Friday, October 18, 2013

The End

I am nothing more than a mirror pressed against the pulse of my universe. I write what the hours whisper to me and what I have copied out of a silent face. I plagiarize the hunkered down eyebrows of my neighbor and the whistle of the train. Everything I produce is recycled from the dumpster filled with all the moments worthless to our minds but buried in our souls. I don't deserve credit for what has happened here.

For the past 8 months, I have come here once a day (usually) to explore the endangered emotions we hide in the forest of our eyes. Every night, I cut back the foliage and bare the echoes of the day. People sing my praises and decorate my self-esteem with emoticons and abbreviations, but they can't always grasp the demons roaring inside me. They try to cut them loose or stab them tight, but the only kryptonite my worst moments can find is a few seconds spent typing on a blank template and a few more spent copying the link to everyone I know.

This blog has seen my heartbreak, my triumph, my anguish, my solitude, my boredom, my regret, and primarily the suppression of all of the above. I can cower behind an imposing vocabulary to sound like I know what I mean, but I gaze at you the next morning to find my antithesis. My metaphors float around like plastic bags over a magnetic ocean, dragging into themselves and towering at the edge of delirium. My thoughts seem alien when articulated, as if defined by an elderly scholar and not the magazine.

Today, I say goodbye to pretending that I can put two fingers to my neck and feel vibrations that spell out through my foggy spirit. I bid the hopes of a beaten-down, facade-ridden writer farewell with the sun. I cross myself out to reject myself from the solution set, because I no longer fit into the original equation: I have morphed into an extraneous root. Hopefully, those roots can grow upward until they break into a green melody until the light from above. Hopefully, this stalk will sprout blooms and they will ripen with heat. Hopefully, those drying petals will fall away cleanly, and die without ripping in half.

I will miss this blog like a part of my body, and I will lose my way without my literary compass of the night. And, through my tears, I say to you, with all my heart: Good night.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Loop

So I didn't go hiking. The depths of the universe seemed just a smidgeon too immense today, and I was absolutely fine with forgoing the saturated smears of a landscape seen from far away in favor of the pastel blue of the sky and freshly painted yellow leaves fallen on the path. Me, K2, and M wandered around the edge of the lake in search of old beginnings and a few profile pictures. We stopped at every new angle, trying to force the beauty of a face into a tiny metal box with the tap of a screen. The glamour spilled out into more than a hundred photographs, at least fifty of which were photobombed and one of which was taken by a befuddled English teacher on top of a small hill.

About a third of the way around, they spied a log extending into the mirrored water that had shed its blue for the bright hills and clouds it could imitate instead. "Come on!" urged M, scrambling down a sandy slope. "Oh, come on, Chloe, I can do it with a medical boot!" boasted K2. Her descent was more of a clambering one. Perching at the edge of apprehension, I observed the entire ordeal via my lens. It seemed much more distant and much less immediately tempting that way. Fortunately for me, I had a legitimate excuse when an unpopular global teacher cornered us seconds later with a report of dangerous activity at the shore.

When we reached the playground at the other end of the walk, after trekking full circle through the thin forest, we leaped across monkey bars and hanging rings and landed on a wooden ledge, comparing shots, surrounded by a cluster of Snicker-bar-types; that is, we were surrounded by those of my friends who I don't get to see enough but can't help immersing myself in once I do. That would be C2, S, E, I, the whole lot. I gave me a wraparound vacuum hug as I narrowed the choices down to a final three. It was well-needed (thanks I!), because though I had spent the day full to the brim with friendship, I had tripped in a few spots over the easygoing proposition of true friendship as I lost the meaning of inside jokes, or dropped out of the conversations about this year's homeroom. Oh well. I guess hunting down a profile picture would make anyone a little anxious.

