Meanderings on I Know What You Did Last Summer

I feel like I can't start this post without saying two things. First: the majority of this post was written pre-election. That feels important for some reason. It might not be, but I wanted to say it, so I did. Deal with it. Second: there are spoilers (kind of), for those of you who have somehow gone 14 years without seeing I Know What You Did Last Summer but want to, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. (If you haven't seen it yet, just do it. Please. I mean, I Know is pretty predictable, but..???)

***

I used to be a list maniac. Like, by the time I left for college, I had an entire notebook that was filled with lists. Favorite songs. Favorite song lyrics. Favorite smells. Favorite life moments. Favorite albums. Favorite movies. Lists of all the albums I owned, plus their track listings. Lists of all the books I owned. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer was my first favorite movie, and it was my #1 favorite movie all throughout high school. Up until I Know…, I didn’t have favorites, really. There were movies that I really liked, but there wasn't one that was my favorite. Scream came out the year before, and I liked it a lot, but it didn’t do for me what I Know… did. 

First of all, I Know… was a book first. And I had read it. It wasn’t my favorite book. The cover and the premise were scarier than the actual story. 

For those who aren’t familiar, I Know… is about a group of teenagers who accidentally hit and kill someone with a car. Instead of calling the police or an ambulance, the teens dispose of the body and vow to never talk about it again. In the film, nearly a year after the incident, someone begins stalking and murdering all the teens who were involved. In the book, I remember the menace being mostly a metaphor for their guilty consciences, which was very disappointing to me. I wanted action, I wanted vengeance, I wanted blood. I didn’t want the moral to be, “Don’t hit someone with your car and then dispose of the still-alive body because your guilty conscience will never leave you alone.” I wanted the moral to be, “Don’t hit someone with your car and then dispose of the still-alive body because someone’s going to come back and kill your ass, and rightfully so.” 

***

Back then, I adored Ryan Phillippe. His character, Barry, was the dickish aggressive jock who started to become a nicer human being (kind of), and then he got murdered. (Oops, spoiler. Sorry.) 

I can’t really remember what else made me love the movie. It took place in a New England fishing town, which I think I liked. Ryan Phillippe/Barry was cute. Maybe I liked the idea that such unlikeable people (Barry, in particular) could possibly change — right before they were murdered, of course — but nevertheless, they could change. That's what made their deaths tragic. 

***

Now, when I watch I Know… Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character, Helen, is my favorite. She’s a beauty queen (literally) who had big dreams of moving to New York City to become an actress. Those plans didn’t work out, and she finds herself back home, working at her sister’s shop and preparing to hand last year's beauty queen crown over to her successor. Helen is supposed to be vain and shallow, but Gellar plays her with nuance. Underneath the vanity and supposed vapidness, there’s a sadness to Helen, and when it comes time for her to die, she fucking fights to the last breath. Helen’s death is the one I mourn the most. 

***

The two main characters who survive — Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) — are the most annoying to me. Julie’s judgy self-righteousness, and Ray’s wide-eyed earnestness are so off-putting.

At the beginning of the movie, there’s a scene where the four sit around a bonfire on the beach and tell a scary story about a murderer with a hook for a hand. After the storytelling, the couples pair off: Helen and Barry, Julie and Ray. Helen and Barry fully embrace their sexual selves and make out next to the bonfire in full firelight. Julie and Ray sneak off to a shadowy cave, where they exchange cheesy words of love (Ray says, “Did you know that the success rate of high school relationships is higher than any others?” then Julie says, “Oh yeah? Cite your source.” And then Ray puts Julie’s hand on his heart. BARF.) and then bashfully have sex for the first time. 

I do appreciate that there is an attempt at a self-aware, feminist lens in Julie, though, especially in the pre-accident scenes. She calls out Barry’s sexism, and delivers a screed on tales used to “scare girls out of having pre-marital sex.” That all ends with the accident.

And even though both Helen and Julie have sex, only one of them lives — the modest, self-righteous one. 

***

Folks of color, where are they at? They’re nowhere. Julie has a Black roommate, who tells her that she needs to “get some sun on that pasty tail.” Because Julie looks like death at that point in the film, to be honest. 

And that is the end of any folks of color in the film. 

***

I imagine that the soundtrack was what some might refer to as "hip," if only for this: 

And I won't lie. I loved this song then, and I still love it now. It feels like a summer song, and it also feels slightly creepy? I don't know, maybe that's just the I Know What You Did Last Summer context talking to me.

***

At the end of the day, the moral of the story is: don’t murder someone, intentionally or unintentionally, and then try to cover it up. Your guilty conscience, literally and/or metaphorically, will come for you. 

Also, be prudish about sex. You can have sex if you want, but be cool about it, I guess. 

And even though you might be a voice of dissent in your group of murderer-friends, but you still go along with the whole thing and don’t tell anyone, you should still be self-righteous about the whole thing. 

And definitely find your courage by spinning in a circle and yelling, “What are you waiting for?” into the trees. 

One Week Later.

As I sit down to write this post, I'm waiting for my Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies dough to chill, so it might seem like things are calming down in my world, like things are getting back to normal. 

This past week has been rough. Yes, I'm wearing my candy cane apron, there's flour everywhere, my hair is up. But I haven't interacted out in public with human beings other than my cat and M in a few days. When we go out grocery shopping or out to lunch, I feel a vulnerability I haven't felt ever before. I want to walk around hunched over and covering my head, as if the sky or bricks are going to fall on us any minute now. With this batch of cookies, my dark purple lipstick, and my indie dance party playlist, I am fighting off the darkness.

While waiting for my butter to brown, a dark-lipsticked rebel baker selfie. 😎🖕🏽🍪❤️☠️

This past week has been waves of nausea, panic, rage, and upset stomach. I've had hours of numbness, of denial. I've had hours of complete depression, despair, helplessness, hopelessness. I've had rage that has typically manifested itself unwisely by unloading on well-meaning folks on Facebook (and if you know me, you know that 10 times out of 10, I don't fuck with internet fights/debates/conversations) about safety pins. 

***

My anger always fuels me. I usually take a day or two to rest, recover, and rebound. This time around, I still don't feel rested, recovered, or the closest bit to being on the rebound. And I don't know how to muster the energy/rage necessary to get my ass out of bed with gusto in the morning. How to approach the day with any kind of resolve. 

I've spent the past 7 days in a state of restlessness. Nothing feels right to me. I tried to read one of my fave romance novel authors in an attempt to escape reality for a bit, but my mind was only half engaged. The other half was cry-screaming into a void. Buffy worked for a second -- when Buffy doesn't cure my ails, it is a sure sign that we're all fucked. So M and I spent our weekend watching Ink Master, because it's easier to focus our disdain on specific aggro dickish white guys than it is to just be in the world surrounded by aggro dickish white guys. 

