I’m terrified to no longer be sharing air with José Saramago, like somehow it’s not as pure anymore.
“Blindness” is one the greatest things that’s ever happened to me. When I finished it I spent a few days fantasizing about sending Saramago a letter, which I never did. It would probably have been a useless endeavor anyway, what with all the enamored readers sending stuff in. I would have been a lot closer to him, though, since we both lived in the same country. I would have saved on postage.
I don’t know. I’m just sad.
ETA 24/6
My father returns from Madrid with a book for me. It’s “Death at Intervals”, a José Saramago I have not read. There is a short biography on the first page, and a small part of it reads: “…which have been translated into forty languages and have established him as Portugal’s most influential living writer.”
LIVING.
Surprisingly, this doesn’t feel like the error of an outdated edition. Immortality doesn’t always remain an element of fiction. Once again I am reminded that being a genius and a writerhas its perks: you never really die.
I have decided not to be sad about this death anymore.
on
19 June 2010 with 1 comment
The supermarket is selling paperback romance novels now. As my mother goes about choosing an appropriate watermelon, I flip through one at random: slinky virginal heroines and honeymoons spent feeding lovers choice meats. At four euros, or nearly five dollars, “Passion” would cost me a third of what “Blindness” by José Saramago did.
Maybe I should have paid fifteen hundred dollars for “Blindness”, instead of fifteen.
Yesterday I presented a report on human rights to the class, and had the time of my life. I’d forgotten how much I loved talking to people who would actually listen. Afterwards, a boy made a few (three, to be precise) kind remarks about my work. They were all directed at fellow classmates, but spoken while I was within hearing range. Can I thus assume they were, at least partially, intended for me?
A school cafeteria became extraordinary when I heard him talking about me, even though I was a passing mention in his conversation, a topical jump sitting squarely between our chances for the World Cup (answer: not very high) and what the theme of Saturday’s party is (answer: Hawaiian). I want to ask him: are you magic? It is as if all my inner organs have swollen up to three times their size while at the same time reduced their density by two hundred percent. I am sorry I could not conceal that fist-pump, it’s very unlike me, I know.
Though he was not expecting one, I spent three hours formulating a response. While chewing my food and walking to and from class I went through possibilities and rejected them for being too cutesy, too serious, too formulaic, too insincere, too sincere. How to say thanks to the kind boy for enchanting me so thoroughly? How to find a good scenario for such a conversation? The universe helped with my plight, fixing the seating alignment so that he could sit next to me, ridding me of the need to purposely seek him out (I daresay my courage did not extend that far). Thank you, thank you, lucky stars.
However, even with the blessings of the cosmos, it took me the better part of ten minutes to tap him on the shoulder. When I finally did, the words poured out in a flash (like a torrent of birds, or a bolt of desire, but neither so pathetic as I was and am).
TTTTTHANKYOUFORSAYINGNICETHINGSABOUTMYPRESENTATIONITWASNICEOFYOU
Miraculously, he understood me (how? Once again, I want to ask: are you magic?) Thank you, thank you, universe, for sparing me the embarrassment of his laughing “what did you say?”
I had thought about what he’d answer, and his response was one I had considered: “it’s the truth”. I had something prepared for this eventuality, and out it went, like a muscular reflex: “it was nice anyway”. The exchange ended there. I’d very carefully coordinated it with the beginning of the lesson. This is the kind of thing I am good at, planning conversations so they fit with a schedule, so that I am not forced to reveal the extent of my social awkwardness.
I wrap up situations like these and carry them everywhere with me, stacked up in the stockier portions of my body. I can no longer recall the birthdays before my ninth year, but I can clearly picture the girl from my preschool offering to trade stickers with me. In my stomach sits this boy who was kind to my presentation, on top of Austin from third grade offering me the role of Princess Leia in his reenactment of Star Wars, the brilliant girl in choir who I spoke to once and never again, Miss Gordon asking me if anything was wrong, the emotional melt-down I had once during school hours.
After “are you magic?” I want to ask him “how much does this mean to you?” It cannot possibly mean as much to him as it does to me, just as “Blindness” is not worth as much to him as it is to me. Exactly how much, down to the last decimal point, does this matter, either positively or negatively?
