Moons and Harvest

Yesterday was the Harvest Moon of 2021. A season of reaping what has been sewn. The last full moon of the summer and the first of autumn. A lunar bridge.

Ever since I hit womanhood, I’ve felt a strong connection to the moon. It was thing of curiosity when I was a child but morphed into a symbol of incredible power and grace as an adult. Every few months, my menstrual cycle links up with the full moon; my body marking its own metric of time in sync with the universe. I feel infinite when that happens. I understand myself to be inexplicable, defined only by the vast mystery of the cosmos. Secrets buried within my body that I was entrusted to hold.

This year’s Harvest Moon will always be special to me, and my body was bleeding as it shone. I have a deep yearning for a sense of infinite, for never ending stories, for ebbs and flows that continue in perpetuity outside of our control. I am desperately seeking the more gracious characteristics of time. And so I am in deep gratitude that this moon, this harvesting moon, has allowed me to share in unearthing the boundless crop.

I’d like to share a poem I came across on Instagram last night by adrienne maree brown. I was simultaneously shook and calmed by it. I was moved by it. I read it aloud while basking in the moon’s glow, one hand applying pressure to the heat of my lower abdomen. I want to share it here. I want to read it always and think of that and those who are infinite, parts of the vast mystery of perpetuity. Thank you, adrienne.

wide fat bottom moon

slow turning your face away in laughter moon

the same thread woven through all of us

but we can only mend our small portion

and our life is the stitch, stitch, stitch

meticulous work if you let it be great

you have to know when the line is straight

when the droplet of blood can wash clean

when the bruise can fade

when the critic can rest in the quality

when the emptiness can fill

how the root can grip the soil

and when, when to let it all go

enough softens the grip

enough stretches the hours

enough expands the wonder

fullness is so important to witness

and even in your brightness, in your godness,

your character is in your scars

knowing you have lived through your own destruction

i trust you to welcome mine

knowing you surrender in reflection

i bend to kiss the earth

i let you kiss my spine

and fill my bones with delight.

💜

I, Too, Remember Melville

I was recently gifted a book: Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens. The subtitle is “Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles” and the book is intended to assist artists of all mediums and levels to find more confidence in their art.  In a chapter about working through and with grief, Pickens writes:

I think of grief not as a looming threat, waiting for an in-between moment to finally nab us, but rather as a sorrowful companion, a wave returning us to the reality and conditions of our interior. Our capacity to grieve is connected to our capacity to love.

That last line resonated with me. I underlined it and dogeared the page. I closed the book and wondered if I could recall the first time I ever felt grief; the first time I ever registered permanent loss. It took a bit of time and staring out a window, but one event came sharply and quickly into my mind’s focus. The Rugrats, I Remember Melville. 

In the 1994 episode, Chuckie acquires a pet bug (a roly poly as the kids call them, Armadillidiidae if you’re a scientist), grows instantly fond of it and names it Melville. From what I remember, Chuckie leaves Melville with his friends while he goes off to find something and, in his brief absence, Melville dies. The rest of the episode has Chuckie pretending Melville is not dead and then crying uncontrollably and declaring he’ll never be happy again. The babies hold a funeral for Melville and Chuckie gets what any therapist would call “closure” — suddenly thinking of Melville starts to make him smile instead of sob.

That’s a lot to pack into one 13-minute-ish television show for children. I remember watching this episode intently. I don’t think I cried, but I recall a deep sense of empathy. Of understanding that there would be my own Melvilles in life and that, like Chuckie, it might take me a second to admit they’re not with me anymore. That I might regret the loss as much as not saying goodbye. Later, when a friend lost a long and extremely unfair battle with cancer at the age of 18, I had to verbally repeat that he had died over and over again about 10 times before it finally sunk in and I crumbled into a heap on my family’s kitchen floor. I never said goodbye to him either and crying with friends at the funeral (my first funeral) felt both terrible and deeply rewarding.

When I think about Chuckie and Melville in relation to Pickens’ last line, I also think about his friends. Tommy and the twins, Phil and Lil. I don’t remember there being any adults or older kids in the episode — it was just the babies figuring it out for themselves. I’m sure this was intentional. Grief isn’t about authority telling us how to overcome, it’s about finding our own ways forward. As much as the plot was about Chuckie grieving Melville, it was also about Tommy, Phil and Lil finding out how to support their friend through something they weren’t particularly affected by. They conjured grief for Melville because of their love for Chuckie. 

For Chuckie himself, his capacity to grieve for Melville was directly proportional to his love for Melville. To his faith in the future that they had together. We can’t be angry at the memory of something that we determined was supposed to be. Grief is that confusion of “I know it’s not anyone’s fault, but I still need someone to blame...someone responsible for this injustice.” It’s the knowing this occurrence will never be neatly tied, but we need to put it to rest as best we can so that something, anything can happen to us again. In allowing for the grief to be deep and in letting the tears flow, Chuckie’s love was calibrated. If a grief is all-encompassing, the love must have been as well. Perhaps our emotions are also governed by the laws of physics. 

This all might seem grandiose for an animated series involving babies and toddlers, but story is how we make sense of the world. While the show was performed by fictional, 2-D characters, it was written by adults who were actively thinking of the best way to convey this sensation to children. They did so in a way that stuck with one viewer, at least, some three decades later. When we create characters, we imbue them with our learnings. As artists, it’s what we do. Or attempt to anyway: get everyone closer to the realities of our interior, to understand our own capacities.

NFTs Are Made for the Modern Colonizer. Is It You?

Friends. Rhodeses. Columbuses! Lend me your ears! Do you have the mind to mine for cultural collateral? Do you want to be able to honestly say “I paid for it and I paid them directly” and “look at all the economic prosperity” while profiting from other people's creative work? Sure, it’s not quite arriving uninvited by boat and claiming all the natural resources, but it is staking a blockchain flag in a newly “discovered” virtual territory, well within the tried and true tradition of claiming ownership of things that already exist. You're a pioneer! A visionary! Modernizing a storied legacy. The old way of pillaging has left a bad taste in our mouth but you acquire new things the new way! Hell, you acquire old things the new way! You're not interested in occupying continents, controlling minor outlying islands and plundering for valuable gemstones, those are passé. The physical world is just so bleh and you know it! To hell with things and people, you want the big business of owning the recognition of value. So philosophical! So meta! You must be smart! The inkling of an idea belongs to the highest bidder. You, my friend, are a high roller at the abstract table of cultural relevance, and so your opportunities are infinite. The cloud is just waiting to be settled, filling up with goodies not meant for the physical world. All those artifacts and digital creations in it, just looking to be claimed by someone who actually knows what to do with it. You know what to do with it: absolutely nothing. Nothing but pay for possession — whatever that means — and talk about it loudly. People may have woken up to the evils of "colonization" (ew!), but they're ok with this! Excited about it, even! The public, collectively and suddenly, accepts this invented documentation of ownership written in a language most people don’t understand. Us visionaries love a new language to introduce new, totally fair rules! We make it sound shiny and seem official so they won't know enough to think badly of you. Score! This is how a random man comes to force a renowned dunk by LeBron James into virtual indentured servitude. A blurry contract of ownership, leaning towards indefinite, of something that is, by definition, not entirely yours but also totally yours. You could be that man! This moment of athletic excellence could have your anonymous digital identifier all over it. You don’t even have to be in shape! Others' creative work— and all the moments of our collective, documented past — is your gleaming trophy. Plus, no expenses on temperature controlled storage or extensive hierarchies of micromanagement like the old stuff. Phew! As far as you're concerned, NFT is code for New FronTier and you know enough to saddle up your cryptohorse. So grab your freshly minted coin, mute any earthly concern and giddy up. Don't worry, everyone is just fine with it!

