I'm Here Sometimes

I’ve been home for a week. Well, come tomorrow it will be a week. 

I feel like it has gone so fast and I’m becoming very anxious about how I’m going to schedule my remaining two weeks before I need to go back to school for three weeks of fencing. Yes. Three weeks consisting only of fencing. No classes. No clubs. No assignments. Just fencing; five days a week, six hours a day. 

Anyway, this week has been filled with work. As soon as my mother could put an apron on me, I was in the bakery filling cannolis and carrying trays and doing anything and everything my mom barked at me. The holidays are always very busy for the bakery, as I’d imagine every store is busy. The preparation for the bombardment of customers that will arrive on Christmas Eve and stragglers of Christmas Day is tedious and long. We stand for a majority of the day, only bending our knees to sit for lunch, squat down for something, use the stairs, or take a bathroom break. Constantly being on your feet can take a toll on your feet and legs. My feet are pretty sore and my shins have inconsistently been giving me problems for the last few months. I’ve resorted to wearing these clunky clogs in an effort to sustain the well-being of my lower limbs. 

The days are long, and I marvel at the dedication of my mother, uncles, brother, and some of the other girls and guys that are there before opening to midnight, roughly hours 7 AM to 12 AM and sometimes later. Even though I came to work late today (11 AM), I still managed to fit in 12 hours. You are constantly moving, constantly stacking or filling or carrying or painting or rolling or cupping or sugering something. It’s constant. 

There is something about repetitive, manual work that I like. I would prefer to stack cookies than to talk on the phone with costumers. I like to think of myself as the packing mule; the one doing all the handy work and filling in the gaps where a worker is needed. It’s an Renaissance-Man sort of job. I work the men’s table (old traditions remain, but can be broken), I buttercream cakes, I bring things to the post office, I wing butterflies and soak babas. I learn to do a little bit of everything. Well. Not everything. I’m not very good with working the counter. I stay away from the counter on the holidays. People get a little scary when it’s Christmas Eve and they want their lobster tails. Really want them. 

Meh. My computer is dying. I’m sleepy. I just want to talk to my girlfriend and make time to see her and see my other friends and get some fencing in and maybe go to the gym a few times and visit my high school properly and other things. But for now, I’ll just sleep. Because before you know it, it’s going to be 6:30 AM and I’ll be in my apron and chunky clogs by 7 AM, filling cakes. 

On the bright side, there are really only three more days of bakery madness. 

I can’t deal with people asking me for my notes or to study with me so they can pretty much use me for my notes. 

This one guy keeps asking me and I keep trying to dodge it. In high school, there were so many times where people used me for my notes or homework or study guides and I generally didn’t say no to anyone. But now I’m all “Dude. I went to these classes. I took these notes. I cared. You didn’t. If your work shows poor performance it is probably a reflection of poor participation and involvement. And I’m not to blame for that.”

Sure, it’s as easy as sending an email. Copy. Paste. Send. Right? But then it becomes “Can you help me with this paper?” or “Can I borrow $50?” or “id onrtewkl owh wherrrrrrrrri am. Helppppmkpe????” (aka drunk texts asking for some help). Like, I like working alone. I like studying alone. I like writing alone. I like making things on my own. I take care of my shit on on my own. I rarely ask for people to help me. My brother would go running to my dad asking questions about his English papers or his accounting homework. I just did what I had to do, no questions or requests asked. 

I mean, I’m a generally helpful person. But this is what I’m passionate about and if you plan on loafing around I have no sympathy for you. 

I just imaged that I smelled my friend Lois. I haven’t seen her in quite some time, but I really thought I caught a hint of her scent at least in my mind. She always smelt a bit like kimchi and flowery body spray and yet a smell of neutral substance when you left the first two parts out. 

Lois is a funny girl, really. And it’s funny how we managed to be friends in the first place and how I still manage to call her my friend though we probably haven’t talked in months. I suppose any sort of preconceived notion of what makes a person the friend-type for me can’t really be said with much solidity. Lois is a Korean Christian party girl with an obsession with media-dictated pretty things. She dyes her hair frequently, worries excessively about her weight, wears these strange plastic things on her eyelids to create a crease, and she listens to the sort of music I have very little patience for. But she is very sweet, a little naive and clueless to things, trustworthy and honest, generous and spiritually dedicated. I remember sleeping at her house one night and she told about how the devil and home to her while she was sleeping and she hid from him under the covers. At the time, I really believed this and had some trouble getting sleep that night. Lois was always easy trick and always easy to scare. Lois is still easy to trick and easy to scare. 

I can’t understand why some people believe they need to be surrounded by tons of friends. In my opinion, the butter spreads thin. And I like butter. I like having my few close friends, and when they are busy I don’t mind the alone time all that much either. So when I think of people like Lois, girls that I spend months without talking to or hanging out with, I remember a little thing about myself. I’m not defined by my friendships. They have not dictated too much of my decisions and my desires and drives. My friends have been companions and partners on the ride, support, and not constantly needed either. Which is nice. 

Sometimes, the best friends are the ones that you can neglect to call for weeks, the ones that you buy Christmas presents for in February, the ones that are always too busy, and the ones that can’t eat dinner with you every night. And despite all these things, nothing changes. And we are just friends again. 

My professor for African American history ended our last lecture today by saying that he has no idea where black politics are heading in the U.S. nor does he really have any clue in which direction it should head. 

