One can be a cat lady without owning cats. I obsessively splay the blinds apart with my fingers and check to see if Tyrese is huddled in the alley. Last night he actually laid down to actually rest-- "he's lying down!", I called from the back room-- and today he (or she, I have yet to know for sure) started cleaning himself with his tongue. "He's cleaning himself! Come see!" And why hasn't he eaten all of the Meow Mix that I left out for him? I thought he would like salmon topped with tuna, but perhaps he will prefer the self-labeled "REAL beef!" that I plan to leave out for him tomorrow. He seemed in good spirits today-- this morning I watched him bound across the fallen boards almost as if for fun, a far cry from his hurried slinking attempts to press himself into the concrete so that I will not see him or touch him or, I know he fears, hurt him as I step into the alley, cooing, to leave him water and salmon pate.
I have decided to open a Roth IRA. I am trying to be smarter about my investments. I resent this.
On Saturday we drove 27 minutes to Target and bought two large plastic containers for $2.79 each in which to store all of our dry goods. I transferred soup cans and bags of quinoa into the clear tubs, then reached for my Zyrtec D-- yelped, and dropped it to the kitchen floor. Roaches fled in every direction; even after the exodus there were at least six more in the bottom of the box. I grabbed the newly-dubbed "roach shoe" and got swinging, then plunged the box into a plastic bag, sealed it off, and carried it hurriedly at arm's length out of the apartment building and up the street to the public trash can. The men stared because I was wearing a thin white tshirt without a bra and my too-large skirt was slipping down over my hips. Who has time to cover their nipples when their allergy medicine is swarming with bugs?
I am working to make choices again from a place of hope, not fear. I save the bottle top from his can of beer and glue it onto a magnet which I then stick to the freezer door: Raise hopes not fears.
"Let's make this our house motto and design it into our crest," I say. "You know, like in olden times."
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
(until yesterday I hadn't seen Tyrese in eight days)
Until yesterday I hadn't seen Tyrese in eight days. Yesterday I checked through the blinds of the back window, as I have every day since beginning to care for the cats, and there he was again, sitting in front of the chain link fence. "Tyrese came back!!!!," I texted.
Now I am sitting with the phone playing ads and lousy muzak beside me, waiting to tell the underpaid customer service representative that I refuse to be taken advantage of any more than I already have been. So far I have wasted 25 minutes, trying to make justice happen.
Corn Plant has put up another shoot. It is small, light green, and delicate, hugging the bottom edge of Corn Plant's thick strong stem. More than six years of straining ever so slightly upward, and suddenly new growth appears. I noticed the bud the day my nephew was born.
His face is squinchy, thick and smooth, and a little skeptical. He stares with one eye squinting into the camera, clutching the red crab sewn onto his chest. When my sister calls I hear him hiccuping into the phone. I have not met him yet but I feel like I know him already. I hope we will be the best of friends.
Now I am sitting with the phone playing ads and lousy muzak beside me, waiting to tell the underpaid customer service representative that I refuse to be taken advantage of any more than I already have been. So far I have wasted 25 minutes, trying to make justice happen.
Corn Plant has put up another shoot. It is small, light green, and delicate, hugging the bottom edge of Corn Plant's thick strong stem. More than six years of straining ever so slightly upward, and suddenly new growth appears. I noticed the bud the day my nephew was born.
His face is squinchy, thick and smooth, and a little skeptical. He stares with one eye squinting into the camera, clutching the red crab sewn onto his chest. When my sister calls I hear him hiccuping into the phone. I have not met him yet but I feel like I know him already. I hope we will be the best of friends.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
(or something is moving us apart from each other)
I feel all my friends are moving away from me, or I am moving away from them, or something is moving us apart from each other. In any case the end result is the same. I feel as if I am standing at the bottom of a very deep well, its cool stone walls dry beneath my fingers. I am not necessarily scared there, and I am not even, or at least not always, anxious. What I do feel is alone, and a little dazed, unsure of what to do next as I look up at the sunlight above me, blinking.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
(hair ties and principals)
We have decided to use poison. The decision was not made lightly. Still I have consented to spreading 12 canisters of toxic chemicals throughout the kitchen and bathroom. The reason is that roaches were spreading across the apartment like the ivy up Allison Conroy's dad's house in middle school, and to imagine them infiltrating my bedroom is to imagine myself taking to the streets, a suitcase in one hand and a toothbrush in the other. It is enough that they have crawled into the cupboards, the fridge, and across our clean dishes and food. I have tried the natural methods and they have failed. It is was my choice and I made it. May they all die, quickly, and may I rest in peace.
