I just cleaned my room for the first time since Germany!

There were piles of paper to sort through, drawers to flip upside down and reorganize, dust bunnies under the bed…

I may have lit enough candles in the attic to accidentally scare the shit out of my poor mother.

Also, Spotify helped me listen to some of the best of Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, and also to The Dresden Dolls’ “Yes Virginia” album*

*because AFP liked my comment on her Instagram post a couple of days ago and I – that’d never happened to me before, and like I said it’s been a couple of days but I’m still kind of glowing on the inside

I may or may not have put on a floppy summer hat and the shoes I snagged at that one Goodwill in Burlington and had myself an impromptu and not particularly graceful dance party, in front of the mirror, by myself.

My cat was pointedly unimpressed.

But after a while, somehow, the attic felt cleaner. I unearthed my birth certificate, a medical insurance card, a set of earbuds that still seem to work, a jar of honey, a dusty stack of old CDs, and two diplomas. Plus I found an abacus and some origami paper to take to the college and also a handful of books I’ve outgrown to hopefully sometime donate to the library.

It felt like a relatively successful archeology dig. You can actually see some horizontal surfaces, in places.

I opened the windows to let the smoke out, earlier, and now the air in the room smells like candlewax and snow instead of dust

It’s been a comfortably productive time.

My little sister just sent a scholarship application in to Brockport.

My brother-in-law had a solid job interview at another brewery a couple of hours away, which has the potential to shift things around in my older sister’s life. The Chairman is old and sick, so things are already changing.

And I know that sometimes change is hard, and I almost got in the car today and drove down to Greensboro to be with all of them for shared beer and some bluegrass music and coloring, and too many things in the world were telling me not to, and so I didn’t.

So I didn’t want to let this day slip away from me, so I put engine oil in my rustbucket of a vehicle and cleaned my room all the way back to the corners

And there is pumpkin pie waiting for me in the kitchen downstairs. I hope it’s a good night.

(This is the one day of the year when it feels weirdly socially acceptable to be vocally cranky about relationship status.

This entire post is objectively funny because I’ve just spent like a year or so being awkwardly determined not to be cranky about this thing, for – oh, probably messy complicated horrible personal reasons.

and the thing is – every other day of the year, I am usually mostly content to be single

because it’s honestly kind of the best. I mean, think about it.

Rationally.

(Odd one, when you’re by yourself…)

There’s nobody who’s constantly around to piss you off with all their bizarre, intimate, idiosyncratic human-ness

There’s nobody who needs anything from you that you’re somehow obligated to give to them to keep them happy, or keep them with you

There’s nobody there to get mad at you for having faults when your faults don’t jibe with their own

There isn’t another life’s worth of trauma and baggage and awkwardness wrapped up in your day-to-day existence

There isn’t anyone you have to sacrifice things for. You can put yourself first, take care of yourself, your friendships, your family, channel your energy into things that are important to you

And, just

on this day, of all the arbitrary days, there’s a voice in my heart saying “yes. All those things, yes, sure, okay.

“but just for once – just this one time – wouldn’t it be nice to be held by somebody who loves you, and hold them back because you love them too.”

It hurts, that feeling.

Maybe it’s good to compartmentalize time to just – let it hurt.

Maybe I could have just one day of the year to feel that messy, complicated feeling I don’t let myself feel, consciously, at like any other time, and be present with all that awkward conflicted loneliness.

Maybe.

I really do think it takes vaguely badass levels of confidence – (even if it’s just pretend confidence!! it still counts for something) – to take all the time that you need to be alone, and be present with yourself, and do your own growing. Because goodness, does it get uncomfortable.

And it hurts on days like this,

when the world stops to celebrate the sweet things about partnerships, from the fluff on the wind to the root systems that seem intertwined centuries below the surface

It’s a reminder that it takes a badass level of courage and confidence to learn how to love, too.

(Thank you to Bucket for the validation about posting this today, I needed that)

TW: transphobia and homophobia in the workplace

Last week, I washed a lot of dishes, folded cranes, made a hip-hop playlist, co-lead an unexpected tutor training, and read half of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

To celebrate, I had myself a comfortably scruffy weekend. I only had to wear actual pants like one time.

