Rhena Writes

Tag: essay

  • To Bike or Not to Bike?

    It’s a sunny, 60ish day here just outside of our Nation’s Capitol: a perfect day for a short, easy bike ride up to my local library. I’ve recently fallen in love with my library as a space to write and read surrounded by books and people who, for the most part, seem to also be readers and writers. Mostly, I’ve been driving up there but a few times recently, I’ve enjoyed the ride. So after checking the weather forecast for this week, I’d earmarked today as a day to ride. I loaded up my lunch, my notebooks, and books into my panniers and set off, helmeted and ready for the two miles or so.

    I live right next to a very busy highway that varies from 6 to 8 lanes. The library is on the other side of this road so I have to cross it at some point to get there. Lately, I’ve been using an unmarked crosswalk without a signal. Early enough in the day, there’s been a long enough break in the traffic that it’s a very lowrisk crossing.

    I’d pulled over to rest on a curb and to wait for an opening in the traffic when I saw the markings on the asphalt on the roadway in front of me. Blue and orange spray painted circles dotted the intersection. They might as well have been hieroglyphics. I did not understand them. But I did know why they were there.

    On Sunday evening, driving back from a family visit, there was an unusual amount of traffic along our residential streets. I conjectured that something was going on one of the arterial roads that was pushing traffic onto these side streets. Sure enough, after I pulled into our driveway, I went out to the highway to see the blue and red lights of emergency vehicles circling around. Eventually, two neighbors passing by informed me that a driver had hit a pedestrian and the roads were closed.

    So here I was staring at the orange and blue circles that meant something specific to someone about the events of Sunday evening. All they meant to me as I sat on my bike waiting for an opening in the traffic was that a person had been hit along this road. Again.

    The police would report that it was a 13 year old girl attempting to cross the highway who was in critical condition at an area hospital. This information was repeated by local news outlets. However, I heard from a reliable source that a teenage boy (a student at the nearby high school) had been hit by a car on Sunday evening along the same highway. So either the victim was misidentified or two people were hit by drivers along the same highway the same night. As unlikely as it might be, the latter isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. In the last four months, drivers have hit three other people in a slightly more than one square mile area. All three were killed.

    On the side of this highway, waiting for a break in the traffic, I wonder whether the drivers are thinking about the young person who was struck at this intersection like I am. I know that crossing this road is the most dangerous part of my ride to the library. I consider walking my bike up to a marked crosswalk with a signal, but both of those are a distance to walk especially pushing a bike on the narrow sidewalks. And then I have to consider my ride back home.

    So I climb off my bike and turn it around. As I’m riding back to my house, I consider whether or not I should just drive up to the library. Even if it is safer, I don’t really want to be another driver on the road. I’m lucky. I have a nice, safe house with most of what I need (other than, of course, the community of people at the library). I don’t have to go anywhere and even though I really could use the exercise and fresh air and human interaction, I have to weigh those benefits against the stress of trying to walk or bike safely within this infrastructure built for cars.

    Here I am, back at my house, having chosen the “not to bike” option. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad and disappointed. How I’d rather be at sitting at the library seeing those increasingly familiar faces, writing about something more joyful than drivers killing and maiming people, my neighbors. But this is what’s on my heart. And it’s honest. So at least there’s that.

  • Myself.

    Daily writing prompt
    Who would you like to talk to soon?
    View all responses

    I wrote last week about three books about dreams and dreaming and an experience I had with learning more about myself and creative problem solving through my dreams.

    I’ve been writing down my dreams when I remember them. From time to time, I’ll think about what I want to dream about and remind myself to try to write them down after I turn out the light and as I’m falling asleep.

    I’ve wanted to lucid dream and I’ve tried a few practices towards that goal. A few times a day, I checked in to ask myself, “am I dreaming?” The goal here is to prime my brain to ask myself that question in a dream state. I also read that one way that people lucid dream is that they prime their brains to recognize that they are in a dream. Things are often “off” in dreams and if we can recognize that things are not quite right, then we can recognize that we are in a dream and assume control of the dream. As for the things that are commonly off in dream (apparently, according to what I read) is that dreamers are in buildings that no longer exist, they are conversing with people who had already died, or their hands aren’t quite right — they might have too many fingers or not enough or they might just look a bit wrong. (Apparently, hands are so complex that we have a hard time recalling them in all of their detail.)