Meanwhile a mouse ran into the bedroom today, tiny and quite adorable, really, though my intent was not to ogle it but to shoo it away from the mattress by sweeping it gently with a broom. Instead it dashed across my foot and into the hole by the pipe that runs from the boiler through the apartment to the second floor. I am reminded of my own memories-- of choosing to live in a cabin with a family of mice and a lost bat or two-- and attempt to take solace in them. I have done it before.
Edwidge tells me that creation is an act of revolution, and of course I agree. Still I struggle to accept the responsibility of such a movement. To create is to release an expression into the world and watch it be twisted and crunched and rotated and expanded into something other than what you believed it was or ever would be. Thus I am learning: the responsibility lies not in the result and certainly not in the conversation, but in the making.
I imagine her climbing up that hill, thirteen hours of effort to see an old aunt whose best friend remains her deceased daughter, whose hands press hot coffee from burlap sacks at dawn. I am struck by the memory of Bangor Forest, the beginning of March and still frozen in ice. We skated our hiking boots across miles of trail, departing once from the path to sprint up a short hill. It was yellow with fallen grass, pockets of snow giving way to waterlogged soil and only the bravest of tiny green shoots. The sky narrow, textured with clouds and the memory of snow.
The star-spangled ball bounces across the crowns of our heads and tips of our fingers. He grasps it with one hand and begins to dance. I stare mesmerized as my body moves.
Two weeks ago I danced in the rain and the cold, for hours I danced and as the weather defied me I held my ground, shaking my stinging wet hair and laughing, and shouted from my mind I will not leave my people. We kept each other standing that night, and the music kept us alive. Fire burned in my torso; I knew who I was again, and knew how powerful that means.
Recently I realized that I have trouble relinquishing control of labels. I name everything I relate to, including inanimate objects, and I hesitate to allow anyone else input. Perhaps it is because I am afraid of what I will be called. So I busy myself with grand shows of perfectionism as a form of distraction while assigning names, loudly, to the new spatula and the guitar, to the cats out behind the apartment and the mice running around inside of it.
Two days ago I asked him to name the wooden fish, and though I did not like it I consented to the referent Baxter. Forty-eight hours later I would not think to call him anything else.
Meanwhile a mouse ran into the bedroom today, tiny and quite adorable, really, though my intent was not to ogle it but to shoo it away from the mattress by sweeping it gently with a broom. Instead it dashed across my foot and into the hole by the pipe that runs from the boiler through the apartment to the second floor. I am reminded of my own memories-- of choosing to live in a cabin with a family of mice and a lost bat or two-- and attempt to take solace in them. I have done it before.
Edwidge tells me that creation is an act of revolution, and of course I agree. Still I struggle to accept the responsibility of such a movement. To create is to release an expression into the world and watch it be twisted and crunched and rotated and expanded into something other than what you believed it was or ever would be. Thus I am learning: the responsibility lies not in the result and certainly not in the conversation, but in the making.
I imagine her climbing up that hill, thirteen hours of effort to see an old aunt whose best friend remains her deceased daughter, whose hands press hot coffee from burlap sacks at dawn. I am struck by the memory of Bangor Forest, the beginning of March and still frozen in ice. We skated our hiking boots across miles of trail, departing once from the path to sprint up a short hill. It was yellow with fallen grass, pockets of snow giving way to waterlogged soil and only the bravest of tiny green shoots. The sky narrow, textured with clouds and the memory of snow.
The star-spangled ball bounces across the crowns of our heads and tips of our fingers. He grasps it with one hand and begins to dance. I stare mesmerized as my body moves.
Two weeks ago I danced in the rain and the cold, for hours I danced and as the weather defied me I held my ground, shaking my stinging wet hair and laughing, and shouted from my mind I will not leave my people. We kept each other standing that night, and the music kept us alive. Fire burned in my torso; I knew who I was again, and knew how powerful that means.