Love you all.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

In Spirit

Once a year, the restless that have scratched at the barren walls of the fourth floor for months without stopping to breathe rush upstate and bask in the splendor of nature under a usually somewhat sunny sky. Picnic blankets litter the ground and suffocate the grass, but meanwhile kids are skipping around the lake, slapping a rubber ball with their foot as hard as possible, and climbing to the top of the mountain for a spectacular view. This is our Spirit Day. We bring lunch, we bring a camera, we bring a dollar for the ice cream, and not much else. We leave the weight of the physics exam behind between the concrete monsters of the city.

This year I'll be hiking that road with R and K3, intent upon reaching that blissful everything at the top. Colors will swirl beneath me like the work of a drug, toxic and mellifluous, beckoning me into their wake. If I can see the whole world, I can make sense of it and catalog it, stick it deep in a drawer and forget until reorganization. I can focus on the brightness in front of me. I can focus on the orb of promise held between the teeth of the god of the sun.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

No Trump Queen

Tonight I lost at the card game I learned when I was only a few years above swaddling level and still tended to suck on bottle tops too long and color outside of the lines. They taught me out of our local Starbucks over a Venti Macchiato and a copy of the Times, and we used the same old deck with the missing corners from a million and one shuffles too many. Stuck on a cycle of learning, losing, and forgetting, it often fled to the outer regions of my mind in those Kindergarten years, along with long division and the state capitals. Now, once again, I'm on my downward streak. It's round 8 and my score is 29 out of a possible 126. Great Grandma Janet would be ashamed.

After a misunderstanding about a key and a long drive north, we ransacked her old apartment, scavenging for good value with our appraisal sheet and eye for color. We were supposed to mark everything we wanted off a long list printed in black and white, covered in dollar signs and numerals. Janet had been reduced to investments and dividends in a matter of months. As the others toured each familiar room like a haunted gallery, I opened every cabinet and peered inside, hoping to find a glimpse of the old woman who had left her breath on everything there. I found: a beautiful watch with a missing silver panel, ticking away with purpose, and two trophies. One was from Great Grandpa George, a certificate of his entry in an encyclopedia. The second was a small plastic sculpture of a hand holding a royal flush. "No Trump Queen - Janet." I asked if I could keep them, because they weren't on the sheet. So I took them home in a box and left them in the box and put the box under my bed until my furniture was delivered in a few days. I put her magic mastermind under the bed, and I put her skill with a deck under the bed, and as of Round 8 tonight, I lost everything there is to lose between a two of clubs and the coveted spade ace.

Monday, October 14, 2013

The Tap On The Head

My paternal grandmother has a long history of shakily snatching bits of food across the table and hoarding them on the edge of her plate like jewels, and then forgetting to put the cloth napkin on the table before she wheels away. But we love her, and she's just so sweet, and she always pays, so we end up dining together several times a month. Another habit: She finds the most delectable things to be the ones that have experienced the least exposure to sunshine and happiness, internal organs piled high in Italian pottery. We've seen it all come out from behind the black and white kitchen curtain, from oozing tripe dotted with dainty mushrooms to steaming elk smothered in a heavy sauce the color of the bottoms of my feet. Not tonight. Not tonight. It was not going to happen tonight without a fight.

The date itself posed some significant challenges to our shtick: It was a Monday, a holiday, and fifteen minutes before departure, so almost every reservation had been shuttered away and tending to the fire for days. We scrolled through dozens of Yelp entries, flipped past hundreds of Zagat blurbs, and skimmed the sleek website of the local slice pizzeria my grandma had suggested. (It had taken me long enough to get my mascara to work that I shot my mom a simmering warning shake of my head.) Eventually, we unearthed a local pasta treasure a couple seconds away, so we stuffed our heads inside our car, and held our noses in combat with the paint odor until we reached the door.