Because there was company, Saturday. A friend of a my parents’ friend came over for dinner and I liked her because she’s this sassy old Italian lady with a degree in mathematics and a masters in social work and we had things we could talk about.

She’s feeling burned out – because social work – but she said that she doesn’t want to switch to working at a college because conversations about diversity and gender identity and and sexual orientation make her feel uncomfortable.

At which point, my parents, bless them, smiled down the dinner table at us and said, practically in unison, “actually, we’ve got quite a lot of diversity in the room right now. Evie’d be happy to talk to you about any of this whenever.”

And I don’t know if it was the wine and i hope it wasn’t but I heard myself saying, “I mean, I’d happily talk to you about this right now…”

So she got to have a conversation about diversity and gender identity and sexual orientation. With young people.

At the dinner table.

Evie was there, and we kept talking over each other filling in the details and making important points and it helped. Our parents were mostly quiet and listened, but were 100% supportive, and that also meant the world.

I could tell that this dinner guest was trying to meet me in the middle and be receptive, and she kept asking questions, and if she hadn’t been that open I don’t know if I could have done this.

We started with the definitions of binary and non-binary, and we talked about what all the letters stand for, and we touched on what can happen to young people who don’t have support and we covered the prevalence of intersexuality and the nuances of asexuality and the validity of polyamory

and then we talked about how labels are comforting for some people, and how there are probably at least as many different interpretations and combinations of those labels as there are people in the world

but no label is as important as the whole life inside the person who’s sitting in front of you, and no combination of words matters next to supporting their health, and respecting the everliving fuck out of their boundaries, and making them laugh

and we talked about how it isn’t just about the sex, and from 5000 feet up why would you ever judge someone for loving somebody else

and this social worker’s transfeminine patient had just recently asked for support around her decision to get a surgery, and the social worker didn’t feel comfortable with that because – among other reasons – the patient wasn’t consistently presenting “feminine enough.” She’d come to sessions with no makeup, or the shadow of a beard, or wearing grey sweats and a T-shirt. When asked, the patient said she didn’t have enough time to get ready in the morning.

I wondered if she just felt like wearing sweats that day. I wondered what else was going on in her life. And I, just – I asked this social worker if, as a woman, she felt like she needed to dress herself up to look feminine, all the time.

And she got it. I think, for just a second, she had it.

Last week there was a sassy old Italian lady out there working in social work who didn’t get it. Now there’s a sassy old Italian social worker out there with a little more information and vocabulary, and maybe a slightly more inclusive perspective.

Two days later I was working in the kitchen and I overheard a coworker saying that he doesn’t want to say to his little brother that he thinks his lifestyle is disgusting, and all of my alarms went off. I moved closer so that I could hear, and then very quickly felt like throwing up because the thinly-veiled hate and intolerance that was tumbling out of his mouth was like nothing I had ever heard in person

I have walked Auschwitz and am only just beginning to emotionally grasp the kind of hate that has existed in the world before. But I’ve never stood next to that kind of blatant homophobia and transphobia, and heard it spoken so plainly and carelessly out loud.

I’ve been lucky.

I think for a second I wanted to actually wanted to smack this speaker upside the head. I didn’t. I opened my mouth to speak and I have no idea what I was going to say, but it was sure as hell going to be something, except that somehow amazingly another coworker beat me to it

In a surreal way, it was comforting that the person who called him out was the only other middle class white guy on the clock. This other coworker also pointed out that this probably wasn’t an appropriate subject of conversation in a work environment, and he was probably right. It was those words on his part that gave me a reason to step away, and cool down, and not scream at the punk who had said these things that got to me.

Later the original speaker noticed that I was angry, or about to cry, or something, because he apologized in case he’d said anything out of turn. “I didn’t mean to make you feel – some type of way, or anything” he fumbled. And I really didn’t mind telling him that he had, but when he asked me what it was specifically I told him that I couldn’t talk to him about it on the clock.

Because if I had spoken in that moment, whatever I’d been able to say would have been so far from constructive. The story that I’m carrying around in my head was that it could made his beliefs deeper, somehow, because I would have said something from my own place of hate. And you can’t fight hate with hate.