At this point, I'm only sure of a couple things. 

1. Caring for ourselves and each other is the most important thing we can do. The next four years are going to be an absolute and utter shit show. This country has shown us outright that it doesn't give a shit about marginalized and underrepresented folks. So we have to care for ourselves and our communities. Because if we don't, we won't be able to keep fighting. White supremacy's goal is to keep us spending our energy/time on hustling to keep the lights on and roofs over our heads. At the end of the day, we don't have energy/love/time/thought left for ourselves. We have to fight to care for and love ourselves because the white supremacist patriarchy tells us that we're not worth even that.

2. In the past week, I have found solace and comfort in family -- both blood and chosen. We've sat together (virtually) in shock and tears. We've checked in on each other in the days following, expressing our confusion, disbelief, horror. We've processed with each other the strange ways we've expressed our devastation and rage. For many of us, this world looks so much different, and I'm grateful to have the people in my life that I do. I just have to remember to keep reaching out and asking for help when I need it. 

***

I don't know, y'all. This is all I basically have to say right now. I have some other things to work out about activism and organizing, how to show radical solidarity, how to get ourselves on the road to being co-conspirators rather than self-appointed allies. But that's for another post. When I'm feeling more calm, more clear, more ready to articulate the nuance of the world we're in now, and how we can move forward. 

What I am ready to say is that there is no easy answer. There is no formula to showing solidarity. Wear a safety pin if that feels like a useful thing to do, but make sure that you are also speaking up loudly when you witness oppression and bigotry. The conversations around safety pins are a distraction. It's an easy receptacle to dump our feelings of futility, anger, etc. I'm so definitely guilty of getting sucked into it.

It's easier to get upset about safety pins rather than sit and do the constant self-reflection and examination of what we do and how we act in the world. To ask ourselves: when and where do I hold power and privilege, and how do I use it amplify marginalized voices? How do I participate in white supremacy and how do I replicate systems and methods of oppression in my activism and in my daily life? 

I guarantee that the answers to those questions are hard and humbling. 

***

I'll end with the things that are giving me life right now: John Oliver and Samantha Bee.

John Oliver: "Keep reminding yourself that this is not normal...a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address, and that is not normal. It is fucked up."  The entire 30 minutes is well worth the watch. 

And Samantha Bee. Some of her jokes are too real for a studio audience so soon after the election, but that's cathartic for me. Making a probably pre-dominantly white audience uncomfortable with the truth of being a marginalized person in the U.S. right now is exactly right. Go, Samantha Bee, and so many kudos to your writers. 

The Day After

I thought I'd mentally prepared myself for this. I thought that I'd mentally and emotionally prepared myself for a Trump win, but I hoped -- I hoped so hard -- that I'd be wrong. That I'd be pleasantly surprised by a landslide victory for Hillary. Even though I went to bed at 3am, after sobbing on the living room floor about the Republicans taking the House and Senate, I still had small hope that I'd wake up in the morning and everything would be okay. That Hillary would be our next president, and the Trump/Pence ticket would just be some shit stain in U.S. election history.

I woke up this morning, and the sun was shining. No one had messaged me while I was sleeping to tell me jubilantly that Hillary had eked out a win. There was just silence. So much silence. 

And I am sick. 

***

I'm hearing the words "heartbroken" and "heartbreak" being used to describe reactions to today. Sure. That's probably accurate for some.

For me, though, heartbreak is for when your team loses the World Series.  

 I'm devastated. And so unsurprised. And so fucking surprised. I'm not surprised because I'm a woman of color, and white folks show their asses to me daily. Hourly, some days. And then I look at the numbers -- 

Goddammit, white women. Goddammit. pic.twitter.com/6zaFcljfAp

— Jessica Luther (@scATX) November 9, 2016

-- and I think, Who are the white women in my life who voted for Donald fucking Trump? Who are the white women in my life who don't give a shit about me, my family, my loved ones? Who are the white women in my life who would rather have a rapist and abuser lead their country, than a woman who would protect your right to a safe and legal abortion? 

***

And then I think about everything that this administration will undo. The decades of work that folks have put in to make sure abortion is safe and legal (though access is a different story -- what little access pregnant folks have now to abortion care is going to get worse before it gets better). That folks have put in for affordable health care -- a flawed system, sure, but we have more people insured than ever before. I get my insurance through the ACA. My mother, who has cancer, has insurance through the ACA. I have no doubt that this administration will gut the ACA and leave us all with nothing. 

And I'm just thinking in terms of the every day. 

Last night, I started thinking of all the shit I need to do before the new administration. #1 on that list -- get an IUD.

I guess that's basically it. First and foremost in my mind was how to maintain control over my own body.  

***

The small slivers of light for me: Nevada, my home and heart state, went blue. They went Hillary, and I couldn't be prouder. They also elected the first Latina to the Senate, Catherine Cortez Masto. Fifteen years ago (jesus, was it really that long ago?), if you had told me that my state was going to go blue and be called for Hillary, I would've been in joyous disbelief. 

But that only matters to my heart. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter for this election.  

*** 

The amount of things that will be undone by this administration is massive. It's overwhelming. The amount of bodily danger that so many face is horrifying. Having a violent rapist, racist, misogynist elected to office validates everyone who voted for him to act accordingly. The folks who are low-key racist are, at long last, going to show their ugly-ass faces. Men who are abusers and who rape will continue to do so. (White) men will continue to assault people because we've elected someone who also does it.  

The person we've just elected president is on trial today for rape .

***

Today, I am mourning. Today, I have no tolerance for bullshit or white tears. I am allowing myself a day of grief. 

And then, tomorrow, the fight continues. At the heart of the fight: the words of Assata Shakur: 

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other. 
We have nothing to lose but our chains.

A Montage as Ode to Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Jesus, how do I even begin to talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I’ve started and re-started this post in my head, trying to figure out how to tackle this. I even briefly considered skipping it, but there’s no way I could dedicate 33 posts to my favorite spooky shit and not talk about Buffy. So I’m trying to make peace with the fact that what follows will be woefully incomplete and will never do justice to Buffy. That’s just facts. 

***

When Buffy came around, I loved everything about her. I loved her outfits, and I loved that she could take care of herself. I loved that she was a teenage girl, that she spoke the way she did, dressed the way she did, and she was kicking ass and literally saving the world every other day. 

