maybe, down there, all this is pure

busy giving more fucks + loving more things than the average person. nonbinary bisexual teenager (but not for long) + rationalist photosynthesizer. they/them/theirs + xie/xyr/xyrs. writer/artist/thinker/programmer/bad-joke-maker/life-lover/how much do you really care? hello.

[compassionblogger]

on a train on a gray day

but actually in the middle of the ride the light sad blue sky tore open a little bit, first, then widely, and shone bright almost-white yellow light through.

red trees against gray water and rocks and sand and sky, and red and brown buildings with white edges, make me feel like I understand better all those New England poets and artists.

I spend more time on this ride than I'd like thinking about the mundane and the concrete;

your smile; my plans for the spring; what I need to do when and where and with whom upon my return;

but I also do take the time to think that maybe to think about the mundane things here on this train is in fact to think about Life,

which is what I was originally planning to do. it is a lot of things, Life – which is why we travel, I guess? to experience each of those perspectives through which it becomes, somewhat slowly until then it is quite fast, abundantly clear to us that ah, of course! all Life is just ____ (you may fill in the blank based on whether you are seeing the Taj Mahal, Detroit, the Arctic Ocean, etc.)

on this train, all Life is just people. knowledge seems much less important to me than it has in the past, except as a means of passing joy from one person to another. and the tumble of rocks and dead leaves down the side of the hills and the islands are good, and right, but what makes them Life is people.

(here perhaps it would be best to admit that when I say people, what I am thinking of is, in fact, you; but I think that this will hold, without loss of generality, for others as well.)

in this short but very wide tear of sky, Life is just the things that we give each other, and pass back and forth using our hands and voices and faces and bodies. I know it's other things other places, so you don’t have to try to tell me. and I always love Life, and I always want more of it, eat it up, feel stuffed and hungry with it;

but here, what I want, specifically, is to be in a small warm room, passing joy back and forth with you. and like always I am moved to tears and ingenious (insightful?) incomprehensibility with it, with the depth of my desire, and with the fact of the depth – with the truth that humans are just a want for other humans with some neuroticisms attached.

how loving Life does make your heart ache. a cliché verb but I feel it right there on the left near the lungs like if you were here and I was reaching out to you and just too far to touch. I think it is a good thing.

[compassionblogger]

I am thinking of a time long ago before the rain began

-to be away from those I love is hard, but it is also a blessing to be able to see in the stretch of the space between us just how much love there is also; to feel the love expand to fill its environment, and to feel it reciprocated, across borders and lakes, and to know that when we are reunited it will spill over and surround us, a halo of all the hugs we have missed.

-when you told me your eighteenth birthday was coming up how rapidly did I reevaluate, in the space of a moment, the relationship between us; from older and younger to peers and equals. what I thought was my awkwardness and your disinterest suddenly my awkwardness and yours; what I took to be my own personal failing suddenly nobody’s flaw but instead a commonality. how much easier it is to love, yourself and others, when you can see no fault in the friction of life.

-I thought I had to move cities to move bodies & become who I was meant to be. now I know that wasn’t true; nothing could have kept me from moving out of my past self. now I wonder if that was true: is who I was meant to be waiting for me at the end of this? are they behind me, now; and I suppose both could be true. or is it that the time in my life of crystal clarity of purpose has faded and now I will never be who I was meant to be but only who I am? the thought is not surprising but leaves me feeling empty. I suppose you get used to living alone after a while.

[compassionblogger]

okay okay so i know my whole life up until high school i never found people who were my people and i know i was always like, one day i’ll find people who are my people and life will be different

and i know in high school i found a few people who were my people and i was like, this is so much better than before, this is great, i’m loving it

but that was the base case and i feel like i’m only now proving the inductive step, you know? it wasn’t a fluke, this is real: people who are my people are easier to get along with, to stay in touch with, to have fun with, to keep things going with, than people who are not my people. and there are many such people who are my people in this world!!!!!! i can have this again and in different places and in different flavours of happiness!!! there is so much out there waiting for me and i’m going to live my life through it all!!!!!!!

[compassionblogger]

summer camp

i am meditating on the kindness of strangers and the kindness of friends

(and of how i only seem to write on airplanes these days)

(or is it that i never have time anymore?)

(or is it that there is a bigger connection here?)

and i am meditating on the way good experiences can prime you for better

(and do bad ones then do the same for worse?)

i am meditating on the compassion of learning and using a second language,

on the wordless give and take and push and pull of gentle teasing,

on if it is possible to be kind to someone while letting them go, and indeed if it is necessary to let people go sometimes in order to be kind.

-

sunlit days and such a simple social contract, fulfilled fully in spirit, and such an easy living.

you looked me in the eye as you dealt me my cards and your voice never faltered.

