The Victim and The Survivor || The Sign and The Signified

I picked up my sister and drove her to GMVS. As I was walking her to a seat in the gym so she could see Les Mis, I was hugged, squeezed tightly and told, "Welcome home!" Naturally, I was offended beyond belief. It's natural to call where you live home and, in high school, I usually misspoke, saying I was going home when I really meant I would be returning to GMVS. Such a slip of the tongue would never occur now, nor would I really call Saint Mike's my home--simply my place of residence. I don't know if my home is in Vermont (where I get my mail). It certainly isn't my childhood home, which has been demolished and created in a new vision. My room--aka the storage room--does not house me or who I am. I feel small pieces of myself everywhere. We must ask ourselves how far we extend, what items, places, moments, clothes, and memorabilia are us; does their existence signify you or just you in that place? Arguably, none, some, and all are signifiers. I am signified... by what exactly, I don't know I am a sign with unfathomable signifiers; I do not know me, so how can you?

Almost a year ago, in February of 2014, I created a new blog, this blog, allowing me to start fresh. A lot happens in a year, and it's combined arbitrariness and social acceptance lends the year to new starts; constantstateofwonder.blogspot.com becomes blank, shaking free its old, embarrassing posts from the me of last year. My writing changes, if it does not improve, and I'm glad I thought to do a yearly cleanse; Junior year Sammi can dwell in the depths of Internet hell while the me with yet no perspective of her own embarrassment can write freely and without anxiety that a reader (or, more likely I) will be tempted to read and learn about me from before. Because me from before does not encapsulate me; she remains formative in development, but not central in current personhood. Slightly Insane Musings of An Idiosyncratic Nerd Girl (my original blog), need not be taken into account when trying to understand me as I am now. Believe me, I'll tell you what I'm about without you needing to root around in my old shitty writing. You can learn more from my current shitty writing. My signifiers cannot be traced to a place or a time, but what else would you expect in the age of the image? I look at pictures of myself sometimes and wonder who I'm seeing. What was I thinking and who was I being? Who is this girl? She is me and she cannot signify herself in a photo; I look for some explanation of who I am in photos of me, but, despite my attempts to declare my personhood to others through countenance and dress, I remain elusive, even to me. But despite my slippery definitions, I feel attached to And That's When I Said...

It may be because years seem much faster; having finished high school, four years in one place (college) feels much shorter; the year, though I've always recognized its arbitrariness, loses its power. But beyond that, And That's When I Said... still feels powerful. It implies seriality--beginning with And, ending with ellipses--and voice with the word Said itself, as well with the temporal words That's and When; the words are spoken in response, and what follows is simultaneously a punchline,  sarcastic comment, scathing remark, and outraged explosion; what follows is a post which has attempted to create a signified for myself, the most accurate one possible. Here, I am here; this is me; this is me right now, right this second; you cannot know me more than I know myself; I've granted you all I can collect from within myself, gathered and shaped it to show you this instantaneous, fleeting glimpse of me. And that's why And That's When I Said... feels right. Because it is temporal; because I am transient, at least the me of now. Tomorrow, I will be someone almost exactly the same as I am today; you won't even notice... and then you will. But I will still be saying; I will still be responding in a myriad of (mostly likely embarrassing) ways. And That's When I Said... I will use my voice and what I say will be signifier of myself.

***

"People who have been raped or sexually assaulted" takes up a lot of space, and it should, but when we're attempting to refer to this group, we search for a word that fits the needs of the group and quickly conveys their status. "Victim," it is argued, gives no agency to the person who has been sexually assaulted or raped ("Victims are passive. If it was really that bad, why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did they let it happen?"), which is why some prefer the term "survivor." The person who has been sexually assaulted or raped endures, survives, and recreates their life despite the harm done to them; they do this of their own volition; they are a powerful agent, a force with control and capability. "Victim," it is argued, removes the power and agency of the person who's been sexually assaulted or raped. They are, according to the synonyms of victim, a casualty, a fatality. Personally, I disagree with both words. Victim undercuts the value and depth of a person who has been sexually assaulted or raped, but survivor, for the reasons it is claimed to be valuable, can be harmful.

