knife

I had this knife and it was perfect. It was sharp and it was dangerous and when I was little my Dad told me not to play with ones just like it. But I found it anyway. It was like my kirpan, and it was everything.

I used it to cut vegetables, threads off of my skirt, my thumb once when I was showing it to someone else for the first time. I flung the edge against a brick wall, just for fun. I launched it into the same wall in anger. I spent hours whittling a stick into a match just looking for the perfect carve. In the end I found nothing but empty air in my hands.

I noticed the blade becoming dull. Desperate, I took it to the knife-sharpener, and he fixed it, for a few days. It didn't cut the same way, though—couldn't. My celery and carrots became nothing but strings, my hems destroyed and unraveled. I didn't dare slam it against anything, but I wanted to. I wanted to see if it could cut stone. I looked for sticks to carve but the edge couldn't even tame wood anymore.

I'm worried now. I'm having trouble slicing marmalade. But I don't want to let it go. No other blade will gleam quite like this one. Other knives won't let me throw them as far away as possible, stick them deep, deep into the earth, cut through a cloth just to hear that sound it makes when it rips in half.

In the end, nothing I have stays sharp for very long. The harder I try to keep things like they were, the easier it becomes for them to ebb. Into butter knives.

emotional avalanche: better than I could say it

"'I love your body,' I said, 'probably too much. I dream about your knees and elbows. I could fuck just your knees and elbows for the rest of my life and be satisfied. Like, I love it how your knees are the widest points on your legs, and how your arms seem all stretched out and too long for your body. You look like an over enthusiastic line drawing. I just… I want to have revolutionary sex with you every day for the rest of my life. And I’m not even really sure what I mean by that, but, well, it sounded good in my head. Sometimes I jerk off thinking about you jerking off. It’s like I worship you or something. God, I’m such a loser. It’s just that… I swear, I’ve never met someone who seems so above life, if that makes any sense. It’s hard for me to explain. It’s like… so for example, you move your hands when you talk, right? Making casual gestures–the sort of ordinary movements that everyone makes all the time. But when you do it it feels different: better, more spiritual. It feels like there should be an orchestra accompanying your every movement. It’s like you’re not real or something. When you open your mouth to speak I half expect pearls to come out of your mouth instead of words. Ugh… maybe I’m making too much out of this. It’s just that, you’re really beautiful in an end of the world kind of way. Is any of this making sense to you? Like even when I squint my eyes so hard that your face is no longer a face, and you just become this messy, flesh-colored smudge, even then I think you’re the most beautiful smudge on the face of the earth.'"

Karley Sciortino:  http://slutever.com/emotional-avalanche/

Only a few people know about this blog I keep and I didn't think they'd feel off-put about this kind of sexual and weird post because they're the best people on the earth. I wanted to share this because it meant something to me the first, and the second, and the third time I read it. That's important. I've read every page of 'Slutever' and it's embarrassing and exciting and hilarious and most of all it says, fuck it, isn't this what the Internet is here for? Let's stop pretending to be coy. Here's my life, and fuck you if you don't like it. It's brave and stupid and naive and annoying and unapologetic, all at once.

I'm too cynical, and too aware of my own cynicism to articulate what this means to me. Sometimes I wish that I could accept the fact that I, too, can feel lame connections to people I don't know over the Internet, and that it's not incredibly stupid. I also wish that I could get over my initial reaction of wanting to push my conventional, unexceptional feelings under a large table. Then, maybe, I can work on not trivializing my feelings. And once I finish writing this, maybe I can be brave enough to not delete everything and start again until I found the voice I want to use.

So maybe this post is about not caring, and not making things look pretty. Or maybe this post is about nothing. And maybe the four people who read this will be like, hey, what's up with your writing, it really sucks lately. Or maybe that's just me talking.

But hey, here's what a first draft looks like, everyone. Enjoy it, I guess.

The Fourteenth of February

Last night I dreamt that we were talking to each-other in that long distance style, that "Can you hear me?," "Your face is frozen," "Hello?" style, that new decade technology that we're already bored with style. All of a sudden I realized that if I reached forward, I would be able to touch you. And I did and I could feel your real, honest-to-God skin stretched over your frame. And then all of a sudden you pulled me in to you and I couldn't tell you how it happened, but it did. I was so happy because finally we were close and it was the culmination of every perfect moment I've ever had, and it smelled like sweat, and deodorant, and woodsmoke and leaves. And my leg wasn't in this silly brace, and I had never gotten hit by that car, so I wrapped my legs around you. Maybe it's just my broken blues wishing me out of this foreign bed and over to you, but it was the best dream-moment I've ever had. Then it slipped out of my consciousness as quickly as it came, and the dream took its own turn, evading my desires, pushing me into the spiral of nonsensicals that dreams live for.

