NaNoWriMo

I'm not the best at sticking to things. Firmly established.

NaNoWriMo - 3

My apologies, but today's addition is not going public. But here's a photo that goes with it. TJ at Halloween:

NaNoWriMo - 2

This story (chapter?) is fictional. It’s based on a dream I had a while back, which I’m pretty sure was inspired by the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials. This photo reminded me of the dream. It was taken on December 28 2007 in Miami, Florida. My mom and I were visiting Renee and Dan, who lived there at the time, and we went to a zoo during our visit. This intriguing guy was there. Let’s call him Carlisle…

I always had the feeling there was something unusual about me and my daemon. Ever since I could remember, Carlisle was there with his big grey feathers and large, sharp black beak. He had been an African grey parrot since the day I was born, as far as I knew. But that wasn’t normal. The other kids’ daemons were changing all the time. Flashing from a finch to a cat to a porcupine, depending on the situation and their mood. I longed for Carlisle to change. I wanted to see him slither along the ground as a snake or bark as a dog at the neighbor’s grumpy old cat, but that never happened. Carlisle was just a parrot, always a parrot.

As we grew up, the other kids started to notice, too, and I had to make up stories for why they never saw Carlisle change. “He changes all the time in my room,” I’d tell them. “But he doesn’t like to change with other people around.” “Oh really?” my classmates would say, “Then prove it… have Carlisle change when you go back to your room and come tomorrow as something else!” Ugh, why can’t the snots just accept it? I’d ask myself. But I’d agree and say okay and pray that during the night Carlisle would change. If I just hoped hard enough, he’d change, right? But it never happened, Carlisle never changed, and all the other kids knew.

“Carlisle’s still a big fat parrot,” they’d point and yell the next day. “He can’t change!” “Oh, actually, um, he did change yesterday, into a wolf. A big, growling, mean wolf. He had a great time shredding all the bedsheets and howling at the moon. But I need Carlisle to be able to fly to, to class… because it’s the best way, the fastest way to, um, get here, so whenever we leave he has to be a parrot. He can’t be a wolf.” Those stories obviously only got us so far, but eventually the other kids gave up and, thankfully, just left us alone. We were weird, me and Carlisle. My big, aloof African grey. Those kids had no idea how badly I wished Carlisle would change… just once, and maybe if he’d change, I’d feel something and would know that we were actually normal, we were okay.

One day after school when I was maybe eleven, I was playing soccer with one of the few kids who would hang out with me. We were in a big abandoned lot behind the school, kicking the ball back and forth. Toby’s daemon, at the time a wiry silver poodle, was running alongside Toby, feverishly watching the ball and barking each time it came near, and trying to nip at it. Carlisle, as usual, flew lazy circles overhead, feigning interest. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Toby started screaming and flung himself to the ground, clutching his foot. I ran up to him. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” I yelled. “I don’t know… my foot, it’s on fire!” I could see that it wasn’t actually on fire, but he was clearly in pain. That was when I realized Toby’s poodle daemon was also writhing and squealing in pain just a few feet away, with a thin, black metal nail sticking out through her hind paw. Toby was feeling every little bit of his daemon’s pain. I could tell it was pure and real and awful. I ran to get help, Carlisle following behind, and when we returned a few minutes later with the school nurse, Toby’s now cat daemon was carefully licking her paw with Toby sitting on the ground, cradling her and stroking her fur and crying a little, but doing okay. They whispered quietly to each other as the nurse inspected the wound. The bloody metal nail glinted up from the ground beside them. It’s a scene that I’ll never forget, and it’s a scene that I think about from time to time and, in some ways, envy.

A few weeks later, Carlisle and I were in my room at the school dormitory. I was reading a history lesson at my desk while Carlisle worked on cracking open walnuts on the windowsill. I had grown up with that sound, the careful cracking and crunching of walnut shells being broken apart by Carlisle’s beak. He often gave the nut inside to me, especially if he’d already had a few. He’d fling them on the desk next to me and then go to work on the next nut. I think he just liked the challenge of cracking something so tough open. I loved that sound. It felt like home.