His “it’s the truth” resides neatly in my stomach now, but it’s perilously close to my heart.
on
16 June 2010 with 4 comments
I should have never have left Paris. The sawed-off vinegar fuck at the Dijon trainstation was right: I have too much little in me. Not enough enough. Wandering someplace happens only once, and once there I should never have left. The gunmetal bomber’s jacket that I stole from a veteran still feels like the thorny net of some Hun invader, and with meatcleaver cleverness was it fashioned into something that I would be willingly snared by. Will of want. Not choice. Were I asked to return it, I may tell a lie and say it was lost or I may tell the truth and say it was ruined. There is a rip in the neck that hemorrhages cotton, after all. I was spidering up a park fence after hours and it snagged and tore open. The fence was iron lattice, and gunmetal.
Marseille was cruel to me but I loved it. Loved it. The autobiography that I vomited onto the sidewalk in front of the burlesque theater was brief but well understood by passersby. They moved so goddamn fast. It was like watching machineguns walk. A boy who was too young for his face was pawing around in the gutter and throwing stones at cars, and when he inevitably groped a cracked bottle he offered his bleeding hand to his mother. She grabbed it, and clucked when he howled. “Eh, vois-tu? Une aide-memoire!” is what she said, which as far as I can tell means “Quit throwing fucking rocks.” Simple lessons are the ones that stick with us the longest, I think. Like bayonets.
In gorgeous Bordeaux I fucked a young black man with greasefire scars sunk into his midsection like quartz leaked in marble, and I was fucked by a Latina woman with no calluses and an Italian-sounding name. There was music, each time. Beethoven said that princes were princes by the accident of birth, and he was Beethoven by the miracle of Beethoven, but the cello spoke more clearly for him. Little else is as divine as the sugary growl of a cello. The greatest of orators and poets and tyrants would fall mute, and upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the miracle of Beethoven had very little to do with Beethoven.
And I loved it all but nothing compared to Paris. Oh Christ, Paris. It rolls my catacomb heart like a die, sets it tantrumming off its ribs like an inmate, has it whining like some mutt shut in a kennel. That sour opium carnival. It was a lover that cradled me like a python, and I was happy prey. Gunpowder was the soup de jour, and I licked my bowl clean. – HOLY BEEJEZUS Kylie
A movie still from “Norweigan Wood” based on the book of the same name by Haruki Murakami.
Found this on K’s blog:
“The most solid materials perish, as do the mightiest thoughts. And the greatest book ever writen can convey only a tiny fragment of the artist’s real emotion. No, we are only building tombs for posterity to admire with our words. We are trying to record the changing ego, but the Self will not be revealed thus. We are only throwing off sparks.” -Henry Miller, to Anais Nin
Everyone who isn’t already needs to go read K. K is magic.
(I dedicate this male narwhal or unicorn to darling Hertzey and her rickety, adorable love life. Also to Kylie, mentioned at the beginning, who is like Thomas Pynchon if Thomas Pynchon were Huckleberry Finn if Huckleberry Finn were a mythical beast)
My life hasn’t been the greatest thing ever lately, but that is okay with me.
on
25 May 2010 with 2 comments
Because it makes very little sense for me to take part in it, for my daily English hour I am sent instead to the Computer Science lab. ”Lab” is perhaps a little too indulgent of a name. I’d consider it more appropriate to term it “attic”, even though, strictly speaking, it’s not really one. It’s on the second floor, in the draftiest area, well-lit but frequently covered in a fine layer of dust. Last year, during a rainstorm, an entire panel of the ceiling fell through. The computers are older than some of the kids, pockmarked, bulky beasts that take between two to thirty minutes to start up, depending on connection speeds, the condition of the cables and a third very mystical condition no one has as of yet been able to pinpoint.
I am rather fond of the Computer Science attic. I chose Biology over Computer Science this year, so I don’t get to see much of it anymore. There are usually more computers than students, so the one at the back (which I call Ol’ Faithful or Ol’ Unfaithful depending on how fast it’s running that day) is pretty much reserved for me. Ol’ Faithful/Unfaithful is my favorite because, despite the cracked modem and the broken switch on the screen, the keyboard is in excellent shape. Shiny, black, rounded edges, a pleasing pop! when you press a key – it’s great stuff.
