what do you live for?

(Inspired by my students. Inspired by the writers who don’t even know they are writers, until they write.)

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I live for that line. The combination of words that, when placed together, shake and stir minds. Knowing words are already there, waiting and breathing. Bones breaking and forming until. Until I pluck them from books or mouths and create a combination that unlocks everything.

I live for the moment all my veins and twists make sense to me. The moment my body speaks back in a dialect I can finally understand.

I live for my father, who never closed his door to me, even when I was at my worst.

I live for the book I haven’t read yet.

I live for the books I haven’t written yet.

I live for the moments I have yet to experience. And the art I’ve yet to see. And the border crossings I’ve yet to cross.

I live for my passport, which one day I will fill up.

I live to free the parts of me I have put on hold. To give them time and space to speak up. To give my body and mind a chance to re-introduce itself.

Yeah. I live for that.

(can you) LIKE this?

When I was a junior in high school, I liked a boy called G. I was too shy to ask him if he liked me the way I liked him, so I gave him my Enya CD before class one day, because I had overheard him saying he liked her music.

He smiled and took it, but never really said if he liked me or even the album and I have a scar on my right forearm from the day I drove to that park somewhere between where I lived and didn’t and cut my skin until I felt touched by something.

Grade ten in high school and I am told by my best friend that while he was in the gym locker room, a bunch of other boys were making fun of me. They said they wished I had just killed myself already and I began to wonder why my friend was relaying this to me. He said, “I defended you,” because he liked me, even though no one else did. Four more scars were born soon after.

First grade. A boy called D passes a note to me via three other people and asks me if I like him back. He gives me a choice: Circle YES or NO or MAYBE. I circle all three; even then, I had a difficult time making up my mind.

Nowadays, we are LIKED at least once a day, sometimes ten or thirty depending upon how often we ask through typed-up messages and photographs. We unravel our scars, dig them out like time capsules and put them up onto our computer screens, so that someone will press a button and deliver validation we’ve grown to thirst for.

Nowadays, we walk around with instant validation. All one has to do is post words and wait.

LIKE.

LIKE.

LIKE.

Two minutes pass and you’ve acquired three and then two more and suddenly your lack of employment or depleted bank account or untreated-but-diagnosed depression does not matter.

You. Are LIKE’d. Simply because you posted words above a button making it very easy for others to press it.

You tell people you have grown sick or gone to hospital or stopped eating or what you are eating or how you sit or how you lean or the delicate drip of your nose or who you are dating.

You tell people about what you just did or what you are about to do or what you plan to do next week.

LIKE.

LIKE.

Nineteen years of age, I am swallowing a boy’s body part that does not feel safe or comfortable in my mouth. He did not ask me if I LIKED this.

Year twenty-seven of living and I leave a place that I never recorded after my body is broken into once again and there is no button, but if there were I would not press it.

Seven years later and I try it out. I gather up some words like a bouquet of flowers stolen out of someone’s front yard. I take these words and thrown them onto a computer screen. And I wait. And I hold my breath until the first….

LIKE.

It feels good. Adrenaline of acceptance rushes through me and suddenly it does not matter how much I meant what I wrote. It doesn’t matter that I never spell-checked or fact- checked. All that matters is someone LIKE’d it, which means someone LIKE’d me.

And all my scars began to faint away or I pretended they had and it did not matter I was alone or lonely or hungry or still depressed. Someone pressed that button for me.

LIKE.

I take all these LIKEs and crush them up. I press down firmly to smooth out the hard bits. Like gristle. Suddenly, I’ve got a fine powder of LIKEs. I lean toward them as though about to whisper something worthy of a click to them. I get so close, I almost blow some of the LIKEs away. Then, I glide this dust toward my nose and snort them up like the drug it really is. I inhale. My chest beckons. My ribs climb themselves. I inhale every last drip of LIKE that exists and revel in the aftertaste of anticlimactic emptiness.

 

the currency of concern.

“A body holding its own dusk/ That is what a predator is, mostly.”  –Elizabeth Robinson

A body shuts down. It is night and there is only enough room for airplanes and crickets and moon and sleep. 

Here is how it goes. The author sits wearing wet hair and long underwear. Breath of peppermint and coffee, barley and long-distanced lover’s tongue. Outside, one could pretend it is spring, but it is too cold to title it as such. The author has consolidated their loans; the author has consolidated their bones.

Monthly payment does not match bank account and when asked how many members in family, suddenly one sounds synonymous with failure.

A body searches its contents and recognizes only the stink of bones, but cannot recall if that is actually what they are called. It is a time congruent to morning. 

It can be immensely humbling to prove one’s poorness. There is enough food in cupboards and shoes to wear and enough options of laundered clothes to fill a drawer and closet. Hot water and heat paid for by unseen landlord. The author can even afford capers, but chooses to wait for tax return.

However, the amount owed far exceeds the amount author owns and on this morning of unzipped blue denim sky, the author cries store-brand version of tears and swallows store-brand version of oxygen.

A body exhales and spits out the dust of agony.

This is not about educational tabs running over. Nor is this about economic class or the woes of a poet in search of a space safe enough to wrap skin around. This is not about what plagues a body. Nor is it a prompt for pity.

