There is no inverted country

this is why I never tell people about my dreams

2009-12-19T23:41:07Z

For years I've dreamed about elevators and they're usually nightmares. I can't remember what came first -- the dreams, or my high school physics teacher's revelations about what to do if the elevator breaks its cable and falls. (Nothing. Gravity wins that round. You're screwed.) In college I studied more physics but found no more answers, except for the fact that I suck at high level calculus. So gravity won that one, too, pulling me inexorably toward what has true weight for me: words. (Gravity always wins.)

But in my nightmares I'm moving upwards. My elevators move in fits and starts. They trap me between floors. They dart from side to side. They compress inwards. They shoot upwards without walls. They compell me to step across the gap. They are precarious and unmaintained. They are hand-cranked. Their mechanics never make any sense. All I know is that they frighten me. When I am in them I feel detached from my physical environment. I am numb with fear.

They are usually in libraries.

Inevitably the book I need is on the fourteenth floor and the only way to get it is to embark on this upwards journey in an elevator that my dream logic knows is destined to fail, but I want that book so I swallow the terror and get on it anyways.

Last night I dreamed the dream again.

Now in real life I live in a building with an elevator. I've lived in elevator buildings before, but this one is different -- it's a 1930's era elevator, cramped, caged and lurching, with a door that swings open.

That could be the reason I've been dreaming the dream more often lately.

That could be the reason, but it isn't.

possession and belonging

2009-12-19T23:36:33Z

Yesterday we shopped at Strand Books, the hugest bookstore ever, maybe except for that one in Portland that I haven't been to in the longest time. I found books for people I like. I'm excited about all the books I bought. I'm always excited about all the books I buy, but it's the kind of happiness that never gets old. We ate at that cafe nearby with a name in French that I can't remember or at least I can't spell; I like table service for coffee because it reminds me of being in Eastern Europe (the bored waiters, the tiny cups of sweet espresso, the little receipt that comes curled in a shot glass with the drinks). I like warm coffee shops on cold days.

We walked through Washington Square Park and there was a man covered in pigeons, sitting on the bench with pigeons perched on his shoulders and around his feet, and I missed my brother because I knew what he'd say. He wasn't there so I said it for him. (Look at this guy, like he's Johnny Pigeon Tamer or something? Yeah right, ain't no Johnny Pigeon Tamer. Not once, not never.) It's hard to explain why that makes me laugh so much. The sun was shining and it was cold but I'm used to that now. It was impossible not to be filled with joy.

Later, riding home alone on the subway with my bags of books. Two guys next to me mocking the advertisement posted across from us, which featured lots of unlikely text speak in floating speech bubbles. I eavesdropped on their jokes and they made me laugh. A subway performer got on the train and started playing guitar and singing "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" into a microphone which he had somehow attached to his neck. He was surprisingly good. Everyone listened.

And I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are so many moments where I belong exactly in the place that I am.

Oh, also, it's snowing.

future city

2009-12-06T19:15:27Z

For the longest time I've been obsessed with cities. I can't remember when it began -- when I read Invisible Cities, or sometime long before that? For me cities have always held magic. Cities both real and imaginary, visible and unseen, past and future. For me fantasy is always about place and cities are the locus of longing and desire, tragedy and dissapointment. Seattle. New York. Atlanta. Veniss. Ambergris. Savannah. Viriconium. Prague. Belgrade. Chiba City and the Sprawl. Perta Perdida, the city of Lost Girls. New Manhattan/Noir Manhattan, the city in Black and White. New Crobuzon. Chicago. Athens. Philadelphia. I've seen these cities in my dreams. I've walked through their streets, tasted their food, smelled their complications, seen the fleeting expressions of passersby with all the past and present they hold.

I'm working on two novels that are both essentially about cities. I've read about the modernists, pursued Le Corbusier, marveled at Alma Mahler. I've worked my way through treatises. There is still so much left that I have to learn. I feel that the research could be endless.

I found a short story anthology from the 70s at PhilCon, part of my epic trawling of the dollar paperback dealer's booth. It's called Future City. Dystopian stories that explored and pursued all their fears and nightmares of everything the future held, cities the locus of anxiety and dread, overpopulation, hunger, energy shortages, fascism, racial strife. Sometimes I read for meaning and sometimes I read for laughs. It was better than I thought it would be. I'll read it again.