Regarding Friendship

In the Western world, many things are opening back up. People are seeing each other again, embracing without fear and blooming like the springtime flowers around us. We’re reuniting — with people and habits, with public bathrooms and the lower halves of faces. A somewhat acquaintance told me that whenever they think of seeing their good friends after some time away, they think of an essay I wrote many years ago. In 2014 or so. They told me they were thinking of it because they will be seeing two good friends this weekend. I was extremely humbled to hear that and it made me want to share that essay again. Because I like it, too. I edited it a bit, but it’s more or less the same. It was originally written to another friend.

• • •

Dear P.E.,

We had made a drunken promise one early dawn to start writing each other stories of our memories. You said it should be about unimportant things as well as important ones. I like the idea of having an external anecdotal memory of my life in you. I like it a lot. This one is an important one.

This is my first attempt. I’m no Hank Moody but I am currently wearing a leather jacket and I have a weird urge to be smoking a cigarette. Yes, well. Let’s.

— — —

There are people in my life that I hold as deities. Larger than life. Worthy of worship. Most often they don’t deserve this nor are they aware of it. This, in turn, becomes even more fuel for me to hold them up so high. They tend to be men though I can think of two women who have cracked the barrier. This particular story concerns men: Renato and Daniel.

The actual year is a bit fuzzy but I know it was summer time. I think it was 2010. But it could very well have been 2009. But that doesn’t really matter.

So there we were in the year 2009 or ‘10. We being Renato, Daniel and myself. We had a specific plan of going to the beach and stopping at one of our favorite restaurants on the way up, Café Brazil. Those were the only plans we had. The basis of our friendship is simplicity. I’ve always liked this about us. Details aren’t our concern. We can’t be bothered with footnotes.

Renato was driving, Daniel in the passenger seat and I behind Daniel. All of our windows were down and the volume was up. Daniel’s long blonde hair was blowing in the wind as were Renato’s curly dark locks. I hated their long hair. This was not a secret. But so it goes.

To get to the beach — we were going to Panther beach in Davenport, California off the famous Highway 1 — we drove through one of the many Redwood forests. Daniel rattled off facts about trees as his dad is a hippy/Deadhead and loves trees (“Big D,” is what I call him). He mentioned something about the bark being used as a cooling agent for many insects but I was only half listening because I was watching Renato smile and shake his head. His one dimple coming out to say hello. I didn’t have to ask to know he was thinking this asshole is always talking about trees. He was right. Daniel was always talking about trees, water and eggs. He still is.

We get to the restaurant. It’s about 9am — my favorite guy was working behind the juice bar — which meant I could order a small and get a large served with a wink. It also meant I would most likely bend over unnecessarily in front of him. Renato’s favorite chick was going to be our server, which meant he would be hoping she would be bending as well. They also had banana pancakes so Dan was jazzed.

Everything was in its right place.

We ate. I had a small (large) acai bowl with bananas and strawberries and Orfeu Negro (two poached eggs over sautéed black beans and roasted potatoes), Renato had Avacado y Beef a Cavalo (marinated steak with avocado on top with a baguette and potatoes on the side), Daniel had 3 banana pancakes, 4 cups of coffee and some generous helpings to my acai bowl. I didn’t mind because I didn’t mind anything Daniel did. I still don’t. I really probably should.

We finished eating and made our way to the beach. It was my favorite beach weather: not super hot. I was wearing shorts and a sweater. Renato was in jeans and a t-shirt. Daniel was wearing double denim. Japanese selvedge, he kept saying.

Daniel and Renato climbed to the top of a big boulder and I laid at the bottom watching them and thinking about what they were like as young boys. Daniel looked down at me and then started trying to draw a circle around me by throwing rocks. He hit my leg. Renato laughed. Daniel blushed and apologized. I can’t remember what I did.

We climbed on top of another boulder and talked. I can’t remember about what. Most likely music. Probably something about aliens. Most likely we called each other assholes a lot. It was always a term of endearment for us.

We decided to head back home, the beach was getting too much wind. I think it was about 3pm by now and we wanted to avoid traffic. So we piled into the car — same formation as before. Rolled down windows. Turned up volume.

Fifteen minutes into the drive, I reached around the headrest and started giving Daniel a massage. He was falling in and out of sleep and I felt accomplished in knowing that I was easing my pal into dreamland.

Daniel was snoozing. Renato was selecting the music. The windows were down. The sun was on our faces. The road was clear. Renato winked at me in the rearview mirror — that one dimple coming out to make a second appearance. I watched my hands disappear and resurface in the jungle of Daniel’s hair and I had a powerful sense of being complete. It was a frightening wash of peace. It made me extremely uncomfortable. Uneasy. I remember my heart beating faster and my face contorting as I was trying to figure out exactly what I was feeling.

I held my breath as well as the sudden tears that were building up in my eyes. I was feeling too much and I didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it.

I recall looking out the windshield, seeing the road ahead and making wishes in rapid fire. I wished the road would never end. I wished the sun would never set. I wished no one would ever call. I wished the car would never run out of gas. I wished we would never have anywhere to be. I genuinely wished these things though I don’t know who I was sending them to. I honestly believed in that moment that if I wished hard enough it would all come true. I was completely content on living in that moment for the rest of eternity. An endless loop of that instant in time. Forever on the road with my two greatest possessions.

That day nothing really happened. Nothing special. But it is my favorite day of my life.

Broken Up

Anything to Declare? vol.01

In America, the color of my skin had stood between myself and me; in Europe, that barrier was down. Nothing is more desirable to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

- James Baldwin, “Nobody Knows My Name”

I decided on the breakup when I realized I was falling in love. Perhaps I was primed for a new beginning because it was late January, that time of year when resolutions are still fresh. But really, I’d been wrestling with the idea for quite some time. I had lived in Copenhagen for two and a half years, and my student visa was up. I knew this day would come. I had to either go back to the States or commit to a new way of life in Denmark. Break up with my old home or end the infatuation with my new one. It was an extremely difficult decision, and I made it easily. 

I moved to Denmark in 2011 for curiosity and practicality. Living abroad sounded fun, sure, but I was also granted a full tuition waiver for a master’s degree. Naturally, my mama having raised no fool, I went. It wasn’t just the place and the friends and the new way of life I was enamored with — it was also myself. I was solely responsible for navigating this new territory. I was building a life with absolutely nothing grandfathered in (a phrase which, as a Black American, carries much burdensome weight). I was confidently ordering my slices of carrot cake in a new language (gulerodskage, tak), cultivating an organic and alternate sense of humor, rereading American literature from a perspective only gained by distance. I was carefree. I recall responding to an American friend’s inquiry of how is it? with “I’m living the dream and hoping nobody finds out.” 

I’m an educated, upper-middle-class, single woman from an industrialized country. Which is to say, not the type expected to leave. I am also the daughter of a Kenyan immigrant (funnily enough, my father became a US citizen while I was in Denmark waiting for confirmation of my green card). I am the story that many believe to be the goal of both immigration and migration. I have enough agency to leave simply because I can, simply because I want to, with “me” at the center of all my decisions.