It was still warm enough out to keep the windows open in the evening, and with both windows open my room could get rather breezy. I noticed the wind picking up and just as I thought about closing the windows, I felt a gust and heard one of the windows slam shut. Carlisle started squawking horribly and flapping his wings crazily at the window, walnut shells scattering across the floor. I ran over to him. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” I yelled. “I don’t know… my foot, it’s on fire!” I could see that it wasn’t actually on fire, but he was clearly in pain. It was just like with Toby. But Carlisle was my daemon. Wasn’t I supposed to feel this pain? I felt nothing but panic for my daemon. “Your foot! It’s stuck in the window!” I opened the window to free his foot and he squawked painfully and fluttered over to my desk.

I followed. “Are you okay?” I asked. I wiggled my own toes, bracing myself for the pain, and sort of hoping to feel something. Some jab of anguish, some tingle of trauma, like Toby did with his daemon. But I felt nothing, other than walnut shell crumbs poking here and there. “I’m fine!” He yelled with an anger I had not heard before, keeping his right foot tucked up under his belly. I could tell it was not fine. Maybe even broken. “Why’d you leave the windows open anyways?” He roared. “I’m sorry,” I said, a bit stunned by his rage. “We should go to the nurse. Do you want me to carry you?” Carlisle generally refused to let me carry him, preferring to fly for himself. I reached out to stroke his grey feathers, and pick him up, but he didn’t answer and before I could touch him, he hurled into the air in a streak of grey feathers and flew out the other window that was still open.

“Where are you going?!” I yelled after him, shocked. There was no answer. “But we’re not supposed to…” I trailed off as I watched his wings flap away. “Be apart,” I whispered. It was the first time he left me. I waited for the burning pain in my chest that everyone said they felt when their daemon got too far away from them, but again, I felt nothing. Something was not right. What if he dies? Will I die? What if he never comes back? What will I tell everyone at school? Everyone has a daemon. Everyone’s chest burns with fire when their daemon gets a couple meters away from them. It’s common knowledge, basic human fact. We couldn’t be separated. But now? We were already strange enough. I’ll be a freak without Carlisle. Can I even go to school, or anywhere, without him? I’d never seen anyone without a daemon before…  

These thoughts took over my mind, until eventually Carlisle did return. He had a white bandage around his foot and a bag of chocolate truffles in his beak. My favorite kind of chocolate truffles. I had closed the windows, with the wind whipping the branches around angrily, so he had to tap at one with his beak to get in. “Hello!” he said brightly, tossing the truffles on the desk as I pulled the window open and sat down at the desk. All of his anger was gone, and was replaced with a frenzied kindness. “I’m so sorry I left like that earlier. It just really hurt. The nurse gave me those chocolates to give to you. Your favorite.” His voice was high and light. He hobbled across the desk and over to me and gingerly nipped and preened my hair with his beak. The only other time he had preened my hair was when he accidentally bit into my finger a couple years ago, mistaking it for part of the walnut I was handing him. I howled in pain until the sudden preening and attention distracted me and calmed me down. He must have really felt bad. I reached out and stroked his soft feathers, but didn’t know what to say.

Finally, I asked, “Is… is your foot okay?” “Yes, the nurse said it’ll be fine. It’s not broken, just very badly bruised.” I nodded and looked at the chocolate and then down at the floor. The walnut shells were still everywhere. I had spent the past hour lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what would happen next, and had forgotten about the mess until then. I stood up, my hair pulling out of Carlisle’s beak, and started picking up the shells. His eyes followed me. “Are you okay?” He asked. I kept picking up shells and staring at the floor. “I’m alright. I just, I don’t understand why I didn’t feel anything.” “You didn’t feel anything?” he asked. “Yeah, I mean, I should have felt your pain, right? When your foot got caught in the window. My foot should have hurt, like Toby’s did. Right? And it should have hurt when you left, too. My chest should have burned. A lot. But it didn’t.”