I told him that sometime, off the clock, I’d be happy to sit and talk with him.

“Oh, I don’t mind being enlightened,” he said. “I feel like if you’re going to be against something, you should at least try to understand it.”

And then the shift manager chewed him out for standing around and talking instead of working, and five minutes later he left to go home early and I told him to drive safe because it was all that I could do

I went home to my dad and told him what had happened and told him how heavy other peoples’ hatred is, and he hugged me and whispered that the hardest thing is not to hate them back.

And I am trying.

This week began with four hours of discworld in a waiting room at a dentist’s office and some impromptu hula hooping & hip hop music in my parents’ driveway and a surprise Calc II tutoring session with Anthony in the deli and the construction of roughly seven sandwiches in one shift.

I’m feeling the wind in my face from unexpected directions, and I feel like if I just keep walking for long enough, I am sure to get somewhere.

Thank you for reading.

“Fare thee well
My own true love
Farewell for a while
I’m going away
But I’ll be back
Though I go 10,000 miles

10,000 miles
My own true love
10,000 miles or more
The rocks may melt
And the seas may burn
If I should not return

Oh don’t you see
That lonesome dove
Sitting on an ivy tree
She’s weeping for
Her own true love
As I shall weep for mine

Oh come ye back
My own true love
And stay a while with me
If I had a friend
All on this earth
You’ve been a friend to me…”

~ 10,000 Miles, Mary Chapin Carpenter

This song was featured in the 1996 motion picture Fly Away Home.

The film was based on a true story about a car accident, some interesting father/daughter dynamics, small airplanes, environmental conservation and Canadian geese.

The song is based on a traditional English folk song that has been traced back to the 18th century. The title is “fare thee well” and it is sometimes referred to as “the turtle dove.”

Up in time to notice a sunrise again, today.

Remembering that I never listened to hip-hop until the road trip to Vermont.

The trip was Kartikey’s idea. The three of us – Emma and Kartikey and I – went for a walk down by the lake after dark. It must have been early spring because it was still jacket weather, but it was also warm enough to sit on the end of the public dock and dangle our legs over the edge. That was where we first talked about piling into a car and renting a house, for a week or so, in the summer.

And I’m not sure any of us expected that conversation to come true, but somehow it existed in our heads as the last time all of us would be together. Kartikey was going Out West, Adam was going to be a computer science and mathematics major in Binghamton because they had a disc golf course he liked, Emma still hadn’t decided between RIT and the UofR, and I hadn’t told anyone that I wasn’t sure about Potsdam. Victoria was mad at all of us for leaving her behind.

Somehow that made it important.

So a handful of months later we were carpooling in silence at – far too early o’clock in the morning – and Kartikey was driving, and Adam was half-asleep on Victoria’s shoulder, and Victoria was playing pop song after pop song through the speakers from her phone.

And then we picked up Emma and she then she was driving, because of course she was driving, and the music changed.

Seven and a half hours of unfamiliar songs, with the signal cutting out more and more frequently the farther north we drove into the mountains.

We’d all split the cost of an AirB&B in Vermont for something like five nights

and in between nights we went grocery shopping down the road

and played Yahtzee and Monopoly and ping-pong in the basement

and visited The Ben&Jerry’s factory, and went thrift-shopping in Burlington

and Emma and I made it to the summit of the highest mountain in Vermont even though both of us kept wanting to turn back, and then climbed back down through a thunderstorm

And then she had to leave us a day early to go to a mathematics conference in Ohio & present on her research* on graph theory.

*over the course of the research program that summer, she was only arrested one time

We drove her to the airport.

and the four of us that were left went wading in a creek near the house and climbed up the banks by the side of the waterfall and then Victoria and I ditched the boys and walked barefoot over a blanket of pine needles through the woods, for what felt like miles and miles

and they were more than a little pissed off and worried when they finally found us

And on the drive home, we listened to Emma’s playlist, again, even though she wasn’t there. Eminem and Childish Gambino and Lil’ Dicky. So strange to me, but somehow wrapped up in all of it and part of this experience

And it was on that drive that I found out that Adam can fucking sing, and not only that but Adam can rap like nobody’s business and for months I looked and looked for that one song we heard in the car and I couldn’t remember the name

And I just found it again, last week.

