hello,
through the glass of my school's library, i'm watching a toddler on the top steps of his brownstone home, bundled up in his winter best, shaking his little fist at the sky with an open mouth. i'm imagining he is crying out at the sudden cruel cold that has wilted all the new buds of spring. the up and down of weather has browned the fresh, sweet pink magnolia flowers and shocked the birds and bees who had just begun to whisper their excitement. i must remind myself that the dew of the morning will be back soon enough, gentle and kind.
while the cold has been inconsistent, the winter has been long. it started back home: in the garden, plucking off meyer lemons from underneath the spiny bush. and on a rainy night, via arrives on a stalled plane. i clutch the steering wheel tight the whole drive back, daring to look at her in my side profile. down into the rose bowl to see the floats covered in flowers and through the dark and damp streets. new years eve is a sparkled affair, all around the table in the morning sure that we accidentally got away with it all when megan's phone rings...
hummingbirds must think they are gods, all that power: do you think they feel godly, or do they just collect nectar because they must? ocean voung says how sad that is - all that energy just to be still. they are fairies and manatees are mermaids, we humans have created creatures out of true animals because in this life there is that tangible feeling of mystery and all the empty space of what we don't know. as the sun is setting after a day with my mother and grandmother in the new living room, sitting next to the puzzle, on the phone, tokata tells me about a mangrove in puerto rico where the water is electric blue. i say its like eden, like an otherwordly treasure, which i immediately disagree with myself about - because the most magnificent beauties to be known are of this world.
for christmas i got: a tiger's eye silver ring that fits perfectly on my left ring finger and a facial that felt like i was abducted by a kind alien. after a week's storm, the peak of the mountain is burnt white, erased right off. everything sprouts big and green, the glowing powerful weeds on the sides of the trails shooting out of the nourished dirt overnight. the dream had no sound. water gushed down into the valley, past the cement. neon moss grew under trees, around rocks in the shapes of hearts. and in the desert: lichens of every shade splatter painted on rocks.
the fluctuation of weather makes it so i've lived four different years in the span of one bulbous january. neck massages and hibernation, pearls in the meat of the shell. we can't go out so we have steaming ramen loaded with onions and an egg on top. jess sits across from me, both of us 'doing work' but we keep looking over the top of our laptops and catch eyes. after long silences: do you believe in an afterlife? which is one of the questions that we have talked about before but we have to check in on every couple of months to see if we have any new ideas.
alexis pauline gumbs writes a love letter to marine mammals, black people in north america, herself, and the environment in undrowned. she bursts at the seams with love as a tool for mourning. she says: "there are at least three ways to love you: as you were, as you are, as you will be. i love you so i choose all three." i don't think i will ever forget that.
from the floaty starchiness of the morning after a night staring at a screen to hands in the dirt, grounded, i appear in my own mind suddenly - where had i been? things change which means they are alive. and things die which means they have exerted something into the world. megan suprises me for my birthday, i scream opening a door i didn't expect her to be behind. a memory, a creative story, a vision, a profile on a friend, a recommendation.
nico and i have dates on wednesdays, in between classes. quinn sometimes joins me in walking to work, we giggle easily. we go to a faith ringgold show. an amazing artist, whose quilt work reminds me of being alive. later i learn once many years ago she stood up a particularly special group of librarians. you know how i love surprising interconnections. i find two copies of tar beach on the street and hope via will read it outloud to the kids she teaches.
and i've been reading a lot: on the train, i never even look up unless someone calls out to the subway for help. besides that, i'm in a different place with different people: among the hostages who are falling in love as they have been captured in a mansion for months, sitting around a professor's dinner table in his home in nigeria while a war is brewing, beside an unconscious politician in a doctor's hotel room in spain, and following quickly behind a CIA agent on a secret mission to release a pet parrot.
all at once: i am waiting in the kitchen and jess is going for a run. she trails down to the water, and back up the hill, listening to loud music that spills over into the room as she crashes back inside. via is in her apartment with miu-miu, who is growing fatter by the second, now a very round friend, being fed well and given kisses. via is laughing hysterically with her best friend, mia, about a memory that involved seafood and making out, probably. simultaneously, in santa barbara, palentina is eating a loaf of freshly-made, nutty banana bread with her roommates. joyce is in iceland in a blizzard, where everything is upside down and whipping white. she has goggles and a huge smile on. my mom is editing a beautiful movie and the trees outside the window are rustling. and my grandparents are sitting in the backyard, quietly, as the golden sun tips under the horizon.
we go to a poetry reading that happened two years before and steal a drink to spite it, our bad moods growing tiresome. we go back home and write our own poetry. being freshly twenty-two on 2/22/22, and at 2:22 PM i was covered in mud, in the rain, quietly pulling out decorative cabbages far past their good-by date. numerology is mysterious and there are signs but what of i can't be sure. one peculiar organism aren't we all, together.
organizing archival footage: naked women drenched in blue, submerged in hot springs, stones lining their torsos. children running freely in fields. the utopian dream of antiquity: it's easy for me to romanticize this past and easier for me to feel both doom and excitement for the future. when in truth, the only real thing is right now.
at stonewall, as a sort of performance art, i get the sides of my head shaved, curls dropping onto the sticky stage. via's new apartment has an all-pink bathroom and a green velvet couch. her bed is huge and dreadfully comfortable and as i lay in it, alone, as she has left in the earliest moment of the morning, i peer out into the boarding schoolyard that looks more like a castle. sick, i walk from the bedroom to the living room and back again.
i get to hear hamilton morris and cornell west speak in the same week. west says in the face of catastrophe (always), we require courage and compassion. he says true work is bravery past your ego. he says there is no way to emotionally understand what is happening in the world at any given time. a student tap dances for him during the q&a and we all boom with applause. i leave feeling very good about the world.
"we lived happily during the war"
by ilya kaminsky
and when they bombed other people's houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. i was
in my bed, around my bed america
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
i took a chair outside and watched the sun.
in the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money,
we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war."
there is a story that goes as such: on the same day in 1979 that the beloved jazz musician, charles mingus, died from complications surrounding ALS at the age of 56, fifty-six sperm whales beached themselves on the pacific coast of mexico, close to where mingus lived with his wife during his final years. the global phenomenon in which marine mammals strand themselves onshore in hoards, while mysterious, has been increasingly linked to reasons human-made. listed causes for select unusual mortality events (UMEs) are biotoxins, infectious disease, human interactions (noise pollution, entrapments, etc) and ecological factors (topography, weather, etc). biologists believe that because whales and other marine mammals have a distinct herding instinct, they will stay with each other even when there is a sickness or possible threat and will follow the pod leader even when they are being led astray. this social connection is also what makes a pod so powerful, so mutually nurturing. they become almost akin to one large organism, reflecting the interconnection of the entire earth. many beachings occur on the coast of california, not far from the great pacific garbage patch, a mass collection of mostly plastic trash that has become linked together from ocean currents. my father was creatively obsessed with the charles mingus mass beaching and the plastic vortex, disturbing and tragic ocean events, and created visual art and music about both.
circles in visions and meditations and everywhere. the circle is the shape of the universe (inner and outer). the little widget that helps me with spelling and grammar also measures 'tone' of the writing, it says that in this letter i am: 'worried' and 'confident'. i find that very funny. soon, i will be done with college.