 

“Oh,” he said, “That… that’s actually a, a good thing. It means we’re strong if we can be apart. And I didn’t go very far, just to the nurse’s office in the next building. My foot hurt so much, I just couldn’t wait. I’m sorry. But everything’s okay now. I’m back.” I straightened up and looked at him. “We’re strong? What do you mean we’re strong? Nobody can be without their daemon. We’re not strong, we’re weird.” “Well,” he said, “well, I didn’t go that far. And, and when people feel their daemons’ pain or can’t be away from them because it hurts so much, in their chest, it’s actually a weakness. They need each other. They can’t be independent, and that means they’re weak. They can’t handle difficult situations. But us? We’re strong. We can be apart, at least for a little bit. So we can handle more than everyone else.” “Oh,” I said. Was this real? Could me and my daemon actually be an extra strong, independent version of everyone else? Somehow, I didn’t feel any better. “I see,” I said. “Thanks for the chocolate.” I unwrapped one and ate it and thought about how strong we were, but, for the third time that day, I felt nothing. Exhausted, I crawled into bed and turned off the light. I listened as Carlisle made his way up to his usual sleeping spot on the curtain rod. But I couldn’t sleep.

Who is Carlisle? I kept asking myself that during the night. He had been with me my whole life, had never left my side until that evening, but he didn’t actually seem to like me that much. At school, I watched all the other kids dart around the playground, their daemons flawlessly galloping alongside as a lynx or zooming easily by their ear as a dragonfly. Carlisle just flew in the same lazy circles over my head all the time. The other kids did everything with their daemon, too. They studied lessons together, ate lunch side by side, and played the same games together. Whenever we weren’t in public, Carlisle mostly just ignored me, perched on the windowsill crunching walnuts or high up on the curtain rod, taking a nap, like he was now. I had always assumed everyone else’s daemon ignored them at home, too, but clearly we weren’t like everyone else. I stared at his beautiful grey feathers, reflecting the dim, hazy streetlights outside, the slow rise and fall of his plumage as he breathed. I tried to imagine what he was dreaming, but found nothing.  

Word count: 2,139
Total: 4,166 

                

NaNoWriMo - 1

Hi. I don’t really write for fun or for myself anymore. I want to, though, so I’ve decided to try NaNoWriMo this year. National Novel Writing Month is November and within that month, to successfully complete NaNoWriMo, you need to write 50,000 words. A novel. In all honesty, I highly doubt that I’ll be able to do that. I like to go for long walks and bake and do other things. And I sit at a computer too much as it is. But I’m going to do my best to write as much as I can this month and I’ll put it all here. One thing I can guarantee: much of it is not going to be interesting or worthwhile. Since it’s so much writing in such a short amount of time, I’ll be putting up a lot of not-thought-out, meh stuff. So please enjoy, haha!

Oh, and this isn’t going to be a novel. I don’t have the capacity for that. What I think I’ll do is on the days when I can’t really think of anything to write about (which will probably be most days), I’m going to dig into my archive of photos, choose one at random, and write about it. I’ll shoot for 2,000 words (I’m sure I’ll miss a few days). It might be based on my memory of the photo or events/people/places surrounding the photo, it might be made up and fictional, or it might be a hybrid. We’ll see! So. Day 1…

These are cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s in Flagstaff, Arizona. White Chocolate Lavender and Double Chocolate. This photo is maybe six years old and I can still remember the flavors. Erin S and I would walk up to Sugar Mama’s a few times a month and each buy a cupcake or two and then take them back to the PIE to split. Cupcakes at the PIE… Program in Intensive English. Erin and the PIE and Sugar Mama’s and these cupcakes got me through the first year of grad school.