Survivor declares either a certain amount of luck or power. Concerning luck, they were lucky to make it out alive and unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luck and sexual assault/rape are two unrelated instances we need to not intersect. For luck to meet sexual assault/rape takes the blame from the assaulter/rapist; bad luck is blamed rather than the perpetrator. Luck also declares that it could've been worse; instead of just being raped (a horrid act and experience), you could've been raped and just realized you ate the last chocolate! You're a survivor, kiddo! We simply cannot associate sexual assault/rape with bad luck, let alone good luck. Concerning power, if this person who has been sexually assaulted/raped is declared a person of agency, their agency may be turned against them: "If their so capable and in control, why didn't they stop their attacker" or "Why weren't they prepared?" or "So... they wanted it to happen?" While people who have been sexually assaulted/raped should not be reduced to powerless, passive victims, granting them too much agency leaves them open to backlash in the ways I've discussed and, I'm sure, in a myriad of other ways I haven't thought of or am not aware of.

I've never been sexually assaulted or raped, so the decision does not belong to me, but both proposed words seem, in varying ways, fraught. I don't know if a word exists in the middle ground that simultaneously places blame on the perpetrator and empowers the person who has been sexually assaulted/raped after the fact. Each word signifies a different meaning and grants skeptics different avenues of critique. The transition from victim to survivor to thriver is also proposed, but this transition is not a single working word applicable to all and usable in conversation, discussion, court, and political discourse. I offer little solution to this issue other than the words "endurer" and "perseverer,"  the definitions of which are, according to Merriam Webster, one who endures and one who perseveres, respectively. A horrible act has been done/is happening, but the endurer endures, the perseverer persists. These words are certainly not panaceas, nor are they easy to say, but they seem to better fit the (perceived) requirements, definitions, and needs of those who have been sexually assaulted/raped.

***

I see my particles arranged in this way:
Crystalline and fractured
As I stare into the void I watch the other particles float 

free

Not trapped by the way they lay
And I think

You lucky, lucky bastards

"amazing division

how sweet the sound"

I am here.

Whenever I read, I don’t pay attention
to the writer’s architecture. To Kill
a Mockingbird, for instance, takes
place at my great aunt’s house.

Every Sunday, we brought doughnuts.
Her fridge always held a liter of Moxie,
and I guzzled its bittersweet for hours;
sugar high and free, nothing could stop me.

I haven’t entered the house in a decade,
I think, and I can’t remember if, three feet
from the end of the kitchen table, an opening
leads to a sitting room. I imagine Atticus, Aunt
Alexandra, and Scout entering and exiting this
room through a door-shaped hole in the wall and
I wonder if my own aunt ever did the same.
I believe I remember the doorway, but
I do not remember beyond it.

I was a seventh grader when my great aunt died
in a fire. My mother, always one to supply unneeded
information in relation to my age, hinted that the fire
had been started by my great aunt. I sat and wondered
if the combination of her brother’s death and the dearth
of doughnuts to pair with Moxie urged her to light
Atticus’s house on fire. Did matches find their way into
Auntie Mary’s hands because we chose other things
over Moxie and doughnuts and
her?

***

The mural springs out from the corner,
where the two walls meet. White and gray,
the pseudo-people depicted, are cartoonish
and beautiful. Their depictions, flat and simple,
their actions, daring and three-dimensional.

One jumps, his hands shaped like pointed mittens
and attached to the ends of thin arms that reach
high over his head. His head hold horns like a crown.
In my mind, I make his white tutu and ballet shoes
pink as he leaps, knees leading
the way for pointed toes and a wide smile.

Beneath him, a man, traditionally dressed, stretches
his arms. His face reveals a negative emotion, somewhere
between upset and worried.

I peer through the darkness and wonder if the man’s
arms reach to stop the ballet dancer from falling, or from
leaping.

***

Focusing
on the waves of reflected light
jumping from the disco ball
and landing lightly on the wall
gives me a headache.

It’s easier to focus instead on
swell of the crowd—how it moves.
Intricately swaying and knottily
shuffling, the crowd says,
“I am here.”

If this were literature,
the women putting her palm
over the top of her drink might
have received a phone call from
her mother, reminding her to be careful.

Literature gives way to life and
the woman doesn’t want her drunk—
drink—to spill.

Even this focus, this interpretation of the crowd’s
darkened, defining undulation,
is too much.

The music, at once pulsing and static,
lifts my fingers up, weightless, and away
from my body, like the first person to pair
I love you with
I’ll leave you.

***

This I wrote last year for my freshmen seminar, but I'd like to commend my 4-year-old self for attempting to describe the cycle of abuse. 