    I often dream of my childhood home, which has since been torn down. I thought that this was the perfect way to get myself into lucid dreaming. And I tried to prime my brain to remember that when I see that home, it’s not real and therefore must be a dream. Several mornings, when I wrote down my dreams from the night before, I described dreaming of my childhood home followed by the question, “Why didn’t I recognize that was a dream???” I was getting a bit frustrated.

    So I set aside all of that. I didn’t really set aside the “goal” of lucid dreaming but, rather, I decided to trust that my mind was doing what it needed to do whilst dreaming regardless of whether I remembered or not and regardless of whether or not I knew I was dreaming. I still was writing down dreams when I remembered them, but I wasn’t letting it bother me when I didn’t. I was confident that I was still dreaming. I was confident that my mind was still doing what it needed to do to take care of me regardless of whether or not I could put the experiences into language.

    In other words, I let go.

    This letting go, this distinct feeling of ungrasping, this trust in myself …. all of that is central to what happened to me next.

    Last night, I dreamt that I was in the driveway of my home. There was a lot going on. Different people visiting, all these cars parked all over the place, more people arriving with camping chairs. I was getting progressively annoyed by all of this. In the dream, I was talking to a few people. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t really matter who these people are in waking life. They are all dream representations of different parts of my personality or different things on my mind. I was talking to one person and suddenly I looked up at my house. We renovated our house a few years ago but in the dream, the house looked like it did PRE renovation.

    I started to say that to the person I was talking to, “look, my house looks….” and then I’m pretty sure I gasped in the dream. “That means I’m dreaming!” I said. Even though I was dreaming I still said “excuse me” to the person I was talking to and then I launched myself into the air and started to fly.

    Especially when I was younger, I’d often have flying dreams, but they involved a fair amount of effort. And I was often flying to get away from something threatening. In this dream, it was completely effortless and exhilarating. I wasn’t trying to escape. I was simply being.

    In fact, I think that I was SO excited that my excitement woke me up.

    Dreams in general feel like I am speaking to myself. I’m having conversations with different parts of myself often towards getting to know them all better and, as I mentioned before, often towards some sort of problem solving.

    Prior to this experience, I wasn’t even aware that I felt that part of me was unavailable to myself. I think that this is a very western freudian belief system — that we have a “deeper” self that is actually controlling us. In other words, this whole idea of repressing our true selves and feelings.

    I woke up realizing that this isn’t true. It was as if this dream dug out and released this false belief system that had been implanted in there by western “culture”.

    Last night, my lucid dream felt like a “break through” in the sense that I can talk to myself, my WHOLE self without words or language. I experienced a sense of wholeness in the lucid dream, a feeling that has carried over into my waking self.

    I am not a mystery to myself.

    ****************************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • On spoons and hurts; words and truth. (A Prose Poem sort of a thing.)

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you have any collections?
    View all responses

    I once knew someone who collected small decorative spoons. Apparently this was a thing that people did. Or maybe still do. At least, that’s what I was led to believe when I expressed my confusion when I learned of this spoon collection. Apparently, many places, or at least the places where this person had been, sell these spoons as souvenirs.

    I think perhaps they kept their spoons in a velvet-lined box. I’m actually not sure if they showed me such a box or if I just made that up. My understanding is that the spoons were not used for anything. They were just kept. Maybe this person and his family (I think the spoon collecting was something of a group project for them) pulled them out every so often to clean them and reminisce about where they had acquired each spoon. And maybe that is purpose enough. Maybe some objects spark memories, conversations even connection.

    Anyway I’ve never collected spoons.

