FRANK, by Amy Winehouse

It has been a long time since my last post. My words have found themselves elsewhere in the meantime. I am a very different person than I was in the early days of 2018. Tonight I return with an overflowing gratitude for Amy Winehouse. Frank was released in 2003, when she was only nineteen years old. It nursed me through my first heartbreak (age 19) with the perfect tiptoe between tenderness and cynicism. It was exactly what my fragile heart needed.

She crooned about poetry as a healing process (Maybe if I get this down I'll get it off my mind), fears about doomed destiny (I can't help but demonstrate my Freudian fate), covered jazz classics, whispered over birdsong, chronicled messy ex sex.

The album's title itself is a reference to a Frank Sinatra CD, shoved into a box of things her ex gave her. She loves Frank Sinatra, as if her music itself didn't betray that fact with every note. But it's too painful to look at. As things go.

I have a pair of my ex's shorts on the top shelf of my dorm room closet. There's no door there, so I can just glance over my shoulder to see it folded there. I'm waiting to give it to his brother or best friend, both of whom incidentally attend my university. He has some of my favorite t-shirts, god knows where. I can't ask for them back now -- it's been too long, and I know from experience that I'd just melt in the materialization of what is to me a mere memory now. When I visited him at school in the wake of our breakup, he showed me a shoebox he kept full of things that reminded him of me. It was his most prized possession, evidently. But none of those words meant anything. I have no idea if it's in the trash now.

But you made me cry, where's my kiss goodbye? I think I love you

Amy was such a mess. But she was a tender, loving, raw mess. I miss her. I wish we could have been friends. I wish I could have watched her grow through the same tribulations that now plague me in similar ways, living in a different country in a different body in a different life. I keep her poster above my dresser; her face gives me the encouragement I need to get up in the morning and get dressed and be the bad bitch she was before there was even a term for it, and in the midst of the myriad aches plaguing a heart that lived its truth even when it didn't make sense to.

Okayness

Me but loves and accepts myself as I am. (I'm already enough)

Me but trusts myself unconditionally to get past whatever is thrown at me. (If I've made it through everything so far I'll make it through this)

Me but isn't bogged down by an obsessive need for perfection. (The world will not end if I finish something before perpetual alteration)

Me but doesn't shy away from being saccharinely optimistic on the internet. (Cynicism is overrated)

Me but eating oyster crackers at work on a Monday. (With iced honey green tea)

It feels like okayness isn't dependent on circumstances beyond my control. Because truly, isn't it exhausting to believe that so many things have to be exactly a certain way for things to be okay? For me to be okay? It's not even a pursuit, really, so much as it is a practice. Progress feels like the world blooming around me, not dramatically but in tiny glimmers and silent gasps. It's a strategy game - one that doesn't require a consuming amount of attention. Okayness! It's what's for dinner

Finals week meditation

I get my daily dose of wisdom from the sky; we have a pretty good relationship. The clouds tell me everything I need to know. I make up the rest as I go.

I live in a room with one window, and I keep the blinds shut so that neighbors can't see what I'm up to. Would they understand why I pace around so much? I haven't been listening or trying to understand lately. I let my circumstances trample over my identity. I felt empty, thin, tattered. A plastic grocery bag twisted around a winter-stripped tree branch.

I sit. I breathe in, deeply. Until my lungs feel elastic-y. I think about all of the ways the color lavender appears in my life, in different shades. I forget there is no One Shade of lavender. I forget that life doesn't abide by rules and conjugations, and meaning can't be laid out for us in a table drawn in pencil between college ruled margins.

I smile because life is chaos, and my worldview is fragile enough for the amount of clutter creating static in my bedroom to change everything. I smile because the key is making the prettiest connections, which isn't hard to do once you start actively noticing things. I smile because I exist in a physical form, fuzzy thighs, fuzzy neck, fuzzy back, fuzzy tummy.

You lose the ability to appreciate detail when you're preoccupied with other things, like seeking the imaginary approval of other human beings (how did I get to the point of having to remind myself that social media is not real life) or trying not to flunk out of college (I just got a 105 on my rhetoric final so maybe this one is exaggerated). I've cried a lot of empty tears spawned from imaginary anxieties. Zealous feeling hits a dead end. Half of my favorite freckle stretches into a scar.

I am not defined by how well I fit into a paradigm of human experience. I am my tiny Nickelodeon-splat toes (too poorly circulated to wear flip flops in the summertime), involuntarily squealing at the sight of cute animals, my favorite paintings in the MFA, trusting the knowledge that nothing is wrong with my experience for being exactly what it is.

I am okay, I am okay, I am okay

December 1st

I cannot remember when I revoked my own permission to exist poetically: when did I decide I had to stuff my being into a linear narrative; that it was not important to find meaning and beauty in little details? (Only to take this meaning and beauty for granted as I lost touch with what mattered most to me)

When I stigmatized my own experiences, did I anticipate the extent to which my future self would be tormented by discomfort and unknowing? Why is this happening to me, after all? Of what consequence is sitting in a corner seat on an orange line train car flecked with decay for thirty minutes every Friday at the cusp of afternoon to pay a stranger to listen to me talk about everything I wouldn't have to talk about if I just took the time to sit and write it all down?