I sit on the bottom of the wooden staircase of my house. I pick at the Velcro on my light-up Power Ranger Sneakers and cry uncontrollably because of some insignificant injustice. Little kids’ tears are always messy and this was no exception; my nose makes disgusting noises as I suck back in the flowing boogers. My mother kneels in front of me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Why are you crying, Sammi-wham?”

Tripping over words and trying to explain emotions my vocabulary was too limited to convey, I say, “It’s just that Daddy. He is so mean. He’s so mean and I’m going to run away.”

“What do you mean he’s mean? We have this house, you have your clothes, your own room, and all of these things that you wouldn’t have without Dad. Dad loves you and me very much.”

“I know. I mean, I just… Sometimes he’s really, really nice. But it’s because he wants me to stay.”

“Wait, I thought he was mean?” At this point, my mother is laughing at me, which only makes me more insistent.

“No. He’s mean and he’s nice and he’s mean so he can torture me and he’s nice because he wants me to stay—”

“So he’s nice and mean?” My four-year-old fists ball and I cry harder; I know I'm being made fun of.

“Mom, listen. He’s nice because he wants me to stay so that he can torture me more and then he’s mean so that I hate him, but then he’s nice again so I won’t run away.”

My mother laughs a little more before the front door slammed. The subject of our conversation walks through the door and my disproportionate, four-year-old legs carry me quickly to my room. I slam the door and continue a paused conversation with my stuffed animals.

***

I wrote poetry, and it was shitty, but I did it. 

Seventeen

I wrote something here and then I deleted it.

***

I could be, should be, watching T.V. right now. I don't really know why or what I'm writing. All the writable things have to be censored; they must be written, but they cannot be read. 

***

The letter I wrote to myself during the spring of my senior year is sitting in the top drawer of my desk, surrounded by miscellany. I want to tell myself, to assure myself, that quote everything will be okay unquote. But really I will live with the guilt of existing for my entire existence. This summer, I crashed and totaled my car. With the insurance money, I bought the same make, model, and year vehicle, the effect of which has only granted me grief whenever I drive. Existing is like buying the same car every time you crash it and feeling the same debilitating waves of shame and humiliation whenever you find yourself with your foot on the clutch and your hand on the key. 

***

I read, analyze, memorize, and regurgitate. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily completing the same amount of each task. We're reading Feed by M.T. Anderson in my media class and my copy from high school contains all the annotations I wrote two years ago. Senior year me and the me of the present have similar ideas. Senior year me used to cry in the shower though, and that was kind of lame, so I'm glad that's done. She also had a lot more things to say, but I'm not glad that's done. I'm surrounded by like-minded people with no one to rail against. I used to write upwards of three posts a month. Now, if I'm committed, I write one a month. The world and everything I see is just nice. It's just pretty. It's just okay. There is no high; there is no low, only silence.

Shhh. There is nothing to hear.

***

I tried to write a poem, but it was shitty, so it's gone now. 

***

Everything's already been written, so what's the point of writing? Everything's been said, so why speak? People have already lived and died, so why do we keep existing? There's nothing left undone. We are the things we do and somehow, I'm always nothing.

***

Yesterday, I left my water bottle in a store in Burlington, which was stupid. But a friend retrieved it for me today. Then on the bus, I lost my water bottle again. My life is most likely a string of mistakes. I can recall a me with a more solidified identity. A me who was certain: yes, please, that's exactly what I want and here's why. But mistake after mistake and a shift in reality has created a me who could not tell you who she is. At 17, I was a writer and a student and a ski racer and a softball player and the best friend I could be. Now, a multitude of mistakes later, I am no longer an athlete, which was one of the only things that wasn't a mistake. Decisions have never been easy for me, and now it seems I've made too many to make myself a person again. Each error grows larger in my mind, taking over my consciousness.

Question: which one of my mistakes will make me I hate myself forever? 

Answer: all of them.

Question: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Why aren't I going anywhere?

Answer:

***

REDO REDO REDO

UNDO UNDO UNDO

DELETE ME

***

I'm so tired and I don't care about the rest of my life.

Go Away (x4), Leave Me Alone (x7)

"Listen," I want to say. "Just fucking listen."

In the middle of speaking. Wait. Speaking. The decision to speak. Why? Why did I make that decision? Wait. In the middle of speaking. The idea becomes a thing. An out of context quote. No. Wait. The idea. The thing. Say it. Say the fucking thing. Did I say it? Fuck. No. Fuck. She gives me a quick, confused look. She says yeah. Why don't I just fucking listen?