Recently I realized that I have trouble relinquishing control of labels. I name everything I relate to, including inanimate objects, and I hesitate to allow anyone else input. Perhaps it is because I am afraid of what I will be called. So I busy myself with grand shows of perfectionism as a form of distraction while assigning names, loudly, to the new spatula and the guitar, to the cats out behind the apartment and the mice running around inside of it.
Two days ago I asked him to name the wooden fish, and though I did not like it I consented to the referent Baxter. Forty-eight hours later I would not think to call him anything else.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
(the heat in the apartment has killed all but one of the plants)
The heat in the apartment has killed all but one of the plants. Those who have died were my friends and I mourn them. Only Corn Plant remains, my companion of more than six years.
If I left a dog or a child in this place they would die. In the meantime I have purchased a cactus. It is covered in sharp spines and sits angrily by the window, yearning, I imagine, for a drier heat. I have named him Marcus Martin. We will try to get along.
I have adopted three alley cats who come every night to the concrete beneath my window. They are quiet, respectful of me and, for the most part, each other. The big orange one takes what he wants of the food I leave out before the calico slips in for a few bites, then slinks to the shade to lick herself. Meanwhile Tyrese has yet to feed, or at least not under my supervision. S/he is orange and white and so small, bony. Flies cover him as he sits all day long with his tail curled round his feet. On rare occasions his eyes will drift closed before flipping open again, startled by even the briefest of encounters with letting go. He stares from the same spot through the chain link fence, every day for hours, waiting. If I took him inside he would bite me, I think, out of desperation to return to the fence.
I am not sure there's much I can do to help him. I am not sure I am helping any of them, by enabling dependency on 79-cent cans of Feast. Still I have to do something. I myself have been bony and tired and covered with flies.
The glass sits only a third of the way empty on the apple crate in the living room. I have lost my taste for vodka, diffused as it is with memories. Instead I sip water from the new filter and believe that I really do taste the difference.
Once we returned to the apartment to find that one of the pilot lights had inexplicably gone out. I have learned since that it is crucial for pilot lights to be burning at all times, that if the other light had blackened we could have exploded as we walked in the door. And so I am huffing and puffing, doing what I can to stoke the flames. I imagine stroking velvet noses and the huuff of horses breathing, my family's old dogs, the shooting star on the way to Vermont, wide fields full of wildflowers. I imagine the trails, a pack on my back and my body steady on the earth in well-worn boots. I remember floating leaves in rivers of rain and living life in bare feet. I remember the wolves. I remember standing on top of mountains.
If I left a dog or a child in this place they would die. In the meantime I have purchased a cactus. It is covered in sharp spines and sits angrily by the window, yearning, I imagine, for a drier heat. I have named him Marcus Martin. We will try to get along.
I have adopted three alley cats who come every night to the concrete beneath my window. They are quiet, respectful of me and, for the most part, each other. The big orange one takes what he wants of the food I leave out before the calico slips in for a few bites, then slinks to the shade to lick herself. Meanwhile Tyrese has yet to feed, or at least not under my supervision. S/he is orange and white and so small, bony. Flies cover him as he sits all day long with his tail curled round his feet. On rare occasions his eyes will drift closed before flipping open again, startled by even the briefest of encounters with letting go. He stares from the same spot through the chain link fence, every day for hours, waiting. If I took him inside he would bite me, I think, out of desperation to return to the fence.
I am not sure there's much I can do to help him. I am not sure I am helping any of them, by enabling dependency on 79-cent cans of Feast. Still I have to do something. I myself have been bony and tired and covered with flies.
The glass sits only a third of the way empty on the apple crate in the living room. I have lost my taste for vodka, diffused as it is with memories. Instead I sip water from the new filter and believe that I really do taste the difference.