Let me make one thing clear that the headlines don’t: immigration is as diverse as immigrants. It all depends on who you are, where you’re going, where you’re leaving, who you’re going with, and what time in your life (or time in world history) the whole jig is going down. There are as many reasons for and approaches to becoming an immigrant as there are ways to make a sandwich. But at the center of every individual experience is one thing: belief. A belief in something better — maybe just a little better, maybe a whole lot. Maybe it’s not a belief strictly for themselves but for their family or unborn children. A belief so enticing it usurps the others that came before it. A belief that the believer, who is positioned unequivocally at its core, feels a bit guilty to hold — though not enough to abandon it. Once I tasted being carefree, I believed in it. And, what’s more, I believed I deserved it. 

So, tinged with guilt, I followed my fluttering heart.

My choice to go meant embarking on an adventure with a distant end date. My choice to stay was something else entirely. The permanence made my priorities extremely public. In staying I said no to my parents’ expectation of experiencing me become an adult, to their ability to attend a lecture I was giving, or to any in-person conversations that underscored the shift from my dependency on them to the realm of reciprocated respect. No to meeting any of my siblings’ new friends casually at a neighborhood bar. No to a shared holiday calendar, to the imperial system, to familiar cultural norms, to watching friends from my youth fall in love and get married. I said no to all of that and yes to a question mark covered in European Union red tape because, for all the terrifying mystique of the question mark, I liked me better there.

Then Michel Brown happened. And Eric Garner happened. And Tamir Rice happened. On December 8, 2014, almost a year after my decision to stay and in the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests following the acquittal of the police officer who killed Eric Garner, I made a Facebook post that began, “There is a strong guilt in being so far removed from the events that are rocking the soil that cultivated my person.” The post went on about music, because art is how I process, and I linked to this song, which is still, I think, one of the saddest, most beautiful songs ever written. I wrote that post and listened to that song and wondered how much more often my exiled Black face may have recently smiled than all those protesting for their right to. I thought myself perhaps undeserving of being carefree because I hadn’t fought for it in a way that was so visible.

Still, I stayed. Uneasy but unharmed. My body feeling no immediate threat — but also no immediate sense of community. Devoid of anyone in my vicinity who could truly understand the pain of that song or the ripples of the headlines. Knowing one reality while living in another, I was alone in the safe haven I’d built. 

This is the decision that my immigration required — that many migrations require. To be both and neither. To be alone but safe. To be carefree and guilt-ridden. To be broken up and in love.

• • •

This is the first of a 12-part mini-series exploring my experience with immigration. Subscribe to get the rest of the volumes delivered directly to your inbox below. Feel free to say hello or share your thoughts or own immigration experiences by emailing me at hello@nereyaotieno.com.

The Significance of Insignificant Things

Talk about the “end of the pandemic” has been peppering conversations and newspaper print more confidently as of late. I’m cautious to get excited while my borderline feral state of being persists. Still cooped up, I’ve been thinking a lot about what everyone has been thinking about: how life has changed, what we’ve lost. Next to actual lives of loved ones, the everyday has left a noticeable void. The anonymous, mundane, insignificant everyday. The things we don’t write home about and all that which never keeps us up at night. I’m talking about the random interactions, strangers and street corners that make up our lives but play no great role in it. The humdrum tasks and actions that allow, by comparison, important things to have consequence. Supporting characters. What story writers call ‘exposition.’ Context, I suppose. Much of our lives now lack supporting context to its existence.

I find myself often struck with a deep yearning to watch a stranger order coffee — to observe the way they perform a globally understood action. It’s those interactions that remind me that, to quote Kilgore Trout, “it takes all kinds of people to make up a world.” Including me. I’m just a person making up someone else’s world. An extra. A background body. Credited in the movie of their life as “cycling woman #3” or “woman behind man at taco truck.” 

There is something to the significance of being insignificant — the communal act we all participate in of filling space. There are two books that consistently orbit my mind space and reflect on this phenomenon with accuracy and nuance. I’ve consulted both quite often during the time of corona: M Train by Patti Smith and The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. Smith’s is a eulogy for the fleeting things that gave purpose to her present; Pessoa’s a reverence for simplicity and a shore for unrelenting waves of philosophical doubt. Recently, I skimmed through both and picked out quotes I’ve underlined or dog-eared that seem appropriate for now. I find they address the experiences I (we all?) achingly long for, recreating them with words that feel like lingering eye contact from a stranger. I have found much solace in reading these snippets again and again. I share some with you here.

F. Pessoa: 

I went into the barber’s as I usually do, experiencing the pleasure I always get from being able to enter places known to me without suffering the least distress. 

Nostalgia! I feel it even for someone who meant nothing to me, out of anxiety for the flight of time and a sickness bred of the mystery of life. If one of the faces I pass daily on the streets disappears, I feel dead; yet they mean nothing to me, other than being a symbol of all life.

If I were knocked down by a children’s bicycle, that bicycle would become part of my story.

Everything that was ours, simply because it was once ours, even those things we merely chanced to live with or see on a daily basis, becomes part of us...Everything that happens in the world we live in, happens in us. Anything that ceases to exist in the world we see around us, ceases to exist in us. Everything that was, assuming we noticed it when it was there, is torn from us when it leaves. The office boy left today.

I have indigestion of the soul.

...the artificial has come to seem natural and the natural strange. No, that’s not quite it: the artificial has not become natural; the natural has simply become different.

Everything interests me and nothing holds my attention.

---

P. Smith

Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.

...shelving real time…

Half-empty paper coffee cups. Half-eaten deli sandwiches. An encrusted soup bowl. Here is joy and neglect. A little mescal. A little jacking off, but mostly work.

— This is how I live, I am thinking.

*A whole chapter called “Clock With No Hands”*

I hate being confined, especially when it’s for my own good. 

I was glad to be going somewhere else. All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations.

We want things we cannot have, we seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother’s voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don’t go. Don’t grow.

Feeling strangely detached, I wondered if I was about to engage in a meaningless ritual.

Home is a desk. The amalgamation of a dream. 

The State of My Forehead

“It’s too late to get stitches,” the doctor said. “If you came last night, we probably would have done them, but now we’ll risk infection if we open it more.” Unfortunately, going to the emergency room was not an option last night because last night I was still drunk from park wine and forgot I had health insurance and thought not to voluntarily go to the hospital in the middle of a hyper-contagious pandemic and that I would just look at it in the morning. Last night I had also fallen off my bike. 

With no stitches, I was sure I was going to have a terrible scar. I was steeling myself to this new life with a new reflection. But when I took off the bandage a week later, it looked okay. A few hours later, I looked again. Is it already better? The next morning I took stock. And the morning after that, and every morning the following week. In two weeks, the swelling was 98% gone and I was just watching the skin heal itself. A month later I was forgetting to inspect every morning, but when I did I would marvel at the progress made. I would think to myself the last time I wore this shirt, it was still open. 

Something else started happening. When trying to date an occurrence such as the last text I sent to my sister or my most recent grocery run, I’d think of the state of my forehead. Oh, must have been mid-November. Or I recall it wasn’t tender for the first time that morning — must have been two Thursdays ago. My brow bone suddenly became the most meaningful metric of time for me. More than days of the week or months of the year. I’ll say the months or days out loud to others, but I calculate using my face. 

For me,  all reference points have disappeared in this pandemic. Weekends and weekdays don’t vary much. I live in Los Angeles and February weather wasn’t too different from October. Individual days are fine because it gets dark then light then dark again — that’s still working (except for during the California fires when we were living in Saturn’s innermost ring). But the longer periods, over 36 hours, are a crapshoot. My time no longer really has to consider anyone or anything else, and so the metric by which it is measured has to be dependent on a new constant. My only constant currently is, well, me. 