This may be about what it feels like to occur. To be the one folded in the corner of rooms wondering why every circumstance is a reminder of what you do not have.

How to populate with only words. How to birth without heteronormative consumption. 

Here is how it goes. The author hikes toward the closest mountain found within the nooks of mind. Digs torn-up fingernails into soil that is highlighted by the sun. Fondles the pebbles and branches, which feel like found currency. Puts loot into pockets. Continues traveling up. Up. Higher. The author pretends to be unafraid of heights; the author does not look down. Up. Higher. Until. The only thing that matters is the wind. The curves beneath each step. And the way down.

reminders.

 

“breathe.”
My father reminds me to remain. When his mileage grows further than my eyes can reach, I press yellow post-it notes to borrowed walls to remind myself what to do.

Exist. Write. Nourish. Be kind. Be patient. Be present. BE.

When I ask my students why they write, a list of words unravel off their tongues reminding me how necessary it is to even question this process of documentation.

I write because it keeps me here.

My father is a novelist. I can say this now because he spent many years curving his back toward various computers, writing words down. Amidst the stress(es) of life, he found time to accumulate over 70,000 words into organized chapters and plot twists. A writer writes.

Each time we speak, he asks me how my writing is going. Am I sending work out? Am I broadening my audience? This check-in reminds me my purpose.

I remind my father that he keeps me here too. As a writer, I have grown accustomed to being so enclosed within my thoughts, it has created a distance inside me. I can reveal all my secrets on stage, but that is because they have already been written down. In person, I am zipped-up; this can be a lonely existence.

My father reminds me how I used to be. Before ______. And before _______.

When I was younger and my hair was yellow and soft, we used to listen to old radio shows, barter at garage sales and hoard other people’s junk. My body was less creased, less angry; there were far less stockpiles of scars on my skin. It’s difficult for me to recall that human that once was me.

My father reminds me that there is still happy in me; I just need to be open to rummaging a little.

I remind my father that there is still peace in him; he just needs to be open to some rummaging as well.

here is how it will happen.

You will receive health insurance for the first time in eight years minus one summer.

A human dressed in a different version of queer than you will ask: “So, how’s your gender going these days.”

And you will smile because there is something so rewarding about breathing sometimes and you will inhale so deeply, you can taste your organs.

“Everything is still forming its bones,” you answer. “There are some things that are getting louder and some things that are feeling stronger in me.”

When you mention hysterectomy, you do not announce the time your professor at the university near the mountains thought you already had one due to the way you were writing about your blood and carved out structure.

You want to cry the moment your lover tells you, “I imagine you wearing the chest you dream about, not the one that greets me each night.”

You hoard that free coffee, owed to you on punch card from favorite cafe, housed in your wallet. You want to save it for a time that celebrates something you’ve been longing for.

You will revisit a lover who loved you when you were still searching for the instruments to carve out the vocabulary of your thoughts. It will be like time never passed and you will relocate that smile you had before that time you used to pretend away. You will kiss a map of all the years onto the palm of the others’ hand.

“But do you even want to figure all this out?” says the one dressed in warm and sleep-deprived.

“This? Is it something to figure out or untwist like knots of curious yarn,” you answer.

You’ve got too many turns in you, so you say: “I’m just looking to feel alive from all my angles. I want to play seek, rather than hide so much.”

Here is how it will happen.

You will stop locking yourself away like a diary with blank pages. You deserve to be read.

You will kiss and you will opposite-of-rhyme and you will read enough books to feed your eyes. And you will whistle even in the winter when your lips shiver. And you will wake. And you will wake. And you will stay.

day 29: edit away the disturb of loneliness.

“Be good and you will be lonesome,” said Mark Twain.

Silence can be so loud, you have a difficult time connecting to breaths. However, silence can also be a song you memorize and never forget the words to. It’s melody will become like a harmonized history of everything you ever called beautiful.

They called you good. They said, You agree to too much and you give in.

So, you stop. You fold your tongue into intricate origami contraptions. Your taste buds turn into swans and kayaks and butterflies and boxes.

There is so much generosity beneath your fingernails, which is why you bite them. With each spit of keratin across the room, you are spreading this munificence everywhere you go.

Your yawns do not need to be introduced. You can laugh at a joke that remains inside you.

Why is loneliness such a whisper? Have you even memorized the various octaves of your sighs and gulps? Scream out your alone and be inside the gloriousness of solitude.

day 27: tracking.