Once we returned to the apartment to find that one of the pilot lights had inexplicably gone out. I have learned since that it is crucial for pilot lights to be burning at all times, that if the other light had blackened we could have exploded as we walked in the door. And so I am huffing and puffing, doing what I can to stoke the flames. I imagine stroking velvet noses and the huuff of horses breathing, my family's old dogs, the shooting star on the way to Vermont, wide fields full of wildflowers. I imagine the trails, a pack on my back and my body steady on the earth in well-worn boots. I remember floating leaves in rivers of rain and living life in bare feet. I remember the wolves. I remember standing on top of mountains.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
(you are reading this it makes me uncomfortable)
We drink champagne from tiny soda cans in black plastic bags and sit with our feet in the grass in a park. It is good to have friends.
I walk 25 blocks to the subway. The train is late as usual, so I pull Claudine from the front pocket of my backpack and thumb to Iron & Wine.
He bought me a green iPod nano for my birthday and I cried. Not because it is an iPod, but because of the reasons why. That he thought about me. That he invested money he does not have in making my commute that much more bearable. In my having access to music at all times.
Eight years ago someone else bought me an iPod, and I told him I could not would not keep it. I was afraid of how he would hold it over me, and he did hold it over me-- that I told him no. He followed me in my parents' navy blue caravan as I drove back to their house after last period; he bumped the nose of his car up against the back of mine as we drove down Midland, and in the rearview mirror I saw him laughing.
Eight years later and I say yes, I'm crying a little, I feel loved. So. Healing is not always planned.
After dinner I suck on a tangerine popsicle and point the fan at my feet to keep from melting. I left my favorite jar in the sink for two days and it grew enough mold that I decided to throw it out. I am sorry, environment. I will miss you, jar.
The thing that is special about me is me. If I ever have children I want them to know every day that they're a miracle. At the same time I want them to know that they will act like little shits at points in their life and they'll probably feel pretty shitty too sometimes and other people are for sure going to treat them like shit occasionally and that this, too, is part of the miracle. Because there is a chance that who knows how many years later all that shit will have fertilized one phenomenal garden. And that there will be music there.
When I am old I intend to dress in bright psychedelic dresses with wild updos and wear brown, rectangular glasses on a chain that wraps around my neck, and I will stand on my porch shaking a broom at kids walking by. Then we'll all have a good laugh and I'll invite them inside for lemonade, just like always, and they will tell me about the kids who are mean to them in school and the stories they're writing outside of it and I will say don't listen to them be yourself.
I walk 25 blocks to the subway. The train is late as usual, so I pull Claudine from the front pocket of my backpack and thumb to Iron & Wine.
He bought me a green iPod nano for my birthday and I cried. Not because it is an iPod, but because of the reasons why. That he thought about me. That he invested money he does not have in making my commute that much more bearable. In my having access to music at all times.
Eight years ago someone else bought me an iPod, and I told him I could not would not keep it. I was afraid of how he would hold it over me, and he did hold it over me-- that I told him no. He followed me in my parents' navy blue caravan as I drove back to their house after last period; he bumped the nose of his car up against the back of mine as we drove down Midland, and in the rearview mirror I saw him laughing.
Eight years later and I say yes, I'm crying a little, I feel loved. So. Healing is not always planned.
After dinner I suck on a tangerine popsicle and point the fan at my feet to keep from melting. I left my favorite jar in the sink for two days and it grew enough mold that I decided to throw it out. I am sorry, environment. I will miss you, jar.
The thing that is special about me is me. If I ever have children I want them to know every day that they're a miracle. At the same time I want them to know that they will act like little shits at points in their life and they'll probably feel pretty shitty too sometimes and other people are for sure going to treat them like shit occasionally and that this, too, is part of the miracle. Because there is a chance that who knows how many years later all that shit will have fertilized one phenomenal garden. And that there will be music there.
When I am old I intend to dress in bright psychedelic dresses with wild updos and wear brown, rectangular glasses on a chain that wraps around my neck, and I will stand on my porch shaking a broom at kids walking by. Then we'll all have a good laugh and I'll invite them inside for lemonade, just like always, and they will tell me about the kids who are mean to them in school and the stories they're writing outside of it and I will say don't listen to them be yourself.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
(I am perturbed by my ability to stop listening to myself, sometimes for months at a time)
I am perturbed by my ability to stop listening to myself, sometimes for months at a time. I am so easily invested in other voices that I can forget about my own. There is reason to believe I was meant to be a hermit.
