My Rediscovery of Me

I keep thinking about how it’s December, about how it was a year ago thatwhen I found out something might be wrong with my kidneys, about how it was two years ago thatwhen my marriage ended, about how it was 23 years ago when my family moved to this country, about how it was 14 years ago when I last saw my mother in person, about how I hate being cold, about how there’s 97 days until spring, about how my Little Sis called two days ago and how I felt when she said, “I love you; bye,” about how I’m becoming an expert at understanding my capacity to love and for loving, about how I feel about my feelings, about how wonderful cuddling is, about how conversations with Jupiter damn near mirror those with the moon in clarity and in relevance, about how amazing that orgasm was last night, about how I’m beginning to care less about the rules of grammar and how I’m unsure of how I feel about my feeling OK with that, about how serious I am when I say poetry saved my life, about how “I place my ear / on the belly of this moment” is a great line in a poem I just read, about how scared I have been this year, about how alone I have felt this year, about how happy I was this year simultaneously somehow, about how I set a goal to read 40 books this year and I’ve read only 22 so far, about how I’ve helped, about how I’ve prayed, about how I sit.

Him: “What is your favorite color?”

Her: “13.”

Him: “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Sometimes, I want to say some things but I don’t.

This:

Do sparrows speak when spoken to, or of, or do they simply see and fly?

This:

To the miracle I saw on the subway platform, at Wall St., waiting for the 2 — or the 3 — with the dreads and the eyes that followed my following eyes: I think I loved you then, when — in a shared below-surface glance — we spoke in spirituals.

This:

Your eyes speak like silence, of how no one really knows what that feels like but how we use speak it to say that no words are spoken. It is in this un-speech that I learned you. Do you not remember all that time we spent not speaking? Notice I didn’t say “in silence.” Sweetie, say something; I know when your lips are full with wanting. I recognize the unsaid that is in you.

This:

How is it that, with your tongue on her clitoris, my taste is still in your mouth? I must insist on flossing.

This:

What does hurt the most: the decay or the exposed nerve? It has been months; I am still lost searching for light in the caves of your body forgetting.

This:

يا ربي — dear god — يا ربي — dear god — يا ربي — dear god — يا ربي — dear god — يا ربي — How can your people’s eyes shine so unholy?

This:

Not all gaps grow bigger.

This:

[Write something from the perspective of a dead ant to its murderer. Call it "I am an ant. Wait, now, I'm dead."]

–

Yeah.

[Note: يا ربي probably translates more into "Oh, lord" than "dear god" but whatevs.]

Oh, and at one point I Googled [sparrows] and I found myself here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign. Remind me to read all of that and look into it more, Internet. Please and thank you.

–

One of many photos from my drive from Mississippi to New York. I'll package all online at some point, in some way.

Am I the only person who watches 19 Kids & Counting and gets jealous?

Things I wrote today:

“My ears witness wrecks long before my eyes do.”

“Sometimes, I can block my mindless overthinking and, in that silent stillness, patiently listen to myself. I wish it were more frequent. My hearing heart is crowded with loneliness that can be cleared only with the calm honesty of clarity.”

Things I overheard today:

“I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘eager’ without following it with ‘beaver’ in, like, two years.”

“You spell so great.”

“I’m not a bad person. I swear I’m not a bad person.”

Things I read today:

“We cannot afford to remain in ignorance because the stakes are now too high. It is vital to know who our enemies are, but it is equally important to know who they are not.” [Source]

“No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,

we come of age as masks
Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.” [Source]

There is something so crack-creating about walking past hundreds of people each day without acknowledging that there was no acknowledgement.

How does one with so many cracks reflect an honest image? I wonder. Do cracks signify an upcoming duration of destruction? Do they, instead or as well, create passageways for light, reversing a blinding?

When I leave voicemails for people, I usually insert, somewhere, “I hope you’re having a great (or an awesome) day.”

Someone returned a call today and, in a voicemail left because I couldn’t answer, said at one point “I hope YOU’RE having a wonderful day.”

She placed a bunch of emphasis on “you’re,” as if we were competing to see who could wish the most good.

It made me laugh some. We should have competitions like that, right?

I was watching Love & Basketball earlier today. It’s one of my favorite movies ever. As much as I love basketball, I know I could never play that way. When she cried after losing a game, I felt so un-there. I can’t understand it. Competitive sports feel kind of like bullying to me — getting joy out of another’s loss.

I know I talk a lot of shit in card games, video games, etc., and maybe that makes me more of a hypocrite, but I don’t know. I just don’t usually get it.

I’ll write more when/if I think more.

…that I will paint in big letters (or hang, if I’m not allowed to paint) the words “WAKE THE FUCK UP, BEAUTIFUL.” on the walls of my New York apartment so that they are among the first things I see every morning (and every other time).

