Christmas

My life as fiction:

There was a party on a boat for the hospital. A cruise called Spirit of Boston, meaning that twenty minutes in comes the realization that exchanging pleasantries isn't that pleasant, and that to escape into drinking is not an option with a morning shift looming, and that one has to smile and try to enjoy oneself.

By which I mean to say, maybe not-me learned some things about some people that she didn't need to know, and maybe some of that they learned later, but that's okay. There were no cheating wives. There was no man who slept with three women from his workplace. There was no higher-up who did worse than either. After the ship and the dancing there may have been pool (which I was brilliant at!) at a bar everyone was invited to by a heart-broken nurse, but there I wasn't complimented on my lipstick as he lamented all the girls scattering when he came around.

Similarly, Christmas Eve was not spent in West Bridgewater. I didn't walk barefoot through the misty neighborhood. Nobody said a single racist thing. Not a single person made a fool of themselves! Nobody got angry, everyone was happy with their gifts, and I definitely, undeniably got a full nights' rest, most likely in my own bed and not on a fold-out couch at Emily's. Incredible, right?

And Christmas day dinner was not four Jews and a Catholic-raised Atheist talking about mind-control for the good of the masses. That's ludicrous! Dinner couldn't have been served on the porch; after all, it's the end of December. There was no tilapia and certainly no pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting or warm hugs. 


cheers to the most Christmas I've ever had in my life.

false dream

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I went to the Cantab lounge for the third time. There, in the basement, people read their poems at an open mic (the second time I went and someone I had gone on an okay cupid date read), then an invited performer uses their slot (the first time I went it was Melissa Lozada-Oliva, whose poems I had already read) and then the slam poetry, which always happens too late for me to stay.

This time, it was me who read a poem at the open mic, followed by the drunken clapping of people who do not know my face and therefore are not as thrilled to see me. People who only understand poetry that burns, that competes as to who. is. the. most. miserable. I AM. if. I. speak. like. this. SEE MY RAGE. swallow my sadness i.am.shoving.it.down.your.throat. Who forget to value words and who just want to be heard by drowning out the rest of the screaming crowd. I am wrong to say these things. I was very excited to go there the first couple times, the idea of seeing some sort of active artistic scene, the odd good line in a mountain off poor attempts more than I would find otherwise. When I saw someone I had spoken to the first night working at a the coffee shop near me, I was thrilled at feeling like I knew people here who did words. But I haven't been able to go after the third time.

I read an old poem because I told myself "I will mourn. I will do it constructively, healthfully, watch me learn to mourn the way we are told we should". So I read a poem I had read for This Bardian Life, because it is something I can be grateful for - being told to speak my words aloud by Zappa, to let my voice be heard off of the page. Be glad for what he gave me. After I sat down I still wanted to disappear but then I got an e-mail and everything again seemed taken from under my feet is such a small pathetic way.

Hey Roomies,

I've decided to move out of the apartment. I found a place for mid-December. I know this is rushed but I'm positive you can find a roommate very quickly since this apartment has been extremely easy to fill in the past even during odd times. If someone else wants my room let me know before I post in the next day or two to Craigslist.

Thanks

The fighting that I had been ignoring had come to its apex. All three had talked to me at some point about it, and I just listened and waited for it to go away, for so many things to go away. About ten interviews later we have someone moving in, two weeks from now. I helped Therese move her things downstairs while her boyfriend just sat there. She told me to take a break and I said I was fine and she said "you're so stubborn" "when have I ever been stubborn with you?" "never! but I am stubborn too, so I can recognize it in other people" and we both smiled at that.
I helped Adrian move into Therese's old room - painting the walls, transporting carpet from home depot, cut by what seemed like robotic mice housed in a giant machine. I can hear the sigh of relief reverberating around the apartment. Hopefully everyone will be happier now.
 
I woke up this morning on Emily's house, from a dream in which Zappa was still alive.

He was slightly delusional, but I could still recognize him through that, having raced down elevators at the mall to find him and a bunch of his Bard friends at a cafe. He said "the first time I left this earth forever..." meaning that he thought he had killed himself twice, but he had returned, alive, and we had just lost track of him and he had thought he was dead and so that's how the misinformation surrounding his death (or lack thereof) happened. I ran towards him and jumped on him for a hug and he spun me around and then we all passed out Christmas or Return of Zappa gifts from him to us. I got a bunch of measuring spoons and a glittery golden pin. He folded up around my legs, lean and long, like a child and looked up thoughtfully. He said something and then added "but I guess that's considered to be an auditory hallucination", in an irritable tone, and we told him that that's okay, that that's not inherently bad, that we just want him safe and happy and taken care of.

I woke up and he was still dead. I had fallen out of touch and couldn't help. I had begun to morn before he had died because I assumed he was gone, not even taking into consideration the parts of him that were still there. I wanted to go back to sleep but I couldn't.


There are so many good things too but I'm afraid that if I pin them down on paper they will disappear, unable to exist without vibration, doubt and exhaustion. But I'll try again soon.

Friday the 13th

At some point in early October, Max came across some candles in a wooded area. Tall white ones, tags still attached. So he took a couple, and then a couple more, and then some more. Imagine then his horror when he realized it was a memorial. The rest of the candles got thrown out eventually, but he still felt like his karma was out of balance following the desecration of the site.

So he asked me if I would accompany him to a graveyard to return the candles to the memory of the dead, to light about ten by tombstones and hope to amend the wrong. I have my own graveyard karma to reverse, so I agreed.

Yesterday was a windy night. We had to climb over the fence and the candles did not stay lite for long - like lives, flickering out. Like lives, some shone brighter than others. Like with the dead, it is the living, us, that memorialized the fleeting light - in photos, in writing, in remembrance.

