it’s ok….actually…..please don’t smile.

WARNING: This post may cause abdominal pain. And it may increase digestion. And those who read this may develop bed sores on their bed side. Side effects may also include: increase of oxygen to most parts of the brain, teeth whitening, freckle recognition, harmonized memories and unambiguous thoughts.

******               ******               ******                  *****

Resting against my face is not a smile. I used to take pills to push one into my skin like the imprint a foot makes in the sand. But there were all those side-effects and suddenly a smile just wasn’t worth all the small print tumbling me into nightmares, dry mouth, loss of sexual appetite and on and on.

I walk on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn from home to subway and three different humans (all male-bodied) stop me and say, “Smile!” as though I had forgotten how.

On the train, I study the commuters who travel like I do and try to decipher the language of their faces. I realize that my lips are turned downward. I lift one side, not quite into a smile but less than a frown. Then, I stop myself. Who am I manipulating my lips for?

I enter a room and collect a bouquet of “How are you’s”. I answer wisely: “Well” or “Good, thank you.” But what I want to utter is: “Troubled, at times” or “Feeling stifled by language which I cannot connect to myself” or “Traumatized by my trip here” or “Okay, but I’d really like to be better.”

My father reads my blog. Tells me my posts have grown sad. I want to tell him that my words are all from the same seed. That the soil they live inside is sometimes colder and sometimes rotten and sometimes neglected but always feeling. I want to tell him that I am a writer and words cannot all be yellow with three dimensional, rotating suns singing in unison. Sometimes syllables shake and have to sit down.

I just don’t want to fake it anymore because in that fake there is tragedy. I want to frown in plain sight; how terrible it feels to be in hiding.

At night, our faces can rest. No one needs clarity when the lights are turned down and we travel into REM. We can wince and we can furrow and we can twist our flesh into sorrowful sighs. And how beautiful and how real all that is. To just rest in a face you really feel without having to make someone else more comfortable.

It’s okay……really…..please…..don’t smile…..just be.

to amy (sic) of ten years ago today.

Ten years ago, you had a difficult time with serving sizes. Back then, you hoarded cocaine and one-night love affairs. You collected envelopes of gashes. Ten years ago, you were being cyber-bullied by your memories. You changed your phone number and the shape of your skin in order to hide from your shadow. You feasted on potholes. You grew an enormous amount of debt as though this tab was like a garden you were watering. You lost feeling in the lower region of your body. Ten years ago, you shaved everything. Ten years ago, you fondled paralysis of your heart. You stopped trusting men. You fell. Do you remember that? You traveled with bar napkins against bloody chin because the weight of panic threw you down. Do you remember that you found new places to hide the slashes from the anger which only grew louder from all the drugs? Ten years ago, you got into a knife fight with the other half of you. You filled out only half the application for a restraining order against your vagina.      * Ten years ago today, you began planning for a future you were contemplating against. You applied to university in a state you never lived in, hoping for a re-do. You found words, which felt too kind, to describe your journey and intention to study. You got a phone call from a voice you did not recognize telling you that you were accepted to university. You decided it was time to get clean again. You threw bad habits into garbage and threw heavy bag of trauma into Brooklyn dumpster. You started writing more. You decided what could be left behind and what you wanted to remain with you. You cleaned out your phone of names, which haunted your ear drums. You decided to choose poetry as your drug; it was a lot cheaper and though it left you fiending for more, it was free. And did not leave you with nosebleeds and blackouts. You drove over two thousand miles. You still made some mistakes, but when you fell, there was a lot less blood. You got your degree. You learned how to collect months and then years of sobriety. You gave up collecting things. You still have a difficult time with serving sizes…..though now, it’s just coffee. And words.

do-over

You did not get raped. You are not allergic to dairy; therefore, you may eat that strawberries-and-cream sundae without fear of gut explosion. You were not interrupted while walking home that day by two men, in tinted brown car, alerting you that you dropped something. You did not say I love you to the first lesbian to ask you on a date. These men in scratched aluminum car did not persistently tell you: Yes, you did. Miss, you dropped something. You do not have a difficult time reading Proust. Here is when you did not grow confused and then angry when these men in bass-blaring car continued with: Miss, you dropped a conversation. Now, c’mon and get closer and talk to us. You’re so pretty, Miss. No, you definitely did not grow flammable when those men thought they had your permission to be gendered and bothered. You never tried to give yourself bangs. You are not plagued by indigestion every time you remove your clothing. You have absolutely no problems being intimate. You never eat dessert for supper; you wouldn’t dare. You have no difficulty calling yourself labels like woman or alive. You feel completely understood by the humans who think they know you. You are not uncomfortable by the thought of celebrating your birthday. You have no desire to afford a mortgage one day. You definitely don’t want to get married. You were so relieved that time you weren’t pregnant. You have forgiven _________. And _________. You are not clothed in sixteen layers of phobias. You definitely do not hesitate to breathe sometimes. You did not collapse on that Brooklyn concrete and find nine crooked stitches in your chin the next morning. You are really OK. You are not looking for a remedy. You are clean. You can definitely get through this. You can get another try; there is always a do-over.

the dormancy of sadness.

