UF pharmacy check-out woman

not to be confused with the pharmacist. Her compact, pretty face sits comfortably atop a substantial double-chin. Long and slack, the chin obscures any neck from view, though one can safely assume it to be pale and middle-aged like the rest of her.

She has bottle blonde hair and thin bangs which sprout from a pinkish bald spot near the zenith of her forehead. Behind her bangs I sense thoughts of the weekend collecting, seeping through the skull like a welcome heat. In fact, all her scalp is pinkish. Too much fun in the sun, it seems, sentiment confirmed by her necklace: a starfish pendant studded with cubic zirconia. Because the pharmacist is out, it is she who hands me my medications. She doesn’t ask the usual questions, nor for my ID, and I feel welcomed to her inner circle. Recognized by face, I suppose, just as I now recognize her.

The first faces I see this morning:
the plumber’s and his son’s.

They ring my sing-songy doorbell and I try to look alive but am caught out:

“Did we wake ya?” asks the plumber, voice so juicy with drawl that I would like it to hold me. There’s a rich flirtation which I know is not directed, rather embedded. His sound has developed alongside his shell—unquestionably handsome. Cyan eyes, overgrown beard, scruffy grey crew cut that contradicts the youth suggested by his clear skin—wrinkles, who? He has a porcine structure, with the wide snout and the full cheeks. He fills out his clothes and then some, but the height, not the heft, is the first thing you see. Maybe 6’6”. Can’t tell without my shoes on.

I give him a tour of my first-world problems. The son curly-tails us with a watchful eye. Real cute. Like, child actor cute. Mullet and a freckled face, amber eyes, about 7 and a quarter year old. His Florida skin alit by the orange getup—both boys in merch like they just came from Midtown on game day. Son ignores my “go Gators” comment. But chirps in my bathroom while his dad snakes my drain:

“Are you glad you’re a plumber?”

“Yep,” says the plumber.

The son reveals that Grandpa Joe says you can charge whatever you want if you’re a plumber.

“I do what needs to be done.” A heroic answer with both audiences in mind.

It can’t be helped. I fantasize. Imagine with curiosity rather than any real sensory drive. How would I fit on this man? Terribly, honestly, like a hair knot clings to a noble pipe. (Not to smack myself. We’re just from different worlds.)

I pretend to read while they echo down the hall. The plumber’s gorgeous voice turns stern as he helps his son spell “right.”

“What’s the last letter? Right. So put it together. No, say it all together.”

“Are we going to Moe’s after this?”

“Say it.”

His tone is disproportionate to the lesson at hand—recall, he’s also schooling my drain. I feel jarred by the harsh edge of his frustration and project a kinship with the unseen mother. Where is she? At work? In another house? Is it the plumber’s special day with the son, or are they picking up Moe’s for Mom too?

R-I-G-H-T. Son puts it together and the plumber’s pride is all pop rocks. Expressive, electric, acute. I wish I could see but imagine his cheeks curling into a smile, that cyan squint.

“Yeah man, right! You got it!”

The invisible amber-eyed mom visits me: See, that’s just the way he is. Now hands off my man!

Man at church with a face tattoo,

or is it melanoma?

It’s a dark spread across the forehead. Looks like braille, intentional. His hair, as you’d predict, is straight brown and scraggly. I try and catch some other features, but I’m too fixed on that bluish spot. Still, I get some blur around the edges: youngish. My age. Long eyes with bygone pennies lolling in the center. Whiskers.

At church he comes in late but stays late too, ‘til after the free coffee hour. At the snack table, somebody tells us that the pecans here were grown at Debbie’s farm—Debbie, another parishioner. More on her one day.

I always ignore my phone during church. Do you blame me? I’m on spiritual airplane mode! After I toss my Styrofoam cup into the trash, I find that I’ve missed an important call. I’m blaring on speaker as I pass the minivan parked next to mine. Navy and scuffed like a lone whale. A small rouge dog lunges out the window, friendly. Mangy, but cute. She matches her owner. From the driver’s seat, the man with the face tattoo moves to pull her back. We smile, awkwardly. I can tell we would talk, if I wasn’t talking.

I walk on but first, wave maniacally so he knows I noticed. That I clocked the energy. We’ll meet again, I’m sure of it.

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Everyone, really? Who am I to talk? Fine, then maybe it’s just me. Here I am, in a Lyft, speeding towards the airport because my catsitting gig made me late (cat was distractingly cute), en route to Florida where Oma lives and the roads are dirt and the dog is dying.