Unfortunately, my grandmother got stuck on the end of the conversation with nothing but her tap water and a dirty bowl of marinara sauce for company. I blissfully reconnected with my cousin, discussing everything from crazy science teachers to puppy photography to her recent life-threatening accident that removed her sense of smell, until I felt a small tap on my shoulder, near the base of my aching neck. I turned to Grandma, who had donned all black with a glowing garnet pendant as an accent piece and still looked colorful. She clutched my elbow intently and through her blinking eyes in the dim light, she smiled at me. It was then that I remembered just why we live so close to her, visit her all the time, never miss a birthday or holiday without dropping an oddly timed line. "Hi, Grandma," I smiled past the spaghetti. And I missed Great Grandma with what space was left in my stomach, and with all of my soul.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Captured

Photo walk. We walked around every undiscovered corner of our little neighborhood until the fading Hebrew awnings blended into one another and the graffiti on the walls collapsed into a heap of paint at our feet, and we imprisoned every moment into our phones, refusing to let them out of our retinas. In number 18, a woman boards a bicycle, donning her printed windbreaker with a sigh. In number 24, a man and his son fall off their skateboards, breaking their fall with one arm and clutching their yarmolkes with the other. In number 27, my own father pierces the lens, surrounded by a spectrum of spray paint over a dirty garage door a few blocks over. These are the pieces of our world.

And he, my own father, agreed to trek across the railroad tracks and through the superstore in search of the fragmented reality I haven't found in my bed watching Netflix. He agreed to sift through my inspiration, even in the face of insanity and, let's admit it, 10% colorblindness to his 4. He even managed to keep our dialogue blank and bubbly, like the expensive champagne brands that make everyone seem to laugh. We only argued once, about the appropriate distance to scurry into a six-lane avenue in search of a late bus. And twice, about the photograph emblazoned with a single word printed onto a sheet of old card stock: WOW! (That was the one I liked, and he found too ordinary. Strange. Usually I'm the one who can't see I've already squeezed enough magic out of my wizardly father to paint my name across the side of a building, in memorial of a mystical day.)

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sky With Diamonds

J's hair is an array of camouflage against the urban extravagance, the electricity of autumn bustle; specifically, the tips of her ebony hair went from black to white to blue and ended up every color of the mirror reflected in the shadows of her clothes. The contours of her black sweatshirt, black tights, combat boots look somehow straighter, as though she has sacrificed the youth of costume jewelry with its round edges in favor of a princess cut diamond, chopped away to remove the princess part. She is every bit the modern, artsy city girl. (In the car, she began to sing in Japanese to the skids of drunk drivers on every side of the intersection.)

She should be sunken! Recently, J condemned herself to my old school until college, refusing to accept the cards dealt to her as a brilliant young woman, refusing to take a test that threatened her safety net. After all, if she got into a specialized school, she is convinced she'd crack in a few seconds. If she didn't get in, it would only take one. She should be sunken! The layers of soft feathers cushioning her from her fear are as warm and deceiving as ever, even as the temperature melts into freezing. As Marianne Williamson once said, "Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." There's something trapped inside my best friend, perhaps in a strangled binary, that is clawing at her uvula and gasping for light. There's something inside her that could destroy or save the world with a single chord of her electric guitar, with a single sweep of her charcoal pencil, with a single flip of her feet up and away over her head. She should be sunken! Because if she was sunken, she'd be driven to release those perfect demons and change everything.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Southern Oil

Slice a verdantly green tomato into slices just thick enough to keep the sopping juice off the scarred white of the cutting board. Douse them in flour from a Ziploc bag in an empty drawer, egg wash the color of an Easter bunny, and bread crumbs crunchy like the dust of traditional bones. Toss them in fragrant deli oil and watch the pops of fire escape the wok like birds whamming into glass before bouncing back into their stride. Salt; pepper; devour.

These morsels of contradictions are familiar to Southern tongues accustomed to warmth, butter, and colorblindness on the table, but strangers to city children with cravings for tartare and filet mignon and experimental casarece served thrice-priced. We know only the front, the show, the facade of extravagance over a blank reality. What else could be lost along with an accent?