I think about all the “weird” or unlikely habits people have picked up this past year. I wonder if they are hobbies so much as metrics of their own. Not ways of passing time, but of measuring it instead. A dear friend of mine started saving all of the paper husk from her garlic bulbs. All of it. She scoops it up and places it in an old coffee tin. The tin never seems to fill up because the paper is so thin, so she’s been using the same one. She told me she had no idea why she was doing it but she just kept on doing it. Now I wonder if she is somehow trapping lost time. Or instinctively finding a way to document that something actually happened during an abstract period of communal nothing.

When I think of it like that — her delicate, exponential garlic skins and my delicate, healing human skin — we’re not really measuring time. We’re acknowledging that we are, indeed, living. Proving we must exist because, look, we have a past. When all the weeks bled together and the seasons just became “corona,” we created our own calendars. They only make sense to us — but they aren’t meant to synchronize with the world. Which, realistically, is how most chronological metrics probably began. 

As I write this, evidence of my fall isn’t noticeable unless you’re really staring at my face — which is hard from 6ft away. It’s healed very nicely on its own and I take an unwarranted amount of pride in that. I’ll need a new (safer!) calendar soon. But I know this will be the one I reference in my mind when remembering this time. I’m not really sure how I feel about that yet.

The Bigger Club

I pop my head out the door, like a meerkat. Looking left, then right, then left again before noticing a package down on my doormat. I grab it. I duck back inside. Safe in my little home, wishing it was underground.

At the grocery store, my eyes are furtive. Anticipating, distrusting, fearful. I stand in the open ground before strategically darting to gather my sustenance. Like the squirrels in the park. 

I want to mate, but I know it is risky. If I leave simply to find a sexual partner, I may die. Him, too. Our union might make our friends and family mad. Like a mongoose. I fear it won’t even be good.

My period comes and I take a mini hibernation, bear-like. Horizontal, full and bloated but safe from the harsh elements outside. When I emerge again, I will be disoriented and hungry.

There is a neon buzz for the ‘open for patio dining’ sign at that spot on the corner that used to have a great parking lot and now has a great patio. I see people flock to it. I wonder if, like mosquitoes, the light will slowly kill them off as they group together.

I try to stay in the periphery, but if I am in the thick of it all, I try to cover my face, my hands, any extremities so that the enemy can’t readily attack. As if I were a chameleon, not blending in exactly but becoming undetectable. Or perhaps an armadillo, living in plain sight but with an impenetrable shield on my body. Or perhaps even more like a turtle, ducking into the dark cover of my mask when anyone comes close.

I envy the ostrich and its ability to hide all vulnerable orifices in the ground. I begin neck stretches nightly. 

I wish I could give away my healthy lungs and healthy heart and healthy body to those that need it and then regrow them again for myself. Like a sea cucumber. This feels like something we should have been working on more. I wonder if I should have voted differently for stem cell research in the California election.  

I marvel at the elephant, the whale, the shark and the lion. Remembering when I, too, had no formidable adversaries besides humans.

I find myself wanting to live like the roach. Moving in silence. Stealthily but in large numbers. Resilient. Well-fed. But I’m not sure I could consciously be that disliked or acclimate to the necessary living conditions.

Corona has reminded me that I’m very much a member of the animal kingdom. Prey to a well-equipped predator. I am bothered by the constant display of my fragile mortality, but it feels kind of nice to belong to a bigger club.

I wonder if somewhere in the great beyond, the spirit of the Dodo is feeling a twinge of retribution; the ghosts of T-Rexes are waving their tiny little arms in warning. Or if the three remaining white rhinos are wondering if we get it yet.

Justice, in Three Acts

When I was 21 years old, I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short amount of time, I started spending some evening and early mornings having conversations with a Danish man while nude and horizontal. At the time, he worked for a very popular bar that was equal parts wholly unclean and wholly necessary for every single person in the city under the age of 35.

This bar was so popular that there was a long queue almost every night. Sometimes over an hour long. Even in the freezing winter months. Why? Because the inebriated masses need to pray before the debauchery altar and this bar was ripe with debauchery.

This bar was in an area many Danes considered dangerous. This was almost entirely due to its proximity to a neighborhood populated by immigrants. Its worth was debated by politicians by day, exalted by the inebriated (and horny) masses by night.

The bar had a security guard to both monitor the queue and protect the inebriated masses from the neighborhood — and themselves. This guard was a man, not very tall and incredibly good at his job. I know this because I often tried to cheat the line and he always caught me and because I once saw him break up a sudden violent fight quickly and efficiently then keep hold of one of the perpetrators while still keeping control of the line.

I also know he was good at his job because one day the Danish man I was seeing who worked at this bar told me a story. While telling, he was nude, I was nude, we were horizontal and I was just toying with the idea of what it meant to “be sexy’ and nude with another person. For this reason, I’m not positive I have all of these details correct but I will try to convey them as best as possible.

This is what the man told me. He said it was a story about justice:

ACT I

A funny thing happened this past weekend. A guy came into the bar — he’s been in before and he always gives off a bad vibe and keeps dodgy company of known criminals. So we keep an eye on him. Soon we start getting complaints that things are missing from various guests. We watch him a bit and we see that he is stealing. One of our guys goes to tell the security guard. The guard comes in and confronts him and then this other guy just loses it and makes a huge scene. Yelling and spitting everywhere and shouting really nasty stuff at people. The security guard tries to calm him down and restrain him and they start having a pretty wild fight. Someone calls the police. It looked like the security guard was getting the guy under control until all of the sudden the guy pulls out a knife. He starts threatening everyone and waving the knife. Somehow the security guard manages to get him to go outside, but by kind of coaxing him into a fight. So the guy is still acting completely crazy and yelling and threatening people on his way outside. Just then the police show up and the guy takes off running. One officer goes after him while the other stays to take statements from people and get more information. 

The next day, the security guard calls up the police station to ask if they caught the guy. The police officer says “As a matter of fact, yes. This is the guy with the knife, right? Funny story. We did find him. Much later. He showed up at the hospital, he’d been stabbed. By a different knife. He died.”

ACT II

About a year after this story was relayed to me, I was back home in California on a short visit. I was on a bus in San Francisco going south on Divisadero. As with anything in San Francisco, there were homeless and mentally ill people present and being actively ignored. One on the bus was a heavier, middle-aged Black man wearing a poncho. He had some sort of cooler on wheels that he was constantly and purposefully rolling into the legs of the woman sitting next to him. It looked like it hurt but she was actively ignoring him. This man in a poncho kept mumbling about justice. Sometimes just repeating the word over and over, making everyone uncomfortable and causing us to wonder if we were all about to be collateral in some unknown retribution. Eventually, he stood up and yelled, “SOMEBODY TELL ME SOMETHIN’ ABOUT JUSTICE!”

I looked at him and said, “I’ve got a story if you want to hear it.” He looked at me, nodded, then sat back down in his seat — no longer rolling his cooler. 

I then told him the story I just told you.

He listened attentively the whole way through. When I finished, he said, “Justice. Yeah, that’s justice. That’s beautiful.” He then thanked me as I got off the bus.

The next morning, I was in shambles from and evening of reunions and being an active member of the inebriated masses. I was slumped against the window at Kate’s Kitchen with two other friends who were also in shambles. We were nursing beers at 10am. I as debating whether or not I could stomach the breakfast plate I’d just ordered. Suddenly there was an intense banging on the window I was leaning on. The whole restaurant jumped, every single patron. A few drinks were knocked over. It was the man in the poncho, now sans cooler. He pointed at me through the window and yelled, “JUSTICE!” I pointed back and said, “That’s right, man. Justice.”

He threw up the Black power fist, nodded at me, and walked away. 