    I do have horrible habit of collecting hurts. You know, things that have been said or done to me that have been unfair or mean. I squirrel them away in my heart and then every so often pull them out to shine them and examine them so that I learn their every shape and crag. That way I can place them in juuuust the right spot in this wall that I’m building. At least such a collection has a practical purpose. That wall is high and strong. I am safe inside where I can keep an even more useful collection: bits and pieces of information about myself, moments of solid happiness and contentment, bright and shiny truths.

    I collect words and sentences, compile them into their velvet boxes, maybe give them a good shake. What words and images will I pull out from my collection this time? Will they be true?

    Maybe they will inspire me to tap out a bit of mortar or even a whole rock from the wall of hurts. I’ll slip the words out through the hole. They’ll glisten and shimmer, a sort of flashlight morse code. I-M-H-E-R-E they will spell out. I’m here.

    *********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Can you spot the moments of unnecessary self sacrifice?

    Daily writing prompt
    What sacrifices have you made in life?
    View all responses

    Let’s play a game. See if you can spot the moment of sacrifice.

    This morning, I was in the kitchen making my tea and toasting an English muffin. I had music on the speaker and also a podcast in my headphones. My son, pen in hand, was working on something on the coffee table.

    “Mom, how do you spell ‘doesn’t’?” he asked from across the room. He made a few guesses and eventually I went over to sit next to him to show him how contractions work. I used to be an English teacher and this kind of thing is in my wheelhouse.

    I showed him “doesn’t” and then was going to show him “isn’t.” He flopped over and moaned. He did NOT want to learn about contractions. He just wanted the one word.

    It was fine. He stated his boundary and I realized that I also wanted to have my tea and English muffin. So I turned back on my headphones and returned to the kitchen.

    A few more questions rolled in. “Mom, how do you spell favor? Mom, how do you spell echo?” At first I’d help him try to sound the words out, elongating different sounds to help him guess more accurately. But eventually I decided that I needed to just turn back on my headphones. He was fine. He might end up with a few misspelled words in his project. That wasn’t the end of the world — his nor mine. Of course, the questions continued. He said my name a few times and I didn’t respond. Finally, I turned to him, “I’m listening to something right now so I can’t help you spell.”

    He started pleading and arguing, “Music isn’t important!”

    I sat down to have my tea and muffin. He continued to ask for help from across the room. Then he tried a different tactic from shouting at me and came over so that he could speak more quietly to me. Eventually, I explained to him that I had been helping him before, with “doesn’t” and he said he didn’t want that help. I have things I need to do now.

    “Mom, how do you spell ‘crate’? Is it K-R-A-T?”

    I shook my head no.

    “How do you spell ‘crate’?”

    I continued to try to ignore him. Eventually I sat down near him on the couch so that I could write in my journal, as is my morning routine. He continued to ask me questions.

    Did you notice it? The moment of self sacrifice? Or maybe I should say moments.

    Often, self sacrifice is considered a good thing and perhaps especially so when it comes to when a parent sacrifices themselves for a child. But looking back at this morning, I can see how confusing my back and forth waffling must have been for him. On the one hand, I would say, “I’m doing something here” and then I could answer his questions. In the moment, it feels like I’m sacrificing what I want (tea and an English muffin) for him, his betterment, to teach him something. But what he is actually learning is that I have weak boundaries, that my basic needs (nourishment) are not as important as him spelling the words correctly.

    For a few moments after I told him that I was listening to something, he responded, “music isn’t important!” Indeed, I felt the tug of guilt to respond to him. Instead, I stayed quiet, listening to my music, teaching him, in the process that, yes, music is important.

    Once I sat down on the couch to write, he continued to ask questions. At first I tried to stay focused on what I was doing, but I was struggling with not answering him, “I am writing and I need to concentrate on that.” After that, there were a few blissful moments where I was writing and he was working on his project. I could see him trying to figure out how to spell “crate” without my help.

    I wish that I had allowed and trusted that my actions would speak for themselves. Had I just continued to write, quietly, I think he would have eventually caught on that, yes, writing is important. His writing is important. And my writing is important.

    And also that spelling each individual word isn’t that important. Don’t let it hold up his writing. He has a deep well of resources and knowledge inside of him that he can tap into without having to always ask me to do it for him. As do I.