***

I'd like to say something about racism.

It's real.

Thank you for your time.

***

This Is Just To Say

I have died.

Please grieve silently.

***

This is the difference. The difference is this. We are different. This is we and we are different.

In the out-of-context context of existence, you and I and me and you and all of us, are different.

And, I would like to tell you, in the clearest way possible, that I don't fucking like it.

***

At the risk of sounding extremely ableist, I'd like to recognize the sincere struggle of very sad deaf people. I need noise. In silence. I crumble. Which is why my music is currently trying to permanently destroy my ear drums. But I'd like to issue an apology to both sad, deaf people and the me in an alternate universe who cannot hear. I'm listening twice as loud for you.

***

Your out of context existence means nothing. As well, I'd like to point out that while your in context existence means more, it still means nothing. Meaning. Tell me about meaning. So infinite. Too infinite. Lacking. Impertinent. Meaning doesn't matter. What does it do? How much work? It doesn't work without meaning. Work is tied in meaning and I am without meaning so I do nothing.

***

Jean-Louise Finch. (Who we all know as Scout.) Wears overalls and nothing else. Spoiler Alert. In Go Set a Watchmen, Jean-Louise Finch does not wear overalls. She wears dresses. Her rebellion is in her lack of makeup or some other pseudo-progressive bullshit.

I was at Nate's house the summer before my senior year of high school. Some uncle who perpetuated sexism with benevolent misogyny had the mother fucking audacity to tell me "I would learn to" like dresses, makeup, and all the other bullshit that comes with being a lady. (What's even better is that he said, "She'll learn" to Nate and not to me.) The effect, I would say, is opposite. All this bullshit about it being adorable for young girls to be tomboys but not for young ladies and women to show their masculinity is exactly that: bullshit.

Jean-Louise, who left behind the chance to be my absolute idol, to wear dresses grew up before second-wave feminism. I would respect her choices if they seemed like choices. But they don't. It seems like someone learned Jean-Louise real good.

I will tear down society and build it again. Based on one fucking principle: listen. Listen because Scout's voice was clearer and stronger than Jean-Louise's. Because I've always hated Aunt Alexandra the way I've hated the subtle cultural messages that I was wrong. Internalized misogyny and strict ideas of what a woman needs to be perpetuated by societal norms is gonna fucking stop.

In Athens, baby girls were referred to as "deformed boys" and when a mother gave birth to a baby girl, it was common to discard the child in the garbage. "Best case scenario," the child was taken out of the garbage raised to become a prostitute. If not, the children screamed and cried until they died in a dumpster. This happened so often that Athenians were unperturbed by the cries. No one listened and we need to start.

Privilege, Prejudice, and the Precipice

The first thing that happened is I got invited to a party. (Just to repeat with the correct emphasis: I got invited to a party.) Now, granted, it was a party for work. And if they hadn't invited me, it would've been cruel. Either way, I got invited. After this invitation, I had two more days of work, and then, on a fateful Tuesday night, I attended a party with all my "coworkers." (That's such a grown up word, but I don't have an alternative.) The party, like, happened, or did whatever it is parties do. And then I went to bed. On a couch. In a sleeping bag. (I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between an invitation to a party and the party itself. I like invitations; I do not like parties.) Anyway, I woke up on Wednesday morning, picked up my bag from the Rosens, and made my way to New York. I had worked, played softball, and completed the homework for a class I no longer wanted to take for too long and when I finally got on the road, on the ferry, off the ferry, and on my way to Haylee's, I thought I was going to cry. (?). Like, I was happy and I was going to cry.

The only thing I could think was, "I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation? I'm on vacation!" and I cried. My best friend lives three hours from me, and I was getting closer every second. I was going to lie next to the pool, in the sun, and have no responsibility to yell at children. That's what I did. And it was awesome. I drove, my privilege hitting me like a ton of bricks every mile marker. Then I got lost and had to call Haylee, who met me at the end of her road. I pulled over after I turned onto her sidestreet, and, after some vehicular finagling, so did she. We both got out, hugged, broke apart, hugged again, broke apart, screamed, hugged one more time, and then got back into our cars.