And now Adam is at Binghamton

And Emma went to the University of Rochester and got a B+ for the first time in her life

And Kartikey is flourishing Out West and still snapchats Victoria every day and last I heard it sounds like he met a girl

And Victoria is probably literally in this same building every day but I’m being shy and busy and working too many hours and I should probably get over all of those things and go and talk to her because that one day in the woods was a good time

And this morning, I listened to those songs on the way to work. One after the other, in all of their strange harshness and sharp corners and words that aren’t in the language that I think in, and there’s a beauty in them that’s connected to that time.

And I miss them.

There is a five-day-old box of cold pizza in the front seat of my car that cost $3 at the end of the night at the grocery store, and that is breakfast

And I’m balancing a chipped ceramic mug half-full of coffee as I’m driving, the way that Emma used to, probably still does

And I am teaching myself the words to that same song Adam sang in the car on the way home, and I am pulling over to the side of the road and jumping out of the car and running through the snow because I need to catch a photo of a rainbow over canandaigua lake even though the math center opens at 8:30 and I’m cutting it a little close

And I miss you, but I’m glad that you’ve gone on, and I am so proud of you. I will see you when I see you, if I do.

every time I hear this song, I will remember.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Here’s a link to a couple of interviews on NPR’s Fresh Air on the subject.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/799228786/fresh-air-marks-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-liberation-of-auschwitz

It has been about a week of working in a job I didn’t expect to get.

I kind of sent in an application on a whim, and then they called me back ten minutes later asking if I wanted an interview, and now – somehow – I am working in a fast-paced kitchen environment in the back of a grocery store ten minutes from my house.

I have still not gotten to make a sandwich yet but I have washed an awful lot of dishes.

I like the people the most.

Melinda is patient and down-to-earth and pedantic in a way that isn’t condescending. She tells me when it’s time for me to take a break, and is grateful in a puzzled way when I ask if I can mop the floor or clean out the rotisserie. We get along swimmingly.

Joan has a sweet smile and is a little worried all the time. I get the sense that she initially liked me very much, and then I did something that bothered her and she – didn’t, for a while, and then she forgave me because I was able to take her criticism halfway well. She spends about as much time being encouraging as she spends telling me what I’m doing wrong. It’s probably good for me.

Joy homeschools four children; she told me that she wanted twelve, because she’d grown up homeschooled on a big woodsy property with eleven brothers and sisters. She loves Terry Pratchett’s work, and is writing a fantasy anti-romance because she wants it to exist.

Anthony is something between a flirt and a smartass and is one semester away from an associates degree in chemistry that will hopefully someday become something to do with biochem. I find this out because we ended up walking each other out to the parking lot at the end of a shift. No one in my hometown had eyes like his, and I’d like to be friends.

Terry is a half-grey and somehow familiar and immediately sets off the frustratingly inaccurate gaydar that until a handful of semesters ago I didn’t know I had. We started this job the same day.

Patrick is an ageless giant who doesn’t like to be criticized and has just enough of this tired inclination towards laziness that some of the older and grumpier ladies tend to yell at him all the time. He seems pleased when I ask if I can watch him do things.

Jordan is the one who emptied out the pans of hot water in the Alto-Shaam at the end of my first night — (that’s the machine that sits in the corner and stays warm and nobody seems to know what it does) — and told everyone matter-of-factly that it was not the hottest thing he’d ever argued with. He also fills me in on where the cameras are in the kitchen – where to stand and which way to turn in order to get away with sneaking bites of food. He is the deli’s third newest employee and is enjoying a sense of seniority over Terry and me.

And I –

I’m realizing that I don’t need to learn how to do everything perfectly right away. It’s a process, and I’m new here, and it’s going to take time.

When I feel too nervous I can hide in the walk in refrigerator and try to breathe, or close my eyes and listen to what is inevitably either going to be John Waite’s “missing you” or Tina Turner’s “what’s love got to do with it” because there is only so much variety that a single grocery store playlist can provide.