I don’t do any really productive work in the Computer Science attic. Since I finish off the projects assigned to me quickly, I spend the majority of the time browsing Wikipedia. Browsing Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. The endless trail of “See also” items! The little known facts of sushi, Fitzgerald and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania! The surprisingly useful trivia! The excerpts of doctoral theses, poetry anthologies and various books! The occasional literary gem! The satisfaction of editing a minor grammatical error on the History of Human Rights page! Wikipedia, like clean feet, shiny glass panes and almost perfectly round circles, makes me happy in a way that is difficult to explain to people. In fact, most things about me are difficult to explain to people. Today, for example, I saw a poster some fifth-graders made about “The Little Prince”, which they credited to Antoine de Saint, who is actually named Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I don’t know why I reacted quite so vehemently to the exclusion of part of the author’s last name (I went as far as to stab the poster with the tip of my finger, quite irrational behavior indeed), but I do know it perplexed my conversational partner quite a bit.
This isn’t the only thing that seems to perplex. My voyages to the Computer Science attic confuse my fellow classmates as well. It’s been five years since the trips started, and still I’m confronted by kids asking what I’m doing there, either sheepishly or aggressively, never something in between. ”Well,” I usually say, “my English level is too high to be taking an English as a Foreign Language class, so I’m doing some work up here instead.” I’ve considered answering with something outrageous (”I’m filing the director’s tax returns!”), but considering that this is a school environment, and I have zero ability to pull off a convincing a sarcastic remark, that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.
Other than these occasional questions, I don’t usually talk to the students I’m with in the Computer Science lab, though I know most of them by name. There’s a rather curious exception, however: when I walk in, and when I leave, a voice from somewhere in the mass rings out: “Buenos días, Emma” and “Adios, Emma”. I am pretty sure the person in question is male, and a bit younger than me, maybe by three or four years. I don’t know how he’s managed to remember my name, or how he’s concealing himself in the crowd so well. Must be magic.
In any case, now, when I enter and leave rooms, I hear “Buenos días, Emma” and “Adios, Emma” in my head. It makes me feel comfortable and well taken care of and just thoroughly at peace, like I’m zooming along on a convenient moving sidewalk, or levitating a few millimeters off the ground, or just generally acting like a happy, non-angsty teenager. I am not quite sure how a customary greeting/farewell cycle instigated this kind of emotional response, but hey, I’ve known for a while now that I do weird stuff, and said weird stuff doesn’t make my life any harder. Quite the contrary in fact, and I figure I might as well stick with stuff that works.
And that concludes today’s segment of THINGS EMMA WRITES ABOUT WHEN WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS TO DO IS MAKE DEVILED EGGS BUT THERE IS NO MAYONNAISE IN THE HOUSE.
on
21 May 2010 with 3 comments
How do human tissues react to the passage of time? How much of my anatomy has stayed intact? If I weighed six kilos at birth and at present weigh several times that, what parts of my original body have remained? What parts have formed along the way?
When I look at my foot I do not think of a foot that is sixteen years old, as the entity I know of as “me” is, but rather a foot that has morphed into several incarnations over the last sixteen years. The foot of my newborn self was one eighth of my current foot. Nail, skin, bone, red blood cells have reproduced, died and been cast off into the surrounding medium. 30 liters of water, several dozen kilograms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, a few grams of salt, chlorine, iron – we know what it takes to make a human being! Gestation is the process by which elements are assembled, following guidelines and utilizing tools impossible to replicate artificially. This is nature’s trump card, leg up, ace in the hole. A body in the process of formation is perfect. How long does a body exist before it begins to decay?
Red blood cells develop from committed stem cells in bone marrow. They are in circulation for an estimated 120 days before dying off. The cells lining a stomach last a maximum of two days. Granulocytes, a variety of white blood cell, the stuff that keeps you alive on a daily basis, have a lifespan ranging from 10 hours to a few days. Macrophages eat the dead cells, and they in turn are eaten by other macrophages, once their 16 days of programmed service are up. The cellular lipids and membranes of a neuron are continuously renewed, bone cells are kept alive by satellite cells.
How long before my first body has shed itself away completely? When I look at myself, I see a life form in various stages of degeneration, several identical reincarnations extending from each other. In the mirror, I can pull back my sleeves to reveal scar tissue on my shoulder, the pink melding into the surrounding reddish-brown skin, the stretch marks on my stomach, the small grey freckle just beneath my nose. Sometimes I wake up and the soles of my feet will have hardened a bit, or a line on my skin will have diminished somewhere, or my stomach, kidneys, head will feel lighter. Though, logically, I am dying always, I prefer to think of it as being brand-new always. This is both a termination and a continuation.
on
16 May 2010 with 2 comments
When you circle someone for an eon, you undergo a gradual process of self-awareness. The aura of the beloved, normally two inches wide alongside the body, grows to a foot, sometimes two. The eyes of the enchanted are pliable, plastic, and they cannot be relied upon.