It will all be okay with some bright lipstick and lung-deflating hugs and takeout burritos, not necessarily in that order and omitting consideration of cold sores brought on by intrusive thoughts and 12-page-papers; uncomfortable attempts at amity and train schedules that don't line up with our plans; frosty first-of-December fingertips and stolen debit card numbers.

I think I'm getting there, slowly, one burst of realization at a time. Moving at my own pace even if it means befriending my cats like they're people and staying in most Friday nights to lay in bed listening to jazz.

Pantone pee & other thoughts

I feel like I'm doing research for Pantone: Right now my toilet has one of those little blue cleaning discs in the tank to keep everything fresh and every time I pee into the blue water (in various states of hydration) a new shade of green peers back at me from its immaculate porcelain goblet. I think this perspective would inspire a new wave of hydration-mindfulness. It's very hard not to focus on whether or not you've had enough water that day when peeing feels more like an art project than gross and critical self-analysis. Have I taken care of my body today? What would I name this exact shade of green?

It's currently late at night in the interim of Saturday and Sunday and I'm sitting in bed typing with the smell of my new gardenia and tuberose candle bathing my senses in crisp floral bliss (I'll get back to this). Sam flies up in 5 days which brings to light my shock/awe at how quickly this summer went by, in all of its obstinate ups and downs. What a weird season. When we're kids everything suddenly lacks structure so we are left to our own devices in deciding how to spend the freedom and sunshine and warm days, which essentially sets the mood of our childhood. I'm not sure how my perception of it will change as I get older and don't have to go to school anymore. I'll keep you updated.

I'd also like to use this platform to formally announce that I am now a candle person. You can find my registry at Anthropologie under my first and last name or you could just stick to the eternal doctrine that I love the way gardenia and jasmine smell. You should also know that I love pretty colored glass jars with well-designed lids. Buy me pretty and good-smelling candles and you will be let into my heart.

Astrology is fake but we're trying

I was once a die-hard believer in astrology, perhaps in part because Aquarius is universally heralded as the coolest sign of the zodiac (uhh what do you mean bias?). But this summer, after reading one too many foreboding monthly horoscopes warning me that my world would come crashing down on August 7th, then again on the 21st, and basically periodically for the rest of my life, I realized something: I'd been using astrology as a way to shirk out of taking responsibility for my choices and actions. In turn it had instilled unnecessary anxiety and dread into my life.

It's not fun when your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and if you know me you know that I struggle with pretty much everything that comes with being alive. When nothing makes sense, it's easy to look to the stars, right? They always have answers, even if astrology.com and horoscope.com always seem to have polar opposite things to say. But once you find a horoscope you like, you absorb it with delight, and the scattered inaccuracies and vague statements fade out of your memory. How do they know you so well? What wonderful surprise awaits you on the morning of February 19th? Oh, you really think I'm that smart and powerful and that's why no man can handle me? *Swoon*

People I admire once looked down on me for believing in astrology because they (somewhat fairly) thought I wasn't capable of vetting my beliefs. I held my ground then, of course, but in the crystal clear lens of retrospect, I know I was pretty deeply in denial. I didn't want to be responsible for my own shit. Blame the stars when I act like a total bitch!! Mercury is in retrograde after all.

In the grand scheme of things I don't think astrology is harmful, even if some people might find it particularly annoying and nonsensical. I think it's just a way people try to make sense of things, as I mentioned in an earlier post about death. I'm not sure if they're just trying to trick us all with it or if people genuinely believe they can understand and interpret the stars, but what's the big deal about nudging us to become better people with imaginary ups and downs determined by the stars?

But listen, astrology or not, I do believe life unfolds with a purpose. Each of our lifetimes is an experience totally unique to us and only us. We have the power, even without stars and planets, to interpret it exactly as we'd like, to surround ourselves with good people, and to spend our time doing things we find meaningful. I think it's incredibly important to continue to push ourselves to become better, whatever that means to you. And I can only speak for myself but in these past few days, I've felt myself opening up to change and letting go of negative energies and habits I knew I needed to let go of. Me or the stars? I guess we'll never really know ;)

Fake glasses

Listen, I get that glasses are very cute. I would wear my adorable Ray Ban frames out in public, but I don't because my vision is so bad the lenses act as opposite magnifying glasses, shrinking my hazel eyes to little black beads and emphasizing the indent at my temples which contributes to a face shape my boyfriend has ever-so-lovingly compared to a peanut. Have you ever found an article detailing which style of bangs would flatter a peanut shaped face? Neither have I (and believe me, I've looked very hard).

If you're one of the lucky ones that have been blessed with near-perfect eyesight, I can't fathom why you would unnecessarily and willingly add an extra barrier between your eyes and the rest of the world, easily fogged up by fortuitous fingerprints, raindrops, or the steam from a pot of pasta. You are taking for granted the privilege of waking up and being able to start living without the delay of scrambling to find your glasses (which are somehow always missing). You are taking for granted being able to open your eyes underwater in vast oceans and impossibly turquoise swimming pools without your contacts floating right off of your corneas, never to be found again.

Let us blind folk reap the benefits (and hindrances) of glasses as an accessory and stick to your blissful, unencumbered perception. Or, you know, keep using them as a fashion statement and pissing the rest of us off.