Max feels that his karma has been re-calibrated. Thank you, Forest Hills Cemetery and to those who lay there.

not a ghost

Months passed I had a dream - A boy I liked from high school but had lost touch with was dancing with me. It was in a building that used to be a psychiatric hospital years ago, by a lake with tall stone walls and hallways that echoed. Ghosts would pop up and then disappear just as suddenly. I've since wondered: if ghosts are usually freed to the spiritual world by resolving the issue that was tying them to the earth past their due, what do you do with a ghost of a paranoid schizophrenic? Are they more likely to get stuck here forever, unable to be brought clarity?

A week ago a friend I had in college killed himself. From my last communications with him, it was clear he had become increasingly disorganized and paranoid, overburdened with false guilt, annoyed by the lack of freedom. When Kelsey called I knew from her voice what she was going to talk to me about, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

He had been so sensitive, he was so bright - I can’t imagine what it is like to see yourself losing that, especially for a person to whom intellectual acuity is paramount - emotional sensitivity key - and he certainly felt that the medications blunted him in so many ways. 

At one point he had been one of the people I hung out with a fair amount, he came to a couple of my movie nights and I took photos for This Bardian Life, and we went out dancing, and he came to my 21st birthday party and numerous lunches and dinners together, he called wine vino and had a particular way he nodded his head, large bony hands, hair that had to be constantly swept to the side, low voice and eyes that paid attention when you talked; conversations not to be had in passing. 

I wish I had more I could find of him, it's a strange drawback of having communications in person, in vivo; you can't look over them later. I read something for TBL, he was thinking maybe I should expand it, I was concerned -- 
You mean you think the re-work would weaken it? I think that's reasonable. If you're interested in a remaster, go for it, although, with my bit of experience with creative work I was thinking your past self might have more to say. But it's up to you, of course. Send me the new version if you're comfortable; i'm also open to talking more about your process if you'd like.
 

We lost touch, he had started to lose something, and I was busy and attributed it to other things until we had stopped trying to speak to each other once I had graduated over a year ago now and only recently did I hear from him again, but not him, some other person. I miss the he who I knew, who he was, but both are entirely gone now. I know I can’t feel like I could have done something, but I wasn’t there, one of my last messages to him an apology for us not having maintained contact, and somehow I want to apologize for him being dead, to apologize to him for the sorrowful mix of genetics and environment that led him to not be here anymore, age 22 forever, for the world for having played such a cruel trick on him, that I couldn't do anything to stop it.

I don’t believe in restless ghosts: I have my memories of you on this side. 

august nyc

I said I would write about my trip to NYC - kept putting it off. It was unbearably and undeniably summer, my least favorite season, the heaviness of the heat suffocating; fingers prying at my neck.
I went to see Bengi who I had met in Berlin. It's been so many years! She was interning at the Turkish Mission in the UN. She still holds some wounder.  I had been so happy in Berlin and was so forlorn in NYC but it was still good to see her.

Saw Kostya , we ate Ukrainian food and I talked about how shitty it is to be with R. and as we parted we passed a memorial for an exploded building.
Saw Shinno who broke his femur in a motorcycle accident a year prior, listening to him tell me how he was bedridden for a month and took two months of waking up with the shakes to get off the pain medication, saying "I decided to come out of it stronger than I went in"

Saw Sasha who saw me cry furiously and powerlessly at an exhibit that aestheticized the bodies of people jumping out of buildings to their deaths, saw me walk out of a restaurant when we were trying to order Chinese to-go, saw me through the lens of her camera and captured me beautifully in spite of all the ugliness inside.
Saw Luisa who works at the Cloisters and let me in for free.
 

script

A few months back with Karen, I put on red lipstick and we went out. I thought every woman should have a lipstick of a color so violent and true. We tried to go to a concert at the Middle East but we but never found the music, just scattered people. We wound up coming back to my apartment, and then two hours later drinking with my roommates at a bar in another part of town.

And then this Saturday, with Essie, at Great Scott. We got to dance but she told me a time that was 15 minutes earlier than when it officially started. The dancing happened an hour after that (we danced alone one the dance floor at first; we did what we came to do, sober and resilient)

Both times it felt like going out with friends in early high school. You have the means, you have good company, but waiting to be seated, sitting down, looking at the menu, ordering, eating, asking for more of whatever, getting the check, figuring out tipping and splitting the bill. This is all a script that comes seamlessly now but had to be learned at first. And I simply have not yet learned the script for going out to concerts and clubs. Come too early, try and persevere. I'll learn it eventually I suppose.

first ever dream about work, almost a year old: Lanauntylaunt and I had gone to a beach with all the patients. The waves beat gently against the shore, the sun was setting. Everyone was happy. They may not have been 'cured' of their ailments, but at least of a moment, the fog was lifted and the misery was gone.

inflated

Why does the intellectual life sometimes feel at odds with the stupid risks of youth? Haven’t most great artists and thinkers lived great lives - really lived, thrived, felt, been hurt - held insight and ignorance simultaneously? Maybe, even, it’s impossible to write (authentically - a toxic word, steeping through the liver as we drink our way to inhibitions end) without first diving into some sort of simplicity (which is never truly simple, or everything is always simpler than --, or whatever it may be.) The cerebral is contained within the rest of the body, depends on and feeds off of the happily (death-driven?) pursuits of the body as we meander on the path of existence (but not just existence: life, awareness, and once again the idea of thriving). 

Hotline bling has been stuck in my head for the last few days, and it is my fault. 