Another reason New York isn’t working for me: there’s no place to scream. During my recent bought of depression, I asked friends if they had a scream inside their head. Not like, the ambient feeling of frustration. Not the sensation of wanting to scream. But the sound of a real scream, lodged in your mind like the voice of a lost loved one. And just as simply as you start humming while recalling a tune, your throat leaps to meet it. 

But you can’t let it out cause it’s New York City. People will look at you funny, or, God forbid, try to help. And that’s not even the main concern. The problem is: you can’t scream effectively, the way that you need to—primal and violent and ongoing—with all that audience. So like a good citizen, you do not scream, and the sound in your head gets louder and louder. At best, you bite your tongue.  

No one (so far) has quite related to my plight. I’ve arrived at the airport. I’m wearing comfortable pants and my emotional support hoodie. I’ll check back in later. 

***

It’s been a few days here. Counter to the entirety of my life heretofore, mornings are my favorite. Alone, I journal on the dock and feel hopeful about the things I might produce. I return to the house for a second cup of tea and I write, still hopeful. I’ve established a workable routine up until 10AM, when the first caretaker arrives. Then, the presence of another person, another set of opinions about my family and grandma and the dog, shoots my focus and resolve. I know I’ve lost when the lake turns bright blue, a reflection of the day barreling on without me.

I am impatient for this mood to break. I can’t say how long I’ve been in it. Certainly weeks and probably years. Not forever; I used to find depression so unrelatable. Something to talk friends through. Now I understand that words don’t help much. At a certain point, negative patterns turn chemical. It will take more than Vitamin D and the other pill to break out: a firm routine must be established. The evil consequence: any blip my the routine is the enemy. I’ve become a snippy, short-circuited person. 

The lake, my ancestral body of water, is supposed to fix me. I haven’t been here this long since I was a teenager. Stupid me, to ignore my natural ways and assume isolation is the answer. I remind myself: it’s only the second day. But no, it’s the third. I’m losing track already. I’m writing now, from a moment of darkness, to capture the before. I will take off my sweater and have lunch and then see how I feel.

Salvation lies somewhere between full meals, exercise, sobriety, supportive relationships with funny people, and a balance between discipline and self-acceptance. Am I the only one overwhelmed by the prospect of nailing all of that in one day? 

***

After crying to my mom over the phone, a video tells me that tonight’s full moon is here to illuminate the soul’s fragmentation. I find this deeply comforting, because before indeed I was looking at shards—questions with no place to grip. Now I understand this mess as a fated tableaux. This broken image of myself, expected and perfectly timed. There’s nothing so urgent, now that my troubles have found an astronomical metaphor. Another anomaly: a comet that will be visible to the naked eye at sunset tomorrow.

***

When I have great thoughts, I feel a rush to write them down. I do not like this trait. It reminds me of being friends with standup comedians in my early twenties. After the quake of any laughter, someone would inevitably whip out their phone and jot a note for the stage. What I’m doing—saving profound turns of phrase for prose—really ain’t no different.

To my credit, ¾ of my grandparents have lost their minds at the end. I find my own mental demise a certain inevitability. Has it started already? Oma is my last surviving grandparent. She is “with it,” as they say, but I’ve still had trouble breaking the habit of speaking to her with that dumbed-down, sanitized voice reserved for children and old people. Whenever I fight it, I end up overcompensating: oversharing and overcussing. But that is the real me.

I feel myself settling in since yesterday’s doompost (hold your horses, its not yet 10AM). I’ve had enough time here to observe Oma’s natural routine. We watched TV all day on the first day. Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures, Law and Order: Criminal Justice, and The Crown. This marathon programming is a side-effect of the difficulty in getting her up and down. Once she’s on the couch, that’s pretty much it. Second day, I made some adjustments for my own sanity. We wheeled down to the lake. I investigated my own impatience in looking at nature (I later googled “how to enjoy boredom,”—top tip: start journaling). We caught a frog. It was a good day, until a snafu with some hospice equipment at the end.

I don’t know why I’m astonished that every day is different, even here. On some level, I imagine real life as constant: an arrival to a satisfying set of routines, hobbies, people, and third-places. I know what my therapist would say about that. Still, I feel I’m closer to it here, in Florida, among the spiders and lizards, near family, with time (too much) to think, no makeup, no car, cooking every night. From a place of stability, I can handle the new stuff. Last night, a caretaker’s grandson came over and I taught him some piano and we danced and then he punched me. Stuff like that.