So she picks you up and hangs you out on a rafter, out to dry, swinging like Foucault’s pendulum, an object oscillating in a circular plane. It’s common after an eon of self-awareness, albeit self-awareness that arrives much too slowly, and much too sporadically. Your head’s making a sine wave in the air, the rush of blood, a blitzkrieg of blood, breaking into your brain barriers and flooding every single memory except those related to mathematics. Mathematics, as everyone knows, has nothing to do with her and, thus, neither does it you. By imagining a right triangle extending from your arms to the floor, and to the wall, and by estimating lengths, you have a rough picture of the space between you and imminent doom. Too bad it doesn’t really change the fact that your cranium’s the most pathetic lie concocted on mankind, foramina at the base of the skull cracking open upon impact, imploding like fruit stepped on. The heads of the enchanted are hard, hollow, and they cannot be relied upon.
Shortly afterwards, the hard vacuum starts. It’s even more common, after an eon of self-awareness, than the cruel treatment of the beloved, the hanging of rafters, pendulums. Decompression sickness sets into legs, bubbles forming in solid tissues upon descent. You do not automatically boil, nor do you automatically freeze, you do so at the rate of growing self-awareness. Mathematics proves this, with formulas, and it is not afraid to tell you what’s what. Or rather, a mathematician isn’t afraid, but do you know any mathematicians? The containing effect of your skin helps, but that has its limits, and you’ll get pimples if you’re stressed anyway. The skin of the enchanted is uniform, yielding, and it cannot be relied upon.
Sometimes, stuff works out. Chambers are re-pressurized, the aura of the beloved shrinks to a an appropriate (while somewhat indulging) size, a blitzkrieg becomes unconditional surrender. Your sine wave is now a sawtooth wave, and she’s plucked you from the rafter, tucked her arms around your back so that her hands rest on your stomach. Hey, beautiful, hey. What’s not to love? Somewhere, a mathematician is going mad in a box that decreases in size at the same speed it takes the mathematician to find a way to get out. At least he’ll die with an epiphany, which is more than we can say for you. The reason of the enchanted is empty, submissive, and it cannot be relied upon.
Spine, support of the body, support of mathematical functions, will probably fail you when you see her. Perhaps your bowels as well, and you don’t need a mathematician to tell you just how unattractive that is. The aureole of hair, framing the face consumed by aura, colored deep orange, twisting, twirling around you as she packs! The clammy stare, the eyes, stinging you at the back of your throat! A Polaire, a Mata Hari, there’s a graph made, detailing how fast she can strip you of possessions, dignity and dental hygiene (it’s well documented that the heart-broken forget to brush their teeth). Perhaps instead of Polaire, polar bear? In any case, the mathematician will not lend you a shoulder to cry on. Mathematicians care not for the weaker portions of the anatomy. Self-awareness always comes a split second too late. What can you really expect, after an eon? The universe enacts its revenge, lovely loving umbra. If you want to appear jaded, I suggest you take up Schopenhauer. Or accounting, maybe then you can recover the funds she stole from you, and maybe a mathematician’s grudging friendship. The hearts of the enchanted are rigid, fragile, but they can be trusted entirely.
on
14 May 2010 with 1 comment
The paunch isn’t visible when she stands up in the tub and looks down, but it is when she turns a little to the left, towards the bathroom mirror. Her upper body feels heavy, not because of its actual weight but because of the weight of her gaze, examining all the crucial aspects of her anatomy, or at least those she deems crucial.
She wonders if she’ll look okay in that dress she’d seen in a store window, a dress she feels she has neither the physical nor the mental attributes necessary to pull off. A good dress requires sass, she recalls someone having told her, and she possesses none. It’s not that she’s self-deprecating, it’s just that she understands to a level exhibited usually only in the solving of mathematics problems. She’s an analytical mind, so to speak.
