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.