I woke up, and Valentine's Day was over. Time runs out very fast. 

enough for a new year

I just found out that it's 749 miles to get to you. And I'm sick of welcoming the new year in alone. Home feels more right now than it ever has before, but it's still hard when I think about making sausages in our small, slovenly kitchen. I just want to go to a time where I'm not afraid to miss you so much, but I have a lot to do before that—so do you.

Soon it will be 7,147 miles to find you and there will be a continent between us. I don't regret it, but the distance will still sting. 

I don't care if you read this and I don't care if you think I'm lame for writing it. All I can do is put this down and make it enough.

We're just waiting, waiting to begin

I can't seem to write anything good anymore. I think it's because I've been in this awful, orange chaired waiting room for the past few months. Waiting to leave, waiting for my friends to come back, waiting for my relationship to fall apart or click together like some magnetic puzzle. I've been thinking backwards most days, back to when every minute was new and I wasn't sitting in bed wondering why my head hurts so much.

But I haven't been honest with myself. I know why my head hurts, and I know why I can't write. I made my own complacent prison. I'm here because I was too afraid to ask myself if I really did have things figured. And now I don't know how to leave. They say that Only you can change your life! but when you've just stirred from a waking dream, how do you find the time you lost staring at a screen?

This place isn't dark, but there isn't much light either. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel good. It's a flat nothingness, like Nebraska on a gray spring day. I'm ready to hear thunder and see the sun, but I don't know how.

Goblin Market

Last night I dreamt
That we walked in the sunlight
And you began to run
And you led me to your car
And I asked
"Where are we going?"
And you didn't answer, so we drove.
And we drove, and drove.
Until we reached a market:
"The Fabulous Farmer's Market"
Full of ripe, strange fruits
Big purple eggplants with swirls of white
Full, neon green peppers
Apple sauce with a sprig of mint
And mashed pears with honeycomb
It was the best place we could have ever thought of
You turned to me and put your arm around my shoulders
And grinned.
And I said, "Should I get the apple sauce, or the pears?"
And you thought about it.
And you said, "How about both?"
And you kissed me.
And the sun washed in from the window in our bedroom,
Taking the eggplants, and peppers,
The apple sauce and pears—
but not you.

9/11

I've read so many blog-posts trying to sum up the day in numbers. In concepts. In emotionally charged adjectives. But I cannot take that single day into my hands and root out the profound moment where my life changed forever. To be honest, the strongest desire I felt on September 11, 2001 was for the day to be over. As I realized what happened and as more information came in and as things began to sink in as far as they could in my 10-year-old brain, I desperately just wanted the day finish. I wanted to wake up to a new day and at least know where the world stood. 

Because there was life before, the life that I knew from July 3, 1991 to September 10, 2001. And then there was the world after. And I could accept that things would be different. And worse, maybe. But what I hated more than anything—more than watching my parents cry, more than worrying about planes overhead, more than trying to make it all real—was this horrible, unstable Limbo that was that day. 

And when it finally was over, when I woke up on September 12—my mother's 53rd birthday, although we did not celebrate it that year—things were different. Things were rawer. And they were ugly. And I know that people want to move forward from that. The only memories they want to draw upon are those of the country coming together out of the ashes. But I will never forget the week that followed the 11th.

It was a few days after the attacks. It was all anyone talked about. But we were still going to school; some things had to stay the same. I was at lunch, sitting next to my friend Nabiha, who is Pakistani. She offered me some Pakistani candy. I took it because it looked good and because my friend had offered it to me. As I unwrapped it, another girl sitting at our table—Rebekah—wrinkled her nose at me.

"Are you going to eat that?" she asked

"Yes?" I replied, questioningly.

"Are you sure you should...I mean...because, it's like...Arab. Is it safe?"

I was so embarrassed.

I was so embarrassed.

I was so fucking embarrassed and I was so fucking sad. 

I could feel Nabiha sinking a little next to me, ashamed. I paused, a mili-second.

"What?" I said. "Of course I'm going to eat it. Why would you even say that?"

Rebekah looked at me unapologetically. I knew why she said it. I ate the candy and tried to console Nabiha. 

And here it was. In this moment. The suspicion and fear and anger and hate. It had already trickled down to fifth graders. People can talk about the Patriot Act, or the reports of anti-Muslim sentiment and hate crimes, or even about the horrific act itself but for me, that was it. That was the destruction. That was what 9/11 had done. It had taken us and turned us in on ourselves. And it was so easy.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. This number is important to us because we like to measure history in neat quantities. But it is not the years or the decades that pass, but rather the days and the hours and the minutes that we should watch for. The unconstructed moments that reveal much more about our insides than an anniversary memorial service, or a 12 minute remembrance segment on the nightly news, or the reflective blog post or Facebook status.

I remembered that moment at the lunch table one year ago today. And I will remember it one year from now. And probably for the rest of my life.