For months I withheld extensive interactions with my co-workers. I went out drinking with them once and later felt like I should have left earlier. I went out again when someone was leaving and did leave earlier. The adrenaline-rushed and boredom filled existence of the halls, the repetition of “here’s a toothbrush” mixed with “I have his right arm” is filled with people who made me want to be careful. I said “working here is like an abusive relationship: you can only be with the people here because a) the weird hours mean that you cannot hang out with anyone else and b) the people here are the only ones that will understand what you are experiencing.” Someone said “It’s so hard listening to people complain about their work after a day here: oh, you had a bad phone call at work? I feel SO sorry for you, someone spit in my mouth today”.

To the point: in spite of my avoiding it at first, I have by now found myself ingrained in this group. I got invited to a birthday dinner of a smaller circle, and after I came Launtylaunt dug at me, telling me that I’m part of the clique, retaliation because I gave them shit about being cliquey for months. The next day I attended a bbq. I find them more and more ingrained in myself. I would not be friends with them if not for this job - but then, I chose to work here, and so did they. I kept thinking careful careful, until suddenly I found myself not so careful. In May I wrote to Kelsey “We bundle strangely”, which is still true. But this tide of people drew me into the fold. I wish I had been writing more as it came along, begrudgingly, uncertainly, cynically, untrustingly, judgmentally. I want to make this whole, here's the first attempt at patching up the hole. all I can find to add: May 4th: i think maybe we are friends, but not the kind of friend, at least not at this point, that will last beyond 'this point' -- this job.  July 4th:  (two of the supervisors are, for lack of a better word, grooming me for the position. It comes with a lot of flattery I don't know what to do with). One of my coworkers pushes my head in a way that a brother would do, and I'm hoping that's all he means by it. I glare at him every time I speak too softly and he tells me to talk in a 'big girl voice'.

Launtylaunt and World are both cocky. They know this, we tell them all the time. They think they are amazing but they also tell the people they like how amazing they are. When the drink flows so do the compliments. I sit there thinking that if I’m not careful, my ego will be so inflated that I could be thrown into the Charles with weights and still stay afloat. Our mouths fill with cigar smoke and they and tell me they want me to be a supervisor - have been telling me for months, Laungtylaunt called me a selfless bitch one time when I rejected a scheme that I thought was ineffective, but would have been to my advantage. They listed off four reasons I should be a supervisor, reasons crystallized with opportunity. Let me, through them, gloat. Even if all of this is false, it is true that they said this.

1. you are the smartest person in the hospital.
   “this is not true but I will not argue with you” and they repeat themselves. Matt alters it, he says “you have the kind of mind most people envy” thinking I can swallow this better and I think how little how little how little (how can I not smile softly to myself at that? how can I not fiddle with the glass of wine in my hands? no matter what it is both nice and horrible to hear)
2. you have a heart like no other
   a similar reaction internally, but I don’t bother fumbling with the words.
3. you know what’s going on
   nobody ever does
4. you are ready, and have been ready
   nobody ever is

I never finished my dinner, World and Launtylaunt ignored me when I said I was fine where I was by the bathroom door, having vomited, picking me up and lugging me to the black couch instead, where I slept for a little bit. We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.

affections

Let me start in small strokes. I am feeling better than the last time I wrote. The boy who would evaporate on me has evaporated altogether, and the only thing that's keeping me from writing 'gone forever' is that I don't like ultimatums and certainties; believe in eventuality and chance. He lives fifteen minutes away but he has evaporated as he was, as people sometimes do. I've always kept this out of here but here it is anyways, I have changed and so has how and what I write. And so on Friday Paras came from NYC, because he is not one of those people who just goes away. Amy showed up and Adrian and his brother, and we all went to play pool and were so cool, so cool.

Yosef showed up the next day and we drank tea and drank words and eventually realized that we ought to take a walk so we did, circling around Inman Sq. I'd given him a haircut so he looked more civilized and in the evening Mama picked him up and dropped off another wild-haired brother, also seeking a haircut. I'd said to Sima that he could sleep over as a birthday present and that's what we did. I'm glad that I'm fourteen years older than him because if we had shared a womb the way we shared a bed I certainly would have been the smaller twin. I woke up a few times to find myself taking up a third of the bed to a child half my size. In the morning I made him oatmeal and then he read for half an hour for his school homework, reading excerpts he thought particularly funny aloud. I gave him a haircut and we walked to Harvard Sq where he got frozen yogurt - he left content.

perfume

My mother keeps telling me to be kinder to myself. I called her on the phone, after what I thought were tentative plans turned to vapor and left no trace, as if they had not even been tentative. I called her, telling her that it took me two hours to get up out of bed after work and move myself to change and shower, and that the entire time I felt gross because I hate staying in my work clothes, the stink of the hospital still on me, the smell of my least-favorite perfume (necessary to wear if I'm to survive a day filled with the smell of psychotic depression stagnation, or geriatric decrepitude, or withdrawal shakes - but still my least favorite because why would I ruin a nice perfume by wearing it there, putting that complicated misery on a smell I like? One patient kept telling me that I smell like the perfume his mother was buried in, he seemed angry that I kept wearing it and kept refusing zyprexa and anything else). T---, tell yourself that it's okay that you were in bed in those clothes for two hours. You are good. She didn't ask why I didn't love myself more, and she knew that when I said that perhaps I am good because I don't love myself, that it was pointless to carry on that conversation further. This is all to say that my mother is very smart and very loving and that I'm so happy I have her.

Paras moved out last weekend, while I was in NYC (more on that later.) Curtis moved in once I was back already, I was grateful that he had so few boxes (so, I'm sure, were both he and Adrian, as we carried what few things he had up four flights of stairs).