After two days spent poolside and shopping, we made our way to Canada for a music festival. (The thought of which still seems ridiculous in hindsight.) Anyway, Haylee and I lost our hearing during the twenty one pilots concert, jumped and danced for Weezer, and (I) screamed for Father John Misty. I spent much of our time dragging my directionally challenged friend from one place to the next, pointing us toward photo booths and kiosks. (Haylee seemed only able to locate a fruitless claw machine.) Either way, we ate poutine and ordered in on Sunday night. We went to another, different party, rode in a taxi, and walked around Montreal like it was our job.

Honored, I felt, to spend this long, long weekend with Haylee, to see such amazing artists, to pay way too much for food, and to be here, to be present.

***

Haylee and I were navigating the subway system, an apparatus I'd never encountered, in order to move from our hotel to the music festival and back. On Friday night, we were walking along a long hallway, which led to the exit and, five blocks later, our hotel. At the end of the hall two men were situated, one sitting, the other standing. The standing one moved between the legs of the sitting one in order to make sexual gestures. Haylee and I, if we hadn't already, visibly stiffened. Haylee, who lacks a sense of direction, and I, panicked and still unsure in a city almost 4000 times the size of Burlington, did not know what to do, where to go, when two french-speaking men were walking toward us with was obviously an agenda. Incidentally, we took a wrong turn and ended up explaining to a woman who only spoke French, that we needed her to just walk with us for a certain amount of distance we could not describe. She finally understood, at least to some extent, and Haylee and I walked the five blocks back to our hotel looking over our shoulders.

In other news, a black twelve-year old girl's jaw was fractured by a white police officer and GOP candidate Ben Carson believes we need to move beyond race.

In other news, queer history is constantly erased and the other day my father told me that "all the queers like Freddie Mercury went around giving themselves AIDS."

In other news, our elected officials, and the society they represent, are so against pre-marital sex that the idea of closing many people's only access to (sexual) healthcare is a more logical option allowing abortions.

In other news, 48.4% of girls in Yemen will be married before age 18. (Source)

In other news, I get really upset sometimes because I convince myself that my rhetoric isn't good enough to make a difference and even if it does, my voice isn't loud enough to have a widespread effect. No one's listening and even if they were it wouldn't matter.

***

My parents were arguing, about what who knows, who remembers. But it was not a small fight. My sister wasn't older than three, which would've made me about eight. I'm not sure if you, reader, know many eight-year-olds, but their decision making skills are not particularly honed. My sister's decision, on the other hand, was much easier. She was a baby, clinging tightly to the back of my legs until my mother moved to the door, said she was leaving, swore she wouldn't come back. (She didn't pack anything; she never does). But to the door she went. They were both screaming, deafeningly so. My sister was crying. I stood stock still. (Screaming adults are like that myth about t-rexes: if you don't move, they can't see you. You no longer exist. They no longer exist. Reality becomes quiet and empty.) My mother did move, scooped up my loudly crying sister and walked to the door. Everyone shouted their sarcastic, biting good-byes, and I followed my mother to the final door.

At my house, the porch door closes at the edge of a large drop off. I spent afternoons jumping from the ground onto the edge, and seeing how long I could balance on the small piece of metal extending from the house. Every time I stepped up it, I leaned forward a bit and brought my knee close to my chest. Now I stood, toes hanging over the edge of the same metal strip, unsure what to do or where to go. My mother was walking toward her car; my sister was, thumb in her mouth, sitting, bouncing with each step, on my mother's hip. My mom turned back when she didn't her the crunch of my sneakers on the stones behind her. Her face and voice incredulous, "Are you coming?"

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I looked down at my sneakers. It was just one big step. I could lean forward, put my foot out and break into a small jog, just like I did every time I found myself at this precipice. The edge seemed too big, the drop too far, and the height too great, yet the metal piece, I knew was not my home. I didn't know what to do. Nowhere seemed to be where I should go. My mom took my answer hastily. "Fine," she shouted. "Stay with him." And so I did. Until my mom and sister came back.

I had watched them reverse out of the driveway. I had stood and watched the trees across the street until my feet and legs ached. Eventually, I had returned to my room to do whatever it is eight-year-olds do when their mothers and fathers divide them up like property.

I think about this moment a lot. The moment on the precipice. The time I didn't move. Plenty of fights occurred later. In these I made different decisions, following my mother easily out the door and into her car. (We went to my grandma's.) But this one sticks out to me. My mother's tone. My indecision. The way that not choosing a side made it seem like I had chosen a side.