-

telling another story as a way of saying i love you? as a way of saying that complexities can be left hanging in the air only partially understood but fully respected?

when we argued it was then that i most felt loved. give and take and push and pull, and to navigate this can be a natural gift, yes, or born of a magical connection, yes, but perhaps also, can be something at which we do our best and improve and when necessary, forgive shortcomings within.

telling another story as a way of apologizing?

it is so quiet to be nice.

do not hear easy in the space between the q and the u, but hear good. small, or large. detailed, or generous, or both. caring. wordless, or if with words then sometimes with other words, which are the fruit around the unspoken seed: you are loved.

it is so loving to be nice.

-

the word smile doesn't convey how it is to share a light with someone else;

the way you said my name somehow an admission of respect and yet also of a duty of care.

-

do we have a duty to care for each other?

i think we do.

and i think duty is not an eyeroll and a sigh, but the stirring music as the main character does what is right in the end, perhaps at great personal cost;

the way the light falls at dusk on two people who have apologized and are now holding hands.

duty is the group hug you gave me when i told you my shuttle was here.

i think all i ever saw in your eyes was the joy of doing our duty,

and those sunlit days were joyous indeed.

-

puppies must play, and playbite even with wagging tails, and sometimes as a dozen of them roll over and over on top of each other, one must back down, contrite.

i think i will see puppies when i see people, and i will put my tail between my legs when it is my duty, and roll around wrestling when that is my duty, and like an animal i will know what we have always known somewhere,

which is that to be able to live and work with and love and fight with and help and raise and teach and create with other human beings is the most glorious work we can ever hope to be assigned.

[compassionblogger]

there is a YA trope, more common perhaps among the old guard of the noughts and the nineties, of a book series with a protagonist with a mysterious guardian angel. the angel helps him (usually him) all through the books, with deus ex machinae and whispered foreshadowings and handily-cast magical spells, but never reveals their identity. as the series goes on the protagonist gains in power, and when the time comes for the final reckoning he realizes: it was himself all along. he has become a god, and he transcends time, staring at the universe, and his tiny mortal self, as a tapestry below him. 

when i write poetry i think i am only ever trying to do one thing: to reach beyond myself, to drag my eyes and mouth and fingers into another higher dimension, where i am as a god and it is finally possible to express in these useless phonemes the truth of all that i can see. i have never yet succeeded but i can’t stop trying, and although their titles might say differently, every word on the page of my life is echoing the same fruitless cause. the world is impossibly large and impossibly detailed, going on and on forever whether you zoom out or in, and i know i will never be able to get anyone to understand this in the same particular unique bittersweet painful and lovely way that i do, number six billion and something out of seven -- but i can’t stop trying. something pushes me forward, endlessly, and i think that when i stop writing, i will die.

[compassionblogger]

curious post-weekend poem

how curious it is to walk through a brightly lit hallway, windows black voids of night, and know that those outside can see you in sharp detail.

how curious it is to travel alone and in silence, in rows of silence and planes of travellers alone.

how curious it is to begin to realize many things, not least of all that we will die with our wishes, or some of them, unfulfilled, and not most of all that we will die with the people we could have been, or most of them, unrealized;

not least of all that to be exactly who you are and no more or less is not a sin but a mitzvah, and not most of all that to love others for being exactly who they are is not impossible nor easy but instead a gift we work hard on to present to the world.

how curious it is to realize that you have been wearing a backpack all your life and now finally you can run, and feel like you are flying;

and then to understand that if you can fly, there is no crime in doing so, gleefully perhaps, or earnestly perhaps, or gravely, or containing many emotions and living with them inside of you, perhaps;

and then to fly.

[compassionblogger]

I think there's real value to being able to recognize that it's okay to be at that particular intermediary level of skill where you're sort of losing it while you do a thing, but you're still doing it. There's a lot of stuff in my life right now where while I'm doing it, I'm freaking out or insanely frustrated or stressed. And obviously, I'm not required to go through with anything that's making me feel that way -- but I can, if I want to. I can say, "this thing is so hard for me that I'm going to cry while I do it, but I'm good at it anyway and I'm getting it done and learning and growing and that's okay."

[compassionblogger]

nostalgia was coined in 1668 from two Greek words and literally means "the pain of homecoming"

[compassionblogger]

i feel like adulthood is taking a real slow windup, getting ready to punch me in the face with everything it has, and all i can do is watch and wait

[compassionblogger]

i wish i were only being torn in two

if this is to be a poem,

it will be the only the poem I have written this year.

if this is to be the only poem I have written this year,

it will have to be every poem I have written this year.

it will have to be about the last new start of an era,

and the desperation of endings warring with the forceful desire to do it all the same one last time.

it will have to be about the way I did not recognize myself when I looked in the mirror, and also, the pure rare small joys which each seem so unique as to be irrelevant to anything but their own existence, and also, somehow, it will have to be about both at once.

it will have to be about you, and forgiveness; about the ways in which people do and do not fit together; about the large individual unwieldy irregular things we have come to call lives.

this poem about eleven pm and seven am and cities, or mostly just one city but also some others, or mostly really just each atom of every city,

about the knowledge that the picture I draw is inescapable, unstoppable, superordinary, and yet that each tiny stroke is its own self-complete axiom, a miracle of understanding, a declaration of everything that is true,

about what sits behind my eyes and mouth and throat and waits for me and pushes me and does not seem to be able to be tactful or even timely,

I don't think I can write it;

it will have to write itself.