I ruined it, partially. I put a soaking wet sweater in my bag, after a series of unfortunate events that could only happen in a city (and a city like this one). I forgot the book was in there. It got wet, and it dried again, but it will never be the same. That's OK. Neither will I.

I chose my college for the city: Atlanta. And stayed there for the longest time. But I outgrew it and I became dissapointed in it and I never explored it as fully as I should have and with every year it seemed more commercial and more corporate, lacking in character, lacking in meaning, lacking in depth somehow, like it was full of cardboard cut outs and magazine avertisements of the way a city should be, with nothing underneath.

Now, New York City. Maybe the greatest city in the world. It's up there, anyway. I met people all over Europe who said "New york is not America, it's the world." They kept saying the same thing. A world city. It feels like that. It tastes like that. It smells like that. I love it with all my heart, but I don't understand it. I feel like maybe I never could.

I love living in Brooklyn. I love the people, how kind and friendly strangers are all the time, when they're not sexually harrassing me, anyway. I love dollar stores and bodegas and tiny super markets, I love the subways, I love brownstones and towering brick. I love noisy construction. I love being close to so many fascinating, funny, smart and beautiful people that I enjoy talking to so much. I love those awful Chinese fastfood places, even though I will never eat at one, ever. I love my new apartment. I love vegan restaurants. And I even love walking through the cold and the rain and the snow, because it makes everything feel so real and it makes it that much more wonderful to get to where I'm going. I tried to explain it-- these moments of abject misery, frustration and fleeting despair that New York creates through its uncomfortable, tangled, massive presence, they make the peaceful, happy, beautiful moments feel like perfection. It's the sour and the sweet. I wouldn't trade these moments of blissful contentment for anything.

There are so many cities that I want to explore, but I think I would be content to know and understand just this one.

incredible days

2009-12-05T15:30:00Z

We watched Pi. From the opening credits, I was back there again. Clint Mansell's music a time machine, back to the year when I watched that movie obsessively, again and again. I was a freshman in college. I was sixteen years old.

We watched and I was startled to hear language that has become a part of my internal vernacular (12:50 -- press return... what's the answer?), the soundtrack that wormed its way into my subconscious as I listened to it and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. (I still have the novel I wrote that year, but I'll never do anything with it. It's the one thing I'm truly proud of.) How I wish I could return, if only for a day, to those wild yearning nights full of tragedy and wonder, full of lying on floors in dark rooms listening to music and watching films. I could sit in the library on the fifth floor and gaze down at the small world below, reading and reading. Spend my nights in the lonely observatory at the very top of the math and science building, and watch the stars with the astronomy researchers, peer through the telescope to see Jupiter and its four visible moons. Hear Amy Lee for the first time and feel my world re-orient itself. Go on all the walks with that boy with freckles, talking philosophy and talking poems and talking future and talking past and discovering that compassion works, too, and honesty is possible though not easy. Work & wrestle my way through physics and calculus problems, story ideas scribbled in the margins of the notebook paper. That's what it was, that year -- and of course, always returning to my small room, to my story, to my music. That soundtrack. That story, of a girl who feels too much, and a girl who can't feel at all, and the human boy caught in between them; that story of chemicals and silicon. I wish I could reclaim that story, too.

Seven years.

We watched Pi, but it was different this time, too. I recognized New York, the subways and the street corners. Every underground scene characterized by the gritty familiarity of a place I've been, a place that's worked its way into my subconscious too (I could see those tunnels in my dreams). I know those tunnels now and I took them home, reveling in the contentment of good conversation and beautiful views and delicious cake, marveling at how unexpected and wonderful everything can be.

Every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is look out my window. I look to remember. I look to remind myself. I'm here in New York. Sometimes I can hardly believe that I've come so far.

Now, in my new aparment, my window looks out at the fire escape and my field of vision is filled by a ladder rising upwards, rickety and rusted, just like the one that filled my dreams, that ladder rising endlessly up into the vivid blue sky. I told myself I would climb that ladder one day, but now I know that I'm already climbing. I'll climb it forever. There's no where else to go.

sensory

2009-12-04T16:51:17Z

The smell of Puerto Rican food always reminds me of that July in Williamsburg...

I miss the summer time.

choreography

2009-12-02T14:08:03Z

Last night I dreamed about everyone I know...

a mirror is a complex weapon

2009-12-01T01:40:10Z

Here's the truth.

Fantasy is nothing

but another word for tragedy.

There's never been magic in this world.

