I love her so much that when she calls me this afternoon during the most restful sleep I’ve been able to procure for days (despite all attempts to sufficiently plum tucker myself out and go to bed so early), and wakes me up (and simultaneously reminds my head that Hey! I remember! I was hurting before you went to sleep!) to squeal joyously in my ear that she! has! a job interview! tomorrrow! at 12:30pm! I don’t even grumble at her at all, or give her the half-asleep voice, or reveal to her in any way that I was just moments earlier more than half-asleep, because then she will feel bad for waking me up (and anyway, she can just read about it later; that’s what websites are for!), and I want to avoid making her guilty because I am genuinely happy for her, and enjoy the fact that she called me instantly to yell me the good news, I myself being privy to the fact that this has been one of the longest days in the history of long days for her.
And besides, at the end of the day, and at the beginning, and in the middle, and during pretty much any hour of the twenty-four comprising a day, most everything else–including naps and migraines and insomnia and sleepy voices–takes a backseat to being her big sister.
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...
They say water changes stone, carving it over time to angles and dimensions in harmony with water’s need to reach the sea; but sometimes, stones change the watercourse instead.
-The lovely and eclectic Shari
I’m collecting my favorite corners, like the one with the stunning oak tree on display for an entire neighborhood to see, its limbs shading a bustling crosswalk shooting confidence into pedestrians like electric currents of white light, fresh graffiti on a nearby curb: an infinity symbol, black and simple.
I’m collecting stories about the apartment window filled with small elephant figurines along one of my favorite walking routes. So many trunks standing side-by-side and none of them alive.
I’m collecting the surprisingly → Read more...