The ladies at Sugar Mama’s always intrigued me. They were covered in tattoos and powdered sugar, most of them had dreadlocked hair pulled back into thick ponytails. They’d be icing a cake or whipping up frosting or transferring cookies to a rack to cool whenever we’d walk in. And they’d never immediately stop what they were doing to help us, which, in a bakery, I realize now that I really like. It’s a good tactic. It gave us time to see the behind the scenes action. The little dollops of frosting getting plopped carefully onto a kid’s birthday cake, the puff of powdered sugar rising up out of the frosting mixer as it whirred together the next batch. The bag of chocolate chips sitting on the counter, waiting to go into a big bowl of cookie dough. The scrape of a spatula gliding under a hot cookie, scooping it up, and then dropping it onto a rack to cool, leaving a tiny trail of melted chocolate in its wake.  

Getting to see all of these things made me feel very good about Sugar Mama’s. They’d let us stand there as they worked away just long enough for us to understand that they meant business when it came to baking. There was no skullduggery going on there, just sugar and flour and butter combining in the best possible, most magical ways. We’d stand and watch and take it all in, and the smell of it all, and then, just at the very second when it started to feel maybe a tiny bit long, they’d decisively yet carefully put down whatever magic they were creating, straighten up, smile knowingly at us, and ask us how we were.

How were we? We had lesson plans to prepare, essays to grade, readings to finish, exams to study for, and presentations to practice, but in that moment we were great. We were witnessing a different, delicious life and we, or at least I, was envying it some. I spent several moments in Sugar Mama’s early on in grad school, and those moments always made the prospect of owning a bakery seem very plausible, and very appealing. People do this. People own bakeries with big, industrial mixers and huge ovens and checkered floors and vats of frosting. They make a living by baking things for other people all day long, and they seem to love it. But we’re only allowed one life at a time and I’m already pretty deep into teaching, but running a bakery sounds like so much fun and this bakery makes it all look so easy… but, well, I’ll just take a lavender cupcake to go. Thanks. The moment we left Sugar Mama’s and its checkered floors and its freshly baked cookie aroma behind, the lovely realness of owning a bakery would evaporate and would only sound too difficult. Back to grading papers and learning how to teach and teaching how to learn.

For my birthday a few months after this photo was taken, Erin, Joe, Kerry, and Nick got me a gift certificate to Sugar Mama’s for twelve cupcakes. Those people knew me well and if only we all still lived in the same cozy little city… I’d bake cookies and cupcakes for them all the time. A couple days after my birthday, we all went to a reputable tattoo parlor in Flagstaff and got matching tattoos. I am aware of how cheesy that sounds, trust me. But each time I catch a glimpse of my "ghoti", I’m taken back to game nights and beer at brews and cues, popcorn fights and sprawling conversations at the castle, loud music and cute dogs at the monte v, papers and books and research and snacks and stress and laughter and warmth at the trailer. None of which would have been nearly as fun without those delightful people.   

And, of course, cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s. Whenever I took the gift certificate into Sugar Mama’s to claim my next prize, one of the tattooed, dread-locked ladies would smile and put a little line in the upper right hand corner and tell me how many cupcakes I had consumed and how many I had left to go. Then they’d hand it back to me along with my boxed up treat. I’d tuck the gift certificate safely into my wallet so I’d always have it with me. You never know when a need for cupcakes might arise. I never ate all of the cupcakes, though. I still feel bad about that. I had four left to go when we just stopped going. I think Erin and I went there maybe once or twice in the second year of grad school. The magic of everything had worn off a little bit by then.

It has been 5 years since we all graduated and moved on. Erin stayed to get her PhD. Joe stayed and continued working full time in the PIE. Kerry moved to Macau to teach, and Nick and his wife also moved to Turkey, but we lived in separate cities. We visited each other, though. After the first year, we also all had a reunion in Flagstaff and told our stories of post-grad life. But I don’t remember much from those visits. The things that I remember happened during those two years of grad school, when we spent nearly every day together and depended on one another for fun and help and comfort.

