1. I never thought I’d say this, but I haven’t done much of anything on the internet for the last year. I still post from time to time, but I haven’t written anything of substance (here) in ages, and lately I go weeks without even checking my email. This time last year I was posting fifteen times a day.
2. I still think about the internet - and the people in it - all the time, it’s just no longer in the same kind of demented fervor omigawdimmamisstheparty breathlessness. I’m quite sure this means I’m no longer addicted.
3. Now that I’ve overcome my internet codependency, I’m slowly paving a digital path for myself, one that I can travel in a healthy manner. I’m in no hurry.
4. The internet and I can’t be codependent any more than my favorite scarf and I can, but still. I project and personify because it amuses me, not because I don’t know the difference.
5. I really hope Donald Trump runs for President, because his humiliation will be awesome to watch.
6. The other day I was craving Starbucks, which, naturally, does not have a franchise in Grenada. So I melted a candy bar and added it to a cup of instant coffee, and BOOM. Party in my mouth.
7. I don’t even drink Starbucks. I also don’t eat McDonald’s or Pizza Hut or Taco Bell or any fast food, really, but I crave all of them like crazy when I see commercials. That’s why I learned to make deep dish pizza from scratch.
8. Thirteen years ago in Paris, I met Margaret Atwood and had a chance to talk to her at length, but I didn’t, because I was scared and also somehow thought it was an opportunity I’d have again. Past me was silly, and should’ve worn more comfortable shoes.
9. Speaking of Margaret Atwood, I just finished Oryx & Crake. I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy love stories about the end of the world.
10. To Bean, everything on TV is either cartoons or the news, except for Futurama, which he says is both. I think I’m going to appropriate that, and refer to everything in life as that’s fun or insipid as cartoons and everything else as the news. Except for this post, which is both.
About the kissing, I don’t want him to feel pressured.
Lately, I’ve been self-soothing by making jewelry.
and admitting to myself that I’d really love to put the chore off by calling a friend to chat, but that I can’t - easily - because I’ve been out of touch with everyone for over six months, long enough that the only person who still emails me is Al Gore.
I felt tears burning in my nose, and I let myself feel sorry for myself for about 90 seconds, but that’s all, because I have better things to do, and if I wanted a birthday party, dammit, I should have planned one.
Bean, the almost-five-year-old amateur psychologist, looks up from penmanship practice to ask me why I’m crying.
“Mommy’s only crying a little bit. I’m OK. I’m just sad because my birthday is tomorrow.”
“Oh…”, he nods, wise and understanding. “You’re sad because it’s not your birthday right now?”
Which wasn’t the problem at all, but it was funny, and I laughed, which banished my tears for real. Then I washed the dishes, and we both got dressed for the beach, even though it’s raining, because we are not easily distracted from our dreams.
Hey, internet!
This is embarrassing. I wrote you a love letter. But then I got to my favorite wi-fi spot and realized I left it in my other notebook.
Also: Bean is still cute.
I’ve been through so much change in the last few years, some of it good, lots of it traumatic, all of it teaching me that while it’s true that I don’t have to lead an obvious life, it’s also true that I have to articulate (to myself) what I want. I can drive the creation of my own future, but not if I’m just wandering.
I’ve always been a bit envious of people who knew exactly what they wanted from life. But lately I find I can close my eyes and picture the map of my future. I can add shading and details where before even the boundary between the land and the ocean was fuzzy. I’m all out of envy, because I too know where I’m going.
The one thing I had to do today was go and collect a barrel that my mom shipped to me via sea freight. This is very exciting because said barrel contains goodies like clothes I ordered online in August, hanging shelves for my closet, the rest of my flip flops, Bean’s train set, Bean’s books, my garlic press and obscenely large cast iron skillet, without which I cannot make perfect pizza, my new prescription sunglasses and a whole bunch of other desperately missed things that didn’t fit in my suitcase in July.
But on the way to town, the guy sitting next to me got off at the Carenage, and after he passed my seat he put down the folding seat, the one that blocks the aisle and people use when the bus is full. There’s a metal rod on the bottom, and my toe was caught, hard, between it and the floor. At that moment, I happened to be deep in thought about how I was going to be a good girl with the customs agent at the shipping warehouse, because these things can go smoothly or they can be difficult and it’s really up to me and my tone. So I was already a little wound up.
The blow to my toe hurt so much I screamed “fuck me” and then burst into tears, but then didn’t let myself cry because Bean was there and seriously, Mommy.
So instead of collecting my barrel, I took some deep breaths, then went to the market and got some gorgeous avocados. Now I’m home, and medicated. I’ll get the barrel tomorrow.
I won’t, even though I probably should, mostly because I just plain don’t want to.
But I’m seriously disgusted. It has come to my attention that people who can’t even be bothered to talk to me when they see me in face-to-face are compulsive readers of my Tumblr who take personal information I share, twist it into something not even remotely resembling the truth, and then gleefully spread that “news” all over the island.
I’ve always known that blogging about my life would open me up to this sort of fuckery, and this is not the first time I’ve been attacked because of something I wrote online. I also find that said fuckery is a necessary evil that’s totally outweighed by all the things I love about the internet. So I’m going to suck it up and move on, skewing my posts toward funny stories about Bean and photos of sunsets for a while, and not share my more serious/personal stuff until the day/if when I again feel comfortable with that.