My dad, though, had a very different idea of how girls should behave, and Buffy definitely didn’t fit the criteria. So I was forbidden from watching Buffy. (I was also barred from watching Alias for similar reasons.) After fighting with my dad about watching Buffy one night, I remember writing in my journal: “Dad says girls aren’t supposed to act like that. Like what? Being awesome and kicking ass??????”  

***

When I started rewatching Buffy a couple years ago, shit was hitting the fan in my life. To keep from sitting catatonically in my living room and/or crying hysterically, I turned to Buffy and Supernatural. I love Supernatural and I’ll write about it later, but I don’t love the Winchester brothers as much as I do Buffy. I love her even more now, in my third decade on the planet, than I did when I was 15. There are days when I identify with her in ways that don’t even seem possible or make sense. 

***

I thought about writing about all the times Buffy has made me cry, or all the times that I’ve identified with anyone on Buffy, or my favorite moments. It’s just too damn much. 

I’m re-rewatching Buffy with M who is seeing it for the first time. I’m a little jealous — I wish I could see it all over again for the first time. When it comes to my favorite television, movies and books though, I tend to completely forget everything so that when I revisit them, everything is a pleasant surprise. 

The first season and part of the second are fresh in my mind, so I’m going to center mainly on those. There might be spoilers for those of you who have not seen Buffy yet but intend to. Just a warning. 

***

One of the things I most admire about Buffy is the intense vulnerability we get to see from all the characters. In the nightmare episode, we see several of her nightmares — being buried alive, becoming a vampire, taking a test but not knowing anything on it. The most acute nightmare is being told by her dad that she is the cause of her parents’ divorce, that she is a difficult daughter, and that her dad is wasting his time when he spends the weekend with her. 

Out of all the nightmares, this is the one that shakes Buffy the most, and it’s the one that no one else witnesses, except us — the viewers. She deals with the emotional consequences of this nightmare on her own, though she must quickly move on from it in order to save Sunnydale from turning into a nightmare world. 

***

And isn’t that how life is? We get dealt a blow — by life, by our subconscious, by our insecurities, our depressions — and we only have a minute to process it and sit with it. We’re not all trying to save the world from literal destruction, but life does go on. Even when it feels like our worlds are ending, we have jobs to go to, bills to pay, mouths to feed. We can’t spend all our time crying and processing the shit that gets thrown at us, or the nightmare world will become our world. 

***

Buffy’s vulnerability is so fresh, and so is every other emotion. Each character wears their hearts on their sleeves. Buffy’s joy is so real because it’s so rare, and each heartbreak is always intense and visceral. Buffy (the tv show) doesn’t shy away from complex or earnest emotion or the ways in which we all deal so differently with devastation or trauma. 

The first episode of the second season, when Buffy comes back from summer vacation and is trying to deal (or not deal) with the trauma of knowing that her death was imminent, and then dying and then coming back to life, is so fucking real to me. She lashes out, making cruel comments to her friends and performing a sexy dance for Xander (her lovable, joke-making sidekick) in front of Angel (a 240-year-old vampire she's crushing on), to a Cibo Matto song, no less — like, fuck. Isn't that how so many of us deal with the big shit in our lives? Push all the feelings down somewhere deep inside until it has no choice but to ooze out in other ways that make us strange to the people who love us. 

***

We — the viewers — see so much of Buffy that her friends don’t see. We’re the only ones who know that she’s terrified that her parents don’t love her because she’s “difficult” — aka The Slayer. In that first episode of the second season, she has gone for months without talking to anyone about what it was like to know that her death was destiny and go out to meet it anyway. And the trauma of death, resurrection, and fear that keeps coming back to haunt her. 

FUCK. 

***

Also, no one can tell me that the arc of Buffy and Angel’s relationship isn’t one of the best ever of all time. I’m so serious. The early stage of their relationship is so much fun and worthy of all the swoons. 

M doesn’t care for Angel very much. Last night, he said, “This guy is supposed to be good-looking? It’s like he’s featureless. He has no distinguishing features.” 

I said, “Okay, Xander,”  and we laughed. I can’t speak to Angel’s attractiveness, but I do think they cast him exactly right. He broods without being obnoxious, he’s mysterious, he has the right mixture of gravitas and humor. He looks young, but also like he could definitely be 240 years old.  

***

And when Xander finally works up the courage to ask Buffy out. Oh my god. It’s so awkward and so genuine. It hurts to watch Xander hope for reciprocation and be met with so much less. And it’s reassuring to see Xander bounce back. To see him recover from taking a chance, to see him respect Buffy’s reaction and continue to be her friend with no malice and no resentment. 

Hello, Nice Guys (tm). Take notes. Xander is an actual nice guy. 

***

This is not the most coherent post I’ve ever written. It’s definitely super gushy, but I don’t care. I don’t know how else to write about Buffy. This is at least a start. 

St. Petersburg, where have you been all my life?

I have limited experience with Florida. I’ve been to Miami, Orlando (kind of — does going to Islands of Adventure count?), West Palm Beach, Vero Beach, and Port St. Lucie. Florida is beautiful, but hasn’t inspired the urge to throw away everything I own and move there. 

Until we visited St. Petersburg.  

Our mini-road trip to St. Petersburg was a spontaneous one. The drive across the flaccid penis of the country is about 3 hours long and took us through for-real rural Florida. We drove past a couple dude ranches, a panther crossing zone, a truck hauling an airboat, citrus groves, and lots of anti-abortion and pro-Trump billboards. (I’m a Deplorable! And I’m voting for Trump!)

We only spent a few hours in St. Pete’s, but we fell in love. Here are the places we checked out.

***

The Salvador Dalí Museum was our main draw to St. Petersburg, and it didn’t disappoint. There was a guided audio tour that I’d say 95% of the museum visitors used (but we didn’t because we’re pretty cool). There were also hourly docent tours in different languages. There was a cafe that sold Salvador Dalí bottled water and delicious little sandwiches.

There was also an outdoor “avant-garden” that had a labyrinth and a giant sculpture of Dalí’s mustache that people can pose in.

The collections are divided by time period, so you get a chance to see some of Dalí’s earliest works and the results of some surrealist games. They have pieces from his anti-art period, his surrealist period and beyond. We got to see some of the huge masterworks, like The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and The Hallucinogenic Toreador, all of which were incredible to see in person. We spent a good 15-20 minutes in front of each masterwork, just examining the detail and craft in each piece. I don’t know a whole lot about art and how to interpret it, but dang. These paintings were like poems. The more we looked, the more there was to see. 