We conceive and scheme and dream

but whatever exists becomes banal.

Only the impossible is worth our prayers.

Gods that speak become our friends,

no longer worth fearing.

Lovers that answer are lost to us, too.

Utopia will never transform a city.

The world beyond the mirror's edge

is ever & only a reflection of ours.

There is no inverted country.

And if there is,

you won't find redemption there:

our twinned selves wander, lost as we are.

(Except for you & me. That's epiphany.
That's sweetness. That's the bliss.)

After all this time

can you taste when I lie?

hell, i still love you

2009-11-28T14:57:04Z

Thanksgiving was a wonderful day. I was dreading it, almost in denial about its existence -- the first one away from everyone, those people I love all so many states south. I ignored it until the last moment but then everything came together beautifully. This seems to be happening to me a lot lately.

My friend was having a vegetarian/vegan potluck at her house, a huge brownstone in Bed Stuy where 14 people live in a co-op. My stove is broken, so I went early to her house, bearing bags of groceries and the will to compose feasts. And compose a feast we did, with lots of people in this huge kitchen stumbling over one another, a giant table covered with dishes and cutting boards and ingredients and partially-composed dishes. It was so satisfying and peaceful to be around a bunch of other vegetarians and vegans. Everyone was aware and concerned of each other's dietary choices, but the restrictions posed no obstacles or complicated issues. It was cheerful and celebratory. There's something so comforting about lots of people gathering together to cook a celebratory meal together, each contributing their favorites.

After the feast we made a bonfire in the backyard and sat around in the wet leaves under the bare trees and drank wine and talked and laughed and stared into the flames. There's a primal attraction to fires. Around them people become sleepy, comfortable, ready to talk. It's this tremendous power that appeals to our ancestral memory. That makes me happy.

So it was a lovely day full of delicious food and merry drinking and flickering flames and good conversation with new friends. I've been up and down about New York a lot recently, but that was a good day and somehow I feel like it could only happen here. I'm still content.

sigh

2009-11-26T05:24:15Z

"...the city is good and the city is merciful, because it has given us, in its justice and wisdom, the opportunity to do without penalty exactly all of those things that we must in order to bear it."

flying

2009-11-21T20:31:16Z

1. Flying with Delta

They're always late, their snacks suck, and their flight attendants wear ugly outfits. But at least everyone on the plane tends to be polite about it, since half of them are always from the South. Getting on and off the plane, everyone's all "Excuse me" and "You first ma'am" and "Can I help you with that bag?"

2. Flying with a big bag

I've been living out of the same slightly-larger-than-carry-on-sized bag for five weeks now. (Although I cheated since I stopped at Goodwill in Charlotte and found some new things.) I have walked through so many airports. Without fail, someone -- usually a middle-aged man -- remarks "That big is bigger than you are!" [girl, little lady, sweetheart, etc]. OK! I fucking get it! I'm small. My bag isn't. Yesterday, my response to this remark was to roll my eyes and say "Never heard that one before," proving once and for all that traveling makes me far more misanthropic than usual. (Which is why I need the Southern manners on Delta flights to keep me in check.)

3. Flying in general

I am so sick of traveling. I went to bed Thursday dreading the next day so much. In the morning I woke up, the sun was shining, I felt OK, I thought: maybe this won't be so bad! Of course, my first flight was delayed, I missed my connecting flight, I was booked on a second connecting flight, and that one was delayed too, and etc. Moral of the story: never go into anything you don't want to do saying "this won't be so bad," the universe loves to mock you.

I just want to go home for a while. I don't really care where that is, as long as I can stay.

concertina

2009-11-19T14:23:50Z

I feel like I'm on the verge of a creative breakthrough, but all the best ideas are bottle-necking.

I hate that feeling.

days of miracles and wonders

2009-11-15T14:39:40Z

I'm in Charlotte. My sister and I planned our trips so we could come back at the same time. My three brothers, my littlest sister, all here too. The result: insanity, chaos, wonderfulness, fun, celebration, brawling, and as always, delicious food.

We went to the thrift store to sift through bins and bins full of horrible clothing and racks of paperbacks, but treasures reward the patient -- we walked out with several huge garbage bags full of stuff for about thirty dollars total. I have vintage dresses. I have books.

We cooked a vegan tex-mex feast for everyone -- enchiladas with "cheesy" potatoes, peppers and onions. Refried black beans. Guacamole. We had to make a special trip to the one store in Charlotte where we know to get dairy-free "dairy" products, but it was worth it.