My father fried them up and laid them on a beautifully pretentious platter. I had five, the brown of dirt but the taste of the earth swallowing my mouth into a cultural void. So sure, I couldn't stand the endless sun, the political foolishness, the religious expectations. I can, however, certainly stand the content reality of those who don't know what they are missing; blessed are the clueless.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Commuters

There is, for every city commuter aboard an exhausted mean of public transport coated in urine and coffee, a person who you've seen every day for as long as you can remember, eavesdropped on with dim ears as they chattered away to their actual buddies while you wish you had something better to waste time at. You could spout out steam about their favorite colors, favorite shirts, romantic lives, best friends, opinions on the mayor... anything, really, is encapsulated or imposed open our fragrant glimpses of their wafting souls. My such fellow is a young boy at my school: purple, his plaid button-down, not applicable, none yet, and independent. Sometimes, I want to fling myself across the car and latch onto his shoulders, guide him through the station and out onto the streets, through exams and intricate essays, confusing maps and catastrophic pop quizzes; I want to make sure he doesn't end up looking at those oblique tracks as an escape for the stress.

I spotted him this afternoon, inadvertently dozing on the graffiti-smothered window a few seconds before our stop. Staring at his forehead, I mouthed fiercely, "Wake up kid, it's gonna be okay. I know those days when you're like a working ant and your brain shrinks and shrinks as your sleeping time shrivels up in the early sun, but it gets better. Stay awake. Stay awake." Suddenly, he popped forward and shook his head out, as if trying to jostle my words out of his head in defiance. But he woke up, and went home.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Creamed

Award-winning caramel ice cream studded with bits of butter cookie that melt in your mouth like ice in hot chamomile tea is the perfect thing to lift your spirits after one of those days when the tears keep dripping from between your lashes but you don't know why or what color of clear they are. (Gold for the heroic tears between skintight suits posing around bulging muscles? Black for the despair-ridden tears of people who've had their souls scooped out, like that ice cream, and devoured by the void? Pink for the pathetic tears of a ditz who can't take the strains that come with applying exactly three coats of eyeliner every morning?) The tears from the sweet cold dessert, dramatic though it may sound, were perfectly colorless, joyful and true.

The suspended test scores dangling just a few finger-stretches out of reach, the high notes of a sea shanty I'm supposed to lead with pounding gusto, and the empty space that dances around me as I move through my space devoid of communication all gushed out of me and I was filled with a profound contentment. Suddenly, it was pointless to drown in anxiety when falling in was only a choice.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Footprints

There were thunder gray taps of soot lining the bathtub like a winter coat, and there were whispery white taps of dust dotting the third floor like snowflakes. It's clear the filthiest versions of my kitten morsels, formerly colored burnt orange and ivory but now a deafening charcoal shade, have invades the pristinely renovated house and laid siege to the cleanliness as much brute/cute force as they can muster. We thought it was coming from a leaky dye on an old futon cover, we thought in was coming from the inside of the floor where inconveniences go to die, and then we thought it was a crevice behind the basement furnace as dirty as J3's jokes. Now, we aren't sure.

There's so much left to learn about this cavernous space, hollow in the absence of bookshelves and our electric piano. There are so many tiny nooks and secrets to wedge between. If we are lucky, before long every hardwood masterpiece, mirrored closet and painted mistake with be snuggled under a coat of fresh footprints, and we'll get sooty and dusty and deafening just to feel the sure exhilaration of using the brand new showerhead.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Mismatch

The pajama drawer of everyone's mirrored bureau, antique wooden chest, and/or plastic Ikea dressër is a hodgepodge of various baggy shirts, college sweatpants, and flannel mistakes. It's the spot where left socks go to hide, and it houses all of the lost thoughts that felt claustrophobic inside your cluttered head. I know I'm not alone in that exasperated feeling that sweeps my body of any remaining stamina when I fling it open only to find that the 1992 tee is moth-eaten and the fleece polka-pants are covered in the omnipresent orange cat fluff. After fifteen tedious hours of frantic character development, exhaustive readings on an Indian emperor no one with a life has time to analyze, and quick meals between musky subway rides along a rickety track, the least karma could do is present me with something halfway decent.