The rotating exhibit was called “Ferran Adria: The Invention of Food” There was meat to sample, cookbooks to look through, video of a 33-course meal, and more. I’m disappointed though, that while they featured a little bit of Dalí’s work in connection with this exhibit, they didn’t mention that Salvador Dalí had a motherfucking surrealist cookbook. YES. I wish I could have seen that. 

Restrooms: Restrooms were gendered with multiple stalls in each, but clean. I believe there were individual family restrooms. 

Good to know: Admission is $24 per person, unless you are: over 65, under 18, or military/police/firefighter/educator.

***

After The Dalí Museum, we were hungry. Looking at all the phallic and vulvic images is exhausting. So we Yelped restaurants that were in the area, and decided on Thirsty First, which was categorized as a “gastropub.” 

Thirsty First is less a gastropub and more a sports bar with better food. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what we were expecting. We were expecting good craft beer selection and good food, and we didn’t really get either of those. Their logo is pretty great though. 

Items of interest: 

• Boardwalk Bites (blackened shrimp, avocado ranch, jalapeños, cabbage, and avocado) were pretty delicious.  
• The cocktail menu was pretty great. I had the Smoke and Mirrors (house smoked tequila, seasonal shrub, grapefruit, and a splash of lemon lime soda, served with a salted rim) and loved it. When I ordered, I was warned that it was “really smoky” and that is true — it is a little bit like drinking a campfire, but I like it that way. If I’d had the time, I would have tried a couple other drinks. 
• The Miami Weiss Hefeweisen. 

Restrooms: Gender-neutral (individual room with a locking door) and clean. 

***

For dessert and a cup of coffee before heading back across the flaccid penis of the U.S., we hit Cassis Bakery. Cassis Bakery is part of the larger Cassis American Brasserie, which we didn’t know about. The bakery is tiny and cute, and when we went in, there was an abundance of fruit tarts, which are some of my favorite desserts on the planet. I don’t even remember what else was in the case, to be honest. We ordered three tarts with cappuccinos, and sat outside along Beach Drive. The weather was gorgeous and someone, somewhere, was blasting a 70s playlist that included Fleetwood Mac. The tarts and the cappuccinos were delicious. So recommended. 

Restrooms: Gender-neutral (individual room with a locking door) and clean. 

3 delicious af tarts. 

***

Before our parking meter ran out, we took a walk down Beach Drive, took in the sights, and started daydreaming about what life would look like if we lived near the beach. 

We also started planning for a return trip. We’re coming back for you, St. Petersburg! 

Meditations on Fear Street & Horror Lit

From ages 0-5, I watched a lot of after-school cartoons, like Duck Tales and Tale Spin. I even watched Day of Our Lives with my mom. When I was around 4 or 5 years old, while I was watching the intro to Duck Tales, the tv went blank. It wouldn’t turn on or off anymore, I couldn’t change the channel. The tv was done. We didn’t get another one until I was in middle school. 

During that time period, we moved from the small town of Lovelock to the bigger small town of Winnemucca. But rather than find a house within city limits, my family opted to move to a house 30 minutes out of town. We moved to a street that wasn’t even maintained by the county, and it had only one other house on it.

We moved, literally, to the middle of nowhere. 

Without a tv and without even a real neighborhood, there wasn’t much for me to do other than read. I read the usual suspects for a girl my age — The Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys. And then I read the things that weren’t the usual suspects — Fear Street, Goosebumps, anything Christopher Pike, L.J. Smith, and/or any fictional book that featured a bloody knife or a dead body or anything that looked remotely frightening. What I’m waxing nostalgic about specifically is all things R.L. Stine.

***

People have a nostalgia for Goosebumps. I read them, too, but by the time Goosebumps came out, I had already read every Fear Street book available at the public library. Goosebumps was dismally tame in comparison. 

Goosebumps was too kiddish for me. It was more science fiction lite than spooky, and it didn’t scare me or hold me in suspense the way that Fear Street did. The possibility that my gym teacher or parent could be an alien just didn’t scare me. A ventriloquist dummy that could talk, act, and kill people on its own? Yes, I had a stake in that. That shit was scary. 

***

For my horror reading pleasure, I had some criteria. I preferred the spooky, the supernatural, the unexplained. I could also go for an old-fashioned horror murder mystery — something with more edge/murder/blood than Agatha Christie, but with elements of a whodunit. I liked trying to figure out who the killer was. I needed a little bit of romance and some making out (even if the romantic interest was eventually murdered or turned out to be the murderer). I preferred women as my protagonists, even then. I enjoyed a twist ending as much as the next person. 

***

Now, I said that Goosebumps was more like sci-fi lite. I actually really like sci-fi. I’m not a nerd about it or anything, but I grew up watching the original Star Trek, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. Obviously, TNG was my favorite because of Deanna Troi, Data, Geordi La Forge, Captain Picard, Commander Riker, etc. (I could probably write a whole thing about TNG, but that’s for another time.)There was a stretch of time when my favorite shows were mostly all on the SyFy channel. I love Firefly and begrudgingly adore Farscape. 

Maybe what I mean is that Goosebumps just didn’t have the edge I needed. I needed something dangerous, irreversible, and final. There needed to be something from which there was no coming back. I needed death or something close to it. 

***

I’m no expert, but to me, sci-fi seems to center itself around exploring questions like, “What does it mean to be human?” and how the answers to those questions can build different worlds, different societies, different ways of being. I love all the different ways sci-fi explores humanity, lack of it, otherness, alien-ness, and the darker side of sentient natures. 

Horror and the spooky explore what it means to be alive. Not human, but simply alive. It dives into the fight to stay alive and what happens when you don’t win. Sometimes horror explores how we deal with grief and loss, or how the way we treat people can come back to haunt us (literally).  

***

Maybe trying to differentiate between the two is futile. They ask the same questions, but explore them in different ways. I do think, though, that sci-fi explores life, and horror explores death. 

***

My love of horror doesn’t seem to translate to the literary world so much anymore. I don’t know at what point I veered away from reading “genre” fiction and went more toward “literary” fiction. Maybe it was becoming an English major. Maybe it was because there was nothing to transition to. After Fear Street, there didn’t seem to be a more “adult” horror alternative that captured the fun of Fear Street.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25077308 

(Some of you might be yelling, “Stephen King!” at this point. Yes, I know. I actually really love Stephen King as a person and I like how he talks about writing, but I’ve only read The Stand. I KNOW.) 

***

I’m halfway through the horror short story collection Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt. It’s so fucking creepy, otherworldly, and good. There’s an entire story that’s told in found-footage style, and it doesn’t sound like it should work, but IT DOES. 