During the reunion, we walked by Sugar Mama’s and Erin and I talked about going in, for old-time’s sake, but we didn’t. We just walked by and looked through the window and saw the ladies inside. They were still in there whipping up their delicious magic and making their customers wait just the right amount of time before acknowledging them. We should have gone in. Instead we just walked around and got stuck waiting for the train to pass and tried to recreate the old friendship, but something was gone. Each of us had new lives and new friends in different places, and our minds kept wandering over to them. The reunion passed and we all left again and just like that our five member "ghoti" troupe dissolved and will likely never reform. It’s comforting to know, though, that each of us has a visible reminder of who we once were and what we once did inked permanently somewhere on us. Mine is on the side of my right foot and I often completely forget about it. For days. Life goes on and it’s impossible to keep all of the good things that have happened in mind. But every now and then it’ll catch my attention and make me smile.  

Last year, when I was moving back to Nevada from New Jersey, I stopped for an afternoon in Flagstaff. I walked by the PIE and the castle and brews and cues. It all looked just as I had left it, for the most part. Joe and I met for lunch at a new restaurant that he said was really good. It had been about 4 years since I’d seen him. As we ate, he told me about his little kids and his dogs and his dreams to get a PhD. He told me about Erin and how she had moved back to Michigan to be with her family. I told him about New Jersey and Turkey and how strange it felt to not have a job. We talked about meeting up in the future and trying to get everyone back together, but we knew it would probably be impossible. Lives scatter so easily and irreparably, no matter how badly they miss each other. Everyone had moved on.

I think perhaps because I was a bit nervous to meet up with an old friend for the first time in years, I didn’t notice the restaurant where we had lunch at first. It was bright yellow inside, freshly painted, with crisp white curtains. The seats and tables had a retro sort of 1950’s feel to them. There was an old-timey straw dispenser on each table and paintings on the wall of old diners. The floor was checkered and that’s what caught my attention as we got up to leave. The checkered floor. Then I realized the counter and windows also looked very familiar. We were in Sugar Mama’s. This time, though, there were no tattooed, dreadlocked baking ladies and no puffs of powdered sugar floating through the air. The waiters had on black aprons and matching black and white shirts and their hair was almost invisible, tucked up into black baseball caps. Wafts of bacon and melting cheese had replaced the sugar and butter.

“Isn’t this Sugar Mama’s?” I asked Joe. It took him a moment to remember, and then he said, “Oh, yeah! That place went under a couple years ago. Just couldn’t hack it, I guess. This place is doing great, though. I’m glad they’re here.” I wanted to ask him if he remembered the gift certificate with the little lines and the cupcakes and the tattooed ladies and the times when Sugar Mama’s made all of our lives better, but I didn’t want to make him feel bad. And maybe it was just me that loved Sugar Mama’s and what it stood for and everyone else just played along. My dream bakery had closed and been replaced by a bright 50’s style diner and one of my fellow "ghoti" members couldn’t have been happier about it.

When I dropped Joe off at his house, he asked me if I wanted to come in and meet his kids and see his wife. I wanted to, I really did, but I was also desperately ready to finish the final stretch of a 7-day drive and I knew if I went in I’d have to stay a while. So I told him I’d be back in a couple weeks, since Henderson is so close to Flagstaff, and would see everyone then. I truly believed that, too. But that was over a year ago and I haven’t been back and everyone, it seems, has moved on. 

Word count: 2,027

Something loved.

Soon I won't live in Turkey anymore. And the things that I do here won't be done by me anymore. Other people might do them here, but I won't. The life I have here will be splintered and divided up and led by other people. Soon different hands will play my piano, different eyes will do my job and stare at my work computer. Different bones will sleep in my bed, different flip flopped feet will slap at all the streets that I love. And different ears, lucky ears will hear my friends' words. Many different people will pick up my life here eventually and make it their own, while I work my way in and pick up the fragments that other people have left behind somewhere else. It's a strange feeling to just constantly continue, and continue and continue, especially when everything feels and looks so different and foreign. But it's all just a continuation of millions of different people, some that have come and gone, others that are still here somewhere. It's hard to keep track of who you are when you've picked up and let go of so many lives. Each one something precious, each one something loved.  

What am I doing?