I'm thinking about the things that people take and leave behind. Paras has taken with him a lot: the coffee maker, the sound of him practicing sitar, himself. He has left a few things scattered around the apartment, including two voluptuous plants on the balcony (he knew I would like that), and Amy for a friend. I'm meeting up with her now.

below: I'm trying to draw again. Max and I meet up - in theory every Tuesday, in practice less frequently. We assign homework, we try to hold eachother accountable to keep drawing outside of college. It's hard, but we are trying.

no doubt summer

dinner on the balcony
Margo: Isn't this a great weather day? Can this day be any better?
Adrian: no, it can't be. It feels like the sun has been making out with you all day, you know? Especially around 3 or 4.

I had a dream this week in which I had cancer and was going to die in three days. A spot had been found on my lungs. I only told my family, and we didn't know what to do and they love me so much but I'm not sure we could even really cry. I still came in to work. I glared at a vacuous member of the administration, who was vapidly going on about the new colors of the walls and being a team. I did not want to die, but my lung was giving out.

Tuesday I followed three of my coworkers to Revere beach, drinking wine handed to me by Meils in the backseat on the way there. "Who is this person?" asked LauntyLaunt. The label read: RELAX. Towels, sand. Drunk sounds of the waves crashing. We drank every time we saw an airplane - and they did come, right out of Logan Airport. I said "guys, let's go swim! The ocean is beckoning us!" "beckoning? It's BECKONING us T---?" but they did come. World flipped me into the water, I pinched my nose so the salt wouldn't rush into my nostrils, joyously bobbing with the waves. I'm a terrible swimmer but that doesn't matter when the moon is full and you've had too much Corona.

The Idiot

I finished reading The Idiot earlier this week. I'd been so frustrated with it. My reading speed in Russian is slow, slow enough that I had already been reading it when I interviewed for the apartment in December. When you read that slowly, the fact that Aglaia was blushing for two pages and then it is stated explicitly that she, was, in fact, embarrassed - it feels like the author is condescending to my ability to comprehend the redness in her cheek. I got why she was red when you started, Dostoevsky, and three pages later I'm quite sure I don't need an explicit statement. I'm sure if the process had been less painstakingly slow it wouldn't be so glaringly annoying.

And I'm not as enamored with Knaz Mishkin as I ought to be. I do not like that he conflates pity with love. I do not like Dostoevsky's hysterical women, strange caricatures of some Russian ideal. But I love when, near the end, (here, I found a translated text) Knaz says he loves both and that he just needs to explain everything to Aglaya, and receives in response "No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality."

And I did quite enjoy the way the writing changed nearing Mishkin's epileptic fit, flickering like something quite modern - Faulkner? - and the change the fit caused in Knaz. I think the rambling of Ippolit in his letter reading is quite great too, though I never figured out what Ippolit is, as a character, and ended disappointed in him.

And then, nearing the end of the book, I decided that Knaz Mishkin and Rogozhin are the same person. Rogozhin is like a shadow: eyes imagined in a crowd, a spirit met at first after many sleepless nights, a knife sneaking up right when a fit is about to occur. His being present in all these moments is not a mere coincidence, nor, I think, because Rogozhin as a person is fixated on Mishkin. Rather, it is Mishkin fixated on himself, but it is his dark side, one that her refuses to acknowledged as himself.

They are so similar, in some ways: both abandoned at the alter, both feverish in temperament, both preoccupied with Anastasia Filipovna, both feverishly passionate at times. Mishkin knows Rogozhin so well he states at the very beginning that he is likely to kill Anastasia Filipovna. At the end, on that fateful day in St. Petersburg, Rogozhin answers in synchrony: Here was a question Knaz had while trying to track down Rogozhin - and Here is the thought Rogozhin had, exactly relating to the thought Knaz had, almost as if they had a conversation throughout the day. After a day of the two of them being in the same place at the same time with almost the same thoughts, Knaz is not surprised to find Anastasia dead, remaining calm as Rogozhin tells him what happened, asking the wrong questions but overall acting as if he already knew, he just had to realize he already knew. Rogozhin insists on sleeping near Knaz - the two souls need to mingle in proximity, finally the two sides of the same coin together.

However, once Knaz, filled with goodness and naiveté, has killed Anastasia (as Rogozhin) he can no longer exist as the image of goodness. Knaz looses himself fully to his epileptic idiocy, unable to exist as a murderer. Rogozhin, loosing half of himself, (as Knaz ceases to exist) suffers an inflammation of the brain, but survives as himself, a dark murderous shadow still in synchrony with its own identity.

so in the end, I did manage to keep myself entertained, albeit with a rather modernest take on the novel.

Jetlag 7th Ed. 

no hurries

I told Adrian that the heat makes me feel horrid and groggy. He says he likes it, that he feels like the world is giving him a warm blanket-hug.
I thought that was very sweet, and that all I can do is envy him.

On the forth of July weekend I stayed in Cambridge, and saw the fireworks for the first time in a while. We live on the fourth floor in an area surrounded by three story buildings, so we have a clear view of Boston from the balcony, and the light show was lovely and so was this strange and delightful blimp with a whale on it and a name of a gin across on a banner, which kept circling around and around.  Elyse came over and a few of us ate nachos and eventually it devolved into hide-and-seek and watching scary music videos with masks. (Pitbull Terrier by Die Antwoord, Alles Neu, Ramstein's Du Hast)

In the morning I woke up and Elyse was still asleep on the couch, and together we decided we have no hurries.

Hurries are like worries mixed with harpies, suburban mothers clucking I have to pick up cake for Sally's birthday party, and make it to yoga class, and finish 50 Shades of Gray for book club this Wednesday, and Paul asked me to pick up the dry cleaning, and I should make sure Ronda did her English hw this time and...