Greener Pastures reminds me that horror as literature can be so effective and creepy. It activates the imagination in ways that film rarely can. For me, reading creepy shit transforms normal night noises into potential intruders, ghosts, poltergeists, demons. It’s the images in horror lit that have me avoiding mirrors in any dimly lit setting, and spending as little time in darkness as possible. 

***

I don’t have a good conclusion or place to end. I started out wanting to write about Fear Street vs Goosebumps, and ended up thinking more about the difference between sci-fi and horror, and then horror as literature. 

At the end of this, I’m going to revisit what Fear Street and Christopher Pike books I can. I just discovered that Fear Street is being reissued with new covers. I’m glad for the re-issues, but I wish they’d leave the covers — they’re so 80s/90s and some of my favorite covers of all time. 

After I reread Fear Street and Christopher Pike, I’ll write a follow-up post. (Oh my god, y’all, I’ve forgotten about Diane Hoh and her Nightmare Hall series! WHAT. So many things about myself and my aesthetic are starting to make sense.) 

If anyone has suggestions for more horror for me to read, leave them in the comments below.

P.S. Also, there was a teen horror Christmas book — I think the cover had a bloody wreath on it? or a wreath with a bloody knife? — that I really loved but can’t remember the title or the author or anything about it other than a make-out scene in a theater? If anyone can give me any leads, please. Do. It’s starting to bug me a lot.

Damon Salvatore & the Supernatural Bad Boy

When I tell people that I watch The Vampire Diaries, I usually qualify it with this: I loved the books when I was in high school. I loved The Vampire Diaries more than a decade before it was a tv show. I’m a little bit of a hipster about it. 

Even before that though, I loved L.J. Smith’s trilogy, The Forbidden Game. 

The story centered around Jenny (blond hair, blue eyes), her boyfriend Tom (he might be on the football team, I can’t remember), and Julian, a bad boy wizard type (his eye color is described as the blue of the sky just before the sun rises) who has a big crush on Jenny and a penchant for sadistic survival board games.  In the first book of the series, The Hunter, Jenny buys a carnivalesque board game at a creepy little shop. Once she begins playing the game with her friends, they’re all whisked away into a life-sized version of the game. 

Yaddi yaddi yada, Jenny finds out that Julian, has been watching her for her entire life from another dimension, and he’s fallen in love with her. Which is not creepy at all. 

And it turns out that by playing the game, Jenny has unwittingly agreed to play for her freedom from Julian. (He wants her to be his queen.) 

And she also has to try to save her friends from death traps. 

Super romantic, right? 

***

After The Forbidden Game, I headed straight for The Vampire Diaries. 

In the original story, Elena (another blond, blue-eyed teenager) falls in love with Stefan, a brooding and serious guy who turns out to be a vampire. Things get complicated when Stefan’s brother, Damon, comes to town and starts causing a ruckus. Namely, he begins threatening Elena and also seducing her somehow (???), and so — a love triangle is born. 

***

I also loved The Secret Circle, which features a coven of teen witches. The main character is a girl named Cassie (if you guessed that she’s also blond-haired and blue-eyed, you’d be correct), and the coven is made up of both men and women. There’s also a love triangle in this series, but I honestly don’t remember it that well.  

***

I had a friend who also devoured these books and talked about them at length. Mainly, we talked about which boy in the love triangle we would choose. These talks always posed conundrums for me. 

For example, in The Forbidden Game, Tom (as I remember him) was a sweet, safe guy. He was perfectly wonderful, respected Jenny’s independence, and supported her ambition. But he just didn’t appeal to me as much as Julian. 

Yes, I preferred Julian, the wizard-stalker from another dimension with white hair and eyes the-color-of-the-sky-just-before-the-sun-rises. 

What was it about him? Well, he was gorgeous, clearly. He was also lonely. He had a lot of angst about having to live in this other dimension, with the object of his affection so oblivious to his existence and unable to reach her. He had never experienced affection or love or a healthy relationship, so the only way he knew to court Jenny was to imprison her in a game of death traps and make her play for her freedom. 

Endearing, right?  

*** 

In all seriousness, looking back on those books, and my inclination toward the “bad” or “darker” sides of the love triangles, speaks to L.J. Smith’s ability to write muddy characters. In The Forbidden Game, the clear “right” choice is Tom. Humanizing Julian and making him a sympathetic character (at times), makes the choice less clear. 

The same goes for The Vampire Diaries. I don’t think I ever really felt the same affection for Damon that I did for Julian. He had his human and complicated moments, but he never really hooked me. But making him a more rounded character made the choice less clear. 

What ultimately makes L.J. Smith’s “bad boy” characters untenable as the “right” choice is this: they don’t change. They reveal their softer sides, they make themselves vulnerable, they reveal emotions. But in the end, they continue to commit acts of violence and generally terrible behavior. The constant back and forth between softness and vulnerability to violence are classic tools of real life manipulation and abuse. 

***

When I found out that The Vampire Diaries was being turned into a TV show, I lost my shit. Past Rachel was beside herself with excitement. 

The first few episodes of the season followed the book pretty closely, and then the show’s writers began taking the storyline in a much different direction. And for the most part, I’ve loved it. 

Initially, what I loved was how each episode started off like a scary movie. And I loved that Elena is played by Nina Dobrev, a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman. That seems like a low bar, but… you know? We can’t all be blond, L.J. At first glance, I thought the casting choices for Stefan and Damon were too pretty, and I was terribly, horribly wrong. Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder are perfect for their roles in every way. 

What else have I loved about the tv series? The evolution of Caroline, played by Candice King. She has grown to be one of my favorite characters of all time. (YES.) In the books, Caroline was mostly just a mean girl who is easily manipulated. In the tv show, she turns into a badass girly-girl vampire, and I love her. 

The other thing I love about the show: Damon. In the books, Damon is terrible and horrifying. In the show, Damon has a centuries-long history of being completely irredeemable, but his character arcs toward redemption and learning what it means to be a ‘good’ person. His evolution really hinges on these questions: when you have spent centuries being one of the worst and most murderous vampires in the world, how do you begin to be a better person? How do you atone for your violence? How do you begin to forgive yourself? How do you begin to believe that you are worthy of love? How do you embrace the darker parts of yourself and still be a “good” person? What does it even mean to be a "good" person?

I love that journey. I love those questions, and I love how complicated the answers are. 