[compassionblogger]

For the first time I genuinely comprehend that there is not enough time to have all the lives I wanted.

[compassionblogger]

new year's resolutions

be kind:

-pause and think before speaking

-stay quiet rather than being cruel

-go the extra mile to help others and make them feel loved

-think the best of others whenever possible

be adventurous, within reason:

-don't be afraid to try new things

-don't be afraid to be afraid, and try new things anyway

-don't be afraid to try new things and dislike them

be unapologetic:

-it's okay to need things

-it's okay to contain multitudes

-it's okay to care

be introspective:

-really think about the best option or choice for each situation

-strive to know the truth, but not to change it

-do what is best and what will be best

love life, including the hard parts, including the incredibly hard parts. be joyous.

[compassionblogger]

Conversations;

or,

The F----- Hotel

The math team trudges along a cold bridge. There are twelve of us spread out and bunched up like a string of old Christmas lights, sputtering to stay lit. The only sound that breaks the quiet of the wails of the harsh bitter wind is the swearing of someone who has failed to discern where the sludgy gray concrete of the bridge gives way to the gray liquid sludge that serves as a witness to winter.

We are all thinking of different things, I think. The girl next to me is thinking of a similar but different trudge with similar but different people one year earlier, although with what colour the memory is tinged I cannot say. Perhaps one of us, perhaps one of the ones far behind or ahead of me who are light and dark smudges against the sky, is remembering tomorrow night, when we will cross this bridge rowdy and generous, bright with the reflection of city lights, drunk on teaching each other our mother tongues and waving away mispronunciation with hands and with laughter.

I am remembering two months ago, when I made this trip by car, and we were full with anticipation which had not yet fermented to a certain and baseless despair. While the leaves were turning (-- I have stepped on a gray leaf in a gray sludgy puddle and it has stuck dripping to my boot) and the wind whispered tomorrow rather than yesterday. Our words were running into each other like five year old twins with motor issues playing tag, and like lovers, who must overlap to survive. We felt that each tall building hinted of a future and the dawn was chilly because it was eager.

Now at 4 pm we cross an America-large parking lot to eat lunch, and I am chilly because I am scared. You do not look chilly, but I would not say that you do not look scared. Your coat is larger than mine and has a commandingly fuzzy muff, and I think you like to think it protects you, but know it does not. We exchange words in a square room slightly warmer than the environs, waiting for food familiarly in a restaurant equally unfamiliar to us both, and you ask me questions that sounded cliche a million times before they left your mouth and were made anew.

We eat at a tall table in the hotel lobby; I get crumbs on my lap, and you do not. You clean your hands on a napkin and text your girlfriend. I am remembering two months ago, when the lobby was nothing to me in face of the challenges I would shortly surmount and minutia seemed a subatomic particle not worth the research budget it would take to be discovered. Now each facet glows darkly and reminds me of a boy who was once too much my rival to be my friend (my...). I do not finish my sandwich, and you do not ask any more questions, and as night falls the hotel is bright. I thought the boy was bright, too; but that was long enough ago that my memories are pushed back, pushed over, and trampled upon by the importantly shrieking crowd of what was to come.

The sheets are cold that night, but they are pure white, and it is not until the next morning that I think again of the bridge and the parking lot and the shoddy LED Christmas lights we will mimic, unavoidably, until night comes.

[compassionblogger]

dulce et decorum est pro justitia mori

[compassionblogger]

[compassionblogger]

i was listening to a song in the shower, and it reminded me of another song i used to listen to a long time ago

and i was humming that song, and it reminded me of a class i used to take a long time ago

and i was thinking of that class, where i was humming that song, and a girl started a fight with me over the integrity of the band.

they’re trash people, she insisted; i just like the guitar riffs, i replied. it grew heated -- or she did, my stake in the matter was not large -- and our teacher, our ninth grade art teacher, stepped in.

it sounds like she’s expressing a musical preference, she told the other girl, and you have a personal disagreement. i don’t think there’s any need to argue. 

i think about that moment a lot. i’ve been taught by teachers worse than that ninth grade art teacher, a lot. 

i knew what she meant before she said it, but those words could not come out of my mouth in that form. i was fourteen, and i did not know how to talk to people, and the other girl -- my friend -- did not know how to talk to people, and maybe we needed someone to step in and tell us every way we were going wrong. 

when i stay up too late, it seems like a tragedy to me that it is possible for humans to spend a lifetime missing each other in this way. 

when i wake up early enough, it seems beautiful that we can even try to fix it. that a person saw two people who knew less and said, i want to make this better, and imparted knowledge to them. that i have been lucky enough, in the past, to learn, and that i will be lucky enough in the future to teach.

i try to wake up early. 

[compassionblogger]

i just had a lifechanging personal experience: i rewrote a really bad sentence, and instead of getting twenty words longer, it got twenty words shorter