    ***********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Writing this post is one small improvement I’m making in my life.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
    View all responses

    An underground lagoon of water inside a cave. On hot days, it is cooling. On cold ones, it’s a hot spring. Either way, it is eternally refreshed by a constant stream of clean, fresh water. High above the pool, there is a space in the rock ceiling through which sun and moon light alternating stream through. The sunlight feeds the mosses and ferns that grow on rock outcroppings on the walls.

    This cave can be accessed from a tunnel. But at first, the tunnel was very small. I’ve had to dig out the tunnel bit by bit to get to the pool. I shoveled and scraped a little bit here and there, carried out the dirt and stones back out of the back of the tunnel. I had to carry it some distance from the entrance lest it built up too high and the whole thing caved in. One day, I could finally see the pool clearly. And so I kept going. Each day, the work of widening the tunnel and carrying out the garbage became easier and easier. I could even say that I enjoyed it a bit, even though it was work.

    Finally, I could reach the pool. I swam and rested. I drank the clear water. I floated and let the water hold me. It flowed around me. I could stay in here forever. But I won’t.

    The world above would miss me if I stayed here.

    And in any case, the pool is infinite, ubiquitous, ever-present. All the work I put in wasn’t for nothing, after all.

    When I started writing this blog, I didn’t set out to write every day. Even once I found the daily prompts (or they found me, perhaps?), I didn’t set a goal to respond to them every day. And yet, here I am, having just posted to this blog fifty days in a row. I didn’t ever set this as a goal. Still, it feels like something of a milestone which, in turn, feels like an appropriate moment for reflection.

    Or not.

    I had this sort of idea in the back of my head that at some point, maybe today, I’d write a “what I learned from blogging for fifty days in a row” post. Or “what happened when I blogged daily.” Or “the benefits of posting everyday.” My understanding is that those are very SEO friendly terms … or something. (The word “understanding” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.)

    But none of this has been about pleasing any other person (much less an algorithm, search engine, or even, I’m sorry to say, readers). It’s been about me. Making myself content. Giving myself space. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s been about digging towards that pool of my own creativity. And there’s still possibility there.

    So. Will I be back tomorrow?

    I really don’t know. Because the other thing this has been about has been to give myself permission to just be in each moment, to do the things that feel most nourishing to me, to always look for opportunities to extend myself grace. Who knows what tomorrow’s daily prompt will bring?

    I’m just focused on the grace, the space, the nourishment of this moment, this breath.

    ***************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Those who ignored, disregarded,counted me out

    Daily writing prompt
    Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
    View all responses

    Many upon a many a time … I was sharing something that I was excited and passionate about. Many upon a many a time, I was ignored. Or disregarded. Or told I was wrong and told that I’d never get it right. Maybe there was laughter, the cold kind. Sometimes there was a simple turning away. Sometimes there was a red pen, the words, “no it doesn’t”, an interruption.

    I’m not going to pretend that those moments didn’t hurt. They did. A chilly shot of the realization that this person couldn’t give me what I needed in that moment. But brief hurts were necessary to learn what I needed, to learn how to ease the pain or, better, replace it with joy. I had to learn how to warm myself up.

    Now I’ve learned that it’s those people who missed out.

    I learned, from them, how to care for myself, how to validate myself. And perhaps most importantly: how to see myself.

    The idea that “I can’t rely on anyone else” sounds cynical without the follow up of, “I can rely on myself.” And that’s what I’ve learned to be able to do. It’s not just relying on myself for material needs but for emotional needs too. I can’t harbor ill will towards these people. It was their actions that revealed to me just how awesome I am, after all.

    One day last, I was in the waiting room of the cancer center not too long after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I knew that a mastectomy was possibly in the cards for me. Another woman, a bit older than me, walked past me to her seat and I noticed that she had one breast. The top she was wearing made it very obvious: it was a stretchy knit with horizontal stripes. In other words, she wasn’t doing anything to disguise her mastectomy. She looked healthy and strong. She looked like she was just going about her daily business.