This body is a storm approaching or one just ending. This body is a gathering of ice and traffic accidents due to slippery roads. This body is approaching a summer storm. This body is a heat index of 89. This body is covered in dew and a mist slowly speeding over joints. This body is winded. This body is grey. This body is has been a haunt of melancholia

My body is a weather pattern.

I have depression, but it currently lays dormant inside me. I exist one moment at a time, kind of like the sun. Rising and falling. Sometimes in need of a hiding (behind clouds). Brighter on days that make up for the times I just feel far too dim to shine.

Sadness is not like a wound we are used to seeing. It does not always bleed and it isn’t contagious. It is not like the flu; there is no depression shot. 

We need to address that depression is not a cold. It is not a stuffed-up nose and achy bones that can be relieved with over-the-counter remedies. It is not a bad mood or a bad day. It is a disease that exists within the cellular structure of more humans than we can keep track of.

There is no one-size-fits all outfit for depression. It is worn differently by everyone. Some mix-and-match, adding on other complicating accessories such as drug addiction or other addictions. Sometimes it is very visible. Othertimes, it can be easily masked behind sunshine’y demeanors.

This earth can be a difficult land to live on, but it is beyond nature; it is how we are nurtured as well.

Recently, a young couple in Portugal fell off a cliff because they were attempting a photograph of the moment. (Otherwise known as a selfie)

Even when we are present, we are not (sometimes).

Sometimes we must forego sleep, wake at an hour that some are just easing into slumber, and travel toward the sunrise. Watch a moment without documenting it.

Recognize that so much of this sadness is also about a need to be somewhere at all times and just being present within yourself can be enough.

We should not wait for depression to puncture our eyes in order to pay attention to its voice.

Put away your cameras and be in a moment. Study the thousands of shades of blue that exist after sunset. Give yourself permission to cry….there doesn’t always have to be a reason. Sometimes life is just sad and sometimes bodies get closer to the edge than others.

But jumping takes you away from seeing the other side of this landscape. And it is vivid. And it is far too exquisite to translate into pictures (sometimes). And this translation of sad is still searching for letters.

Feelings aren’t selfish. And there are times where having these feelings leave no other choice but to leave.

Walk outside your front door. Check on your welcome mat. Dust it off, if it hasn’t been in awhile. Go out and buy one if there’s none already. Let those who enter your world know they are welcome to come in. This, in turn, creates a safe space to let you in.

continue on.

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

So, you wake and want to wring your fists against door handles…find a way out through rust and bone.

So, you think you’ve reached your point as all the callouses on your skin call out stop signs and search out potholes to slither toward.

So, your tongue has numbed and your teeth have lost their ability to forgive you and who ever thinks about aging when skin still appears tight enough to trampoline on.

So, you found a grey hair in an area of your body no one was ever meant to see anyway.

So, you leave it there.

So, it reminds you you’re still around.

So, it represents the worries–the kind that no longer get you.

So, sometimes the ash between black and white or fade of color that used to be bright only means that you’ve remained one more morning.

So, you might as well continue on. This curious pattern of aging can be worn in more ways than just sad.

 

if this is anguish, what direction leads to its opposite.

“I have brushed my teeth.
This day and I are even.” 
………………………………..Vera Pavlova

Dear SS,

I’ve ransacked your journal. The library sold it to me for one swipe and you’ve already taught me that skin can be trusted.

You call love suicidal and I am reminded that I die a little each time I feel something.

Each time you write about sex, you label it as a knockoff of pleasure. I try to think of the last time I felt and how good one can get at pretending.

SS, all I can think about is rice these days and how it fills me in a way no human ever has; what kind of person does that make me?

And what is it to be tired the moment one wakes. How urgent is blinking.

Are we forever connected to everything we give birth to: sadness. a child. a sentence.

You ask: what do you think about all day? Moisture. Employment. How many lies I lied about. The shape of the last human I loved. What fears I fear tonight. Rehearsal.

SS, if you were beside me, I’d ask you where your focus is and if you believe in the forgery of bodies.

You wrote, “I fear I have never used my body” and I fear mine has only been used.

You mention delicacies and I’d remind you that survival is one as well: particularly textured, sensitive, susceptible to illness, expensive and tricky.

 

 

 

Dear Elizabeth.