Well. Today I wrote my resignation letter to AIU and in less than two months, my contract with them will be terminated, as well as my time in Turkey. Turkey time terminated. As usual, I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly, I feel excited to move on to something new and to be back home in the US again for at least the next couple of years. But fairly often, I'll have a moment that rips at my heart in a more visceral way than when I've been preparing to leave other places. It hurts more, like a small smack of failure, and of finality.

Today, for example, when I went to save my resignation letter on my computer. I hit save and navigated to the AIU folder and was confronted with all of the electronic things I've done and saved here...in folders like TurkishLessons, CreativeUseOfEnglishPlans, IntermediateCoordinatingMeetings, TestingFiles, Year2, Year3, and the one that hit me most: AIU_ApplicationandPrepDocs, created way back at the beginning of this current life, before I even got here. And now I'm saving the file that will end it: AIUResignationLetter. It hurts. But despite moments like this, I can't imagine staying. I can't imagine carrying on here for even another month past June.

The past three years, particularly this year, have been odd, like my life has been in limbo. And I don't know what has happened to me. Things seem less funny. The world seems less promising, less bright. I also feel less funny and less promising or bright as a person. Which may have been evident on this here blog. This increasingly depressed and neglected little blog. Fewer opportunities feel like they're waiting out there for me to grab on to. I guess it's partly due to going through an awkward transition from 'hey i'm young i'm carefree i'm a world traveler there's lots to do and i'm never bored' to 'i'm 35 and what, exactly, am i doing?' For now, I'm resigning. From AIU, from teaching, from Turkey, from living abroad. Until further notice.

But I do have a few things lined up for the not too distant future, trusting that I make it that far, enshallah. I'll go home (well, whatever home means anymore) and spend a few weeks with my mom in Henderson and a few weeks in Reno with my sister and dad and little brothers, and hopefully some old friends. I'll go back to New Jersey for six weeks for another internship with ETS. I'll hopefully visit New York City and Princeton and, with luck, reacquaint myself with feeling like I sort of fit in, like I sort of belong somewhere. Hopefully. Also, with luck, I'll get a full time job with ETS and spend the next few years living in one place with one job making a good set of friendships and living a life that I mostly love, a life that expands and grows and continues to learn and experiment. A promising life, a bright life. At least I still have a tiny bit of optimism lurking around in these old bones.

And as for Turkey? I'll miss her at times, no doubt. Her kind people, her beauty, her history, her food. I don't think she'll miss me much, though. And I do worry about her future. My future feels a bit shaky, but her future feels unfathomable and, if anything, dark. As much as I'd like to say that I feel perfectly safe here, as much as I'd like to say that everyone should come visit, I can't. Things don't really feel like they're going to get better any time soon. What might ISIS have in store for this place? What's going to happen to the Kurdish people here and what might they do in return? How are the Syrian refugees going to be treated as more are sent back and as more arrive? Why are protesters treated with such brutality, and what is up with the way journalists just disappear? These questions darken much of Turkey's charm and they are questions that will only be answered over time, in the future. The answers to these questions I'll continue to watch unfold, but from a safer distance, and I have the feeling the answers will sometimes hurt. But hopefully some of the answers will be promising. Hopefully some of the answers will be bright.          



        

How can this be?

How can one person, one simple person on earth be in their apartment, cooking dinner, listening to their favorite song, thinking about the work they'll need to do the next day, while at the same time another person on the same earth is putting together the pieces, aligning all of the wires, figuring out the timings of a weapon that will take it all away. Take it all blindly away from anyone within reach the next day. How can this be? How can the one be so innocently oblivious while the other so cruelly powerful?

How can this world be so endlessly interesting, with all of its villages, all of its people and birds and trees and mountains and seas and stories, while at the same time full of such terror that the beauty looks like nothing. The palm trees, the breeze, the chatter of birds, the smiling faces, the laughing babies, the sun soaking it all, everything, all beauty, becomes invisible when all one on shaky legs can imagine finding is an explosion.