We watched my little sister's team get trounced in her first basketball game, sitting in the stands and planning the two family restaurants we'll be opening one day. The girls' restaurant? "Sprout." The boys' restaurant? "Fatt Scrubb's." Details forthcoming as necessary.

We walked to the park and played on the swings and ran through the grass and walked back through our neighborhood as the sun was setting, and the sunset was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen: pink and red spread across the sky, the silhouettes of the houses dark outlines against the horizon as it faded into pastels.

We went to Red Robin, a childhood favorite from a rural past where it was the only restaurant around. I still love Red Robin, even though I don't drink Shirley Temples anymore and I'm way too old for the balloon on the chair.

But that's just part of it. The other part is the jokes that only we understand, the shamelessness with which we venture out into public, shocking and terrifying everyone in our path. The other part is staying up too late until we can't take it anymore, then passing out spread-eagled, fully-dressed wherever we can find a spot to drop.

How could we not be egomaniacs? When the six of us are together, we need nothing and no one else. We fit together with a perfect symmetry. We're the tribe who can conquer any new frontier. The farther we go, the more evident it becomes: nothing else can make us this happy, and this is the only place we really belong. Everyone else comes and goes. Everyone else is temporary. Family lasts forever.

I'm happy. This isn't neccesarily the place I want to be, although after the stress of the last few days in New York, it's awfully nice to be here in this comforting place (where there are so many trees and they're all more colors than you can possibly imagine, and the sky is still big enough for sunsets, and the road stretches far ahead in front of us, empty). This isn't neccesarily the place I want to be, but I'm so happy that it's the place I come back to.

oh, and I remember something you once told me

and I'll be damned if it did not come true

twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down

And they all led me straight back home to you.

20,000 roads i went down

2009-11-13T13:33:07Z

Impossible to describe how I feel about this, but here it is, anyway:

Done with November, the whole kit and caboodle, all of it

2009-11-13T03:05:34Z

Today I wrote a song. Here's part of it:

Just another rainy ass day in Broooklyn.

Life sucks.

Here I am,

walking through the rain

with all my bags

Coulda seen this one coming

It's pretty ironic

but only in the Alanas Morisette

kinda way

while it sucks

its also kinda expected

which is not what ironic means

Just another miserable day in Brooooklyn.

Life sucks.

I think it's pretty good.

I also wrote a slam poem:

I saw 3/4 of a pizza with tomato and green peppers and lots of cheese sitting in the rain with water pooling in the middle. I was thinking, I am kinda like that pizza. I used to be all hot and desirable, but now I'm all sad and soggy and nobody wants me, in fact I bet I kind of make them gag a little in the back of their throats when they look at me. I relate to you pizza. I wish we could be friends. But even I think you're gross.

If I'd have known before how good I am at song writing and slam poetry writing I never woulda wasted so much time on that whole "fiction writing" thing. SONGS AND POEMS ARE WHERE IT'S AT.

I don't think I've ever hated November as much as I did today, but that's my fault. I shoulda bought a winter coat.

for all the toasts

2009-11-09T13:51:59Z

Here's the new blessing I want to bestow on everyone I meet: May you always be sad to leave, and happy to return.
I'm lucky enough to say it's true.

strobe lights & blown speakers

2009-11-08T16:38:47Z

All wonderful things come to an end, of course, which is what makes them so wonderful -- fantasy lives on because we learn to let it go and not look too closely. We watched The Prestige last night, a film I still adore, I want to take it apart and put it together again so many times. I feel like it's perfect, even though that's a dangerous thing to say about anything. We went to Roka, our favorite restaurant, and ate lunch to celebrate -- hummus, dolmas, haloumi, french fries, eggplant, bread, wine. I'm going to miss the food here, but it's for the best. Last night, we walked to see the sunset but it was all obscured behind the clouds, all we saw was the dimming light against the orange streaks. The ocean's beautiful any time of day or night in any light. It's hard to take all this beauty, for long, I've found -- the breathtaking becomes commonplace too quickly. I don't want it to be like that, which is why I always want to be on the way to somewhere else. It makes you see. A boy sang a beautiful song with so much soul that I could hardly breathe, and for days that was all I heard in the silence. I'll spend the rest of my life wanting to hear that song again, but the moments are always fleeting and impossible. "We conceive and scheme and dream, but whatever exists becomes banal. Only the impossible is worth our prayers." Fantasy is about longing and desire is the only magic left. I try to be OK with that. I miss my family, I miss my city, and I'm coming home.