ACT III

I’m not sure if I think what happened in Copenhagen was justice. No, actually, I am sure. It wasn’t justice. I find that story incredibly disturbing. Yet it keeps coming back to me. There was a sense of reckoning and consequence for an ill act. This sense brought people to a reserved and somewhat celebrated acceptance of a traumatic moment in the past. 

A sloppy resolution to a violent problem did not bring happiness, but it acknowledged the danger and pain caused by the original offense. And the offender was penalized — quickly. That seems to bring calm. The man who told it to me treated it as a parable, a modern day Aesop’s Fable. When I shared the story with the man in the poncho, he softened. He called it “beautiful.” I think it may be because in the story justice wasn’t sought, necessarily, but it was delivered somehow.

I bring these tales of justice because the United States is to have the inauguration of its 46th president tomorrow at the nation’s Capitol building. Where the memory of an unrectified bloody exchange full of vitriol is still so fresh in our minds I’m hesitant to even call it a memory. There is a nation of people who feel entitled to justice or retribution for wrongdoings surrounding that event. Many of their conceptions of wrongdoings are in complete opposition to each other.

So can justice surface? How often are justice and morality not synonymous? Can something be just and fair and also completely unreasonable?

I’m one of the people who feel entitled to justice. But the kind of justice I want will not be the one I get. It will not be poised. It will not be respectful and thorough, apologetic and directly in proportion to the magnitude of the effects of the offense. It will be sloppy. It will likely be somewhat hidden. I’m fearful of all the collateral damage this justice might require in creating consequence.

All This is True, More or Less

I’m often asked who Kilgore Trout is. 

This is because I put “Proud disciple of Kilgore Trout” in my email signature, my social media bios and on my website. In fact, it’s at the bottom left of this page. When people ask this, I am typically imbued with joy at being the person to introduce them to Kilgore Trout. If it takes place online, I then question their ability to use the Internet for its first intended function: to seek and share information. But I tell myself such is life and then try to imbue myself with joy.

Kilgore Trout is a fictional character from the mind of Kurt Vonnegut. Trout is a ‘failed’ science fiction writer whose name is allegedly inspired by the inventor of the cap gun (Kilgore) and Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon is one of Vonnegut’s friends who was also a failed science fiction writer for a while until he became a wildly respected science fiction writer and even contributed to a little television show called Star Trek. Vonnegut was tickled that someone’s last name could be a fish. 

As Vonnegut’s many novels often cross reference each other, Kilgore Trout pops up a fair few times. My preferred instance of Mr. Trout is in Breakfast of Champions. It is my favorite of Vonnegut’s novels, though not his best writing. It is simply such a delight to read. If I’m completely honest about why I like Kilgore Trout so much, it’s because he doesn’t make sense. The timing of his death is weird and then doesn’t match up with his references in other books. His backstory is constantly changing — the only consistent fact being that he is a science fiction writer who has received absolutely no recognition despite a deep catalogue of supposedly profound work. As a character, he is sometimes the driving force in Vonnegut’s novels though he plays a minimal part. It’s almost as if Trout is the trick Vonnegut pulls from his hat to connect unconnectable dots. I’m sure many Vonnegut fans will disagree with me, but I’m also sure they have their own unread blogs elsewhere on this wild ride called the Internet. 

For me, Trout delivers the heaviest hitters of Vonnegut’s pleas for humanity and understanding in the absurd world — and certainly the country — that he lives in. For instance, his motto in the novel Timequake is “You were sick. Now you are well again. And there is work to be done.” A phrase that he invents to pull other people out of a collective depression, malaise and shock at realizing the magnitude of their worst actions. The phrase evokes sympathy and empathy and support and, at the time of writing this, feels all too prescient. Another example: “Life’s no way to treat an animal.” That’s what Trout’s tombstone reads and is a sentiment that sneaks up on me almost weekly — particularly while waiting in the customs line at the airport or while reading the news on any given day.

The greatest Troutism of all and the one that inspired me to take on the self-inflicted title of a disciple is one found in Breakfast of Champions. A main character tells him about individuals who grab poisonous snakes during church services to demonstrate their belief in Jesus — he says this to get a rise out of Trout. His response? “Takes all kinds of people to make up a world.”

That sentiment, right there,  is the reason I choose to follow in the path of Kilgore Trout. My life, too doesn’t really make any sense. I, too, have a wellspring of written works that absolutely no one reads (though they are by no means profound). My impact on other people’s stories and character development has no coherent pattern and oftentimes I seem to be the only thing that connects unconnectable dots. I’ve probably also been the only thing to disconnect very connectable dots (my apologies to a few past lovers, I hope your dots have found more accommodating harbors). Throughout the giant question mark that is my real life story, I want to employ the fictional Kilgore’s creed and understanding:

Life is tough, it’s unfair, and I am in no position to judge anyone else that is simply trudging through life the best way they know how. Knowing all of this will get me through as unharmed as possible.

Faith in a fictional being seems to bring their teachings into existence, after all. I’ll try to continue following in his path until I myself am a memory, my body lying in an ashen heap or beneath its own exacting epitaph. Just being one of a kind making up a world.

So it goes.

On Bill Callahan in 2020

There are many a ‘year end’ lists pouring in. This isn’t one of those. But it is adjacent. If there is one song I have suckled off of, fed from and sought both refuge and respite in — it’s Bill Callahan’s Say Valley Maker under his old moniker (smog). I’ve probably listened to it at least once a day since June.

Frankly, I don’t know where or how to start when writing this. I really, really admire Bill Callahan’s talents. Through them, I love the world more. When everything seems too fluid, so fuzzy, overly aggressive and as if it were a poorly written spy novel you read after it’s been discarded on a waiting room bench...Bill gives me something solid. He gives me something concrete. Honest. Understandable, but not easy. His music won’t automatically give you answers, but it will make your questions seem less ridiculous

In a eulogy (elegy, perhaps?) for Gil Scott-Heron, the writer Steve Almond suggested that one of the reasons Gil and those like him are so powerful is because artists project the voice we wish we could summon in ourselves. Their power lies not in that they feel what we feel, but that they say what we cannot bring ourselves to. It’s worth noting that Gil Scott-Heron covered Bill Callahan. Word for word. The song I’m New Here. Which was also the title Gil gave to the final album he made before he passed. That’s one hell of a thing.

But I understand why. Bill’s voice, his constellation of words, his thoughtful meandering, his lollying guitar...when they come together it’s as if they’ve mulled all of life over and sifted out the unnecessary bits. Leaving us with a distilled version of emotions that lack their original bitterness.

In 2020, Say Valley Maker acted as my proxy for both reason and human touch. I can’t recall how or why I was so drawn to it, but I awoke the day after the first protests for George Floyd’s murder and I thought of Bill. I came to this song. This Song. A song so simple and lilting, you might forget its’s playing. Bill’s voice as soothing as a friend’s in the distance as they approach your door.

Say Valley Maker is told from the perspective of a dead body floating in a roaring river.  It is a tale told from helplessness — of being wholly subjected to the power of your surroundings. And, as a dead body, no one has any interest in saving you. In fact, you can’t be saved. So here you are, unsavable and unable to fight.

With the grace of a corpse in a riptide

I let go

Those are the first lines. Giving up. Relinquishing with a backhanded mention of grace as if it were voluntary. This Callahan corpse will be battered against this riverbed but it is pretending, with all its dead might, that it is participating in this activity. Gracefully. As if it were not insane for an already dead thing to be aware of its very imminent death. 

If you’re reading, please listen to the song before continuing, the lyrics are in the description. I’ll wait here. 

