Semi-Daily Scribbles

The Limitations of Expertise

Who's story am I allowed to tell? Can I hand over free rein to my imagination so it can wander unchecked as it dictates the rules of an existence lived outside of my skin? The safe play is to write what I know; access to opportunities and the freedom to consider more than one path in life. Does my background translate into an echo chamber, or an offensive display of privilege? Either way, not much of a page turner and closer to a head-scratcher.

What’s it like to be human? I think I can speak to that experience with some level of expertise, but what’ll it take for me to offer a more inclusive narrative of who we are as a species? Here today and destined to become a memory, if we’re lucky. Stardust, at the very least.

Surreal Estate

If someone uses the phrase "safe as houses," think twice before you accept their invitation to come around for tea. Houses are portals to places we've never been, and would do well to traverse with care. Is it hospitality or the promise of the unknown that propels us to cross the threshold as we stand on the stoop examining the door? It is power all the same. This old house is charming and a curse. A house needs good bones to support dark corners and hidden rooms. Buyers, cellars; agents of forces too great to contain. And gardens are camouflage for that which must be kept covered.

dinner

longing for the old country
where its inhabitants would eat your tender belly
and spit out what would be left of any backbone
you are neither just off the boat
nor are you 15 quid short of the price needed for membership
your contacts are clouded by a pretty shade of pussy willow
while you struggle to juggle disparate worlds in the search for the perfect
ISO

Can I Have Your Number?

A number on the bathroom scale does not determine health or warm fuzzy nudges of "I am the best lookin' bitch on the block!" Rather, how many times I can walk around the block before I get winded is my measurement of cardiovascular wellness. This bipedal mode of locomotion is also a super way to decipher what my back, knees and feet feel compelled to share at any given turn. HAPPY 2018! HAPPY I JUST CELEBRATED MY ___ BIRTHDAY! Again, numbers can be a confusing language when discussing health, and whatever the opposite is. But I will throw out a figure which will help in the writing of this here Love Letter to the Body: 22. There was a time, not so long ago, when I supported an extra 22 pounds on my 5-foot-nuthin' frame. Pleasingly Plump I may have been, but according to this I was overweight, and my numbers (damn pesky things!) sucked. Yeah, this was also a prolonged Blue Period, too. At a heavier weight, I was three pounds away from a number I knew was my Point of No Return. Once I hit that designation on the scale, it was only onwards and upwards for me. My health history and decades of family photos provided all the data I needed to choose a course of action.

Today I feel just right, someone in an official capacity thinks my numbers are acceptable, and I get asked at work what size pants I wear. Unless you plan to buy me a pair of jeans, I humbly submit: What the fuck? Ah, shaming. It does a body good (as in it doesn't really do anything to me, but the numbskull flapping her/his gums apparently gets a boner.)

For the remainder of my journey, I want health and well-being to take center stage, not a dress size or any kind of movement other than that of the bowel. Now to get my Hashtag Game on:

#FoodIsFuel
#HealthNotHate
#KnowYourFamilyHistory
#SayNoToTheShameGame

The Grid Life

I've tossed all my maps on the Yule bonfire, so you're my guide now. What will the world look like when we make up new coordinates? Ah, the fallacy of maps! They seem to ask: What has power over you?

Maps suggest the uncomfortable, too: Greenland is Bigger because White is Better.

Paper trails, that's all they are.

But the big reason why you hate maps is they take us where we have to go, and that's no way to find home.

Do like you do

The things you make define who you are. You do what you do to pay the car note, but don't forget to write notes, play notes. Leave a story behind for others to try on. Thoughts and Words and Actions matter. Just know that what lights you up may hardly start a spark in the people you love. So continue to photograph toes. Keep on studying the history of Pidgin. Build your time machine out of all your other half-assed projects.

In order to let go, you'd have had to have clung to something. Watch what happens when you breathe and unravel your beliefs. This shit is for real. What splendid fertilizer!

No Good Reason

A bromide that sets my teeth on edge is Everything Happens for a Reason. It's insensitive to use that phrase in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, but it's because of this deadly storm that I'm thinking about why we tell ourselves the things we tell ourselves. If we say a sentence, do we understand the meaning? Do we believe the message that comes from an innocuous string of words? How do I process Everything Happens for a Reason after I've read this?

I Can't Explain

And like o.k.: There's this particular writer whose work I've read and enjoyed and whom I find interesting and irritating all in one big, messy mouthful of come-one-come-all (talkin' bout chyoo JD). Yeah so, brutha man goes on about fat folks in his stories and he himself is pretty thin (cute, though - I'm shallow, ok?) Curious bit that I don't quite get unless the writer's a reformed fatty. And if so ??? Ah, the tricky ickiness of body politics (which needs its own moment of contemplation ... like how I've been body-shamed, but yeah I digress.) Anyway, dude also has a fondness for riffin' on why Asian girls go with white guys. But..but..but ... JD's partner is hapa haole. Just like me! So does he believe deep down she should be living with a Chinese man or, at the very least, a half-breed like herself? What is that all about? Does JD worship or despise or just plain could not give two fucks about his lover's DNA that is white-white-whitey-white? Why not go Big, Black & Beautiful, bruh?

Simply put, we like what we like. No tryin' to deny it. Humans, each and every one of us. Being human is a tough gig to pull off no matter the narrative one espouses from atop the mountain.

Well, as I do, here I go to face the day and try to relate to Every Body best I can 'cause we are all dodging one shit storm or another. Ain't it all supposed to be about love? Tolerance, too? Minding one's own bloody business when it comes to affairs of the heart and parts farther south? Fear of a halfie planet, indeed! Bring it. Here's hoping you stay open-minded today, peoples. Best of luck to ya!

"Admittedly, I'm a coward."

Marnie avoided her best friend for the past two weeks. If she thought she heard Lettie's voice, or smelled Lettie's attar of roses while she was out running errands, Marnie ducked down dark alleys and hid in really spider-webby photinias. She began to get disgusted with herself. She should have just come out and said, "No, I won't read it." She should have told Lettie best friends don't make good literary critics. Not if the parties involved wanted to remain best friends. But Marnie accepted Lettie's single-spaced pages; their margins crammed with Lettie's handwritten notes/comments (Hell demons need a catchier name. Use silvery orb instead of moon? The deal with the baby explained in book 5.) And all the characters talked funny. Marnie didn't think Bronze Age people used that many adverbs when they confabbed around the fire.

Sounds like ...

Sure Corrie felt shitty reading her big sister's diary. Did feeling like a degenerate make Corrie put away what wasn't hers and go do something productive like laundry? Hell no. All of the people Shelley wrote about in her big red book were thinly disguised real folk, like too-close-to-home-folk. Like who could this bitchy character called "Lorrie" possibly be? The queen at the center of this sweeping mega fantasy--five-sided love polygon--family drama was a beautiful brown-eyed maiden who answered to the name "Sherrie." Corrie had just read the passage where "Sherrie" discovered her sister, "Lorrie," in bed with "Sherrie's" on again/off again fiancé, Patrick. Corrie laughed. Patrick was Patrick. Shelley didn't give him a soundalike name. Corrie considered the significance of this particular authorial choice as she tucked the big red book under her arm and headed downstairs to heat up her leftover chicken and pasta.