Now I think of my present self in the same situation. One parent screaming on the left and the other on the right. I think of my sister, clinging to the back of my legs. I see myself, car keys in hand, putting my own car in reverse and driving to get ice cream with my sister. I see us driving to my grandmother's for the night. The three of us sleeping in her king bed together. Getting up early and deciding against cereal, because what is it with old people and almond milk? I don't know where we would go or what we would do from there, but I refuse to stand on a precipice any more. My decision is no longer either/or. My decision isn't mom or dad, it's me. I choose me.

***

Two || Perfect Circles Entwined

Two weeks from the end of finals, we sat in Alliot, which is the Saint Michael's dining hall, or, more accurately, the cafeteria. Before our 8:30 class, we gathered in Alliot to shovel cereal into our mouths in a sleep-like state before joining the mass exodus from the cafeteria and toward the academic buildings. Haylee sprinkled salt and pepper on her hardboiled eggs. Nichole provided the table with commentary on the difficulty of peeling the shell from her own hardboiled egg. Amy and Shae hadn't sat down yet and Haylee rose to get a drink. I pushed my captain crunch from one end of the yellow bowl to the other. I looked up at Nichole who was only slightly grumpy with how her egg had come apart.
"Nichole?"
"Hmm," she didn't look up from her eggs as she picked away shell from pieces of edible egg.
"Do you think--I mean, like, do you think that we create messes?" My words fell out of my mouth awkwardly and Nichole finally looked up at me. "I mean, like, do we create the messes or are we just the messes and everywhere we go spread the mess. Like the infinitely increasing entropy of ourselves?"
Pepper shaker in hand, Nichole looked down at her eggs, torn from their shell, separated from the yolk, and ripped from other pieces of egg white. When she looked back up at me, she said, "Where do you come up with these things?"

***

S: I'm sorry the past couple weeks have been stressful. But all will be well soon. Just keep doing your best. U r da bomb.
H: Thanks Sam. You are fucking awesome.

***

In my dream, my face is close to your chest; the fabric scratches my nose. The phrase is tête-à-tête... sort of. My arm drapes over your middle, barely touching whatever is underneath us. You speak, slowly and sleepily, and tell me about the sharks. I realize my fingertips touch sand, warm in the summer sun. You describe the sharks, snarling and snapping, as if sharks could make such noises. But I believe you. (Trusting, gullible, your choice.) You say the sharks are coming and what was once an image of a calm, lapping, welcoming ocean beneath a sun whose heat hugs me snugly, becomes dark and cold and frightening. The ocean beckons us, not with open arms, but with a cruel, gnarled finger. I squirm closer to your chest, to protection. Your arms tighten in response. Coming for us how? Who knows, but they are coming. The water-bound sharks do indeed snarl and snap as they propel themselves across the sand with their fins. We are flightless.

***

While driving and sad, the easiest way to measure your stability is to listen to the radio. If you are the saddest of sads, one of two things will happen. You will become stressed by the lack of relatable and acceptable content provided by the radio conglomerates, causing you to smack a random selection of buttons at once and cry out pathetically before slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road to sob loudly in the semi-privacy of your car. People passing might think about stopping to make sure you're okay, but your obvious wailing will make their eyes widen and allow them to continue on their path without guilt. When you finally compose yourself, you will simply turn on your directional, fruitlessly wipe your eyes, and continue crying (quietly) as you approach (slowly) your destination; you are alone.

This is the first option. The second comes when every radio station and every corporately-owned popstar seems to understand your current emotion; they've created these songs especially for you, sad, lonely, down-trodden, crest-fallen, heart-broken, listener. Someone, on the other end of your car speakers seems to understand. You are not alone; the everyone you are with melds into one being. You know this amalgamation of persons that has become one exists somewhere and they knows the depth of your sadness; their words are a reflection of your soul. So, like the (sad) kindred spirits you are, you scream, together.

***

I am crying in an uncontrollable manner. My sobs make it almost impossible to speak and my nose has become too stuffed to provide air. Haylee sits across from me on my bed, telling me I'm okay and that I just need to calm down. "Buddy, buddy, it's okay," she says as I helplessly throw my head into her lap. I blubber, trying to explain more eloquently why I'm upset. I cry and cry and cry. Haylee says I should watch something engrossing. What she means is mind-numbing, but that's okay; I wouldn't mind being numb. Both her hands rest on my back, taking the vibrations of my tears. I cover my face in embarrassment. Eventually, I stop crying and sit up. "I'm okay," I lie. "I'm sorry," I say, telling the truth.
"What? No! Sammi! Stop. Don't be ridiculous. You're totally fine," Haylee tries to assure me, smiling at me. I return the smile weakly and look at my hands in my lap. I think hateful things about my hands and the other parts of my body that interact with the world. I think of all the harm they do and the wake of stupidity and annoyingness and bad they leave. As I disintegrate, my particles of unworthy and terrible disperse into the atmosphere. The mess I spread simply by existing disgusts me and I think of ways to exist less, exist smaller. I draw my knees to my chest. I need a way to shrink; no one can know I'm here.