***

In real life, I have zero tolerance for abusive behaviors. I believe that abusers can be rehabilitated. I believe that people can change. But they rarely do, because they aren’t given the tools and support to create change within themselves. Because there is no reason for abusers to change their behavior. Because we live in a society where one of our presidential candidates can brag about sexually assaulting women, and nothing happens to him.  Because this same presidential candidate can try to use physical intimidation and bullying on his opponent (who happens to be a woman) during a debate on a national stage, and nothing happens to him. Because a man can be found guilty of assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, but only have to serve 3 months of his ridiculously short 6-month sentence, and the world cries about how his swimming career is over. 

And so on, and so on, and so on. 

***

So maybe that’s the thing. Maybe L.J. Smith’s bad boy characters are initially appealing because they’re mysterious, dark, supernatural, charming — like so many bad boys in actual life. But despite the magic, they’re just as human, just as unchangeable as an abuser. 

Ian Somerhalder’s interpretation of Damon explores what a reformed abuser might look like. He’s white and never been oppressed in his life. He’s exerted power and control and violence over so many people throughout his centuries of living. And he lives in a world where he is supported in self-actualizing toward being a better human. 

Imagine if everyone had that. Everyone. 

***

Of course, as with most things, it's never that simple. 

I believe that people can change, that people are ultimately good. But we haven’t created a world where every person is supported and nurtured into being the best people they can be. We haven’t even created a world where trans folx can use a public bathroom without fear for their safety. Or a world where trans folx of color don’t fear for their lives every single damn day. Or a world where a womxn — cis or trans or queer — can walk down the street at night — or any time of day, really — without fear of violence or death. 

And so on, and so on, and so on. 

Damn. 

We’ve got a lot of fucking work to do. 

Horror & Me

When I first got the idea to blog about horror for the entire month of October, I needed a healthy distraction. I got real excited, real fast, and immediately plotted out an entire 33 days of content. My plan was to post every day in the month of October, starting with October 1st and plowing right through October 31st and beyond. I even started writing posts well in advance. Like an entire month in advance. 

Even with all that preparation and enthusiasm, I haven’t started off October with 33 Days of Horror as I envisioned. 

***

I don’t know how to write/blog right now without acknowledging the larger context of my current life. Coping and survival mechanisms were the subject of my last post, and instead of being vague about my life, I’ll just talk about it. 

Recently, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. In stages, we found out that it had metastasized to her bones. Most recently, the doctors found that it’s spread even further. As I write this, I’m on a plane back home to be with my family as my mom gets her first radiation treatments to target the small tumor that’s made a home in her brain. 

The doctors have said that my mother’s cancer is incurable and terminal. 

***

My first horror movie memory is a scene from Friday the 13th. I couldn’t tell you which one. All I know is that hockey-masked Jason is chasing a young woman through the woods. She screams as she runs through the trees, and Jason ambles along after her, his long strides somehow closing the distance between them. 

That’s all I remember. I must have been maybe 4 or 5 when I saw this. It was probably on in the background at my mom’s friend’s house. Even though I was so young (too young), I wasn’t terrified or scared. I was too young to know what was going on or to be worried about death. 

***

While death and mortality were not things that worried me as a child, what actually did terrify me was the banshee in Darby O’Gill and the Little People. 

I was in second grade when I saw this scene, and second-grade Rachel was like

I couldn’t go outside after dark by myself for quite awhile after the introduction of the banshee into my imagination. The facelessness of the banshee, its alarming electric blue color, its ear-splitting shrieks. 

When I watch it now, it seems a little (a lot?) hokey. But it still stirs some fear in me.  

***

By the time I hit middle school, I was no longer crouching in the dark, covering my ears and eyes, just in case the banshee decided to pay me a visit. 

Instead, I was running full-speed toward the spooky shit. 

I loved ghost stories and always had my ear open for a ghost anywhere — the school bathrooms, the abandoned property next door, the janitor’s closet. I read Nancy Drew and kept returning to the ones that seemed supernatural. I was always so disappointed that Nancy’s ghosts were always just people, trying to get away with their crimes. 

And then I found Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. 

Not only were most of these stories fairly horrifying, the illustrations were the stuff of nightmares.  I would read the stories and find myself simultaneously repulsed and drawn toward the accompanying images. 

The story I remember most clearly featured a girl who thought she had a gigantic pimple on her face. It got bigger and bigger until one day it burst and thousands of tiny spiders leaked out of her face. 

On its own, this story is pretty silly. The illustration gave me nightmares. 

There was another story about a fleshy lifelike scarecrow named Harold. Another about a hairless dog a girl picked up in Mexico that turned out to be a flesh-eating sewer rat. 

The illustrations are imaginative, earthy, dark, oozing. There are no defined edges, where the image ends and the white page begins. It’s as if the figures are appearing onto the page, and hovering there. They make your neck feel itchy, your toes wiggle. 

I loved it all and I wanted more. 

***

My original goal with 33 Days of Horror was and still is to dissect my love of horror, the supernatural, the spooky, the dark. Sure, it’s an escape from reality, but I think that’s an overly simplistic understanding of my inclination.

Because though I love horror, not everything I love is necessarily feminist or feminist friendly. Because when shit hits the fan, I want to curl up with my favorite scary movies. Because even though I love horror, I hate real-life violence and gore.  Even though I love horror, death-too-soon in real life is too much for me. 

***

My mother’s diagnosis is one of my worst nightmares come to fruition. When we first found out, I couldn’t stop crying. And then I went into survival mode (see previous post). I’m still in survival mode. 

The older I get, the more acutely aware I am of mortality. Even before my mother’s diagnosis, on a weekly basis, I thought something along the vein of “One day, your parents will not be around anymore” or "I will die someday" or "I could die tomorrow" and it was enough to scare the shit out of me. Or, at the very least, bring a sense of gravitas to whatever I was doing at the moment.

For my mother’s sake, I want to say that I’m done with the weeping. The last time I spoke to her on the phone, I had a runny nose. She thought I was crying again and said, “Don’t cry so much, okay?!"

So here we are with 33 Days of Horror. 

***

Now, let’s get a few things straight.

First: Violence and death in real life makes me sick and angry, but in horror movies I can (sort of) tolerate it. Just because I love scary movies doesn't mean I'm desensitized to violence. I close my eyes during violent and gory scenes. And I’m not here for torture flicks, like Saw or Hostel. I know Saw is iconic, but I’ve never watched it and probably never will. I watched Hostel and kept my eyes closed for 80% of the film. Not into any of it.

Second: I am not an expert. I’ve seen a lot of scary movies — both good and bad, mainstream and indie, classics and B-movies — but I definitely have not seen everything. There are films and shows that I should probably see, if I’m a self-respecting horror fan. There are things that I haven’t seen that will probably shock some people, but they’ll just have to deal with it. I’ll get to American Horror Story eventually.  