I recently learned that you kicked out one of your students because she was exhibiting strange behavior. You told a thirteen-year old girl with visible sadness and markings of warning signs not to come to school. Since when do elementary schools have a policy that pushes out the mentally ill?

When I was fifteen, I rubbed Plath and Dickinson into my skin. Could not compare how I felt with the others around me. So, I wrote. Carved poems into my notebook. Carved letters and lines into my skin. No one taught me how to hurt myself. It was a language I gathered with each collected tear drop. Poetry wound up [in many ways] saving my life, but it also turned up the volume to my invisibility.

Freshman year of high school, I read my first poem to an auditorium full of 13-18 year olds. I don’t remember the title, but it was so dark, the lights lost their balance and afterwards, teachers started worrying for my safety. This was the moment I realized how powerful words can be. I carried a book of Lou Reed’s lyrics with me and reread all the poems by Plath that made my skin feel like it was finally getting nourishment. The school guidance counselor started making appointments with me. The bloodied hieroglyphics on my skin were getting noticed. I stopped hiding.

Even in my saddest state, no one ever asked me to leave. When I walked out on classes because I needed to retreat, to lose myself against trees or carve out my grey into park benches instead of myself, no one stopped me. When I missed over forty days of classes because I needed to medicine myself toward something more safe, I was welcomed back without judgement.

Now, I’m the teacher. And I notice every student in my classroom and help them to feel and be present. I would never close the door on someone trying to learn. Especially someone having a difficult time remaining with themselves.

There is a school in Elizabeth, New Jersey that recently asked a thirteen-year old learner not to come back. I think that if every school pushed out those having a difficult time with living, we’d no longer have to worry about over-crowded classrooms. We’d also have a shortage of teachers and (probably) administration.

Kicking people out is not the solution. Giving them a safe space to talk is.

It has taken me almost two decades to manage and understand my sad. I have finally located the root, so now I work everyday to create and find safe spaces to translate it.

Elizabeth, New Jersey, I am disappointed in your approach to mental illness and unwillingness to look at this young girl as a wake up call. It is difficult to be alive sometimes; punishing someone because they are having second thoughts about it will only perpetuate these behaviors, not help to solve them.

courtesy of sadness

In the city, which never sleeps, it is difficult to find a napping New Yorker. Even on the subway, there are restless multi-taskers swiping away at their ipads and cell phones. Some balance laptops on laps, while others can be found with a thick pile of papers atop their thighs to prepare for an array of early morning meetings. New Yorkers are always busy and because of this preoccupation with always doing something, they tend to forget to notice what exists around them.

Underground, we seek out seats and balance the weight of gym bag and yoga mat and briefcase and backpack and pocketbooks the size of small suitcases. There are rare moments when the doors open and you have many seats to choose from. During peak hours (and in New York, all hours are peak), you must shimmy your way in and do your best not to let you hands wander; humans get very, very close underground.

Amidst this overcrowded chaos, there are moments where humanity exists in the most symphonic way. Look to your left and you may catch the little girl around 4 or 5 years old singing nursery rhymes to herself as her mom or guardian looks on. A guy at the end of the train seems to have forgotten that he is not in his bathroom, as he lifts bare feet up and begins clipping his toenails. I seem to be the only one in fear of a flyaway piece of hardened keratin. A female nuzzles with her lover: another young woman with a tattoo of a dragon on her forearm. Many act as though they cannot be seen and this is when we can catch bits of uncensored New Yorker emotion.

This is what I look for.

This is what reminds me that although we go home to different sized apartments (some have no home to go to) or engage in lifestyles of varied monetary styles, we are all here on this train together. Religion, race, economic background, or educational history do not matter.

The cover charge is the same for everyone: $2.50 per ride. As I look, I take out my red notebook and begin to write what I see.

***

It is impossible not to notice the color of May sky on her fingernails. Blue unlike turquoise or swimming pool or deserted-island ocean. Blue like the color of sadness. And she was crying. This young woman, perhaps around twenty-four or younger, had drops of salt falling from her eyes, brown like dug up earth. I sat across from her on the 3 train heading back into Brooklyn on a Sunday. It was early and it seemed like she may have been wearing last night’s attire: carefully ripped stockings, short black skirt that was neither leather nor linen. Cotton spandex mix? Her shirt was also black—true New York fashion derived from the allure of midnight: dark and slimming. Her hair was tossed up into a high pony tail/bun combination. I couldn’t stop staring.