So with no hurries we wandered over to her place in Quincy, stopping by a beach filled with dead jelly fish, reading in the sand, eating drippy ice-cream and meeting up with Sam for dinner. No hurries is great.

Misha and Nastya

Misha got married to Nastya, and Nastya got married to Misha.

In a magical house filled with handmade decorations, and a backyard filled with people I've mostly met before but whose names I can never remember and good food and plenty to drink and vases filled with flowers.

To my American (and some other non-Russian?) readers: There was a "vikup": a traditional ransoming of the bride before she is given to the groom. In this case, the three friends of the bride came up with questions and challenges, and kept the bride hidden away in a room on the second floor. Each question the groom answered correctly, he gained a step. He could ask for help from the team he assembled, but if they could not answer the question, or complete the task, they had to pay up. What is her grandmothers full name (including the patroym), what is her favorite store, what animal does she think you are most like?

Eventually he got her.

kaleidoscope

I keep having words but not putting them together here, like a moving kaleidoscope and I can't quite snatch up the shapes and colors before they disappear from before me.

green glass - I went to the Somerville porch fest with Adian and Margo. We shifted from venue to venue, and with the change in location came a change in population. Old married couples with grandchildren in one place, people in their late 30's at another, those in their 20's and early 30's at a third. It's kind-of perfect though, the idea of a porch fest. People come out and share their own music with the people living around them, using the cross of urban and suburban space: tightly packed houses stacked next to each other -- creating a town-wide bbq-party. Green bottles filled with beer in hand, music dances in the air.

teal strand - I dyed my hair. People keep asking way and I say "I just felt like it" except to Paras to whom I said "whenever I change my hair it's because of a boy" and didn't repeat myself when he didn't hear.


a feather, refracted - we went camping: the boy who used to live in the room I live in now, Therese, Paras, and Amy. I had never gone camping without the supervision of those a generation above me! I had never gone camping without Russians! We snuck around trying to scare each other throughout the day, like real adults. We had about 7 different types of 'dogs' to accommodated so many different dietary restrictions. We pitched a couple tents and didn't get wet when it rained. We toasted marshmallows for breakfast and swam in a lake with ducklings.

a mirror slate - at work, I now only have 32h schedueled per week, and only work day shift, which means I no longer feel like I'm chronically jetlagged. Unless I pick up a shift, I always work on 3South, on of the acute units, like I had asked. All of this makes me much happier, I didn't even realize how much weight had been placed on my chest until it lifted. Two days ago I had a few tears escape my eyes while at the nurses station, in front of people. One of the patients had screamed and called me a bitch, and I also found out that I was almost certainly mandated. Usually I am ashamed when people see me cry, but this time I apologized and it felt okay. "Relax" Cole told me, and gave me a one-armed hug. I didn't get mandated. She apologized to me the next day "you know you are one of my favorite staff! I was waiting for you to come in after yesterday so I could apologize!" I said, yes, thank you, but wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to apologize? Think about what you think will help you to control your temper, before it boils over. "You are right!" she said. We will see.


how many times have I turned the kaleidescope?

into the fold

I tried to eat every morsel of remembrance on my trip back to Annandale, it was hot and on the ride there Donnie manned the music, and Charlotte manned the wheel, and Elyse and I sat in the back awaiting our fates. "McDonalds bought a nearly complete T-rex skeleton for a museum in exchange for it's own wing. How do you guys feel about this?" Charlotte asked.

We arrived on campus and went to explore the changes. There is a new baseball field, cut out of the woods where many a person had peed on those fresh-aired Smog-filled nights. There was a bench we found by the campus center, bright blue and fresh. The ropes on the swing had been changed, and on North Campus there was a barn that had only been in the minds eye last year. We went to the burrito stand and feasted (some things are reliably good), the smoky hot sauce and cool root beer went down my glutenous throat.



Glutenous for all I had missed: hours pouring over books, long walks and conversations, screaming from the community garden to hear my anger echo against the dorms and back to me, and the beautiful ephemeral bloom of magnolia blossoms each year. So much had not changed, but I am no longer there, it is no longer mine, and I am no longer part of the Hudson Valley landscape.

After lunch, my road-trip companions dropped me off at Sorrel's house, same one she had lived in last year, and Will and Hannah (back from France just last week) were there to greet me. There is so much more responsibility as a graduating person (I had forgotten). The balancing of visitors, and family, and friends graduating with you, and looking for advice from favorite professors!

So Will skipped off and Hannah and I made dinner while the night set in, Sorrel still tending to all her other responsibilities. Hannah and I sat by the window talking about the feeling of religious devotion without religion, depression and who you surround yourself with, solitude and lonesomeness. Nina asked what rituals we do in place of those religious ones so many have. Hours passed.

When Sorrel did come, we huddled on her bed, avoiding the crowded tent party in favor of the company of two. The shunting of conversations deeper than a kiddie pool that happens in the real world did not happen here, and depth of warmth to match. The effervescent eager conversation. Here: here is my heart and mind now, know how I have changed and how I love you.

The next morning Will, Hannah and I went to the Tivoli Bakery. Cranberry-corn muffin, cinnamon bun, sandwich, coffee. We sat in the grass with Will's friends.  Then we went to see our seniors walk.

When the fireworks came, I was surrounded by the right people. "If you lie down on your back, the sound reverberates in your chest" "Oh! It's true" Kelsey responded. Will kept berating me for missing the fireworks - "Look T---! Look! Turn around!". After that we all danced.