I think more than I want to think
I do things I never should do
I drink much more than I ought to drink
Because it brings me back you...

20,000 roads i went down

2009-11-07T10:09:16Z

another early morning adventure

2009-11-04T11:05:54Z

Woken up at 6:30 a.m. for yet another early-morning adventure, still wearing all my clothes, true Boskovich style. I was too tired to live. I kept curling up and trying to go back to sleep, the way my brothers used to do when I was trying to get them ready for school.

We hiked down the epic staircase to the bay, where the boats dock. It was sunny, chilly, windy, the breeze whipping hair everywhere and cutting through clothes. The water in the bay was very clear, and miniscule jellyfish floated in the water. Stray dogs nosed around, waiting to see what we would do next.

We were headed to a small island nearby. It was decided that while we were on this other island, no one would speak. A group observation of No Talking Tuesday. I was too tired to say anything anyway, so it worked fine for me.

We took a small ferry boat to the nearby island, called Thirassias. It's a short ride, fifteen minutes or so. Once our feet touched the ground on the other side, no one said anything. We paid for the ferry, got on a bus, went partway up the hill. The bus dropped us off and we hiked the rest of the way up to the top of the island. We walked along a deserted gravel road for a long time, empty hills stretching away, terraced fields with rock walls and dry hillside. Finally we reached our destination: the abandoned monastery. Lost in my thoughts and the silence and my semi-lucid state, I felt very open and receptive to the inspiration of the environment. I had some ideas. We explored the monastery. I stretched out on a flat roof area and tried to go back to sleep, but the wind was too cold. There a Greek couple there, too. The man kept shouting in Greek, as if he was telling offhis wife, but also gesturing around him, as if he was talking about the monastery, so I remain utterly confused as to what they were discussing.

We made the trek down the hill, onto the bus, onto the ferry boat, stopping for a long time to play in this abandoned playground: swinging on the swings, riding the merry-go-round. On the way home, the water was choppy. A storm was blowing in, bringing rain later in the day. All last night the wind blew and blew, rattling the shutters and whistling in the cracks and tunnels. But today is sunny and beautiful, the prettiest day there's been in a while. Two girls are leaving today, and we're all sad about it. It's not going to be the same without them.

You write such pretty words

but life's no storybook

love's an excuse to get hurt

and to hurt

why i miss my brothers

2009-11-02T20:42:56Z

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
and all I remember
is thinking
I wanna be like them

Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
and it's no coincidence that I've come

maybe we're crazy
probably

sea change

2009-11-02T09:26:17Z

On a small island things change overnight. A cold wind blew in, bringing with it the feeling of winter. Now a chilly mist hangs in the air and the wind rattles the doors and shutters. Night came early yesterday, darkness falling across the overcast sky. The other shops are closing for the winter. I went to the small shop a couple doors down to buy a candy bar and found it shuttered and chained. After about 2 pm yesterday not a single customer came in; eventually we closed the door to keep in the warmth and watched a movie on our projector screen. There was a feeling of hibernation.

This feeling makes me miss home, where winter is more positively defined. Maybe it was Halloween, maybe it was November -- I was homesick all weekend, longing for a winter that feels familiar. This one feels like nothing but abandonment, isolation, an ending of something but not a beginning. I want to sit in a warm house and watch the cold rain fall outside, eat dinner in a brightly lit window with the darkness out there, walk down the street bundled in coats and scarves, and sleep late through the chilly mornings, staying in bed to keep warm. I want to walk through the city streets still full of people, looking inside the windows, marveling at the brilliant displays, entering the revolving doors to a blast of dry warmth.

In 8 days I'll be back in New York. In 10 days I'll be back in Charlotte. In 15 days I'll be back in New York again.

One day not so long ago I said I would only be happy if I was always on the way to somewhere else. I am happy now, but I miss my lover and I miss my cats and I miss the feeling of home.

eyes that burn so bright they make me pure

2009-11-01T00:55:30Z

It's three hours into November 1st. I've written 584 words on my novel. I'm listening to Bright Eyes. I miss all the places I've been and all the people I love. Life is predictable, but beautiful.

happiness

2009-10-31T12:29:49Z

Last night the six of us went to dinner at the house of a local fisherman named Petros. We set out around 9:30 -- dinner time in Greece -- and made our way through the dark streets of the village. (Always a harrowing experience. With stray dogs running wild, you never know what you might step in.) Soon, we turned off into a side path and began descending an epic staircase built into the cliff side. Being a fisherman, of course he lives at the water's edge, while our bookshop is in the heart of Oia at the top of the hill.