Essentially, the wild water takes the Callahan corpse through a deep valley it never would have seen if it were living. The journey gives the corpse a nuanced perspective that morphs into a renewed sense of agency and a realization that love requires sacrifice, but is also best paired with understanding, leeway and room for error. 

The fact that Callahan’s corpse makes this realization in the middle of its journey — still at the will of the water, careening towards an unknown end, unable to make any sort of move or change for who knows how long — is the part that punches me in the gut. Squarely. Just to the left of my navel. Despite learning its lesson, the Callahan corpse has to weather more abuse and uncertainty in order to display its newfound agency. It’s not the learning that was hard, it’s the waiting. Say Valley Maker is a song that says: this will end. It will hurt. You will be buried. But, no matter how it ends, you will resurrect. Because you have learned.

If I had to condense the whole song (forgive me, Bill), it would be:

With the grace of a corpse, I let go.

Bend.

Take me.

Bury me.

I never really realized

Death is what it meant to make it.

Because there is no love on the hacked away plateau, in the unerring

So

Bury me

I’m gonna phoenix.

Why was I seeking Bill Callahan the morning after the world erupted around me? I don’t know. Maybe because this song is the most beautiful and abstract pep talk I’ve ever received. It’s a gentle rub on my cheek when I’m sad about something that’s not my fault. It’s a way of saying “you’ll understand when you’re older” or “this could all be for the best” without undermining my current pain. 

It is particularly striking to listen to this song in the context of being a human during a pandemic. It’s even more arresting to listen to this song in the context of being an American in a volatile political year that affects much of the globe during a global pandemic. It is another thing entirely to listen to this song as a Black American in a time of polarizing racial upheaval and demonstrations erupting around the world to endorse or condemn your existence during a raging global pandemic.  Our collective corpses being battered in a riptide that seems to only be gaining magnitude. We are prey to the whims of so many forces, and we pretend to be graceful in the churning water. And yet, somehow, to have deep within our bodies the knowledge that this will eventually end and — no matter how it ends — we will rise.

This post in no way does Bill’s artistry justice. I am in no way satisfied with what I’ve written here. I’m tipsy and alone and about to ring in a new year that seems already doomed to be a helpless corpse of its own. But it is what I can do to help amplify the projection I wish I could summon. The true grace his music emanates. The sacrifice with understanding — the action and patience — that is necessary to be a considerate human.

If for some reason Bill is reading this, I’d like to thank you for making the whole ordeal of life a little less lonely, a little more forgiving.

Again, listen to the song here. Purchase the album here.

This Is How the Teeth Sink In

Note: A version of this story appears on Salty.

I can’t help but think about the US war in Vietnam. I found myself writing that line in an email  last week. This was unusual.  Typically, I can easily help but think of the US war in Vietnam. It is somewhat of a twisted civic duty to not think of the US war in Vietnam. As a country, we don’t focus on our missteps.

The email was a continuation of a discussion I’d just had with a friend — a very good friend who loves me dearly and happens to be a white, cis, hetero male who was born and lives in northern Europe. Our realities are incredibly different though our affinities are strikingly similar. In the email, I was attempting to clear up some questions he had asked surrounding race relations in the United States. Specifically those with black folx. With me. He wanted answers, evidence, facts and figures that would outline for him a clear path to help him understand how the US got to where it is and how it could possibly operate as it does.   

I opened my correspondence to him like this: “In ruminating over our short conversation, I can't help but think about the US war in Vietnam. I believe this is because I got the feeling your questions wanted to unearth a clear absence of principles; of goodness (the US's motivations for the war). I, however, needed to declare my humanity (Vietnam’s). A want versus a need. An idea versus a personhood. These are very different debates — one resolved by evidence; the other by recognition and respect. There is a reason why this particular war was so bloody: the parties didn't understand each other yet both agreed there was a need for violence. Our conversation was a microcosm of the current unrest.”

 I’ve realized that many of my life’s conversations about race hold this parable — discussions as far back as I can remember of explaining the woes of a minority to a majority. It struck me that the idea of racism could be quantifiable and readily measurable when, to live it, is to find it all encompassing. Racism doesn’t merely happen to me, it has so proliferated my environment that it is me. A parasite that somehow also sustains the host. How does one apply metrics to an omnipresence? All we can offer, instead, is our experience and hope that people pay heed and acknowledge it. Though, I once read from Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. that a facet of discrimination is “being treated as an unreliable witness to your own experience.”

I seek to share some of that experience now in the hopes that some may listen and begin to understand that they haven’t understood. I operate in the blind hope that I will be treated as a reliable witness to that which I have lived (and am living) through. It is a testament to that omnipresence. It’s very personal. I wrote it a week after George Floyd was murdered.  

***

 This essay is NSFW. But most everyone is furloughed, unemployed or suddenly/accidentally freelance. Or you’re reading this from your new couch office with no bra. So, somehow, this NSFW essay is safe for anytime.

I haven’t masturbated in seven days.

For some people, this may seem normal. For those who don’t engage in such solitary activity, the statement itself may be seen as egregious. The fact of the matter is that, for me, this is unusual. I’m a daily kind of lady.

 I know exactly why this is. I know exactly why it happened and, try as I might to change it and let my cooped-up, living-alone-in-the-time-of-corona body receive a much needed release — I can’t. I have decided I will to try to explain why and shed some light on one of the many nefarious ways in which racism claws into and plagues the minds of those it was created to terrorize.

Allow me to first establish something: my body, like all bodies, is beautiful. In sexual situations (even with myself), I find myself to be a gift waiting to be unwrapped. I know he was a gay man, but when I hear George Michael sing I know not everybody has got a body like you, I take it to be a personal message just for me.

My skin has red undertones that look good in any light and against any color. I am incredibly soft. I have beauty marks in adorable places and a spattering of freckly pigmentation encircling my nipples that one partner once said was “the most arrestingly beautiful pattern” he’d ever seen. I was born with a uterus, which means my body is a miracle that houses, grows and nurtures life. I feel privileged and lucky to find it a delight to live my life in the body I was given. Usually. 

Some years ago, I decided to watch 12 Years a Slave. I cannot for the life of me remember why I decided to do this. I made an unofficial rule when I was 17 to shy from slave-era media. But I watched it. I’m guessing because it was Steve McQueen. It was the first slavery-centered media I had watched since the Roots episodes in high school US History.

There’s a scene in the film — as there has to be in every retelling of slavery — in which there is a line of black people standing naked before a white man/audience and being judged for physical prowess, sexual promise or simply for an afternoon exercise in ridicule and power. I watched this scene. I pressed ‘pause’ on my computer. I stripped completely naked. I turned on all the lights. I stood in front of my mirror. I stared at myself.

 And then I cried.

I hadn’t seen any slavery representations as an adult with a womanly body. Suddenly, I saw my body reflected in these scenes. I saw evidence of myself in these women entombed by an unfathomable practice who were seen as animals and used for nothing more than physical labor and vessels for rage manifested in rape. I scanned my body and I saw theirs. Never mind the fact that there is no US slavery in my bloodline. My family’s presence in this country started in the 20th century. But those are details and my body is flesh. Flesh that is identical to the ones I’d just seen lined up, paraded around and mocked for the simple pleasure of another body that did not resemble it at all.

After watching the film, I couldn’t masturbate. Not at all. Not even the tiniest bit. For a month.

 I was 24 or 25 then; my libido evidently hell-bent on procreation. I was young, horny and felt invincible. Yet, when I watched this film, the concept of my body became dirty, barbaric and unreal in its mortality. I could only see what they could see. A shameful body. A peculiar, exotic, mammalian body. One that was to be used and not touched. Beaten and worked and impregnated but not celebrated or stimulated or given pleasure.