Sometimes I really believe I am invisible as I travel underground from one borough to another. Brooklyn into Manhattan or Queens to the Bronx. Strangers stuck in a train with windows, which do not open. We involve ourselves in technological distractions: the latest popular downloaded game on fancy cell phone; rapper-endorsed headphones over ears blasting shuffled music; travel-sized electronic books. Some sleep. Some sneak sips of beer hidden inside brown paper bag. I have seen mothers nurse their babies and change diapers. I have seen fancy-suited proselytizers. I have seen guardians hit their kids. I have seen the beginnings of sex, heavy petting and deep-rooted foreplay. There has been vomit and piss and spilled meals and grime and rain all staining the floors and seats of these trains.

On this particular Sunday, I want to offer this young person a tissue. I want to climb in the empty orange seat next to her and hold her painted fingers as we sit in silence. I want to ask her what happened. I look around and wonder if anyone else notices what I am noticing or if they are stuck inside the NY code of contact to ignore, ignore, ignore.

Some occurrences on the subway elicit a response. Whenever God is mentioned, there is someone else on the train ready to retaliate. A man screams at his girlfriend and several people get involved to protect. A kid screams his/her way into a deafening tantrum and everyone rolls their eyes at once. But sadness tends to induce complete disregard. Perhaps it is so elevated in ourselves that it is too difficult to notice it in others. So, when this girl cries into her hands, she becomes deeply ignored. All eyes look away, except mine.

There are many rites of passage as a NYC subway rider. The top three that tend to eventually baptize commuters into “true New Yorkers” are: falling asleep and missing your stop, vomiting on the subway and crying while underground. I have reached all three and some more than once.

We tend to notice what we want to notice. Or sometimes we see what we want others to see in us. I notice the sad. When I am stuck on a train full of laughter, my eyes will gather steam from the couple at the far end who are nodding off, track marks on exposed forearms and twitching with each stop. Maybe I feel the need to notice the forgotten humans—the ones cast aside because they look crumpled or lost. The ones who smell. The ones disconnected through distracting electronica.

This particular woman still has the stain of Saturday’s lipstick on lips. I can tell it is from yesterday because it is darkest on the ends and far more faint throughout the rest of her mouth. I watch her take out cell phone and rub finger along screen. She is scrolling up and down, reading something. I imagine her reading text messages from whoever or whatever she came from. Perhaps she is reading something that birthed these tears. A text-messaged break-up? Her lips move as she silently reads from the screen. Her forehead squints into furrows. Her tears stop and now she looks angry. What is happening? She looks up and notices me noticing her. I look down because maintaining eye contact with this beautifully sad woman is far too intimate for me at this time of the day. I prefer being unnoticed or maybe I just enjoy having control over this noticing. It makes me wonder if anyone is noticing me.

 

a meal of plath and tikka

I used to read “The Bell Jar” each year until I landed in the hospital in Connecticut. On a Saturday, curry is cooked in a washed-out red and black pot. A welcome of cauliflower, onion, kale and cumin. Later, an attempt at brown rice that never tastes as simple as white. I think it’s all that death that can create a relapse of sad within the body; I remained there for almost two weeks. It is never as spicy as I need it to be or I receive third-degree burn on the ledge of my tongue. Like love, there is no easy interpretation for piquant or peppered. She needed to call herself Victoria because illness is metal and it is necessary to protect oneself from the possibility of rust. I am solidified in silence as I chew alone. No one asks if I like it, but into the air I still speak out: for the most part. Plath parades her grey so effortlessly and I wonder if I can fall in love with a human who knows how to blot my weep with palms of heal. Meals may be annotated and books can be digested. I should have used more garlic.

neglect the map or gust of origin.

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.” Aldous Huxley

I come from white walls white thighs white mother crust of malady and abandon.

I come from culdesac dead ended romance with calm and how to collect a thousand fireflies in just one summer with scoop of blond hand and curious wrists. Spell out help with the death of smeared illumination.

I come from guilt. Guilt of murdered lightening bugs. Guilt of murdered hair follicles through bleach and rusted scissor clip. Guilt of murdered childhood through the erasure of memory. Guilt of each kiss claimed by mouth without manners.

I come from New Jersey. Concrete and sod. Hangings and ambulance whispers. Suburban boredom collapsed into self-harm. That time that time that time that time that time that time that time that time that time. That time there was a need to gallop body into medicated bones and bruise away hatred of self.

I come from stages and poets dusted and banned. I come from Ginsberg and Plath and Kate Bornstein and Gertrude Stein and Bukwoski and Mapplethorpe and Serrano and Valerie Solanas and every teacher that tried to teach in a way that kept the windows open and doors unlocked.

I come from appetite and birth and love there was some love [once] and Brooklyn and boroughs and grass stains and hyper.

I come from shift and gender and clutter’d queer disrobing through each climb of love and affair.

I come from that place within the body that thieves. Call it basement. Call it butcher shop. Call it handsome. That’s where I derive.