You might be getting the wrong impression. I’ll write in the evening next, so you can see what that’s like. 

***

I am beginning to think New York City is the real world. Florida certainly isn’t. Every day it rains here for 9 minutes and then the sky acts like it didn’t happen. Here is the land of death. We dug a grave for the dog. I took comfort in seeing a large root in there, in the hole, and made sure the spades left it intact.

***

Routine is the thing. And done right, it’s a pleasure when broken. Yesterday was the midway point of my trip. Oma slept through the entire day, and I took the opportunity to go into Gainesville. Get a haircut, tour the university. Live in the land of the future. There were college kids everywhere and I called August and we joyfully did not pass the Bechdel test. It was so nice to laugh and walk among the gator statues. I took pictures of the Spanish moss, but my phone couldn’t capture its romantic beauty. I thought: it’s important to see a place in real life because I wouldn’t have known a thing like that. Also to be reminded that however enchanting a college green is, a dingy classroom is a dingy classroom. 

On the way home on the radio, on what would be my commute if I got into U of F and decided to live at the lake house, they played 365 twice and I remembered that I’m young and fun. 

I broke through the numbness yesterday. I went to my cousin’s house and we talked loudly and laughed. I’m paying attention to my laughter lately, trying not to fake it as much as usual. Real laughter is a signal of happiness, and I’m tired of throwing off my gauge with false grins just to please people. Each morning, when I catch a turtle head sliding down sneakily into the water, my laugh—soft and short, but real—surprises me.

I still feel the scream building up inside of me, but it’s different now. Lower, wilder. Wider, if that makes sense. I didn’t realize I was suppressing the sound in New York, even in my mind. I’ve been playing John Denver for the dog, to remind her of Papa.

***

Writing to you from night again. We put the dog down today. She died in my arms, just before sunset. The vet came out to us and was a kind, clever soul. Oma and the caregivers told some stories about the dog. Myah. Belgian Malinois. Chasing the FedEx driver, accompanying all the runners on their runs. I see the glint of her fur everywhere now, at sunsets, in deer, in autumn bushes. All week, I’ve been running my finger up the bridge of her snout, and it’s this memory that breaks me now. 

I feel like I want to brag for a moment. I have been so fucking strong this week. I have cooked all of my meals and carried the emotional weight of this thing for my family, of Oma and the dog. My week is coming to an end now. We must take turns carrying.

I am overwhelmed by the idea of losing my Oma. She raised me. She is the second-closest person I have to a mother. Her papery skin is amazing, her thin gold bracelets and her ways of cooing. Her obsession with the weird. The macabre, the freaks. She’s always urging me to write about about something “really interesting,” she says, like a feral girl from the woods. Everyone has an Oma impression. She is a strong Scorpio presence, observing everything and speaking with intentionality. Her concise reflections on the people around us are delightful and surprising. For example, my dad: “an actor.” Papa: “so much fun.” She captures an essence in simple words, where I would take paragraphs.

I have sat on couches beside her my whole life.

Some things I will keep to myself. I believe in vulnerability as a tool for healing, and I’m happy to offer it. I also like the praise, the eyes on my writing. Why not both? But some thoughts, particularly the grey unfinished ones and the bruisy purple tender ones that come from dreams and nightmares and full-bodied feeling... well, those thoughts are best saved for songs.

The spot where the dog has always sat with me, at night, is empty now. The caretaker who can see ghosts says she heard Myah’s nails clicking on the floorboards. For my part, I saw a very doglike lizard, and the following cloud. And I do feel her presence here. She’ll stick around for a while. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, which is strange to say now that it’s done. Like, was it really that hard if I did it? But yes, I remember. It was and it still is.

***

It should come as no surprise, if you’re still reading, that I’ve been planning to scream all along. The funny thing is, two nights ago that strong desire suddenly evaporated. I know why.

I went to see the stars with my cousin. I’d been too spooked to go out on my own (though I’ve done it before). It’s also just more pleasurable to coo at the universe with company. As I’ve already noted, I’m still learning how to appreciate nature alone. Anyway, every time I go to the dock there’s a thicc ass spiderweb I’ve been ducking under out of fear and respect. Well, we ducked it on the way down, but plum forgot on our way back up. Bishop took the brunt of it and at 6’1” he probably walked smack into the spider. I hardly even got webbed, but we both freaked out anyway. Hysterical laugh-screaming while we shook out our hair and smacked our necks at the feeling of phantom legs. I had one of those real, ab-crunching laughs which only then did I clock as long-lost. The surge of panic made our laughter all the more delicious.