And I’m not really sure either, because you have leftist radical activists that work on race based issues up-front and then there is a more modern conservative perspective that had emerged. But is it too soon to apply that conservative national perspective? Or do we simply need to grow into it and race will melt into the past? Or are there still many problems that need to be seriously dealt with as exclusively racial issues? Has white guilt and black bitterness been strained enough? Is there need for an uprising of strong black leaders to get that job done or is self-sufficiency really what it takes? 

Dude, I’m not sure which side to pick. I don’t really know enough to say and, apparently, neither does the professor. 

All I know is that there are still people that are prejudiced and that needs to change, and America is just a really weird place for that to work out. 

Leaf blower welcomed me through the sunshine window this morning. Persistent for some time and droning, lulling me to remain in the sheets. I sat at the desk, watched as the leaves floated up instead of spiraling down. Currents rising, wind shaking the green and blue post-it notes on the varnished wood above my brow. Slick brick floor, misty rain. Caution tape wrapped around the fence, flagging. My head filled, my thoughts consuming, my heart soggy and groggy to match these slate clouds. My love for her has yet to fail astonishing me and there is magic in it. We breed happiness, which suppose makes me half of that happiness. She the other. Though she sends me words of sadness and anxiety at 2:56 this morning, all I could do was sleep. All I can do now is listen to songs and read her words again and want to do something, want to change things, want to fix the sorrow and misery. I make comparisons again, build off the reference point, think “Again?” in some aspects. But not at all. I’m afraid to be the spark in the dark. I’ve been there. I’ve been the well of happiness and good and love during times of insecurity and fear and sadness. Which is why I think “again”. I don’t mind it, though. And with her, I’m not so much afraid because I believe that she will not place the misery on me. 

But why do I want to take it? 

Give me it all and I can disperse the weight. 

I know that is wrong, because this isn’t about me. She must find her own solution, and not simply in me. And I can’t fix the problems. God, I want to fix them but there is not much I can do in that way. 

I don’t know. My words are running in circles. 

I need to go to my fencing lesson, and class, and study Italian and Cognitive Neuropsychology and I’m on page nothing of 8-10. So I should stop writing and worrying myself too much. 

The crows are the noisiest of birds;
at least this is what I can gather
with an open window
and my heavy lids tempted to rest.
Sometimes it sounds like an argument,
or a shouting match,
or a commander spitting commands,
or a chant in unison.
Altogether; cacophony. Loud,
and conflicting.
I can’t see them from beyond a haze of orange leaves.
The sounds are not as easy to mask.
I’m beginning to doubt my ears,
for from the crows I hear baby cries
though they are nothing like the softness,
or sound nothing like the softness, of a baby.
When you take the feather from the black bird,
it is alien, and new, and isolated.
And somehow beautiful.
Take the egg, break it, stack halves and form towers,
toss into a white bucket.
I’m reminded of the sound and the snake skin quality.
And somehow, death. 
And babies can cry from the hazy skies,
if only from the crow’s mouth.  

It’s funny.

There was a time where I believed that it was completely possible to be alone for years and years and years. I never expected love. I never expected to have any sort of relationships. I didn’t expect a boyfriend or a girlfriend or to have someone to hold me at night and breathe on my neck and keep me up all night because I don’t really like being breathed on but not minding because I had someone to hold me. I never saw myself holding hands and walking down a sidewalk. It didn’t occur to me that I would ever be so honest and true with a single person. I didn’t expect to run my hands over a sighing rib cage, fingers tracing the boundaries of the thoracic cavity. A counter image never presented itself to me, either. I couldn’t see myself having this occur multiple times over the span of the next decade or so or even longer of my life. It just didn’t match up in my mind to the image of myself I knew.

When I think about how in disbelief I was, I laugh. I wanted them. I definitely wanted these things. I wanted love and lust and comfort and honesty and trust and experience and that experience. I just didn’t see it. And here I am, finally realizing that I’ve already become part of a life I thought I could never touch. I’ve found love, and felt love, and felt lust, and felt the rib cage sigh, and I’ve had heartbreak and torture, utter loneliness and renewal. I’m doing things I’ve done before, they they are so different. I’m feeling, but it’s hardly the same. I attach the same word to that feeling, but I feel it for another and I feel it like the notion that red and blue are primary colors. Both are true, but red is nothing like blue. 

I was wrong. I haven’t realized it until this moment that I was wrong. I found what I thought I wouldn’t, and I will continue to. 

It’s just funny. 

He spoke like a yawn,
and he laughed like a machine,
and she smiled like the stars
in a warm August breeze.  

I watch as the rain shakes each leaf on the trees.
I listen as the rain claps with the leaves of the trees.

She walks in italics, 
gravity plays games on her trot.
Red brick, a mirror,
reflecting strides on beat.

I watch as the rain shakes each leaf on the trees.
I listen as the rain claps with the leaves of the trees.

The fan drones in a muggy room. 
Posters hung click click against the wall.
I read about the Neanderthals
and of exploding female figurines.

I watch as the rain shakes each leaf on the trees.
I listen as the rain claps with the leaves of the trees.

Applause! Applause! Standing ovation!
The crescendos of splashed puddles rejoice in this rain.
For some reason it has swept up
memories.

I watch as the rain shakes each leaf on the trees.
I listen as the rain claps with the leaves of the trees. 

It is unsettling for me to be in the middle; stagnant, really. I’m no one’s heartbreak, no one’s obsession, no one’s rumination. I’m not sure if I want to infuriate someone or make them fall in love. Make them fall in lust. I feel I need to be more than just here. I’m somewhere in the middle but I don’t want to settle for that.