In the morning, I watched Kelsey pack.
Now it's their turn to go.

lilacs

One patient who has been there for a while: now not too paranoid to leave her room, hasn't showered in a month, thinks she is the fbi, keeps showing me and others her badge, making a motion by her hip as if lifting up a cover of a wallet. I tell her I don't see it, and I confirm that she has told me that she is the FBI. She doesn't like this – she now thinks I'm the Illuminati. When I denied it she said that I'm a bad liar. When I was dissuading her from going to check on someone who was getting restrained, and denied that I was killing him, she called me a selfish bitch. In the past, she has told me I look like her sister. A change of pace.

This morning, I woke at 9am, ate a banana, sat on the couch drifting off. Talked to Adrian. Went onto the balcony and continued writing a letter. Talked to a neighbor who was also trying to drink coffee outside, until he was herded back indoors by bees.

Another patient is here for a second time, having left in a state of catatonia – waxy movements, silence, not eating or drinking for days until his face looked shriveled. Now he is actively psychotic, taking his clothes off in the middle of the hallway, trying to kiss everyone and spitting at them when they do something he doesn't like. A different pace.

Having finished my lettering for the day, I smelled the lilac I had ripped off a neighbors bush in the middle of the night, and started off to a plant shop 40 minutes away. It is a hot day, but I returned, joyously, with lupin, angelface, sun parasol, clear crystal and some droopy plant, the name of which got lost in transport.

I had to restrain a man yesterday who was trying to hurt his foot. In the past he has claimed auditory hallucinations, but this time he said he was feeling not great. He demanded meds and ignored any healthy coping skills. After a very long time here, it has dawned on all of us that he is borderline – this is not something that is ever written in a chart. He did not like it when I told him that slamming his foot into a door repeatedly is not the appropriate way to express frustration, that medication is not the only part of the puzzle to feeling better, that he has to wait a little bit for the medication to kick in because it's not going to start working one minute after he has swallowed it. A shift of pace.

Max M is biking over to meet with me for something some iced drink.

This day in May has turned stiflingly hot, good for noon-day naps and lethargic conversation.

royal regal and junk

Today is my day off. I have to wake up early tomorrow so I can't go out tonight, and, as I just texted Amanda  I'm having trouble getting my regal ass out of the apartment
 
Other days I have more success. One time, recently - that is: in the month of April, before my birthday but after my bike had been stolen - I headed towards Cambridge Antiques in east Cambridge in an attempt to replace the aforementioned bike. It's a four-story building filled with, for the most part, junk. There are 150 areas owned by different people, one flowing seamlessly into the other, with porcelain and umbrellas and sewing machines and jewelry and I went through it all, unable to find the bikes until I was pointed to them in the basement. I didn't end up getting one, and am still bikeless (it's my first real adult purchase, in a way, and I can't research it in the same way I could a laptop or a camera, stiffing my attempts thus far). 

Empty handed, I started back, accidentally striking up a conversation with the owner of a historical bookstore, passing an old butchery, and settling in at an amazingly expensive restaurant for cake and coffee. Though, to the restaurants credit, 'Loyal 9' is a good Boston-history name, and it was airy and spacious and had a garage door fitted with glass which beautifully lets the light stream in even when it is closed to keep the hot air of the street out. They had a sign up which read "come and stay as long as you like" (which I tried to do but failed to come up with anything to do after I had finished drinking coffee from a hand-made cup.)

i supposed i should get some groceries

picture by MacDonald (https://www.baycitizen.org/news/visual-art/san-francisco-artist/)

what next?

The first restraint I had to do I didn't feel bad about -- angry males that are just trying to set each other off, even if they are schizophrenic drug addicts, don't make me feel as sad because that behavior, in this case, had little to do with the diagnosis. I think I bruised my rib because about a month later it still hurts, but that night I was running on adrenaline. I joined Paras and Amy after my evening shift had ended, meeting them at Charlie's Kitchen around midnight, and then the three of us went to the The Field. It was a Friday night and for once it felt like it, still wearing work clothes, watching people watching people.

This Friday there was a large goodbye party for a co-worker who left for nursing school, and it feels like everyone who is working here now has either been here forever and is old, or is about to leave, or has already left. We have a new CEO and DON that don't understand that everything they are doing is hurting them (but us first) like trying to increase census without increasing staff first. It means people get mandated (like I did for the overnight last weekend) and are less likely to help patients and more likely to get hurt. Everyone I could learn from is leaving, and that's a problem for me.

I went to the Hakusai exhibit with my family and it was great. It's a totally different type of printmaking than what I've done, and it's strange to realize that this one wave is the face of all East Asian art.

(which is to say, outside the hospital, it is spring and I am happy.)

yellow balloons

Mama and I went to Newbury St with one goal in mind: to get me a hat. The Goorin Brothers shop was filled with people listening to the Kentucky Derby crackling on the radio, drinking bourbon and wearing outfits alluding to some old-Kentucky time. The hat is brown and felt and with a very large wavy brim. My hair does not look silly sticking out from underneath - this was a very lovely birthday gift.

Sima's birthday was on Thursday, so they all came to me. We inflated nine yellow balloons (his favorite color) and we went to Baraka Cafe, which has good food and a chatty Tunisian lady. I told Sima that, since he has so many things, I'm not going to give him a physical gift. Instead, my gift to him is that he will come visit me for a day and sleep over. When Mama asked him what I had given him he said "She gave me love".

Spontaneity

One thing I've learned from online dating is that everyone wants someone spontaneous and 'willing to try new things' as well as some standard rotating set of 'has a good sense of humor' or 'can have an interesting conversations'. I on the other hand like humorless boring people.