Don’t worry. I did scream. Just now, in fact. At sunrise at the dock. I nearly talked myself out of it, bent to my nerves about waking the neighbors, about having to answer for my crazy ass. But I know that the scream inside of my head will return, possibly even tonight when I land in the city after thriving in the wilderness. I needed to scream for that future self. Also, it occurred to me: it’s good to check in with one’s scream every now and then for safety reasons, so I know how to pace my breath support in the case of real danger.

Much like a lot of things, accountability was a great support. I’d already told my cousins my plans, and they were rooting for me. Would hate to disappoint. 

So I did scream, twice. The first one short and surprising with its high pitch and tight tunnel of sound. My favorite part—the impressive echo to my left. As soon as it was over, I wanted to do it again. To do it better. I allowed myself a few sips of tea to build up the courage, and waited for the wave of desire pass through and pull me upright. I set my fingers as a timer for five decent seconds, breathed, and tried to slow my heartbeat (which never works; once the heart is beating fast, the mind is lost to the body). I screamed. This scream was warbly, more movie-like, longer, more authentic. The novelty remained, but I screamed long enough to attach some real feeling to it.

I have better screams in me yet. I’m tempted to go again, rule of thirds and whatnot, but there are new neighbors and I did hear a screen door slam after my second scream. I’d prepared my line: “I’m from New York, and it’s been a hard week,” but didn’t get to use it. 

New York. I’m going back tonight and I can already hear everyone laughing at my saying I’m a changed woman. My classic refrain after any trip or great experience, but it has to be true on some level, right? At some point, we must achieve the ability to truly integrate life’s fleeting lessons for the long-term haul. I.e., have your tea outside sans phone; do not fake laugh; act quickly once decided; be prepared to say “no” twice; don’t let the night swallow you; call your loved ones; and perhaps the hardest of all to hold onto in a huge busy stressed-out expensive place like New York City: focus on what truly matters. The other stuff should barely nip you, like a toothless fish.

I go home and crash on the couch. I’d intended to set up the new pillows for L but I’m dead exhausted and need to zonk on my phone for a bit. He comes home to find me slumped. He is carrying a bulbous and healthy pothos plant. I feel touched by the evidence of our disparate mornings, which nevertheless ended in both of us buying something nice for the new apartment. To decorate a home with someone you love is to sculpt an idealized model of your union. For L and me, red is at the center of it all. 

I have a zillion things to do, all of which I swore were non-negotiable last night. But the doctor put it into perspective and now I just want to shop more. I join L on a hardware store adventure and try not to overindulge my nostalgia at the smell of sawdust. When I got sick at school with the kind of mild fever that only a determined child can conjure, my mom would pick me up and cart me along on her Home Depot errands. Sawdust smells like her love. I tourniquet these feelings with my phone. Ghosts of my past have hit me up on Instagram. At the sight of a certain name I hold my arm out stiff and read the message from a distance, as though it were a dirty diaper. The message is thrilling yet sinister. I take note to mention this in therapy. 

It’s late afternoon by the time we get back. Together, then apart again. On the train to my next thing, I inform a few friends about the turns this day has taken. In between stops, when my texts won’t send, I begrudgingly check in with my body. It feels different since the doctor’s, yes. Lighter, bouncier. Something at my core has been removed. In the shower, I often take inventory of the foreign objects on my person. Contact lenses, tattoo ink, the metal retainer on my bottom teeth—the glue of which I feel wearing away, waiting to spring apart and saddle me with a thousand-dollar trip to the orthodontist. An inevitable nasty surprise, living in my mouth. The call is coming from inside the mouth. Creepy thoughts I’m blessed to be rid of when the next distraction arrives:

A man sits down beside me. There’s a loose banana peel in the mesh pocket of his backpack, rubbing against me. I proudly ignore it. He starts eating what looks like dried mango, notices me noticing, and offers me some. “No,” I say, “but thank you for offering.” He insists again and I say I’m having dinner soon, and don’t want to spoil my appetite. He nods and returns to his snacking. A minute later, he hovers his hand over my lap. It is curled strangely, for a fistbump I presume. We’re on good terms, so I meet his knuckles. He grabs my hand and slips me an object. A silver ring, in the classical engagement shape. Actually, I’ll spare you the details. It looks like this: 💍