This is the trick of racism: it dominates in ways it does not even know it is winning. It is in the way you regard your body knowing absolutely everything you know about yourself is to the contrary; contending with even fictional representations. Racism wins in the perpetual knowledge of and the necessary realization of its presence. Many revered writers and thinkers have worked to explain the immense weight black folx bear knowing that they are destined to be hated and that their mere presence is believed to threaten the sanctity of the places that make America what she is.

But there is something I find implicit in their writing that I have come to discover is not clear for those without darker skin. I will try to make it plain: it is not only to know that your body threatens the sanctity of America, it is to hate your body for transgressing against your home. Discrimination thrives, at its core, as one of the purest and most painful forms of unrequited love. The majority not loving you and, in turn, the difficulties in loving yourself.

I am a peaceful person. I do not like things that breed contempt. So, I find myself at an impasse. How can I not despise my own body, my own skin? How could I not feel betrayed somehow by the way my body makes a world full of people feel so incredibly threatened? How could I not feel it was actually me, I, this vessel through which I live my life, that was to blame? And, in turn, how could I not come to the conclusion that it is meant to be beaten and worked and shamed for the transgressions and fear it has incited?

 On May 31, I tried to start my Sunday off as I usually do: a little morning masturbation with intermittent, very casual yoga poses. But I couldn’t. For the fifth day in a row, I couldn’t. I’d seen other bodies repeatedly cast aside, run over, screamed at, tear gassed, charged at, shot at, beat up, crying, sobbing and bleeding...all because of the existence of my black body. The disgust crept over me as I lay there, warm in the rays of an ignored mid-morning, perfect-for-self-satisfaction sun. Well, actually, the disgust didn’t really creep. It panged deep in my belly and splintered through me to the edge of my limbs. The way safety glass breaks in the center of a room and shatters immediately to every nook and cranny it can find. Nuzzling shards deep in corners even the kitchen itself had forgotten existed. 

I don’t know how long this will last. Each time I wonder if it will be permanent. I wonder how long I will even go without looking at my body in the mirror — “denying myself the pleasure of my own company” in exactly the pathetic, cowardly way Zora Neale Hurston intended it.

But this is what racism does. This is how it lives. This is how the teeth sink in. It’s not that I cannot masturbate out of sadness or exhaustion at the state of the world. It’s that I know that my body is the cause for that exhaustion, and that cause should not be rewarded — no matter how innocent, how incredibly deserving it is of joy and crying out to be loved in a way that only I can love my body. 

So, I’ll wait. Until another problem comes along to distract and I can heal enough to unwrap the gift of my body and find solace in myself. Loving of myself. When the world is not yelling and crying and frustrated — debating the humanity of my mere presence.

Kendrick Durden

I originally posted this on my paltry Medium page on March 13, 2016. Long before the Pulitzer Prize and on the eve of the release of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘unfinished’ album untitled, unmastered. I had just landed in Johannesburg and, as someone alone in a new city, I spent my time evenly split between happily taking in the foreign organic sounds and frantically covering them up with something familiar. It was in these first days exploring a country with a racial history that has parallel lines to that of my homeland of the US that writing this idea down felt necessary.  I’m publishing it again here with minor edits. They number very few. The accountability I hope for is just as necessary.

***

On my second listen to the instant classic To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album, I had this thought. A sudden, revelatory, all-consuming thought. The thought grew each time I gave the album a new spin; it was deepened with every exploration into the lyrics. 

Kendrick Lamar is Tyler Durden incarnate.

Durden is one of the main characters in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, personified by Brad Pitt in the cinematic hit of the same name (disclaimer, if you are not familiar with Fight Club, this article is not for you. I also refuse to be blamed for any spoilers. Fight Club has been out for 20 years as a novel and 17 as the famed film — you’ve had plenty of time).

My belief in Kendrick Durden starts with three simple similarities:

1. Kendrick finds himself screaming in a hotel room.

This is not a unique motif, but Kendrick’s spoken line “I found myself screaming in a hotel room, I didn’t want to self destruct” started this whole theory off. The imagery immediately conjured up the changeover scene in Fight Club between the narrator and Durden — which takes place in a hotel room. 

2. Both Fight Club and TPAB culminate as a public conversation with someone who isn’t there.

3. Both Lamar and Durden consort with chicks we pretend we don’t like. Marla Singer-cum-Taylor Swift.

The aspect of these women plays a crucial role. Durden is having relations with Singer, a coupling the narrator questions rudely and often. Despite his disapproval, he tries to catch a glimpse of them in the horizontal tango and constantly wonders about how it is they’re getting on. Comparatively, we’ve been giving Kendrick a lot of flack — or at least skeptical surprise — for doing a Top 40, pop song with Taylor Swift yet many of us can’t help but sing along when we’re alone. If Kendrick is Tyler, we are the narrator. We are Ed Norton.

Please lock your tray tables and put your seat backs to their full and upright position.

As is revealed in that hotel room, Durden is everything the narrator wants to be. He is created from the holes in the narrator’s own life and problems with society that he wants to rectify. The narrator made Durden out of necessity as a means to deal with all that he didn’t have the courage or know-how to address within himself.

“You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. All the ways in which you wish you could be, that’s me.” — Tyler Durden

Just as Durden was manifested by the narrator to address his shortcomings, contemporary America manifested Kendrick. The main topics addressed throughout his discography: police, governmental accountability, community support, social and civil equality, racism, sexism, mental instability, etc — they are all things that America grapples with openly and without grace.  America is Ed Norton. We are Ed Norton. We made Kendrick in order to say and do all the things America cannot collectively bring herself to.

Why did we need to make him? Because we created the circumstances for which his music was needed. Because we created a system in which rapping about injustice is not a work of fiction. We have guilt in that. We have guilt in racism, in social inequalities, in dubious federal spending, in governmental misrepresentation, in the lot of it. Yet we shy away from confronting it, seemingly because we simply do not know how to tackle the behemoth that we have let injustice become.

This is why we need him. Kendrick doesn’t predict the future. He is not a prophet. He is simply bold enough to actually see what is there, what we are all turning a blind eye to. That’s where his strength lies. He does not look away. This, in turn, allows him to see more than we allow ourselves to. It makes him seem prophetic, levitating like a holy body given access to a realm of knowledge reserved for the anointed. His album is a lineup of things we as a culture attempt to cover up, hide and re-dress in ways we find acceptable. We knew about police brutality, we knew about social injustice and economic inequality; he just repackaged it. He says it in a way we feel comfortable addressing it. He brings up the frustratingly inhumane components of our society and has us yelling them verse-for-verse en masse. He is — like Durden — taking our unsightly, unwanted fat and selling it right back to us.

“You admitted it once I submitted it wrapped in plastic.” — Kendrick Lamar on “Momma”

In Fight Club, Durden ultimately helps the narrator. He is a medium through which the narrator gets closer to his truths. Perhaps Kendrick has been manifested for us to do the same. He deserves accolades for that. He does. The fact that he made an album so openly critical of American society and its shortcomings that not only made it on POTUS’ list for best of the year but also had the recording academy recognize it for being creatively competitive suggests that we’re getting somewhere. It suggests that maybe, just maybe, both civilians and the powers-that-be are starting to agree that things aren’t as they should be.