What *is* different about this particular wave of nasty gossip is that the starting point is a person I consider a friend. And to that person, I have only one thing to say:
Trying to mess up my life is not going to improve yours, honey.
1. How I gained some weight during the year I wasn’t in Grenada. I’ve been back for two months now, and it’s still the very first thing people comment on when they see me. It’s stressing me out so much that I hid in my apartment for four weeks, avoiding people. I’ve lost ten pounds since I got here, but no one mentions that. I’m not writing about it.
2. How last year I went through some really awful emotional abuse from my family. Now that I’ve gotten some distance from them, I’m actually thinking about it more, and I don’t want that, because there’s nothing to do except get over it. (I talked to them about it, which only led to specific explanations re: why I deserve to be treated like shit.) I’m not writing about it.
3. Bean’s father is a jerk. This is not a surprise, nor is it something I can’t handle. But still. I’m not writing about it.
4. I’m lonely. I want to have dirty martinis with my girlfriends, get tipsy and talk about how much we love each other. I’m not writing about it.
5. My book, which was almost finished in May, has floundered. I don’t have the physical or emotional space I need to focus on it. I’m worried I’ll never get it together, and that if I do, it’ll be trite and boring. I’m most certainly not writing about it.
6. I stopped taking Wellbutrin back in May. I don’t feel awful without it, but I know I’d feel better with it, but I can’t afford to fill the prescriptions here. I’m not writing about it.
7. There’s a broken pipe in my head. It’s spewing words, and in order to avoid a flood, I had to shut the whole system down. I’m definitely not writing about THAT.
8. I’ve been sick off and on since I got to Grenada. I had two fevers, which were miserable, a cold, and I generally just feel shitty, probably because of the heat and how hard it is to stay hydrated. It makes it hard to keep up with Bean, and everything else. I’m not writing about it.
9. I haven’t had a real job in a long time, and I’m terrified that I’ll never be hired again. I’m kind of a loser, you know? Totally not writing about it.
10. I could use a hug, like a real hug. Maybe I’ll write about that. Then again, maybe I won’t.
I am wearing jeans, and now wet straight up to my nalgas.
I did this because Bean was trying to catch a ride on a fishing dinghy.
Also, dark denim is hot.
1. For two night in a row now, I’ve slept funny on my neck and woken up with a band of angry Sumerians in my right shoulder.
2. The Sumerians claim they’re from Çatal Hüyük, but that’s obviously a lie, because they have iPhones.
3. We’re at the beach.
4. Bean is in the water with his life-jacket and a responsible adult who is not me watching him.
5. Vodka and grapefruit juice since 10AM, because we have rules here in the Caribbean, yes, but they are different.
1. Never ever going to catch up, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
2. Wrote something longhand. It’s also long. Also.
3. In the beach bar nursing a Carib.
4. Bean is at a sleepover.
5. Two ponytails and I took this photo five minutes ago, but now it’s raining, and I love rain.
1. My email is full of fantabulous photos that Gary took of my family. This is one of my favorites. That’s my brother Bob, and he’s not really going to eat the chameleon. I think the chameleon knows that, because when the chameleon gets upset, the chameleon turns black, and here he’s still green, which tells me he’s not frightened.
2. I’m in a hotel in New Haven, CT. My cousin is getting married in a few hours. This wedding is the reason I’m still in the States. Marta’s like a sister to me. The last couple of months have been hard, but I’d do it all over again to be here today. It’s so worth it.
3. Her almost-husband is a guy from Tanzania named Gwaki. He’s unspeakably awesome. He has lived in the U.S. since he was 12. He hates my Macbook but other than that he’s perfect.
4. Last night at the rehearsal dinner I met one of his uncles, who still lives in Tanzania. He’s currently working on translating a history of his tribe, written by one of *his* uncles. His English is great and he’s getting the work done, but whenever he finishes a chapter he rereads it and finds that it just doesn’t quite make sense. I explained to him that this is because translation is not just a mechanical process. You can do a perfectly fine job of translating the words and somehow not just get the meaning right, especially when you’re working on a history, a text full of nuanced statements pregnant with emotions from the past. Translation, I said, is best done by those who are themselves writers. So he asked me, what should he do? Should he stop his work and study writing? I laughed. Gave him my email address. Extracted from him a promise to email me his chapters. Told him I think I can help him, and that I’d love to be a part of immortalizing the history of his tribe.
5. I called Bean’s father this morning. He’s picking us up at the airport. It’s going to be wonderful to see him. (For the first time since March of 2009. Exclamation point.)
6. I made you a mixtape, I just need to figure out how to post it.
7. My brother and Bean got matching haircuts. Bean is going to be the cutest Ring Bear of all time.
8. My uncle from Hawaii is, at this very moment, catnapping on the floor of my hotel room - the one with the light switch on the ceiling of the bathroom, yeah. He’s waiting for me to finish this post so we can talk about the book he wants me to write about my grandmother. Like, the family wants to pay me to do this, you guys.
9. I was told there would be no math. Srsly. I’m notoriously terrible at estimating what my own time is worth. But I like this idea, and so I’mma do my best.
10. My next post will be made from Grenada.
