I will write and write and write and enjoy it too

Suddenly I remember him whispering in my ear, as he lay on top of me with my shirt off, that I was lucky he was choosing not to rape me because there was nothing I'd be able to do to stop him, and I am filled with so much anger that I finally forgive myself for ceasing to answer his calls.


The depth of sorrow and rage that I feel over what these hateful, voracious men are doing to the earth is perhaps the greatest sorrow and rage I will ever have the experience of feeling. There are no words.


I must not be beaten by 2011. I will write and write and write and enjoy it too, the sound and sensation of fingers flying over a keyboard always strangely comforting to me.

Here are some of the images that come to me running on the combined baseball/field hockey field at my old high school, dressing up as an elf to dance dirty in the narrow, darkened, sweaty hallway, biking to DC dubstep parties through the most murderous neighborhood in the city, having beer-fueled sex across four apartments, sneaking down to the kitchen for bowls of ginger and raisins and grapes, laughing so hard on my back with my best friend in a tent beside the reservoir, lying out on a colorful quilt in the dark grass of the Christmas tree farm, the whole class listening as I shared my thoughts on Transcendentalism, watching the video of two-year-old me taking my father on a walk, playing that weird audio recording of my writing project mashup while sitting in front of the class, locking eyes with Wilson the day we went to pick him up from the shelter, pushing the bounds of so many new neighborhoods on two feet or a bike, the river water sloshing against the concrete breakers at Astoria park, standing under that sand beach of stars in Maine, getting drunk together under that tree on the edge of the lake, sipping whiskey by the fire at the Nature Inn, climbing into the backcountry, flying down hills on my cross-country skis, Hanna trying to eat that big hunk of carrot.