In a eulogy for another notable social musician and lyricist, Steve Almond postulates that we idolize artists because they “project the voice we wish to summon within ourselves.” America has manifested Kendrick to do just that. Otherwise we continue to fuel the environment that prompted him in the first place. Until we testify for our legacy of mistakes, Kendrick will continue to do what he does best: take a long, hard look at society and give us a lyricially and rhythmically inventive tsk-tsk-tsk. Chastising in a language we can understand. Each time he confronts us, he disrupts the dark institutions America is indebted to and leaves us reeling and collectively asking, “Where is my mind?”

Corona Keeps Me Young: An Upside

I’m wearing glasses every day. I rarely wear a bra.

I look in the mirror every 20 minutes and wonder if my body has changed.

I lay awake at night thinking about boys and what it would be like to kiss one.

I wonder what sex will be like.

Meal times mean nothing.

I have a lot of books but only ones written by Roald Dahl are open.

I fantasize about sitting in the sun with a group of friends drinking alcohol. I imagine it will look like an Applebee’s commercial.

I wish I could hangout with my friends without permission.

The freedom of an afternoon bike ride.

My radio is constantly on. My door is always closed.

I fling myself on my bed while on the phone. I lay on my stomach, I twirl my hair.

Oreos and Wild Berry Skittles.

I think I can write poetry. Moreover, I think it is good. I am sure I will be a poet when I'm older.

I am surprised by body hair.

Occasionally, I have to wait for the Internet.

New York City seems sad, wild and scary.

My parents are checking in on me in a way that is caring but I feel is unnecessary.

My friends are chronically available.

I dance in my room. Alone. A lot.

I want to go outside, but I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble.

My period is kind of an exciting event.

I paint and repaint my toenails.

I am 30 13.

Realizations in the Light of Theo Balcomb

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re in a room you have absolutely no right to be in? That was me tonight. But the most unusual aspect was that I was invited by the person being honored. 

Her name is Theo Balcomb and she’s the creator and head of The Daily from the New York Times. The podcast , which started in 2017, was celebrating reaching a billion downloads–yes, you read that correctly, not streams, downloads. One billion. Now, tonight, when I watched her face in a way that would be awkward than if she weren’t being given accolades, it made so much sense to me as to why she had garnered the admiration from the US’s most storied news source as she did. 

To explain that, I have to explain what I know of her. I’ve known Theo for a shockingly short amount of time. Particularly for having been invited to that evening. Even more so, I have never known her in a professional context, so that is not how I shall speak of her. I’ve only known her as a person. As a person, she has greeted me with nothing but overly eager eyes and extremely welcome ‘hello’s’. She has responded to what I have had to say, from tellings of origins of depression and the complexities of being a black American woman abroad to frustrations of New York City wine distributors and opinions on Nicky Cage, with an outrageously fair and even ear. The things I had to say were certainly neither always fair nor even. Oftentimes her listening was decorated with an understanding nod that never corroborated sentiments (though I fucking hope she shared them sometimes) but rather let me know she was there, she was listening. That’s honestly as I know her: a welcome person who is both a safe space and welcoming receptacle for whatever bullshit I want to throw her way under the pretense of “this is my life.”

I guess the best way to say it is that she isn’t exactly like but also not entirely unlike a mother figure saying “I’m listening.” When people go to their mother figures, it’s not to find a partner in crime. It never has been. It’s to find someone who will openly and willingly hear your side of the story–even if you‘re wrong. It’s about speaking to someone who cares even though they may not entirely relate or understand. 

I think this is why I was staring at her face all night. I mean, she is good-looking and was THE lady of honor so it’s not weird, but I think shortly after she took the stage to commemorate the rest of the team, it became clear to me as to why she was there. Why it was HER. Again, I don’t know Theo in a professional context, but I know the environment she creates. If she looks at the news–and all the peripheral pieces of it that make the Daily what it is–the way she looks at me, she gives people meaning. She gives details in a story meaning. She cares about all the random facts that came together to make something that thing. It is for precisely that reason that she can highlight it. She gives stories dimension. When she looks at me, no matter what bullshit story I’m telling, I feel multi-dimensional. I feel important. 

Tonight, I saw within that room, all the ways she has made her gaze, her outlook, transfer through other people. I’ve seen how she’s given the news dimension. How she’s given people so removed from our everyday a depth that we’ve swum in. I saw how she has inserted bits of herself into the stories and that is what have made them more human.

As I said in the beginning, I had no right to be in that room. But I feel so privileged for having the opportunity. If that doesn’t sum up her podcast, I don’t know what does. 

Thank you, Theo. Thank you. 

Necessary Monsters

There is a website I take great joy in. I visit it periodically when I need a little creative nudge  and want to dip my toe in a rabbit hole of the absurd. On their “About” page, they have a quote from Jorge Luis Borges about how the dragon was imagined by man as a way to test our limits. From the depths of our creative mind we created an idea of something so evil and foreign that it takes great courage — and likely teamwork — to face. Borges calls dragons “a necessary monster.”

The site is called the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments. It is exactly as it sounds. It is a lovely dive into instruments that don’t exist yet have been created — somehow. What draws me to this site is that it is an archive entirely concerned with what could be not with what is or was. In a way you could call it a museum of optimism.

 In reading of these instruments – the sound machine, the cat piano, the torture tron, Euphonia or the ocular Harpsichord to name a few – they become real. I create their non-existent sounds in my head. It forces me to conjure sounds I’ve never heard before, an impressive and difficult feat. Because imaginary sounds aren’t just louder versions of what you already know, they’re not discordant mash-ups of what already exists…but something else entirely. You have to imagine something you’ve never known, something you’ll likely never encounter.

I feel like it’s this push that relates to Borges’ necessary monster…it forces us to confront ourselves, acknowledge boundaries and, perhaps most importantly, conjure what lies beyond them.

I turned 30 earlier this month. It’s not a big deal but it’s also a big deal. Perhaps that’s why I’ve found myself contemplating imaginary boundaries made real as of late.  Like many of these instruments, the importance of this birthday is no more than any other birthday. But by naming it, it becomes something else. 30 signifies an entrance into real adulthood, it’s a nod to youth’s demise and a milestone by which many people feel they should have “it” figured out.

Are these imagined milestones also necessary monsters? They force us to confront ourselves and acknowledge our boundaries — we take critical inventory of our lives and what we’ve built. But it also forces us to conjure what was expected of ourselves, to look beyond. In my imaginary things logic, a milestone should result in concocting all the possibilities of what could be.

My life as a 30-year-old with a house and a perfect job doesn’t exist any more than the ocular harpsichord. But in imagining it, my mind is required to define it. And to think beyond it.

In imagining a dragon, you must also imagine its weaknesses. You imagine the whole thing. We don’t realize how hard at work we are when creating a dragon. It’s peculiar how much man reflects the most vulnerable parts of our mortality in the image of a dragon: fire, size, flight, crazy teeth, living in dark caves, etc…all very real threats to human capability. We concoct a literal mortal enemy. It shows us what we’re afraid of, but it exists only in our heads. Where we fight it–tooth and nail, flaming torches and fearless princes–until we overcome.

If the fear of facing this new era is also what makes me work harder, better, smarter towards living my imagined joy, then I kind of like it.

Is this thing on?

“Start a blog,” they said. “No,” I said. “But really,” they said. “Okay,” I said.

And here we are.

I’m new to the whole thing, but I want to use this space to write about things I feel excited about or intrigued by in both my professional and creative fields. Sometimes it may just be links. Other times it might be reactions to other articles or published works. Still others may be full on essays exploring a topic that I wanted to comment on in a domain where I make the rules.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But I’m excited to find out. If I ever say anything that stirs something up in you, please feel free to send me an email. I’d love to get your thoughts.

/ Nereya