    Over the months since then, I’ve thought about that woman often. And I still feel, at times, a little bit uncomfortable with my new body. I worry that I’m going to make other people uncomfortable or that someone is going to ask me questions that I don’t feel prepared to answer. Still, I have to go out in the world. And so I think about that woman in the waiting room and how I didn’t even have to exchange words with her. Just her presence, being out in the world without apology makes me feel like I can do it too.

    Today, as I was walking my son to school, I noticed another woman doing a double take when she saw my chest. I started to reach for my shirt to straighten it out and make it less obvious. But then I remembered the woman in the waiting room, just going about her business and also that I had more important things, like chatting with my son to do. Thinking about the woman who was surprised by my uneven chest as I was walking home, I thought that the look on her face probably mirrored mine when I saw the woman wearing the striped shirt in the waiting room. And so I decided that perhaps the woman who was looking at my chest this morning maybe also was recently diagnosed or has a loved one who was diagnosed. Maybe me being out in the world without a breast reconstruction, without really trying to hide my lopsidedness, looking relatively healthy and strong … maybe my presence gave her a little spark of hope in a dark time. Just as the woman in the waiting room passed her candle flame on to me, I hope that I’m able to pass it on to other women.

    And so we carry on. One light at a time.

    ************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Free your mind…

    Daily writing prompt
    What does freedom mean to you?
    View all responses

    …and the rest will follow. — En Vogue, Free Your Mind

    Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

    None but ourselves can free our minds.

    –Bob Marley, Redemption Song

    After reading the daily prompt, I was thinking about different song lyrics that spoke to freedom. A few crossed my mind and I decided I would put them in my post, but first I wanted to listen to the music in my music player. If nothing else, to double check that I had the lyrics correct. But also just because I like these songs and wanted to listen to them.

    I opened up my music player on my computer and everything looked different. Well, not everything, but just enough that I couldn’t figure out how to search for specific songs, something that I’d done just a day ago. Unfamiliar. I was lost and frustrated. I wanted the system to work the way that I was used to, the way that I had expected it to. And it wasn’t.

    I was internally raging at the designers who made this music player, who changed it so often as to make it impossible for me to keep up who made it so NOT intuitive.

    And behind that, I was raging at myself. Annoyed that I wasn’t able to keep up with rapidly changing technology. Regretting that over the years I’ve sold off all of my CDs. It was so easy back then when I could just find the album I wanted and pop it in the CD player. Past me should have tried harder to keep everything the same for future me. Arrrgh!

    I know. It’s ridiculous. Take a breath.

    Because now me actually doesn’t want to have stacks and stacks of CDs to store and maintain. (No matter how satisfyingly familiar the clack clack of jewel case against jewel case sounds, no matter how much I relish unfolding the liner notes.) Present me really, really enjoys the convenience of being able to pull up music.

    No. This internal rage was something else. It was me demanding that I “get it right.” I’ve listened to both songs, Free Your Mind and Redemption Song, perhaps dozens of times in my life. And yet, still, part of me felt that in order to write about them properly today, I needed to listen to them again. In other words, my lived experience is never enough. Even for my own blog.

    Where does this come from?

    Something that someone once said to me popped into my head. I was in high school and I was wearing a new dress. This person came up to me and said, “I liked your dress until I saw that it had pockets.”

    At the time, I didn’t realize what an odd thing that was to say. And I suspect it’s because when day after day, people are commenting (overtly and covertly) on your clothes, the way you look, how you sound, and your body in general, one comment more comment doesn’t particularly warrant attention in the moment.

    But now-me can see how truly strange it is that someone might comment on someone else’s clothes in this way with an air of taking offense that a dress might have pockets and that said-pockets might be used and useful.

    This was far before the “it has pockets!” meme. Perhaps it is was this meme that made me realize just how “out of pocket” that comment was. (Yes. I did just have to write that.)