The nightmares of ambiguity always escape from the pajama drawer and haunt with sleep with ALMOST-softs and MAYBE-nonflammables, so close to the pinnacle of comfortwear and yet so far from the catalog images reserved for rich, suburban wives who know how to mix a mimosa. Sometimes I like to fade into the haze, and release the tense obsession with always looking right. And then again, I like to sleep. Good night, everyone. Better blog tomorrow.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Engrained

Why does my devilishly hilarious science teacher, the one who offers Swedish fish on a whim but denies that the orange arrow on the board is in fact orange, have to extend his insanity over the first tests on our permanent high school transcripts? I had to ask him four times before I understood that yes, everything in the textbook was testable even if we didn't go over it in class, and yes, that included the mind-numblingly exhaustive description of the safety precautions taken by most modern skydivers, and yes, each question was worth a minimum of seven points, no partial or extra credit. His smile was vicious and bloodthirsty.

It's enough that the morals and déjà vu have pilfered all the common sense I had left so that I'm always left feeling a bit confused. Now I have to remember the notes I never even took in the first place? It doesn't seem possible that some self-respecting teacher with checked button-downs and glasses - glasses! - would squeeze my dry brain for sustenance while I lie dead from anxiety. It all comes down to the number out of 100, the potential we present for physics in general... Apparently if anyone gets 100 the test was too easy. I guess that would make the end goal for this course chasing our tails until we come just high enough to fall the farthest.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Wiped Clean

Usually, when my computer's battery has trickled to a drought and the screen goes a bright black what hurts your eyes, I plug it into a crusted-over, three prong socket and annihilate the power button with my thumb until the whirring picks up and everything is back, as if revealed form behind a curtain. It doesn't matter. But today, something was missing: My day was completely devoid of pain, sorrow, panic, bright blackness like the dead screen. A nagging feeling enveloped me, and I knew I should just charge the stupid thing, this little silver box that now holds my legacy at school, but there were only a few crackers left on the plate, and they looked lonely against the porcelain. (Then again, to me, crackers always look lonely.) Anyway, as soon as the omnipresent buzz of the motor dimmed and the screen faded away, the familiar catch in my chest and rushing in my head activated. I threw my hands onto the bed, tucked my chin into the folds of my tee, and panted fervently.

The power button seemed colder than usual, and then it took longer than usual to load the start screen. No rainbow wheel, no sliding blue bar along the top of the hinge; just an apple perching in the center of a gray mass. To my horror, after five minutes of processing, the desktop popped up through the center of the virtual nothingness, blank and iconless. The essay I'd worked tirelessly on all day had run away from home. Life as always, then; devastation when I'm left all alone in my pajamas on a Saturday, absolutely devoid.

The Routine

It's always the same color soap in the bathroom when I wash my hands exactly five minutes before our reservation at the closest purveyor of the fancified internal organs that my grandmother craves each day. Then it's always the same confusion about how to get there: The silver car, inherited from Grandma and covered in craters? In the shop. The old, blue padded wheelchair that may or may not have brake broken like bones? In the back. And finally, as always, we decide to escort an 79 year old woman with an entire entourage of Macy's blouses and mid-price crystal and gem necklaces through the city streets on a snazzily red motorized scooter seat.