“Oh no, I can’t take this, no thank you.” I thrust the ring back at him.
“It’s for you. Keep it,” he says. All this ride, he’s been trying to give me something. I dare not inspect the ring. Is it a rock? A diamond? Why does he have it?
“No, no thank you. Thank you but I can’t,” I insist. People are starting to watch us.
“It was my grandmother’s,” he says. Calm. Sober. The ring is most certainly not his grandmother’s—it’s too modern. I wonder what kind of a quest is he on. 
“Oh, then I can’t accept this. It’s an heirloom. Keep it in your family.” This back and forth reminds me of my college playwriting class. In a scene, each character wants something. Each line is a new tactic towards that desire.
“You need it,” he says. 
“No, please,” I protest, but I admit he wearing me down. Maybe I do need it? “I have a boyfriend. Give it to a single lady,” I try. I’ve had some success recently in rejecting street Romeos with the boyfriend line, which for so long I avoided on the grounds of feminism. Ownership and what not. Sometimes, though, it’s the only thing that works.
He looks insulted. “I don’t want to be your man, I got a woman,” he says. “I just think you’re gonna need it.”

The train stops and he slips out the door, leaving me with the ring and several people staring. I give them a look like I tried. And I know I did, so I feel in a way that I have earned the ring. His sudden departure—I hadn’t expected that. I’d thought that maybe, he’d just wanted to talk. The ring was his opening to bother me during the long ride ahead. But the way he left, like I was the bother. I have an instinct that it wasn’t even his stop, just his final tactic to accomplish this task. I wonder what dimension he is from, which mythical plane he is traveling. I am touched that he chose me. I believe in this sort of thing. For the rest of the ride, I google things like how to tell if real diamond and cubic zirconia vs diamond. Fake diamonds will shatter in fire. Real diamonds sink fast. My rock flashes rainbows in the light, but a fog lingers when I breathe on it. I wonder if I have an ethical obligation to turn it in, if it’s real. It is interesting to admit that I wouldn’t. That’s the thing about ethics, you don’t really know where you stand until you’re tested.

I walk to the dinner place and tell myself I’m going to be a good listener, but when I get there I am bursting with the miracles of the day. Mine are great friends. They listen. Maggie thinks the rock is glass. We walk to August’s reading and it’s hot as hell inside the bookshop. I sit on a crate and fidget. The ring is big on even my thumb, so I’ve jailed it in with a smaller band. I use my index finger to spin it around, flicking it by the possibly-diamond.

What else? I miss the bus and call a Lyft; the next bus comes early and I cancel the Lyft. I watch the debate and hold Ethan’s black kitten. Everything has a shine to it. In therapy the next day I reiterate what I’ve told her before: that every week of my life is so unexpected, with so many surprises that I could not possibly predict where any given day will take me, and that’s what makes it hard to get up in the morning, hard to sleep at night. I wonder if it’s like this for everyone, or whether it’s my own narrative-addled perspective that makes a mundane day appear this way. Or that I’m a writer, or that it’s New York City. Or my lack of routine, my freelance schedule exposing me to the strangeness of the streets. Or maybe it’s my energy: I’m somehow innately opened to the universe. Or else I’ve built this life over time, accumulating people and things like plaque which on any random day can cross the threshold into cavity, into loose teeth and gold fillings and diamonds and sawdust and pillows and vines and mangos and glass. In this way, I do believe my soul is just a mess of timers set by God, waiting to go off on His watch. 

These are thoughts which are hard to explain out loud. Lessons too vast to fully recall when I need them most. But I have distilled them into a talisman, a rock of uncertain origin. And it spins and spins and spins.

And yet. Her therapist kept bringing it up. Shame, shame, I’m hearing a lot of shame. And this made her feel what? Bad. Puzzled. Upset, almost immediately. To think that somewhere along the way, she’d picked up a problem. Developed a scar, dead tissue over an old wound. Unfeeling. But if she didn’t have a problem, then why was she here? The therapist’s office on a psychiatrist’s prescription. For all this, there must be a problem.

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Quick tarot reading before we embark on our 3-day hike from the AT southern terminus to Blood Mountain. Got the 7 of swords, and what should jump out but the moon! Swords 7: deception, secrets, trickery, betrayal, shortcuts, acting strategically. I’m hiking with my mom who I (literally) trust with my life, so I’ll ignore the negative meanings and assume the card is referring to our enormous backpacks, which are (hopefully) strategically packed. 

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For an optional interactive reading experience, cue this song at the beginning of the penultimate sentence, indicated by an *asterisk. As always, skip to the end for the fun stuff.

