Burlington

This winter has been weak, so I have tried to travel to track it down.
The first trip was the first week of February; found winter curled up in Vermont.

I stayed with Hannah and Will and got to peak into Adrienne's work life at the co-op.
I walked on a frozen lake. Saw the same vast lake break against the shore and stretch into the mountains at sunset.
I slept in perfect darkness heated by a wood stove, a little cabin on a bed with Sorrel.
I drank hot cider with Luisa.

I wanted to escape the hectic expectations of my own life and stumbled into those of traveling to a place with so many familiar faces. I wish miles apart didn't foster the fear of other types of distance. I wish I could slow down a bit, and sense more of their warmth.

Instead, I kept chasing the cold biting air.

Construction

On October the 19th, we were over at Em's. This was the night I had smoked a full cigar, exhaling it through my mouth and inhaling the smoke through my nose into my lungs until I felt too dizzy to sit. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the room, exclamations and roaring laughter gave way to chitter and chatter and quieter conversations, and by then the world had stop spinning so much around my body. Em and Launti had gone to bed. World Matt and I stayed up watching "That's My Boy", which World claims is the movie of his people (set in his hometown of Somerville). I said we should go for a walk, but a little past midnight World fell asleep in his chair, mid-sentence.

It was drizzling outside when we left the apartment. I used a gray blanket from the couch as a cloak and Matt pointed at a building not too far away and said it looked like Christmas lights so we went towards the twinkling, found the gates to the site unlocked, and climbed, ten stories up, with a view of the city spreading out below us on all sides. I wanted to return to take photos so on the 14th of December we did. It was unseasonably warm and rainy, and in two months glass had arrived to the first nine stories of the building, and wooden beams had appeared on the first couple floors. But the gate was still unlocked and the security guard was not doing his job, so we went up and up again. Here are a few of the photos from that hunt -

different building, still twinkled

 

 

 

Truth and Beauty

At the very end of my shift on the 31st, a code was called that resulted in three restraints. That was how I exited 2015.

They say your year will go the way you entered it. I entered it with warmth. I was surrounded by people I've known since I was ten. I called my family in Arizona. I messaged those who I wanted to carry with me from 2015 into 2016.

My first conversation of the year was
Eloosha, with a smug look: Huh, doesn't feel very different.
Me, insistent on magic: almost like New Years is an artificial time construct, you jerk.

traditions carried for generations: Oranges or clementines. Champagne. A table laden with food. Ирония судьбы (The Irony of Fate) playing in the background. Saying goodbye to the Old Year before saying hello to the New. Family. A New Years tree. Sparklers and fireworks. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz. Gifts. Love.

First Day of the Year, discussing bunnies as secret illigal pets during college
"I only ever saw two bunnies at Yale, one was named Truth and the other Beauty, and one of them almost certainly overdosed on cocaine" (which one though, is unknown)

I woke up the next morning and knit for a little bit before falling asleep and waking up with everyone else: all of us soon transitioned to one bed, a lump and warmth and promises to try to stay horizontal for as long as possible. Liza said "my new years resolution is to keep my heart over my head for as long as possible". Eloosha said "I think with my hands". I tucked those away.
Wasting time to the fullest with cuddling and music and late brunch. 
The next morning I woke not in my own bed yet again, and read Autobiography of a Corpse (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull, 1920's) while surrounded by sleeping beauties.

I made it back to my apartment eventually, only to go back to the same company for a conversation that lasted hours, a midnight visitation and trying to breathe and be brave.

2015

2015 was holding my breath. I lived so much this year.

Time passed with a moon dipped in venom, so many friends visiting - Adrienne, Hannah, Will, Sorrel, a Bernie rally attended. I smoked my first cigar and felt sick - stuck with the habit of holding the smoke in my lungs. I got hit by a car while biking, and had too much to think anything of it. I went to a lecture on John Weiners at Harvard at Kelsey's urging, hundreds of miles away in Columbus, Ohio. I got sick. I spent a few days in NH with my coworkers and three dogs. I got told that I was looking exceedingly bird-like. My flatmates and I threw a party and named it "Crunksgiving". I climbed Mt. Lincoln and Lafayette with my father.

each of those is a story, a vignette.  maybe I'll have time to tell them this year.

I read a few books - Cat's Cradle in a burst of "oh! reading in English, I've forgotten!". On Adrian's advice (and my parents as well)  How to Win Friends and Influence People. When I felt lonely with R, I would read his favorite book; 100 Years of Solitude - it went by quick, so did he, the irony not lost on me. House of Leaves, which I had gifted myself for my birthday. Matt then lent me City of Glass. A project started by Hannah and Sorrel led me to read chunks of A Short History of Wine, I Drink Therefore I am; A Philosopher's Guide to Wine, and A History of the World in Six Glasses.

I'm ready to breath out.

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.