I am not here, I am not here, I am not here.

I glance up once more before collapsing inward entirely. Haylee is still looking at me. Her eyes are big and sad and reaching. She seems to be cleaning my mess as I create it and I want her to stop before everything I am, everything bad, hurts her. She rebuilds my shambles and negates my entropic force with her calm. She absorbs my particles, overpowers them, turns them good, and gently puts me back together. I am here.

***

"Don't fucking move

'Cause everything you thought you had will go to shit.

We've got a lot.

Don't you dare forget that.

And I'm wasted.

You can taste it.

Don't look at me that way

'Cause I'll be hanging from a rope.

I will haunt you like a ghost."

"Then you walk

under the streetlights

and you're too drunk to notice

that everyone is staring at you

you don't care what you look like

the world is falling around you

You just have to see her

You just have to see her

You just have to see her

You know that she'll break you in two"

Chaos Like a Motherfucker

Close your eyes.

Take the stuff out of your hands.

Listen.

That's how Jim starts. As a junior, I heard these words and scoffed internally. I was much too cool. (News flash, Sammi. You're a fucking loser.) So I watched and waited, turning my head left and right. Are these kids actually closing their eyes? Really? Oh my god. How could they be caught doing such a weird thing? It felt like church. Kneel, clasp your hands, pray. But Jim spoke despite my haughtiness. I closed my eyes in an act of conformity. But when I did, there was the poem in front of me. Not particularly long, but red, definitely red. Sweet and arching, stretching across the horizon of my mind. This, I decided, would be my church.

***

You might be able to tell, but if not, I'm telling you I spent the weekend at the Champlain College Young Writers' Conference (CCYWC). I hadn't written poetry in like maybe two or three forevers so I was pretty much quitting writing indefinitely. That's a lie, but momentum is important in writing. Difficult to maintain, easy to lose. Anyway, I went to the writer's conference and I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I actually appreciated my notebook. I stared at, willing the words to appear on the page, which turned out to be an entirely ineffective method. I learned that in order for words to exist, they must be created--combined and coerced into collaboration. (Us millennials have no idea how such "arcane" technology works.) Beyond this discovery, I found the words, ideas, pieces, poems, babblings to be of a slightly greater than terrible quality. They were almost, like, good, or something? I liked my writing? The words I wrote didn't make me cringe when I read them ten minutes later.

In one craft session called Translating from English to English, we were given a copy of "Child" by Sylvia Plath (included at the bottom) and told to rearrange it, tear it apart, contradict its every assertion and create something new.

I.

my cloudy blindness is one of many ugly lackings
I reject gray geese,
the extinction of the old

the negated existence you ignore
December rainflake, colonist's cigarette
gargantuan

wrinkled stub
empty bath, blank
never meant to be illustrious

This troublous
clapping of eyelids, bright
sky filled with stars

II.

beautiful eyes
fill, wringing

meditate--want, should be

names:
Your
You
I--wrinkle

hands stalk dark images


So I did that and then I wrote a lot of prose. We read this poem called "Pluto Shits on the Universe" by Fatimah Asghar (included at the bottom), which was awesome, and then wrote a response.

Literature, we assume, is unchanging. There is Wordsworth and Emerson and Shakespeare. They are white and male and, therefore, their words are defining. The writers who follow, we assume, because we are told, are white and straight and male, and therefore defining. But Pluto "realigned the cosmos," creating beautiful change. The western literary canon "tried to order [Pluto]... tried to make [her] follow rules," said if she didn't how could she be a planet? But to Pluto, your day is "an asswipe. a sniffle. Your day is barely the start of [her] sunset." She is more than you. Pluto--not white, not male--redefined and "realigned the cosmos." She "shook the sky" and when she "broke your" straight, white, male "solar system," she opened a new sky, and "the sky is blue-gold: the freedom of possibility." Robert Frost said, "Writing poetry without rhyme or meter is like playing tennis without a net." Bu I know what Pluto would say: "Fuck your net."


