Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

When 2016 started I began the year staring at the television, sitting alone on my parents couch, as my Dad slept in the back and the dog was with him.   That day we had checked my mother into a nursing home.  At that moment, I remember thinking if this is a sign for the coming year . . . Yeah. 2016. Here's your fucking match.  Celebrity deaths aside, it's like this year had it out for the world, with a vengeance and flare. That being said, there are many reasons that the departure of this year is a blessing, and by and large I really don't have it in me to rehash every horror filled moment of the 2016 realm of Dante's hell . . . 2016 being the layer he never wrote about.  For two weeks I've been trying to figure out what I would write to close this year . . . I've sewed some, made bras and jeans and a couple silk blouses, I've travelled, I've taught, I've collapsed under it all, I've lost myself, I've lost my faith in resilience . . ...

As I sit here in the wake of another 80 hour work week--which is also attributing to my disdain as of late--and not having had a genuine day off in more than three months I battle writer's block and securities of social design.  Alone again . . . a tisket, a tasket that matters far more than it should, as most days I'm not home long enough to fully sleep to shake off the exhaustion.  Instead, between fits of sleeping and hustles to side streets and subways the snow begins to fall and the the air has chilled low enough to allow the truly ingenious--or cheap--to chill beer and other consumables in the open, frigid air.  I haven't resorted to that--as of yet--as my ginger beer is still in my refrigerator and every morsel of consumable food is packed and stored so that the city's real undesirables--roaches and fucking mice--can't make their way into it. Yet, on those subways from western Queens, to eastern Queens, to the Queens/Brooklyn border, to east Brooklyn, to ea...

“Mom.” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.”  Tho s e  final four words from Rory Gilmore  have now  erupted  shock waves across the internet, phone lines, and social gatherings.  I, like a large score of others who loved the  Gilmore Girls  show for years, am no exception.  I gasped, I laughed, and I logically saw it as an opening for another revival.  But, as I sat on my bed,  my  knitting falling from my hands, staring solo at my television I couldn’t help but feel a strange mix of nostalgia, anger, let down, and longing wave over me.   For months now I’ve been working on various feminism projects, and in the midst of that I’ve found myself re - watching  Gilmore Girls  as the show has always been my feel-good, go-to, comfort food of no calories.  That combo is hard to find, and about four years ago when Netflix released the entire series I was one of those  mid  thirty-year olds who spent the better p...

These days, as they are shorter and the darkness longer, the temps are dropping and the once brilliantly colored trees are starting to drop their seasonal garlands.  I've always loved fall, which admitting it probably makes me a little basic white bitch.  Usually I would say oh well, but these days . . . eh.  National events aside, the power to persevere in the face of life itself is sometimes lost on even me.  Moments in between, and stopping to literally smell the falling leaves, has kept a balance.  Not a metaphorical one--as that one is just crazy, spiraled, and ugly--but a literal moment in time to stop and stare. A little array from a Long Island campus (left to and far right and the Bronx in the middle).  Yet, these days I've got an ugly planner . . . one that is colored, just about indexed, and as I'm told every minute of the day is planned.  Just about . . .That being said, a crushing schedule comes on the heels of needing to find norm...

I'm been waiting to find the moment to escape back into Seattle.  Don't ask me about recent events.  This, this, is your (and my) diversion.   *** In what feels like a lifetime ago, I saw my original hometown for a moment last summer.  In all reality, it was how I ended my long sojourn off the east coast, through the midwest, and nestled in the peaceful slopes of the Cascade basin in Oregon.  As I took one last Greyhound up to Portland, walked less than half a block to the train depot, and boarded I begrudgingly accepted the ideal retreat my summer had been was already fading.   Limey had already been returned , my clothes were packed and shimmied into one carry on, one back pack, and one suitcase.  Six week's worth of muscle, memory, and trinkets were packed away in my literal and metaphorical spaces.   As a long weekend, at the end of August, rounded out my travels there's something to be said about the tranquility of returning to a...

Things I've found myself unprepared for. . . well, there's a list, and like any red-blooded human being they range from hysterical, tragic, to embarrassing. These days . . . Lady Gaga's new album hits home more than I would have expected, especially since I'm not a large LG fan.  Yet, for several days--okay a near week--I've been blaring it pretty regular.  That being said, the irony resonates as between blaring LG and extended Beyonce playlists I have been editing and writing women's narratives.  Why, yes . . . yes, I see the oxymoronic humor.  I certainly wasn't prepared for that album to shock me awake these days.  Parallel to that, though, that stupid thing called Lupus has been knocking on the inside cellar door again. The knock, knock of Lupus for me typically comes with crushing muscle cramps, joint on fire between the prongs of a c-clamp, and kidneys knocking out their own beat to Use Your Illusion II .  The slow ballad beats of "November Ra...