We arrived at his house and there was an absolutely amazing spread of food on the table: five different seafood dishes (all fresh caught by Petros himself), roasted chicken with potatoes and eggplant, rice, vegetables, cheese, olives, garlic dip, bread... incredible. (We later found out that he also runs a restaurant during tourist season. The meal was definitely better than most restaurant meals I've had around here. In fact it was the best meal I can remember eating in quite a while.) We heaped our plates and mounted the stairs to the dining room upstairs. Of course, there was wine -- white and red to begin, then later a sweet red wine that's local to the island, and a strong liquor made from currants that's complex, sweet and spicy with a hint of black licorice. It burns going down and fills you with warmth. We opened the window, looking out on the bay ... fishing boats floated in the dark, moonlight shone on the water, the breeze cooled our faces.

Petros DJed, alternating between traditional Greek music and party hits from the eighties and nineties. We danced -- he demonstrated Greek dances and we broke it down American-style. We looked at his old photos, snapshots from the seventies and onwards. Fascinating. Like pictures of my parents when they were young and sexy and having a bang-up time wearing bizarre fashions. Except also in Greece.

When we were downstairs getting second helpings, one of the girls said "This is the kind of thing you always hope will happen, except usually it never does." I knew exactly what she meant.

While I was screwing around chatting online earlier in the evening, the other girls had prepared a delicious apple crumble to take to the meal, so we ate that too, proving once and for all the existence of the "dessert stomach."

Two of our crowd asked if they could go fishing with Petros sometime, and he offered to take them out that night. So they went. The rest of us worked on the dishes and watched from the open window -- the small boat bobbing in the bay, the three of them fumbling in the dark, illuminated by brief interludes of flashlight.

They returned with a net holding a number of small, sardine-like fish caught by their heads in the net. We sat on the living room floor and untangled the net and extricated each fish by hand, throwing them in a colander near by. It was wet and messy, but satisfying. It reminded me of my childhood. When we'd finished this time-consuming process, Petros fried up some of the fresh fish with olive oil and salt and lemon.

Then we made the epic journey up the 200 stairs, which was painful, but probably good for us considering the feast we'd just consumed.

I went to bed last night reveling in the feeling of pure and utter contentment.

November

2009-10-30T17:16:27Z

Against my better judgement, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I'm so excited, I can hardly wait.

politics

2009-10-28T07:02:57Z

What you wear is political. What you buy is political, and where you buy it. What you eat is political. Who you sleep with, and how, that's political too. Where you live is political. Everything is politics but somehow I still can't bring myself to read the news anymore.

My 15 year old brother is working on a year-long research project as part of his academic program. He's going to help a grad student at University of North Carolina-Charlotte with field research on an environmental science/climate change project. He's going to write some newsletters for their website about saving energy. When he told me last night, he was so excited and I was so proud of him that I couldn't stop smiling. I might have almost cried a little tear. :)

cold sea

2009-10-26T12:17:37Z

"We may be done with the past, but the past is not done with us." I still remember the first time I saw that line, and how it stilled me. I couldn't tell if I was being sentenced or released. Sentenced to a lifetime of remembering, or released from a lifetime of wondering when the past will stop. The answer: never. "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

Winterson. Faulkner. I'm finally taking on my own story once again, both farther and further from home than I've ever been. It makes sense that I could only begin while stranded between continents.

It makes sense that my story belongs to the South. You want to talk about past? Past, present, future, in the South it's all the same. Some scars never heal. Some fault lines go all the way to the core.

That's how we are, too. I figured that out when I was 16 years old. Another sentencing that felt like freedom: the simple knowledge that there are some traumas we'll never forget. I realized I could stop trying to free myself. I was already free. Damaged but unrestrained. Broken but unstoppable.

Here's what I want to do. I want to jump into the ocean, no matter how cold it is. Kate said it best: sometimes drowning is the only way forward. We've been talking about that cliff for a long time, you and I, but I'm the only one who will ever be brave enough to jump. That's the only knowledge that could give me the courage to say goodbye. Because it's a long way down to where the future lies.