Then I came home and some asshole took out my wisdom teeth, so now I'm dumb. But I wrote another thing, which is part of a longer piece of prose I've been working on. So here's that.

Amy put the office phone to her ear, pressed the number nine, and took a deep breath before punching in Ed’s number. The phone rang and rang and went to voicemail. Hi, you’ve reached Ed. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. She didn’t bother to leave a message. Phone tag is the only way to talk to Eddy. She’d call him. He wouldn’t answer, but ten minutes later, when he looked at his phone, he’d ring back immediately. Amy pushed back from her desk, her brain turning from James, the bastard, to Ed. In high school, Ed partied. Amy, programmed to be overprotective, always either accompanied him or picked him up afterwards. He’d call from Angie’s or Calli’s or Margaret’s and she would get out of bed, one in the morning, and drive halfway across town. Ed would stumble out the front door and clumsily clamber into her passenger seat. His drunken rants were famous, always almost eloquent and, if nothing else, consistently interesting. Funny and almost insightful. During Amy’s senior year, Ed called. “Hey, Amy. I… Can you come get me? I wanna go home.” She didn’t remember the house but when Ed opened the door to her car, he was crying. Big, sloppy tears complemented with a stuffy nose, which he blew into drive-through napkins from her glove compartment. Amy didn’t say anything. He fiddled with the radio, putting on something slow and calm and low. The night gathered around them and the only light seemed to come from the headlights. It pooled in front of them, an unreachable mirage. Amy’s tires chased the light and Eddy stared out his window. A cemetery appeared on their right—a cliché of fog and eeriness. After a moment, Amy heard Eddy stop breathing entirely and then his breath returned in a heavy rush. She glanced at him quickly. His face with covered in darkness, but she heard him sniffle. “I—I just,” he started. Amy asked if he was okay. “I was looking,” he said. “I was looking at the grave stones and I just thought, holy shit. One day, that’ll be me, ya know. And I felt hollow, like there was nothing inside of me. And hot and cold, like the whole inside of my hollow body was hot and cold. And I thought, holy shit, that’s gonna be me one day and what the fuck am I gonna do ‘til then, Amy? Like, am I gonna get married or have kids or like, am I ever gonna get a job? We’re dying, Amy. We’re dying. What the fuck am I gonna do ‘til then.” Amy’s foot had automatically tapped the brake, slowing and stopping next to the cemetery.

“C’mon, Eddy,” she said. “Calm down. This is what happens when you drink.” Amy rolled her eyes, trying to quell his fears, but she knew this wasn’t what happened when he drank. He was drunk, she knew, but this was just Eddy.

“Listen to me, Amy,” he pleaded. “Look at them. They’re there and we’re here and one day we’ll be there but that’s the only thing that’s not moving. Think about everything else, it’s like, something you need to like, figure out. Like everything is a question and on the other side of the that fence is the answer.” His head turned to face Amy, but he didn’t look at her, but, rather, through her.

“Eddy,” Amy’s voice was soft and quiet; she hoped her tone felt like a warm hand on his shoulder, on top of his head.

“Yeah, Aims?” The air stagnated around the hearts of the still and silent living. Amy knew if they sat there too long, became another unmoving thing, looking at and through each other with their pool of unreachable light guiding their short ride, there would be no chance for decision or question. They would be determined. She knew they would be dead with no babies or spouses or jobs. Societal conformity or not—no matter how much they moved, or didn’t move—eventually they would stop. Just hollow existences—simultaneously hot and cold—who only needed one answer.

“C’mon Eddy. Let’s go home. Mom will start to wonder where we are.” But her eyes didn’t budge; they peered, through Eddy, through the window, through the metal fence, through the eerie fog and into the future.

“Yeah, okay.”

***

Anyway, that was CCYWC. I tried to type all of this with a bag of ice on my face. Have a good week.

"My heart is my armor

she's the tear in my heart

she's a carver

she's a butcher with a smile

cut me farther

than I've ever been"

"Child"
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate -
April snowdrop, Indian pipe
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.


"Pluto Shits on the Universe"

On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.

Naw.

I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.

Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?

That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.

My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.

It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.

Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.

It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.

Abby strikes a pose

Duncan does a dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham

Geof Hewitt AKA Nicki Minaj