hayley Woodman