Hold me to it, Universe. Love, eba.

When I was growing up, I lived in this community called The Village — married student housing on the Ole Miss campus.

My family and I — the eight of us — lived in a two-bedroom apartment. My parents and the youngest kid in one room; four of us in another bedroom (with a bunk bed and two fulls); my oldest brother on a mattress in the living room.

It sounds hellish, but that was the happiest I remember us as a group. Really happy. (Also some pretty horrible things, but the good memories stand out for me. Maybe not the same for the others.)

So many memories.

I had this dress that I wore everywhere. I wore it while roller-blading down the sidewalk in front of my building, while playing basketball, while climbing trees on our block, while playing kickball or house or doctor or whatever. I loved that dress. It had holes all over it, but it was the most comfortable thing I’ve ever owned.

I remember we used to have these Village-wide fairs. Families from all the buildings would get together for food and games. One year, I won the hoola-hoop competition and immediately rushed off to take part in the basketball around-the-world shooting contest. [I don't remember how I did, but I'm a pretty good shooter most days.]

I remember the day the rod of my bike pedal punctured my toes and my mom carried me to the bathtub, dripping blood, from the sidewalk through the building. The blood stains remained for a while. I had to get stitches, right between two of my ties toes.

I remember this boy named Sammy, a year or two older than me, who would ride his bike in front of my building and scream “Eba! Eba!” — always twice — whenever I was sitting outside.

I remember when Jeffrey, the skinny boy who lived in the next building, slipped me my first “Do you like me? Check yes or no.” letter at the bus stop. I remember falling in love with Jeffrey a year later. We dated on and off for like six years.

I remember freeze tag, sledding whenever we got a quarter-inch of snow (it was Mississippi, after all).

I had this friend named Kitty. Her dad was so strict. Whenever we were together, he would yell at her for having poor posture. “Stand straight like Eba,” he’d say. I’ve had poor posture ever since (though it may also have to do with the size of my breasts). Kitty was an amazing artist. She’d do portraits of other kids who lived around us. Whenever I think of seesaws [or teeter-totters, if that's what you call them], I think of Kitty.

There were baby-sitting gigs, lots of neighborhood fights, learning to do back flips on mattresses we’d dragged onto the grass.

In third or fourth grade, I took home some seeds and planted them in the garden right outside our kitchen window. Beautiful flowers. They grew year after year. I still don’t know what they were called.

One time, a friend named Lizzie knocked on my door. I answered wearing an apron. She asked me what I was cooking. I said I was washing dishes and was trying to stay dry. She looked at me funny and I then realized that no one outside of my household did that.

Adjusting to American customs took awhile, I guess. [I didn't learn what a Lazy Susan was until college.]

One time, my dad killed a chicken in our kitchen sink. I remember praying for the chicken, thanking it, realizing how important it was to know where your food came from and to appreciate that.

For a few years, I had this stray curl that would never be tamed by gels, mousse, ponytails or anything else. The other kids started calling me “Michael Jackson.”

I loved this place. More than I ever thought I did back then.

In the past year, Ole Miss tore down The Village. A law school was built. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSCxZcav5CI]

Three of the buildings in the The Village remain, but the main buildings — including the one I lived in — are gone.

I saw the completed law school when I was home a couple of weeks ago. No signs that anything was there before.

Just gone.

The playground where I attribute a number of my remaining scars: gone. The place where we waited for the bus: gone. The first tree I remember climbing: gone.

So I’ve been trying to write about The Village. I want to remember it.

Sometime last year, after construction had begun, I wrote:

They razed The Village,
tore down the only place where we were a family
to build a law school
where they would talk about justice
without ever doing justice to the place that had raised us

But I didn’t like that. So I abandoned it.

Today, while sitting on a bench enjoying the sunshine in Wichita, I wrote:

We were redefining rich, poorly,
with our overflowing courtesies
and Southern modesty,
spreading the walls of our 2-bedroom apartment so wide
8 bodies
too few
…
….
where we climbed family trees,
where at the top,
sap-soaked,
we had unobstructed views of generations,
we could see so much, there on top of the world

I don’t like that either.

So, maybe, I shouldn’t write like that.

Maybe this is a short story. Maybe this is a novel. Maybe it’s just an intro to a collection of essays about The Village. Other people must have similar memories. Maybe I could collect their thoughts, create some sort of tribute website for this place that built me. Theyrazedthevillage.com. That’s too negative, though.

When I think of home, I think of Oxford, but really I mean The Village.

Is it still home? How could it be? Is “home” really just a collection of memories? Or does it have a door that you must walk through before knowing you’re there?