It took you three thousand, two hundred and eighty-five days to get here. You fell in love three and a half more times with six people. You lost a pregnancy; you lost three gloves. You gained weight, several new words and two college degrees. You cut your hair; you lost your hair; you bought some hair. You learned about mountain top removal and composting. You read several books you cannot recall and you wrote some books. There were fourteen blackouts: several from various weather configurations, one due to a past due bill and the others connected to your inability to curb your alcoholism. You took a bath. You learned how to knit. You purchased a mattress and almost fell off a fire escape due to your inability to curb your alcoholism. You became sober. You cooked the most delicious meal for yourself. You learned how to banter. You took one thousand and ninety-five naps. You grew an affection for hard-boiled eggs. You had a biopsy. You moved nine times. You applied for health insurance; you acquired a primary care physician. You gained more weight. You fell in love for an evening. You purchased a pet. You lost your pet. You learned how to play a musical instrument; you lost seventeen friends. You traveled overseas; you took a road trip. You contemplated lipstick. You purchased two succulents. You tried Nattō. You had three affairs minus the six you do not mention. You still bite your nails. You still collect stamps and phone numbers. You still forget to breathe sometimes. You still fall asleep hungry some nights. You still think of _____. You still do not know how to crochet or apologize correctly. You are still alone; you are constantly surrounded. You still desire stillness. You are still learning. You are still drafting drifting dreaming.

day 15: re/in(carnation)

“People don’t become what they were brought up to be, people become themselves.”
― Sarah Schulman

You walk into a room and swallow as many cellular structures as you can. You ask yourself: was this table, etched with unclear floral arrangements, ever someone with limbs? 

Furthermore, you wonder: how much of what we once were parts of what we are right now.

You have begun to romanticize reincarnation as though it were a new love interest. You bat your eyes toward flashes of memory. You are unclear if these are your theatrical trailers of lives once lived, or just scattered bits of movies and conversations you’ve devoured on lonely nights.

When do you officially become?

You were brought up to leave your elbows behind when eating at the table. Back erect and hair untouched while food fondled your lips. You were brought up never to cuss or complain. You were taught homosexuality was a sin, so you left yourself behind for two decades. You were told to keep your hair long in order to be approachable. You were trained to walk away from who you felt you were.

Or are we perpetually becoming?

You decide humans are always humans and do not reincarnate into inanimate objects like stones or light bulbs, but trees and water are a grey area, since they move.

So, you may have been drops of water in that lake you swam in upstate this summer. And you may have been splinters stuck inside the tree you straddle in the summertime during moments of mourning. And you might have been a slice of paper in a notebook that someone somewhere wrote poems in once.

Perhaps we are in constant modes of arrival.

Perhaps we never arrive, instead we transform into various shapes and sounds; there is no stopping point; there is no complete. There is just being.

day 12: welcome in the chaos

There is no meaning without just a little bit of chaos. Gather up your gnawed-at wires and all those batteries scattered around your home like miniature rolling pins for miniature pastries.

Walk inside the worry of a wound.

You’ve thought about this for weeks. No, months. (Years sounds far more dramatic. To be able to leave all your alphabets behind in order to enter a place without baggage. Literally. Of course, metaphorical baggage will travel with you near and far, with and without passport. Chaos is defined as: complete disorder and confusion: snow caused chaos in the region. Behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. 

We view this as odd, unfamiliar and troubling. But what if we welcomed in this chaos. If it left you to adventure. If it arrived at the answer to all your question marks. If it encouraged more photographs to be lived out loud, rather than viewed behind glass screens.

This is what I mean: On a long train ride from one part of somewhere to another, a human gets up and begins asking every passenger– one-by-one– how their day went. It went a little something like this:

Chaos Encourager: Hi. (spoken to someone stuffed inside a suit perhaps
more expensive than my rent payment) How was your day today?

Traveler 1: (silence)

Chaos Encourager: How are you adjusting to this weather? Did your
feet stay warm? Today, I thought that if I were to title this day,
I might call it a grumble of shivers. Do you ever think like
that? Hey, I really like your tie.

Traveler 1: (silence, then…looks up from cell phone game with
neon colors) Thank you. Thanks for noticing.

I know what you are thinking. There is no way this actually happened, but it did.

We forget to notice what needs to be noticed. Others. The smell of the air. The instrumentation of the rain outside, which may be a bother because it makes everything wet, but it also sounds like a symphony of percussion.

Chaos just means interrupting the norm. The quiet. The undisturbed. 

What are we so afraid of? What if we were to break these habits of looking away? We forget that if we were to lift our heads from cell phone hypnosis, we might find actual meaning to things.

chaos. disorder, disarray, disorganization, confusion, mayhem, bedlam, pandemonium, havoc, turmoil, tumult, commotion, disruption, upheaval, uproar, maelstrom; muddle, mess, shambles, free-for-all; anarchy, lawlessness, entropy.  an order to the disorder.

(it can be) difficult to be human [sometimes]

When all else fails, take fourteen hours out of your day to create a manual for making it through a mood. Call up the lover that always mispronounced your favorite word and remind them the importance of expiration dates, clean sheets and the texture of toast. Mediate an argument between humans you never met before but feel the desire to restore. Give your mouth away just for an evening and forget about your allergy to men, moustaches and margarine. In order to make new friends, sometimes you need to pretend you understand how to download or upload and logout immediately. On the second day of Autumn, you will receive an unmarked scab from someone who used to know seventeen things about you; this will be their version of a love letter; do not eat it; or if you do, tell no one of this. Everyday thereafter, this encrusted wound will cause you to mispronounce your favorite word. You will choose silence over speech lessons. The next time you weep will be three years two months and four days from now. It will be attributed to something related to southern women or a misplaced pronoun. Sometimes, to be human can be difficult.