We arrive at the restaurant and there is tremendous brouhaha over where is the scooter going? Does it fit at the table? Can we park it outside? Where's the key? And I've memorized every answer, encrypted it onto my muscle memory. We slide into old chairs and pore over the same menu that's graced the paper-covered table for at least five years. Me: Beet salad. Smoked gouda macaroni and cheese. Chocolate tart. After the menus go away, the walls come down; pleasantries cower in fear as the traditional politics and awkwardness flood the space. We put up levees and arms in front of our face, but everyone ends up getting yet. But then. like always, we climb back around and into that startling scarlet seat and left the scene of the crime. I love her.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Silver Chain

I have a charm bracelet adorned with figurines of grandeur, one for each production I've partaken in since I discovered that when I step onto a stage, something inside me sparks hot and I melt into my "atman" or essential self. (Thanks for the vocabulary, Mr. P.) There's a dainty silver snowflake for the fifth grade play - I was overwhelmed with the small song I zipped through as "Snow Angel," the coveted number of every blonde, skinny-jean-wearing girl I had become accustomed to, and overtaken for once. There's a cupcake for the failed production I jumped into for a week in North Carolina as we rummaged through my grandmother's disintegrating family portraits and forgotten birthday gifts - I can still recall the way the thrift store's gray cloak felt on my tiny shoulders as I swept through the Southern dust and pretended to live on the city streets. Imagine that.

Currently, the charm bracelet is in a small tupperware with the two newest charms jangling beside it. The box is tucked behind a ruler and an oilcloth in a hodgepodge closet half an hour from here, muffled by the folds of my lost winter jacket, thrown over the whole mess. At some point, my mother will pry apart two links in the chain and slip the memories on. That's when they will cease to be the yesterday and become the once upon a time. Once upon a time, this life will read, there breathed a girl named Chloe. And eventually, she learned how to live.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Eye Baggage

The recommended amount of sleep for adolescents is between ten and eleven hours. Ha. Ha. I'm lucky to nab seven from the clock, hoarding its seconds away in the past like a toddler's old Halloween candy that tastes like rubber. Each morning, a blaring iPiano trill jostles me out of blissful ignorance. I typically set the five minute timer two or three times before hauling my bones from beneath the duvet and stumbling into some jeans and a t-shirt. Still wilting, I wade into the bathroom and attack my hair until it temporarily sits still, and then I produce a purple tube of mascara, a concealer stick, and some waxy lip balm from a box; once my eyelashes are properly extended, teeth brushed, and chapped lips battled to the death, it comes time to cover up the purple circles under my eyes with infinite layers of tan cream until they fade into the already somewhat mystical paleness of my skin.

Haplessly I glide through school, yawning periodically and yearning for the flannel sheets of new home. Occasionally I subtly cover my eyes with my hand to protect the purple from escaping and earning a reputation. And yes, I've heard many a tale of a three a.m. English paper and an all-night search for the perfect image of Haydn, but never noticed anyone else disguising their deficit. In fact, I haven't noticed anyone else's exhaustion at all. Maybe it's all in my head. Or maybe it's all in my dreams.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Devour

On Tuesday nights, when my mother has strapped on dancing shoes and waltzed sweepingly onto a rough-and-tumble gymnasium floor for our favorite weekly spectacle, my father (usually) buys two fillets of summer flounder dusted in breadcrumbs and herbs, a greenly envious zucchini or two and a their savory friends, and on occasion an award-winning brownie spotted with nuts or caramel to tantalize throughout the evening. Today, however, he arrived home with nothing but a heavy bag weighted with folders and files and old newspapers with coffee stains, and quickly prepped a tray of conglomerate cheese, vegetables, and penne. It filled four medium bowls and could have overflowed into a fifth if there hadn't been a bedtime to cut it off.

As I munched my way through the chunks of cauliflower, my health teacher's blonded voice wafted back to me: "At the end of the day, just see if our power nap today helped you feel more rested or not." We were guided through a love meditation focusing on water washing away the tension in our muscles. I was unable to drift into oblivion, eyes pried open by the terror at my audition tomorrow that ventures one whole step too high. But suddenly, my eyelids began to sag like old plastic bags in the hands of an old street woman and all of the pain rushed out of me at once. And they say that my blog is food for thought. Think you've got it backwards there, pal.