Regardless, I wouldn't call myself a spontaneous person. Paras and I took a trip to Target a couple weeks ago. He has a theory that older siblings date people who are younger siblings, and that older siblings are less spontaneous, generally smarter and less athletic. I told him that I sometimes set goals for myself to be more spontaneous - and was relieved and surprised when he said he has done the same thing. Not only that, but written down moments of increased impulsiveness, a list of running accomplishments that feel more satisfying than fulfilling expectations of walking up the steps of societal expectation and growth. Yes, I got a positive ninety-day review at work but also I bought pussy-willow at the store on a whim and that's even better. Under the florescent lights, we pathetically looked up reviews for vacuums on amazon and compared prices before, finally, settling on the first one we had looked at.

Last weekend Sara sighed at me as I chose three rings for ten dollars. It was the third time in my life I had ever bought myself jewelery. It took her a few seconds to choose earrings, and I kept trying on one ring, matching colors, wanting to know which fingers I'd wear them on and if on the thumb then it should be bigger but shoot they don't have that color in a bigger size. "Don't you do anything spontaneously?" she asked and I remembered that I had bought a ticket to Moscow what seems not too long ago but is has already been two and half years. But even that was a result of a long-seated desire to do so; the action was not planned, but the intention had been there for years. fuck I thought she's right. As we weaved through Haymarket, I bought a stem of grapes for a dollar and a whole fish for four. Spanish Mackerel, beautiful on ice, not yet gutted. Sara was impressed. 

"It is important for people, for whom part of their identity is being sensible, intelligent and responsible, to know that they can risk being foolish". This is what I told my visitor (or myself) this weekend, a friend of a friend who was here for the sole purpose of trying to see if this thing with a guy would work out. We went to the Isabella Gardner museum during the day and she met him for dinner later. Today we had brunch downtown and walk down Newbury street, and who know what will happen for them? But without spontaneously risking foolishness, one can never find out. I'm turning twenty-three in three days, maybe I'll learn.

basement party

This is my first full time job. This is the first time I have signed a lease. This is the first time I bought lipstick. This is the first time I have made an on line dating profile, and gone on a blind date. This is the first time I have bought a gym membership. This is the first time I have bought pussy willow in the spring.  like my mother does. This is the first time I've had a budget spreadsheet. This is the first time I've attended a party that was attended by the police, twice.

The apartment-wide party really did end up happening on Saturday night. Adrian Paras Amy and I went down to the basement and there was a dj playing in the corner with his laptop and a movie projected behind him, another one waiting for his turn at the set, wearing lab goggles over his glasses. A couple lamps and some Christmas lights, someone turned on a couple bike lights and it looked like a strobe blinking in the corner. Like an edgy bar where they can charge you 12$ for drinks, except with a laundry room at the entrance. At 10:30 the cops showed up, right as we had shut off the music (there was a quick interlude for a fund-raising auction, which was actually pretty funny.) They said something about usually being reasonable before eleven but that we were so loud they could hear us a block away. I blame the building architecture for acting as an amp.

They left and soon after we continued, the number of people swelling and multiplying; people who didn't live in the building, people who were friends or dating, people who came after they heard it was actually a party, people who came before to create critical mass. I ended up stereotyping apartments: the demure and professional girls, and tall bro-y potheads, the nerdy MIT students. A few of the apartments opened up their doors and we went on an apartment tour, exploring the different layouts, the messes of one set of people, the meticulousness of another, the pile of shoes at the end of a hallway and the posters in the kitchen, sangria standing on the kitchen table. Paras's friend came with a horde of Germans, I talked to a couple who didn't live in the apartment, recently moved here - she's Columbian, he's Italian. One girl started apologizing to me that she wasn't more outgoing, as if a total stranger could have noticed her sadness amongst dozens of people. A girl asked her "why are you sad?" and she said "oh. nothing, oh someone just didn't come" and we nodded sympathetically. I said "if I knew you better, I would give you a hug" and she responded "I can use one, yes" surprising me more than the boy who decided to put his phone my dress pocket, a pocket between my shoulder blades that I cannot really reach myself, and a little less than the German boy whose female companion kept pointedly making out with him while he was talking to me and Paras, him going on about how not Jewish my nose is and that I don't have horns, not necessarily in a mean way but just rather unaware that I don't know anything about him. I walked up and down the stairs, weaving in and out of a few apartments, grabbing another bottle of beer, going back to the warm basement and up for gulps of fresh air on the deck, again with the Italian-Columbian couple. And at 1am the cops came again and Paras and I sat contentedly on the porch.

blue tape white snow

I got paint at Pills Hardware store and somehow ended up with a VIP card, 10% off with a signature of the owner (I'm much friendlier when I'm tired.) I got Yosef to come and help me evacuate all my belongings, blue tape the floor, paint the walls. I took him out for pad-thai, so I don't think he regretted coming.

I also went with my family to New Hampshire. We went snowshoeing. Sima struggled to get up the mountain but then we slide down most of it on our butts, the longest snow-slide and excruciatingly fun.

Black Cat White Cat (1998, Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)

dream --
We had crash landed on another planet, our jar of human stem cells cracking in the process, the culture spilling all over, infecting the air. The creatures that lived in took on the form of what they touched, and so they looked human. But if they touched you, you turned into one of them: empty, imitative, reflectory. And so we were terrified: who is human and who is not? They moved and were watching us, slowly pretending not to hunt.

a taste of life

Work, Work, Work (double), Work, (off), Work, Work (double), (off), Work, Work, Work, Work.
The snow hit hard and I ended up staying at Rita's, sledding in the morning before going to work and getting stuck there because people didn't come in for the night shift, and with the exception of me and one other person, everyone working evening was working a double from the day shift. Which meant that, five days after being mandated to do a double, I got mandated to do a double again. 3pm-7:30am. Not something I ever wanted to do or desire to repeat.