She can remember the exact moment of her life, down to the exact second, that it became important to her that she look good in a dress. Before that moment, she had adopted an attitude not unlike that those of social deviants, except she harmed no one, and her deviance was restrained to the two feet to every side of her. She had given off a mildly caustic aura, like a two-day-old whitewashed wall. After that moment, she was suddenly consumed by a desire to please, not generally but specifically, and in her desire to do the latter she found herself unwittingly complying with the former. It’s not something she is used to. It’s not something she’s happy about, and how’d she become the girl who makes herself unhappy in the process of attaining happiness?
It used to be something she laughed at, even condemned. Her personality was set in stone, and what a personality it was! Rough, blunt, uneasy, never eager. She’d known it, and she’d brushed off the people who told her what an ugly fact of her life it was. She was a modern St. Benedict, and she knew one didn’t change the what one doesn’t like.
How’d she become the girl who stares at a dress? What she wants is to change the image you have of her, but not her image in itself. What she wants isn’t the dress, but rather the image of her in a dress, safeguarded in your brain’s pleasure center. How’d she become the girl who wants you?
Actually, it isn’t difficult to figure out how, or why. As with many matters, it was mainly about timing. The ticking hidden inside her breast combined with your sudden, impossibly opportune and impossibly coincidental appearance in her life, making you both a welcome and puzzling diversion, one she does not understand but wants to understand with a maddening intensity. You had very little to do with it. How’d she become the girl who could become possessed by your presence, or lack thereof?
It occurs to her that she is reforming herself in an attempt to reach you. It’s an idea she hates, one that makes her plop back down into the bathwater again. She’s going against the grain, she’s going against her principles. She’s knowingly becoming a better person, or rather, putting on an impressive show of one. She’s acting, and while she’s surprised and pleased with her performance, she’s conscious that that’s just what it is: a performance.
No one would have guessed she’d act this way, pulling at her flesh in the bathroom mirror, imagining herself in an infinite series of dresses, each more appealing than the previous one, and the last of which will guide you to her. But then again, no one can be expected to guess the inner workings of a heart. No one can be put to blame, pushed against a wall, seated beneath a solitary light bulb in a darkened room. It’s no one’s fault, not even your’s, even though you’re the catalyst. You go about life, complaining about this thing or that thing, picking up dry cleaning, trimming your nails, unaware of what you have started.
When she stares at the dress, tulle, white, flashy collar, a yearning begins in her head and travels down to her stomach, wallowing, spreading out. It’s inconceivable that this feeling might not make its way into the floor, across several city blocks, into your feet. It’s unimaginable that you do not sense it in the throbbing of your toes, or at the very least your gut, like a far-away molecule feels the rumblings of a chemical combustion. When she looks at her naked body in the mirror, clinically, logically, how can you not lift your head up and realize it, whether slowly or suddenly?
98% of people are stricken by a familiar feeling in their lifetimes, she once read in a magazine article, and she’s horrified to learn that she shares something so personal with just about everyone. It’s supposed to be noble, she’s learnt, unselfish. Unselfish? She’d always been told she only thought of herself, had it thrown in her face by various people on various occasions. She doesn’t think of you constantly, but she thinks of you when it counts. Damn it all, she thinks, damn it all to Hell, what is this crap? And after thinking this she smiles a little, and then more broadly. She’s absurdly pleased to learn that, despite everything, she hasn’t lost her bad habit of cursing.
on
9 May 2010 with 2 comments
At three thirty, two hours before I am due home, my desk partner begins investigating a strange smell emanating from his backpack. We are in Math class, and I am finding it difficult to pay attention to functions when he’s got the bag on the table, and his entire upper body stuck in it.
After a while his head, a little disheveled, emerges, and then a hand gripping a napkin. He gives it a perfunctory glance, as though accustomed to textiles in its state of disrepair, before returning to his rummaging in the bag and the search of the That God-Awful Smell. By this point I have almost totally abandoned my attempt to follow the teacher’s explanation and am watching him like a camera man filming a chimpanzee encountering a foreign termite mound.
Suddenly he shoots back up and exclaims: “I KNOW WHAT THE SMELL IS! IT’S MY SANDWICH!”, in the tone of: “I KNOW WHAT THE MEANING OF LIFE IS! IT’S MY SANDWICH!”
And then he proceeds to tell me it’s as old as a month and a few days, and hey, is the napkin disintegrating? Oh, why, yes, it is, hey Emma, is that even possible?!
And that’s when I started guffawing, and my good girl image went straight to Hell.