    So how does all of this relate to freedom and what it means to me? Some days, it feels like I’m caught under this massive pile of these sorts of comments and experiences that make me question myself. Comments from teachers and professors that infer that I’m not trying hard enough or that I’m not enough; implicitly messaging of the society that I live in that disregards bodies that look and behave like mine; the culture of comparison and competition that seeps in everywhere. It takes a great deal of my mental, physical, emotional energy to overcome these comments and expectations.

    But increasingly, I’ve been able to see where I’m getting a helping hand. People who wear dresses are suddenly on-line espousing the benefits of pockets and are genuinely excited about something so simple. This provides the ammunition I need to shoot down the “I like the ‘I liked your dress until’ comment.” Or better yet, to just ignore it. Focus, instead, on how much my daughters enjoy pockets. I’ll read a line from a book and it will feel like the writer reached out and lifted one of these expectations I’ve been living under. (As with Cole Arthur Riley’s reminder, “I am no one’s burden. I am no one’s savior.”)

    Or, yes, sometimes it’s a song. As with En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, “Before you can read me, you got to learn how to see me. I said.”

    In the end, it comes down to me. It’s, in part, up to me to write myself down so that there’s something there to be read, something to be seen.

    In other words, as Bob Marley asks, “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?”

    ***********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Read, Write, Redefine

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
    View all responses

    I wish that twenty years ago, I had decided to read, write, and redefine on my own rather than going to an MFA program in creative writing.

    I learned recently that James Baldwin read through an entire library on his way to becoming the writer that he became. I wish I had done something similar. I certainly read a lot during my time in the creative writing program, sometimes as many as five books a week. But these were chosen by professors and instructors who were already, more or less, part of the literati. There were few women writers that we read. There were even fewer writers of color. For me, I was reading for the class I was in, to pass or, sometimes, to try to “impress” the instructor. I wish I had been reading for myself. I grew so used to reading for classes that once I was done with my MFA, it was many years before I started to read for pleasure. Even now, I sometimes have the thought while I’m reading that I’ll have to summarize or answer questions about it or respond to the writing in some way that will be acceptable to an instructor. I have to remind myself that I’m reading for only one person now: me.

    A similar thing happened to me with regard to my writing in my MFA program. All of the writing I was doing was for an audience outside of myself. I spent a lot of time and energy on trying to get it “right” and almost no time exploring, having fun, thinking my own thoughts. I was fixated on being a “good” writer, on receiving praise so that I never focused on what my writing was and was not doing for me. (Praise that I was never going to get.)

    At the time, I fell for the idea that I needed an MFA in order to write, in order to be “successful” and in order to have a community of writers. I thought that the degree would be a stamp of approval that would open up the world of writing and publishing. In other words, I’d fallen for an elitist way of thinking: hook, line, and sinker. I worked while I was in the program (three research fellowships) in exchange for tuition reduction. This was less time on my own writing. I spent hours and hours each work reading and responding to my classmate’s work. This, too, was time away from my own writing. And, honestly, it sometimes feels like that sort of workshop set up is actually just having students doing the professor’s work. I rarely received feedback from instructors that was truly, well, instructive. Each of them seemed to have an image in their minds of what was “good” writing and I either wrote towards that, earning accolades by the second or third submission when I’d decoded what they were looking for or, well, not.

    For one of my admissions essays I wrote, in all my earnestness, that I was looking for a “community” of writers. I didn’t realize that this was just me parroting what MFA programs claim to not only offer but exclusively so. I truly believed that these elite institutions were the only place that I could get support in my creativity. How naive! I’m sitting now, at my desk, with music on my phone, a scented candle lit, the sunlight hitting a handmade vase of flowers just so, the breeze playing with the grass and shadows playing with the outside my window. And all those many years ago, I thought that I had to climb into an ivory tower in order to access a creative community and the support I thought needed. Like I said: naive.

    So the last action I wish I had taken was: redefine. What do I wish I had redefined twenty years ago? Success, community, expression, support, reading, and, perhaps most of all, writing. I wish I had sat a minute and thought about what I really wanted and needed and that I had had the courage at the time to just give those things to myself rather than looking outwards to these institutions to give them to me. Well, here’s to hoping that it’s not too late to give those things to myself now.