My secret is how much I love washing dishes, which is the thing that secretly nobody else likes to do. This is kind of silly, but once I was volunteering at a music festival in exchange for a weekend pass and I’d been working on this pile of dirty pots and pans and empty milk jugs for a couple of hours one morning when some stranger in charge of organizing the volunteers came up to me and said “thank you for just standing here and washing dishes.”

There is just something about simple physical repetitiveness that works for me. It’s a peaceful space to think. I tried to communicate to Melinda about this, and I think she understands.

Joan knows that I’d rather wash four and a half hours of dishes than interact with customers and so she intentionally makes sure that I stop once in a while and talk to people, practice my “HihowcanIhelpyou,” learn how to recognize three different kinds of Swiss cheese or whatever it is and how to weigh out exactly half a pound and print the correct labels on a machine that’s probably older than I am.

Patrick and Anthony and Melinda all agree that it takes time to feel like you know what you’re doing. Jordan says it took him about a month. And I’ll get there.

Oh, and Terry has already made her first sandwich. I am only a tiny bit jealous about this.

TW: imposter syndrome, dropping out of school, math, anxiety/depression, negative self talk, burnout

My brain will not let go of a comment that an old professor made about how he is glad my parents are supportive of my choice to take a gap year, because “there are some people that wouldn’t be.” I think that I see judgement in his face.

I told him that I have soo much time, and he laughed at me, and it was bitter laughing.

My brain-voice tells me that he’s mad because one of his best Calc I students dropped out of school, and then immediately proceeds to turn around and question the word “best.”

And then a very small voice in the background asks me, “dropped out? Is that actually what happened?”

I have had to tell so many people yesterday and today that I am not in school. That I am taking some time to figure things out and that I’d rather do that now than later. That I am not sure what is coming next, and that somehow that’s okay.

I am imagining that everyone is disappointed in me. That they think I have strayed from some path I’m supposed to be on, because I am the kind of person who gets A’s in community college math classes.

This train of thought is objectively interesting, because when I was getting those A’s in mathematics, the voices in my head never stopped telling me that I did not belong on this path, because I am neither clever nor gifted enough to do this kind of work – I am too slow, I will never see the answers by myself, I will always have to push through my own ego and embarrassment and ask for help in order to see the simple elegance of those patterns.

And that same breath I am capable of letting my stupid, gets-A’s-in-mathematics, over-patterning anxious brain take over, and I can let the marker slide over the whiteboards and carefully unravel a tangle of algebra until I know that I have an answer that is correct.

And in the next few breaths, I am capable of turning to another human being who has come to me for help and listening and asking questions until they smile and say “I have never understood this idea before and suddenly it makes sense to me. Thank you.”

And for a heartbeat I feel like I could do this work for the rest of my life.

But that would mean knowing for sure, and I don’t. I do not know for sure. I am pretty certain that not knowing for sure is true for a lot of people.

I am being honest with myself about it and I am doing things in my own goddamn time, and it is terrifying.

My father in particular has always told me not to compare myself to other people, because that way lies madness, and also that what other people think of me is none of my business.

I haven’t actually told him that I’m feeling any of this, but I know that it’s what he would say.

When I think about how he would feel if I said all these things, I imagine that it would be hard for him to watch me standing in my own way. I know he would tell me that I am enough just the way I am, and a very small part of me wouldn’t be able to know for sure, and it would make both of us sad.

He’s got this idea in his head that I will help to find the equation that will save the earth from climate change. He is positive that I could do this. And I’m not afraid not to live up to his expectations, because I know he will love me no matter what.

Ingham was right about my parents, at least.

Even if I don’t know about being enough for academia, I am always sure I’ve got my father’s love.

Which is good, because – I don’t want to be the one who finds that equation. I don’t want to have to do that by myself. I would like to do exceptionally well in my own little corner, and work side by side with people who are doing the same.

This is the truly hard work. This work, inside my head. And I am doing the best that I can.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been up and awake in time to catch one of these.

But I guess – between one thing and another, here I am.

I don’t usually try for poems.

---

There isn’t a rule book, for being human.

If there was, then I feel like we’d all disagree and argue over what it should say.

I feel like there would be at least as many versions of that rule book as there were humans doing the writing. Each one would be just a little different, even though I’m almost sure that most would have a few things in common.