Cuando es invierno en el mar del Norte
es verano en Valparaíso.
Los barcos hacen sonar sus sirenas al entrar en el
puerto de Bremen con jirones de niebla y de hielo
en sus cabos,
mientras los balandros soleados arrastran por la superficie del Pacífico Sur
bellas bañistas.
Eso sucede en el mismo tiempo,
pero jamás en el mismo día.
Porque cuando es de día en el mar del Norte
—brumas y sombras absorbiendo restos
de sucia luz—
es de noche en Valparaíso
-rutilantes estrellas lanzando agudos dardos
a las olas dormidas.
Cómo dudar que nos quisimos,
que me seguía tu pensamiento
y mi voz te buscaba -detrás,
muy cerca, iba mi boca.
Nos quisimos, es cierto, y yo sé cuánto:
primaveras, veranos, soles, lunas.
Pero jamás en el mismo día.
Ángel González
(We read this in Lengua class and it, spoke to me? Something quite like that.)
“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” — Charles Manson
A veces, las palabras se posan sobre las cosas como una
mariposa sobre una flor, y las recubren de colores nuevos.
Sin embargo, cuando pienso tu nombre, eres tú quien le da
a la palabra color, aroma, vida.
¿Qué sería tu nombre sin ti?
Igual que la palabra rosa sin la rosa:
un ruido incomprensible, torpe, hueco.
Ángel González
(And because I am wonderful and too lazy to translate the previous, longer poem, I shall do so for this one.)
Sometimes, words situate themselves above things like a
butterfly above a flower, and they cover themselves with new colors
And yet, when I think of your name, you are the one who gives
the word color, aroma, life.
What would your name be without you?
The same as the word rose without the rose
an incomprehensible noise, clumsy, empty.
Sometimes, words situate themselves above things like a
butterfly above a flower, and they cover themselves with new colors
And yet, when I think of your name, you are the one who gives
the word color, aroma, life.
What would your name be without you?
The same as the word rose without the rose
an incomprehensible noise, clumsy, empty.
Ángel González
(Note that I am not an academic, and that this loses 200% of its power in the translation. I’m helpless.)
Almost immediately (hell, who am I kidding, immediately) that poem made think of a certain someone. A Certain Someone. A CERTAIN SOMEONE. Crazy magic stuff, and I want to hit myself, and then I think of this, something I wrote in the margins of my English notebook:
WHAT IT TAKES TO COMMIT A CRIME, OR CONFESS YOUR LOVE, WHICH REALLY AMOUNT TO THE SAME THING, IN MY MIND
Equal parts gut, gumption, all stupid. Optional, but highly recommended: good boots.
on
5 May 2010 with 3 comments
I hate the look, feel and sound of my mother’s crying. It’s not so much the implications as the act itself: ugly, rolling down in fat, butchered sweeps. She looks younger than ever when she cries, as much as twenty years younger. Perhaps I am so affected by her crying because it shows me the time I will never recall: the days she was not my mother.
Once someone told me I am at my most pretty when I am crying. I think that’s true of a great many girls, maybe boys, though I have only ever seen a few of those cry. Most people would say the beauty of crying is its vulnerability, but I don’t think I agree. When I cry, I go to the bathroom and stare hard at my face. Then I wipe my runny nose with toilet paper, sit on the floor and think to the future, to the days I will not be crying.
My face when I cry is flushed, but that itself is not discernibly sad. The color is warm, red blood vessels contracting underneath dark skin, pleasing even to a critical eye. My mouth, which has always been small and and my most trustworthy feature, does not falter. It can somehow, miraculously, still the picture of my collapsing brow, but never the eyes underneath.
Something about the whole damn thing is aesthetic. Not necessarily pretty, like that someone once said, but definitely aesthetic. I have yet to decide if it’s a car-crash aesthetic or a zen-garden aesthetic.
When my mother cries, nothing about the scenario or her face is attractive. I want to clasp her arm, I want to punch her as hard as I can. When she cries, I become someone I don’t know, someone who can comfort and cry at the same time, a someone who can hold her mother while praying for the days she’ll never have to cry again.
on
30 April 2010 with 3 comments
How absolutely perfect that my SAT test date (SATURDAY) coincides exactly with my menstrual cycle.
Thanks, universe.
TEST-TAKING HORROR STORIES IN THE COMMENTS: GO!
on
29 April 2010 with 1 comment