  • I am the book.

    Daily writing prompt
    What book could you read over and over again?
    View all responses

    I am a book. My body is a book. My life is a book. My home, my heart, my spirit … all are books. Some of these were tucked away in hidden tomes in the special reserved section or banned altogether. Each day, each moment, I open another volume, a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence, a word, the spaces between the letters and the punctuation. I’m returning to this same book of me over and over but each time, it’s different. The textures, the language, the characters, even the story itself, it’s a slippery something, evolving, endlessly entertaining. A choose your own adventure only better, unbound.

    I am the book that I read over and over again.

    And the novel I am writing is one that I read over and over again.

    And the bound book, Beloved, by Toni Morrison is one I could read over and over again.

    I hope Toni Morrison wouldn’t take offense that her work isn’t first on my list. She did, after all, say, “If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

    To read me over and over again is to write me over and over again. Each day. Each hour. Each moment. Each breath. Each word.

    And so I begin. Anew.

  • I don’t know about the animals, but I know what made me the worst pet owner.

    Daily writing prompt
    What animals make the best/worst pets?
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    My sophomore year of college, my three roommates and I went in together on getting a pet. It must have been around thirty or forty bucks each that we each contributed to the tank and the items we thought we needed to keep the chosen animal: a snake.

    I’m not sure what kind it was specifically, just that we named it Oscar and kept it in its tank on a table in the room which was meant to be a dining room.

    In retrospect, I was not well suited to roommate living. Perhaps it’s a by-product of having grown up in a large (my American standards) family of five children or perhaps it’s just who I am, but I later on found that I preferred living by myself. In fact, I enjoy being alone.

    Oscar also would have done better under different circumstances. So much better, that at some point, Oscar took off to be on his own. Was that Oscar 1 or Oscar 2? My memory betrays him. I’m getting ahead of myself.

    At some point, a snake named Oscar grew large enough that he managed to push open the lid of his tank and slither out.

    Where did he go? We had no idea. Even though he was strong enough to push open the lid, he was still quite a small snake. Although, who wants to find a snake, of any size, in their bed? Not me.

    Fortunately, it wasn’t my bed where I found him, some time later. It was under the garbage can when I picked it up to empty it. I screamed. There he was curled up. “Pick him up!” my roommate screamed back at me. Nope. Wasn’t going to be me. This was one of many signs that I was not cracked up to be a keeper of snakes. We learned enough at that point to put a rock on the lid of the cage.

    But now that I’m thinking about it, that must have been Oscar 2 because clearly he had gotten big enough to escape. Oscar 1 (only retroactively named such) didn’t make it to such a size.

    Oscar 1 (and Oscar 2) ate baby mice, called pinkies, which we kept in our freezer. They only at maybe once or twice a week, but part of the appeal (to some of the denizens of our house anyway) of having a snake was watching it unhinge its jaw and then swallow the little pink rodents whole. It was something from a nature program right in our very own living room.

    We kept a heated rock in his tank and it was on this rock where we’d let the frozen mice slowly defrost. The rock was also supposed to provide warmth for this cold blooded animal there in our rental house in frigid Wisconsin. Turns out: one heated surface is not enough for a snake. One day, one of us found in him in his tank, curling himself into an actual knot. We had no idea what to do. It seemed he was sick. Very, very sick. By morning, Oscar was done writhing. He was dead.

    The pet store employee seemed to think that he wasn’t warm enough to properly digest his pinkie, which meant that it rotted inside him.

    So maybe this question, to me, isn’t so much about what makes a good or bad pet, but what makes a good or a bad pet owner.

    I wasn’t a good roommate and this made me a bad snake keeper. I was a go along to get along person, unwilling to say “no” to other people. More importantly, unable to say, “yes” to myself. I would have been much happier living by myself, but I hadn’t yet given myself the self awareness to know that at the time. I was also too worried about being the “weirdo” who lived by herself. And maybe I was also too worried about being the uncool one who said “no” to chipping in to buy a house snake. And then a second. And for that, I’m sorry, Oscar 1.