In my head, I can picture us as this spectrum of different colors – bright red on the one side, deep blue on the other – but most of it’s just different shades of purple.

Sometimes red goes well with other shades of red, or blue works well with blue, and I – I guess the truth is that sometimes they can’t, and don’t. Sometimes two colors from opposite sides compliment each other perfectly, in the beginning, but then become faded and weathered by time

but most of us

so many of us

are purple, from indigo to violet to magenta and maroon, lilac purple, rich and royal purple, easy-on-the-eyes purple, your grandmother’s favorite sweater or fallen plumbs or the tattered case for that first CD you got when you were ten PURPLE

Sunrise on the pond purple. Amethyst. Flecks in her eyes when she smiles.

The lucky ones sometimes find just a few other shades of purple that match up pretty well with their own purple, and shine a little brighter, with each other, for a while.

And even when they’ve all run and faded and crumbled to dust, they’ll remember…

we’ll seem somehow all the brighter, even after all this time.

and blue can look at red and see the beauty in it

and rivalry or rapture is a choice

but I think that the answer is somewhere in the middle of this purple

The meeting of edges, the mixing of opposites

compromise, harmony, androgyny, and light

It might take a lifetime to see it. I’m trying to open my eyes up, when I can.

Meet me in the middle, purple.

so when we stumble on the yellow, and the orange, and the green

maybe sometime we will all know how to dance after the rain

together,

Purple.

Thank you and goodnight.

Camping, with Sara. Last summer.

It was dark outside, and the crickets were singing in the woods around us, and the campfire was just embers anymore. Both of us were getting our own selves ready for bed when we met on the path that lead up to the house.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing upwards at the canopy of tree branches.

I followed her arm and looked up, and at first I didn’t see anything, and I said so. She helped me, until I was standing where she’d been standing a moment before. Perspective shifted. Objects in my personal foreground seemed to move more than the things that were farther away- from the tree trunks to the interwoven branches to the sky.

And there it was.

A gap in the trees, with a patch of starlight framed inside of it. The smallest detail, the easiest kind to walk past with your gaze pointed downwards and never see at all. But so lovely.

“Look at that,” she breathed, again. “Shit like that keeps me alive.”

I’m not sure if I completely understood what those words meant, then. But I absolutely believed that she meant them.

---

In Europe, I started taking photographs – not for the sake of photography, but because I wanted to remember where I’d been. Every travel blog, every backpacker I met on the road, everyone told me that memories fade, and many had experienced the regret of not having kept a record. So I was doing my best.

In the middle of a handful of UNESCO world heritage sites in Potsdam, Germany, I stepped outside my door in the morning and hadn’t made it half a mile down the road before literally stumbling across some ancient palace grounds, now a public park, that I didn’t know existed. I spent the whole day taking pictures. There was no way I could do justice to that experience with words. There were elements of Auschwitz that I also don’t believe I will ever be able to write down, but I might be able to allude to them with pictures.

But then – fast forward to a time when I’m not traveling. When I’m trying to adjust to the massive shock of coming home. And I did come home, but I also got stuck in the Doldrums.

Since the day my dad called and helped me get up off the couch, I’ve been walking almost every day. I’m not running a 5k every morning. I’m doing a halfway decent job being at peace with myself on the days when I don’t get outside. And every time I go outside, every time I’m walking, I reach into my pocket and open the camera on my iPhone 6s and start to look at the world through a different lens. It’s a habit.

When I was standing with Sara and looking up at the gap in the trees, part of me was acutely aware that she’d noticed it and I hadn’t. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing touch with reality and worldly things because I’m too caught up in my thoughts to see them.

But when I look at the world through a camera lens, everything clicks into focus. And I begin to notice the little things, so easy to miss.

Bubbles on the surface of the water, or the texture of moss or the curves of the mushrooms growing on tree trunks. Intricate shapes of unfamiliar seed pods, a trail of footprints, or the twining of grapevines and wire.

The gaps in the trees.

Taking pictures is pulling me back to a place where I feel like I’m almost a child. It’s grounding as fuck, and it helps me. So much.

This shit keeps me alive.