But one good thing: one Sunday the mbta was canceled and I had already gotten home on Saturday, so I had to call off work. Therese and I went to Aeronaut Brewing Co. for a beer & cheese tasting. We walked through the snow for half an hour and it was so beautiful, the snow falling softly, the roads mostly void of cars, and street lamps casting yellow-pink light. The brewery was gorgeous too: a huge hall with high ceilings and a bar, large Christmas-tree bulbs hanging on the rafters, which made it feel both spacious and intimate. And another hall where the beer and cheese was presented to us, pleasant strangers to talk to and we walked home through the snow satisfied.

My apartment just had the fire alarm go off. Everyone evacuated and a girl from one of the apartments started organizing a party for next Saturday. Amen to taking advantage of the situation.

free chocolate

That same day I met up with Karen in the evening. It was my Monday off (I'd worked the weekend of the play) so I wanted to make the most of it, and for once everyone else had a Monday off too. Full weekends become a very exciting event when you only get every other one - a marked switch from the three-day weekends typical of my college experience.

Tuesday, Wednesday were normal work days: up before the sunrise, done by 3:30. Thursday I got mandated to do a double shift for the first time. I still had work Friday morning and had woken up at 4am for no reason. I was so loopy (and also it was my fourth unit in three days, which meant yet another set of names and rapport to establish) but it went well, though I'm sure the other MHW, who had never worked with me before, thought I was crazy. I told him that during my break my eyes welled up with tears after watching a Cheerios commercial.

I met with Cat and Alana after work that day, and watched The Wolf of Wallstreet once I got back to the apartment (2013, USA, Scorsese, not worth your time). Beer and a movie; classic American way to end the day. Totaling being up for 22 hours for no reason at all.

Saturday morning I got up and Therese (roommate) and I joined her friends at Harvard Sq. where a chocolate festival was going on. Lots of free samples, also lots of people lined up, patiently. We were not patient. We ate the samples we got before a couple hundred people swarmed the square, at which point we left to get afternoon margaritas. This is what classy ladies do - drink margaritas in the middle of the day. And the cherry on top was my parents coming to drop my bike off, and then falling asleep, finally, after they left. (There ain't no rest for the wicked.)

after my parents left and I fell napped, I woke up in time for wine & sparklers

Snow Queen

 

The best part about repeating the play I was in during the summer (Snow Queen) during the winter was this:
- I did, I think, do better this time. I also got a lift from rehearsal in a Tesla.
- Waking up the next morning, Veta asleep to one side of me, Liza asleep and snuggled up against my shoulder to the other, Eloosha not yet up in the room across the hall. And then a multi-course breakfast that turned into lunch while we remained seated.

YP in GB

patient: how old are you?
patient: you're too young to be working here.

Monday morning I disassembled a bed, drove it to Central Sq, and assembled it in a small room on the fourth floor of a building where I now live. Young Professional in Greater Boston. I don't make enough to be a yuppie. After meeting up with Sorrel, I spent the night at my parent's place.
It snowed (again; it snowed when I interviewed for the room too)

patient (with history of assault, paranoid schizophrenia; thought I was lying about my name): I'm going to smash your head against a wall!
[a few minutes later, affect back to normal, apologized. and again, three days later when we met in the cafeteria] I'm sorry about the other day.

Tuesday I could not fall asleep terrified of taking the bus the next day. I noticed that the ceiling in the room is pretty high. I remember how the street sounds at night.

patient: how tall are you? model height?
[and] you are the nicest nurse here. What do you think I should do? Should I try to get out of here as fast as I can, or should I stay here for, like, ever?
[and, five days later] are you a model?

Friday night I read at 1am, woke up at 5:40 for work, and then, fully intending on a quite night in, found myself at Middlesex (club) with Paras (roommate) and his lady friend and not-lady friends.
I hadn't been out dancing in so long, never mind at a club, certainly a first in Cambridge. Danced with someone briefly who had a boner, saw someone basically jerking off at me, and got berated for not dancing with anyone [with him] by yet another gentleman. Ended by dancing with some tall, blond, boring looking guy, not for too long. And to top it off, two guys from my high-school were there as well - a past I do not care for. But I did dance, and I thank humanity for dancing.

patient: you are a good doctor-person. From my first day here I thought that.

Saturday I met up with Yulka at Harry's Bar & Grill. We've both moved out now, both have jobs, both assume things we shouldn't sometimes - but we drink different drinks.

patient: she has a soft angel smile and a hard glint in her eye. 


Sam's boat is in North Carolina but he came here from Germany. We got to convenience-store-land which is not in a convenient location to get to by subway. It was freezing. I was glad to see him.

patient after patient after patient: what ethnicity are you? Portuguese? Brazilian? Spanish?
best response to my reply (by one who claimed to be in love with me): I knew it was something unusual.

wrap up

I was just watching stand-up on youtube with people, but have a hard time getting into it. The go-to explanation is that I'm too pc to laugh, but a lot of it was pretty inoffensive. Just boring. Or sad. Many jokes come from sorrow.
But I'm not a lost cause -- A few of the patients said about me "that one has a sense of humor".
I'll take it.

Welcome in the new year. Here is what happened in the last one (listing off for myself so I can start afresh?):

The next generation was in the second iteration of the Harms play from 2008. I talked to Eloosha, half asleep, after that, and to a half-awake Valya the next morning. Dew-covered thread connect sleeping moment to sleeping moment, new faces on an altered stage.

I went to the Goya exhibit with Max M. There was this beautiful print The Blind Guitarist and some paintings on ivory that had a really interesting effect.

bits of James Bond. The Manchurian Candidate (1962, USA, Frankenheimer); Print the Legend (2011, USA); Footnote (2011, Israel, Cedar); Mazerunner (2014, USA, Ball).

photo by Miriam E