She takes a break from restocking the shelves to smell the soaps. First miel, then citron, then lavende and finally argile, taking in the waxy, earthen scents and imagining a new life with them. She’s always somewhere she’s not. This time it’s an all-white bathroom, and she’s sinking into a bath, and the light is streaming in, and her feet are soft. It’s her afternoon off, and her husband has taken the kids somewhere autumnal.

None of this is real, she doesn’t even like baths. But the images are so clear she sometimes wonders if they are not daydreams but premonitions. She wipes the condensation from the shower glass and sees the lady in the bath and tries to send her a message, visualizing golden beams reaching across the room and into the future. She feels herself as the lady: ten years older, deeply breathing the scent of argile soap (or maybe lavende, she can never decide), eyes sleepy and then suddenly alert, receiving the missive from the past. She acknowledges the shabby girl with grace and care, nodding gently as if to say, “Yes, we are finally living in the moment.”

Lately, she’s been getting a sense of that thing adults have been talking about for years. “Oh, you won’t care about any of that when you’re older,” “You’ll see, none of this will matter to you one day,” Sometime very recently (perhaps last week?) she became one of them. The cable-knit lobes of her pre-frontal cortex finished their last stitch and suddenly she didn’t care about any of that anymore. This is mostly a good development, until an old sad song comes on the store playlist and she feels nothing but a small and detached sympathy for her younger self, compulsively sobbing in her freshroom dorm bed before pressing repeat. She thinks of the eggs in her fallopian tubes, a finite number of them set since birth, and wonders if the same principle applies to tears. Are her sobbing days numbered? 

At the store, she professionally stewards the liminal space between want and have. A man sees a mirror, and suddenly he is in two worlds: The near future – where his wife is happy and his rental property is more valuable – and the present, where he feels powerful and in control of this easy decision. The girl spots a calm-before-the-cigarette expression on his face and ferries him forward: The mirror is $220, looks great in a red room, would you like the dimensions? It’s easy, he buys it. She is paid to get involved like this. For the older women, she speaks softly and with confidence. For the girls and gays, she babbles and compliments. For the men, she laughs at the women.

The day is long and full of questions (Sterling or plated? Grey or dark grey? Where is this from?), and after a while she is no longer impressed by her own cunning. One too many people asks for a paper receipt and she begins to lie, saying everything is imported from Morocco. Finally, it’s evening. No one has come in for an hour, and now no one will until morning. She turns off the playlist – Clean Retail Pop Hits 2022 – and turns off the lights. She locks the door and pulls down the grate, then locks the grate and pulls out her phone. Outside: the wave-like sound of passing cars and chatter at the pizza restaurant across the street. Some machinery hums in the distance. It’s almost too cold for just a blouse, but the subway isn’t far. *The girl taps her thumb against the glass of her phone until she finds the song she wants, and soft guitar fills her ears. A woman’s voice, the lyrics just for her.

Today’s Emoji: Slimy Yet Satisfying

I was recently admiring the bugs in my emoji keyboard. Several columns deep in the animal section, these critters are distinguished by their fine details. The hair on the caterpillar 🐛, the antennae of the cricket 🦗, the translucent exoskeleton of the cockroach, the beetle straight out of Pumba’s lunch. It’s a wonder to see this attentive treatment of God’s smallest creatures. 

But how did we get here, from the veritable ZooPals of earlier generations? Language is a mutable tool, made useful by its ability to adapt. The first emoji set features a smiling dog, a smiling cat, smiling poop, and an angry dumpling. These were emotional cues, meant to buoy the new world of text-based communication, a world without facial expressions or tones. Smileys were the stars of the show.

 More modern editions favor detail, realism, and specificity. Emojis are no longer just the emotional sidekicks to sentences, they are something like words themselves. Consider new additions: how better to convey 🙃 than 🙃? The longer we spend with these icons, the more meaning and history they take on, and the more we demand of them.

Let’s return to the bugs. While I appreciate the artistry, I’m suspicious of the turn from symbolic to material. Part of me thinks Unicode has capitalistic motivations: an Instagram caption is more eye-catching when there’s a picture for every word! I’m also concerned that the Emoji Rennaisance will lead to more intergenerational misunderstandings, as old people and young people struggle to create shared definitions (See also: my deepest sympathies 😂). 

Worries aside, I’m excited to see what happens next. Emojis feel like a completely new frontier, and an excellent earmark for the century of text-based communication. There’s so much more I want to say about this; I didn’t even mention the unnecessarily sassy seal! Luckily, this section is a feature, not a bug 😉.