In some ways I am more of one than I have ever been, though I am living with millions of people in New York City. The street outside is disgusting and grey. There is pigeon excrement everywhere, and pigeons threatening to excrete, and few people seem to care about much of anything, including littering. Three days ago as I sat on the subway on the long ride to work I watched a man toss a plastic bag out of the train as it opened its doors to new passengers. How the fuck is the world going to get better if people can't even be responsible for their own trash. Stick the bag in your pocket, for god's sake. There are trash cans immediately to either side of you no matter where you disembark the train. Throw it away then.
But no! Instant gratification! Any load is too much for me to bear! The world owes me perfection while it is reasonable for me to shit all over it. Just like a goddamn pigeon.
So I make my way to the apartment as quickly as possible and I close the doors and make believe that outside there are flowers and trees growing.
Of course I am painting in stark colors. Of course it is inevitable, were I to continue writing, that they would start to bleed together. Of course we all have bad days and of course there is goodness to this place and of course if someone litters it doesn't mean they are categorically bad and unworthy of love. Still. Don't throw trash on the ground.
Lately I have been feeling angry for the fact that you valued me less than the idea of conception, even though it's been years since I've though of it. You would have left me to labor while you gallivanted through emerald sheep-dotted fields with accents on and a fedora, or left me if I chose not to. At the time I thought my heart was big enough to understand but I see now that you were acting like a self-absorbed ass with a superiority complex and a strong mind twisted by misogyny. I wish you well and hope you are happy, always.
I remember when I allowed my anger. I said, "I need to go vent, now," and I walked outside and kicked the trash cans until my foot was bruised and the bins' sides were dented-- so much that the lids never quite fit again. I felt just fine afterward! Anger is energy! Bottle it up and what are you left with? Confusion and misdirection on the eve of turning 26.
But of course that's not the whole story. I have stopped believing that I have to do it all right now. I've been through a lot and I have a lot of competing visions in my mind and it's okay that it's taking some time to pick and plant my way to where I want to be. It is quite a relief, in fact, to know that seedlings need time in order to grow. That with soil, water, air, and light, they will.
In some ways I am more of one than I have ever been, though I am living with millions of people in New York City. The street outside is disgusting and grey. There is pigeon excrement everywhere, and pigeons threatening to excrete, and few people seem to care about much of anything, including littering. Three days ago as I sat on the subway on the long ride to work I watched a man toss a plastic bag out of the train as it opened its doors to new passengers. How the fuck is the world going to get better if people can't even be responsible for their own trash. Stick the bag in your pocket, for god's sake. There are trash cans immediately to either side of you no matter where you disembark the train. Throw it away then.
But no! Instant gratification! Any load is too much for me to bear! The world owes me perfection while it is reasonable for me to shit all over it. Just like a goddamn pigeon.
So I make my way to the apartment as quickly as possible and I close the doors and make believe that outside there are flowers and trees growing.
Of course I am painting in stark colors. Of course it is inevitable, were I to continue writing, that they would start to bleed together. Of course we all have bad days and of course there is goodness to this place and of course if someone litters it doesn't mean they are categorically bad and unworthy of love. Still. Don't throw trash on the ground.
Lately I have been feeling angry for the fact that you valued me less than the idea of conception, even though it's been years since I've though of it. You would have left me to labor while you gallivanted through emerald sheep-dotted fields with accents on and a fedora, or left me if I chose not to. At the time I thought my heart was big enough to understand but I see now that you were acting like a self-absorbed ass with a superiority complex and a strong mind twisted by misogyny. I wish you well and hope you are happy, always.
I remember when I allowed my anger. I said, "I need to go vent, now," and I walked outside and kicked the trash cans until my foot was bruised and the bins' sides were dented-- so much that the lids never quite fit again. I felt just fine afterward! Anger is energy! Bottle it up and what are you left with? Confusion and misdirection on the eve of turning 26.
But of course that's not the whole story. I have stopped believing that I have to do it all right now. I've been through a lot and I have a lot of competing visions in my mind and it's okay that it's taking some time to pick and plant my way to where I want to be. It is quite a relief, in fact, to know that seedlings need time in order to grow. That with soil, water, air, and light, they will.
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