Third: While I’m not an expert, I’ve still seen and love a ton of shit. My 33 days of planned content crams in as many of my favorites as possible — at least 40 films — but I’ve forgotten to include so much. For example — I completely forgot to squeeze in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hitcher anywhere, and I’m a little panicked by it. But I can always write about them later. 

Fourth: I want to explore my favorite spooky films and books. I want to dig into why I love them so much, and why I’m drawn to the things I’m drawn to. Not only that, I also want to examine how my favorite horror rates on the Bechdel test, how they’re feminist or not, how they treat people of color, and how they treat queer folks, even though those folx are few and far between in my favorite flicks. As Ani Difranco sings, “We have to be able to criticize what we love, say what we have to say.” She’s talking about free speech and being an American. I’m talking about horror. Both contexts are legit. (Right?)

***

I don’t know where I’ll end up by the time October finishes. I originally planned daily posts, but, obviously, that’s not going to happen. I’ve got 33 days of content planned out, though, and I haven’t been this excited about a project in a long time. So I’ll go with it, and see what happens. Maybe I'll be writing about the spooky shit well into December and beyond. I'm okay with that. Excited about it, even. 

So here goes, y’all. Day 1: complete. 

The Mercury retrograde struggle is real, y'all.

Yes, friends. Mercury went retrograde last Monday night, the first solar eclipse of the month was on September 1st, and I’ll be honest with y’all. That Mercury in retrograde struggle is so very real for me right now.

I understand that some of you (most? all?) have (probably?) chuckled or laughed or lost some (all?) respect for me now. You might not believe in astrology or the idea that the stars and planets have anything to do with our silly human lives. And that might (probably?) be true.

What I know is that, in some of the most chaotic times of my life, astrology has been one of the things that helps me make sense of what’s happening. It gives me something to hold on to when I begin sifting through what feels like the wreckage of my life.

***
Wreckage sounds dramatic. It might be. But it's also what comes to mind when the world as you know it falls apart. Wreckage sounds scary and final. And it is. 

The good news about wreckage is that you can clear all of it away -- even the parts you loved -- and create something new. 

***
When you're still in the part of the wreck that is scary and overwhelming though. When it feels like you can't get out of bed, but you do because you're an adult and you have stuff to do and bills to pay. When you want to ugly cry all day. 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is: coping mechanisms. I want to talk about them. I talk a lot about self-care, but right now, I'm talking survival. I'm talking about the ways we deal with trauma and stress every day. The real-time struggle. 

***
Last week, my family got some awful news. Like really fucking terrible. Like one of my worst nightmares. 

My coping impulse was to lay in bed all day. It was to curl into a fetal position on the couch at random times and cry and then fall asleep. My impulse was also to call each member of my family at least twice a day to check in. 

My impulse was to lay in bed all day, but I forced myself out. I forced myself to get up, to be around people. The goal was not to force myself to actually interact with people, because it was clear that I was not up for that. The goal, instead, was to place myself in the world. To be among others, to remind myself that I do not exist in a vacuum. Life goes on. 

When I finally came home after our outings, I changed into sweats and collapsed into deep naps. Even if that outing was just to TJMaxx to buy a cat bed, it felt like it took everything within me to keep it together. But it felt important that I hold myself together for at least part of the day. To feign normalcy for at least 90 minutes a day. 

***

Cooking? Forget it. Before the bad news hit, I had plans for a pineapple jalepeño upside-down cake. It took me a week and a half to finally get up the energy to make it in between episodes of The O.C. (another one of my coping mechanisms -- what better way to escape reality than to watch a show about white folks living the dream?!). 

And it was worth it. 

HELLO, boozy pineapple jalepeño upside-down cake. 

***
This week, my energy levels are back up. The bad news has not gone away. Its urgency has subsided, mostly because there are a lot of medical tests to run, and results to wait on. 

I'm used to bad news quickly evolving into worse news into worst case scenario. This latest news is a slow burning fire. This feels like we're preparing for a long haul. At its most superficial, my life right now feels like a boss level of self-care and healthy survival/coping mechanisms. 

***
Anyway, my energy levels are back up. I'm not back to 100%. My energy for meal planning and cooking is back, but it might leave me just as quickly as it returned. My plan for this week is more loose than usual. Everything is a variation of a rice bowl. Easy, healthful, lots of room for improvisation, for as much cooking or as little as I want or am able to do. 

***
Last night, I started making October plans for this blog. I got so excited I couldn't sleep for a little bit. 

Two words: SPOOKY SHIT. 

It's coming. (I hope.) 

***
But seriously. I'm excited. 

Because I don't know how to end this post, I'm ending with this. Keeping it together long enough to buy a cat bed from TJMaxx for $20 is worth it. 

Coz getting comfortable in her new queenly ass bed. 

Gratitude: the food edition.

These days, I'm trying to remember gratitude. Life is hard enough on its own. Partly because shit happens, and mostly because the systems that we live and participate in are racist and patriarchal and paternalistic and violent and unjust and every kind of phobic. I've been known to say this on a daily basis:      

Some days, I get overwhelmed with how fucked everything seems, how my every day seems so inextricably woven with oppression and injustice, even though I'm fighting every second to dismantle it. 

It is those days, when I feel so backed into a corner and so overwhelmed, that I need to remember gratitude. I need to remember joy in every small thing, wherever I can get it. 

***

I've been home from traveling for almost two weeks now. I'm finally (finally!) over my jetlag and getting back into my meal planning routine. Which sounds riveting, yes, but honestly -- meal planning/cooking are sometimes the only things I do for myself in the course of a week. When I'm choosing recipes, I'm choosing shit that looks delicious and worth working for at the end of a long workday. I'll write more in-depth about meal planning another time (maybe? I'm kind of excited about doing it?), but today, I just want to take account of the good shit, and talk about some of my favorite things, culinary-wise. 

***

1. Getting a goodie bag full of fresh produce from a friend's garden. I thought we were getting hooked up with basil and jalepenos. (Okay, but seriously, how do I get some tilda action up in here?! Help me!) Instead, we got this cornucopia of goodness. 

I've already used a bunch of peppers for breakfast adventures. 

Yes, that's a motherfucking homegrown cantelope you see. Our near-future is full of stuffed peppers, jalapeno pineapple upside-down cakes, boozy cantelope drinks, chowder with roasted peppers. So thankful for these friends of mine who grow food with such care. 