The Gossip

I have feelings about the Taylor-Swift-is-bisexual fan-theory.

As a bisexual, I’m always excited to discover a celebrity is one of us (hello, Susan Sarandon!) Oft stereotyped as messy, wallet-losing, promiscuous, glittery bitches with mustachioed boyfriends, we are a legion united in a sexuoliminal space, and we’re only growing in numbers. For the record, I think the stereotype is rooted in sexism but it is also very fun. I could see Taylor fitting the mould.

I also think it comes across as pathetic and invasive for us to lay false claim to someone who hasn’t even asked for a welcome party. But with the announcement of Midnights – her 10th studio album – is that exactly what Taylor is doing?

As a songwriter, I’m game to hunt for double-meanings in lyrics. I write easter eggs into my own songs all the time, references only that person would understand. Taylor favors a simple pop vocabulary, leaning heavily on Americana sentimentality and the rhymability of “2AM”, decorated with an abundance of unsubtle details from her own life. For years, fans have successfully matched her lyrics to some relationship or another. 

Such fans have speculated that the evermore bonus track, right where you left me, is a metaphor for Taylor remaining “in the closet” after a breakup. The strongest evidence: “I swear you could hear a hair pin drop / right when I felt the moment stop.” Not a particularly impressive lyric, with an awkward syllabic structure bent around the hair pin detail. Go ahead! Google it! That’s right, it’s slang for dropping hints that you are gay!! The song’s narrator also bemoans that she is “still 23, inside her fantasy,” 23 being the only age Taylor Swift was not in a public relationship, and the year she had a well-documented friendship with model (and rumored ex-lover) Karlie Kloss. There are many, many more hints. But I digress!!!

As a lifelong Taylor Swift fan, our parasocial relationship has had its ups and downs. I remember feeling frustrated by her silence throughout the 2016 presidential election. When she “came out” as a Democrat by way of wearing a shoulderless sweater to the polls, I just saw it as a coy play to score points with her liberal fans without upsetting her conservative fans. On the flip side, I recall spending entire afternoons lying on my friend Kate’s carpet, poring over the liner notes for Speak Now and decoding the encrypted clues she was leaving by way of random capitalization. Taylor has a long history of speaking to her fanbase in riddles.  Politics and the pushy, invasive atmosphere of the 2016 election is one thing. A stranger’s sexuality is something else entirely, and we are not entitled to it. Coming out has consequences, and for someone as famous as Taylor, those consequences would be on a global scale. 

That being said… if she is bi, and if she plans to come out, it follows that she would want to control the narrative as much as possible. And what better way to tell the story than with an album? Look, I started this summer a Gaylor skeptic, feeling put-off by groundless fanaticism and bit too old for puzzles. But if Tik Tok user @swiftieplanntika’s dedicated research got me curious, Taylor’s own solemn, wistful alto on Carolina convinced me. If Midnights comes out and it’s not gay, I’ll eat my words (and be angry at her marketing team for all the queerbaiting). And if it is? There are things that only Carolina will ever know.

A Song

While Taylor Swift wallows in a vague longing, Carl Carlton is leaving nothing to the imagination in his 1981 R&B hit She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked). This jam is so good I have compromised my stance against parenthetical titles. 

Credit where credit is due to Leon Haywood, who wrote the song and gave us this incomparable verse:

Her body measurements are perfect in every dimension

She’s got a figure that’s sure enough paying attention

She’s poetry in motion, a beautiful sight to see

I get so excited viewing her anatomy

With lyrics equal parts drooling wolf and Dr. Frankenstein, the way Carlton effortlessly flows lets you know: he’s saying exactly what he means to say. 

*It’s also kinda long. Skip ahead for the fun stuff 😉

I woke up in tears today. I began crying in my dream and woke up crying in real life. I always thought this kind of thing was fake, a melodramatic plot device used in Murakami novels. I always skim over dream passages in books. They don’t make any sense to me.

But I’ve had vivid dreams every single night for the last three months, since quitting my job. They set the tone for my day, and more jarring than that, they are keeping me in bed. If I wake up from a good dream, I go back to sleep for more. If I wake up from a bad dream, I go back to sleep to see if it resolves.

(I wrote a song. The weakest lyrics mention nightmares. I’m not often held back by the fear that something’s cliché, but words about dreams? Nightmares? Everyone has tried that. I write to process, and there will always be more to process about a dream. The work is always unfinished.)

