Sometime last year, my cousin was driving me to a doctor’s appointment. While we searched for music for the road, I mentioned that I’d never listened to a single John Mayer song and he sought to change that. We listened to an entire album that I couldn’t tell you anything else about other than it has a song about slow dancing in a burning room. … Continue reading Burn it down.
And then there are cracks. Moments that should ordinarily be a quick tear when I encounter something that moves me but my body malfunctions and my grief flows out in barely contained guttural screams. It’s contained quickly. But it’s still a swollen river: it can only deviate from its course; fuck some shit up. Continue reading Little sorrows
Meditation on (the catharsis) of violence and punishment/(as) justice. Klaus, The Originals, has uttered variations of this title numerous times. I think I, like a lot of people, are drawn to powerful characters because there’s so much that is out of our control in our daily lives. So many indignities and violences that we can’t do anything about. So a character like Klaus provides that … Continue reading “I will condemn you to a fate far worse than death.”
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about community. In little blocks. Lately, it’s been a building block of community— friendship and trust. The cyclical nature of friendship and trust. How trust is implicit in building a friendship and later in maintaining it. It’s almost like, the earning of trust is beside the point, giving it is where it’s at. I don’t know, there’s an earnestness … Continue reading Isn’t that how love works sometimes?
I oscillate between an arrogance about my survival and a debilitating awareness of my life’s precariousness. It’s increasingly more of the former now. A year ago, it was only the latter. At my most precarious, I ended up isolated in a hospital room, immunocompromised and on the verge of malnutrition. I’d barely eaten in three weeks and by this point, I couldn’t keep food down … Continue reading Rest in kindness Naphtaly.
For Catapult, I wrote about our mothers, the terrible marriages they are in and the things they tell us bout surviving those marriages. “I wondered if part of surviving your husband’s betrayal is assuming that of all the women, you had to have been the smartest; you had to have been the one he was most honest with when it came to money; that you’re … Continue reading Do not marry a politician and other kitchen table things.
I’ve always thought I’d die young. For most of my childhood, it was an unexamined thought sitting in my subconscious, quietly accepted, yet to be complicated with the arrogance and hysteria of young adulthood. I had no concept of “gone too soon”; unaware of my potential, untainted by ambition; not jaded by hope and dreams. I read Bridge to Terabithia and thought, “that makes sense.” … Continue reading Heartbreak is the only way these things make sense.
My mother says she was in labour for seven days before giving birth to me. I don’t know. Guys, is this plausible? Anyway, I was the first of my mother’s three c-sections. The year I turned seven, my sister and I had a joint birthday party. Her birthday is two days after mine. All the children except three at the party were her friends. My … Continue reading Birthday Blues.
I am excessively aware and terrified of my heartbeat. The strength of it; the fragility of it;the aliveness of it; the finality of it. How it sums up the seemingly shrinking but yet expansive ordeal that my life has been this past year. Whilst people can gesture and make lists, I only have to sit really still for a moment. Everything that I am, everything … Continue reading My heartbeat and I, we got this.
Once your death sits on the floor with you, it never quite leaves no matter how hard you scrub the floors. I am constantly out of breath. I will always be out of time. Continue reading But at what cost?
Clarie's Ramblings 