Saw a TED talk starting with the fact that “we are asleep for 26 years of our lives”. Clicked away immediately. What an evil statement! And based on what metrics? Average American lifespan? Average American sleepers? I’m wary of any science that attempts to define humans’ natural way of being. Humans are natural omnivores, naturally monogamous, or non-. Humans are early risers. We wake at dawn to hunt. How many meals are we supposed to eat in one day again? Three? Five? Just a big one at the end? I’ve lost track. 

Oma (German for grandmother) wakes up around 2pm every day. She is 86. My grandfather says she’s useless, meaning no one is around to remind him to eat in the morning, and he’s lonely. I remember Saturday mornings, Oma picking us up for German school, an hour away with traffic. School is out by noon, but we’re already beat, the day is over, we’ve stuffed our brains with rules and vocabulary. We stop at Quick Trip for gas, corn dogs, and milkshakes. Oma buys us anything we want. By the time we’ve arrived back home, we’ve found the energy for a new day. We read, we fight, we play in the creek. I’m not sure what she does.

I remember the lake house. I’m up late reading, a ball on the couch against the lamplight. The phone-clock strikes midnight. Oma turns from her own book and wishes me a happy Fourth of July. When I go to bed, she’s still awake. 

I don’t discount that she’s sad. Dreams and sleep pull us in at our weakest, and mornings are hard on the body. But best part of deep night is being alone. The work is done, the mind is creative, alert, undisturbed. Time seems endless, and the sky isn’t getting any darker. If I was dying, I would want more of the night.

In my dream, Oma is pulling us through the corridors at German school. I attended the school for twelve years, in a public middle school rented out to the German School Alliance on Saturdays. The cafeteria always smelled like powdered donuts. The hallways all looked the same. Even at 18, I still got lost. In my dream, it’s the last day. May. Oma wants to find my brother’s teacher, thank him for doing such a good job. She pulls us through the crowd like a rope, her hand on my brother’s, my brother’s on mine. We pass faces I recognize. My Aunt Ann, looking young, like pictures from before I knew her. I kiss her cheek and smell perfume. Oma pulls us forward. Everyone is happy on the last day of school. Parents, teachers, students. Grades aren’t out, but they’re beyond our control. We get to be proud. Every year, there’s a festival. There are blow-up slides, bounce houses, prizes. I don’t see the festival in my dream, but when I wake up, I feel it there. If I go to sleep again, it’s what would come next. 

My dream has made contact. It’s been trying to for months. I accept the wisdom of the sleeping hour, I indulge interpretation. A lot is nonsense, but meaning is not impossible. It’s just rare.

I hear the message. We celebrate the end. 

Today’s Emoji: ✨

In today’s dark times we need the sparkle emoji more than ever. And yes, the dark times I’m talking about are me managing the Instagram of a boutique retail store.

My personal use of the sparkle emoji dates all the way back to 2013, when I religiously bookended my Instagram captions with emojis because my friend Michaela told me that was the “rule”. Now, it’s technically my job to care about such rules: post at primetime, lots of color, ask a question, use the hashtags. The grid is no longer enough, now it’s grid-story-Reels. Oh yeah, learn Reels! Before it’s too late!

When it gets to be too much, I remember my old friend the sparkle emoji. She is fun and inoffensive, an all-purpose spice for whenever you’ve used too many exclamation points. Is it working? I don’t know. Sales seem the same, but I’m getting more compliments!

The Gossip

The gossip today is personal. As such, I will not be revealing many details. Suffice it to say: it is a family matter, money is involved, and e-mails have been exchanged. I, of course, am innocent. Some wisdom from the present moment (me in the thick of it)

• When you feel your blood pressure rising, step away.

• Written words confuse.

• Are you speaking in the interest of being right, or are you speaking in the interest of Truth?

• Believe yourself.

A Song

I almost can’t choose a Carol Ades song, so I won’t. You get two today, and they’re both fantastic. Ades has written for Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez, which you can totally hear in her pop-star vocals and addictive melodies. Even as I write this and blast “Crying During Sex,” my roommate is shocked that it’s not Miley! Hi Sebi!

I’ve dwelt a lot this week on Ades’ melodic restraint, how she finds the perfect tune for “But I don’t get to know the rest// ‘cause I’ve been crying during sex” and only gives it to us twice. She’s also cracked the indie-pop lyric formula, perfectly balancing universality and specificity. I mean, “You were always good but you were not inspired”? Juuuust right!

Incidentally, I discovered her on Tik Tok. I feel blessed to be a singer-songwriter girl during the Tik Tok age. We are really having a moment over there. Come join us!

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