2. Heirloom tomatoes are one of my all-time favorite summer foods. If I see heirloom tomatoes on any menu in any form, you can bet I'm ordering it and I'm loving it. One of my favorite summer snacks is eating heirloom cherry tomatoes raw and being brought to my knees by all the different flavors and all the beautiful colors. 

Heirloom tomatoes snuggled up with jalapenos. 

These heirlooms are no exception. I ate ONE, and almost fell on the floor with their deliciousness. 

3. Roasting chiles is one of the most satisfying activities ever. Even though it gets to be 500 degrees in my kitchen if I'm roasting chiles in the summer, I love broiling and charring them, throwing them into a paper bag for a few minutes, and then peeling that skin off. There's something so satisfying about the whole process. I don't know what it is. It's so easy? It smells so good? ????

Unfortunately, I had too much fun roasting all my peppers and didn't get any pictures of them. So, don't take my word for it. Roast some of your own. 

4. Slicing corn off the cob. It's a pain in the ass, kind of, but it's satisfying to just slice through all those kernels. The result is delicious, fresh corn kernels ready for roasting or throwing into a summer chowder or just throwing into a regular old summer corn salad. (Did you know you can eat raw fresh corn and it's delicious af?! YES.)

Again, I had far too much fun slicing my corn off the cob this week and roasting those suckers, so no pictures for this either. Try it out yourself. 

***

That's what I've got so far. 

Even when it's hard to start my gratitude list, I find that once I start, I keep going. And suddenly, I am filled with all the little things that bring me joy. 

And that's how I'm getting through this week.

***

And because Reading Rainbow kept coming up in my head as I wrote this post, I'll end with this: 

What I did on my summer vacation

Yes, I have been away for awhile. Summer happened. I started this post back in June, when I felt like I finally had a moment to breathe and get excited about the beginning of summer. 

Now that summer is almost ending, I'm finally getting around to actually writing this post. It figures. 

***

I love summer. Even though I'm an "adult" and don't get my summers off anymore, I still love the laziness, the heat, any vacation I can get. I love summer dresses and beaches and bathing suits and big sunglasses and floppy sunhats and cutoffs. I love most things that try to capture the essence of summer -- road trip and summer camp movies and books, those earworms that become the songs of the summer. I love baseball and ice cream and sunsets and I even love the sweat that comes with this godawful Indiana humidity. 

***

This summer was a full one for me, full of travel and writing and community and self-reflection. I spent time in Miami for the VONA/Voices writing workshop and spent almost 5 days in Rochester, New York, for the ever-feral Pink Door Women's Writing Retreat. A few days ago, I got back from Seattle, where I attended the Gender Odyssey conference with my parents, and caught up with so many old friends from high school, undergrad, and my writing life. 

My summer has been packed with travel, heart work, and the best people in the world. It was exactly what I needed to recharge my writing life, and return to my roots. I'm going to write about all of it soon. Maybe even for this blog. 

Right now, though, I'm exhausted. Everything has caught up with me. The physical exhaustion that comes with traveling from coast to coast and the emotional exhaustion of self-reflection and writing for the jugular, combined with the exhaustion of balancing all that with having a regular work life. 

***

There comes a point during summer when I grow tired of the heat. When I just want to be able to turn on my oven and bake or roast something without turning my entire apartment into Hades. When I just want to wear a sweater. When I mostly still love baseball but am kind of waiting for it to end so I can have my life back. When I grow tired of the constant motion and restlessness of travel, and want nothing but rest. When those songs of summer get stuck in my head and overstay their welcome. 

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm almost. 

***

All that is to say, I'm back. I'm ready to begin again, as I always am. This post is more for me than for anyone else, but here we are.  

Shouting longing into the void: a sort-of manifesto

I've started a couple blog posts lately that I've felt overwhelmed by. When I say "overwhelmed," I mean that I'm writing them and there's no end in sight. There's no place where I can wrap it up, save the post, revise a few times, publish it and feel good about it. When I say "overwhelmed," I mean that I'm opening up cans of worms everywhere. I'm spilling my marbles all over the place. 

And that's part of the reason I started this blog/site/whatever in the first place. To test out ideas, to write whatever came to me and about whatever I found interesting in the moment. Something in me told me that if I started this and followed my writerly nose, I would find the things I needed to write about. 

Needless to say, those couple of blog posts are no longer blog posts. They've made their way to Word documents. I'm not going to call them essays, but I'll call them "things." 

***

I've blogged since blogging was a thing. I blogged more often when I had free time, lots of free time. And angst. Lots of angst and emo-y feelings and heartache and shit that I just couldn't hold inside. And for some reason, blogging was the perfect way to express all of that. 

Some of the things I wrote and published were intensely personal and vulnerable. I wrote about crushes, and longing, and heartbreak, and memory, and anger. When people I knew found my blogs or read what I wrote, I was intensely embarrassed, but it didn't stop me from continuing. It doesn't seem like it makes any sense -- why would I write such intense, vulnerable, personal things and then publish them on the internet? And if I did that, why would I be so embarrassed when people from my actual life found it and read it? 

Blogging in those days was more about finding a place where I could shout and scream my heartbreak and longing at the edge of an internet cliff, hear it echo, and then get on with my day. In those days, when I blogged, I was never thinking of who would read it. Nobody was ever next to me when I walked up to the edge of that virtual cliff. It was just me. 

These days, I would hesitate to hit "publish" on even a fraction of what I blogged about ten years ago.  

***

I started Medusa Ironbox because something in me said, yes. Now is the time. So I did it. I started Medusa Ironbox, because I was tired of feeling like I needed to write something and then send it out into the world, but having nowhere to send it. I was tired of the idea of being "accepted" to a literary journal, of trying to fit my writing into a linear essay format, or any kind of form that demanded coherence.  I started Medusa Ironbox because the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to lift up the blog entry as a legit literary form (whatever "legit" means), because, right now, it's the only place where I feel free to embrace my chaos and resist a demand for coherence. 

I love the immediacy of the blog post, its documentation of specific moments in time. The way a blog can cultivate a community, or lift up social justice issues or ideas or knowledge that the mainstream ignores. It's a way for a person to carve out a space for themselves in the world, whether their reach is 3 people or 300 or more. Blogs are something to take seriously, are things to be reckoned with. They are not side projects or offshoots. Blogs are not trivial - it doesn't matter if I'm a 15-year- old writing about my crushes, or a heartbroken 21-year-old shouting my longing into the void, or a 31-year-old feeling around in the dark to find connections between food, self-care, activism, music, books, race and culture. All of it matters and all of it is worth reading. 

Beyond that: all of it is worth writing.

***

So...this is my post for the week, I guess. In real life, I'm in the middle of a busy training season, which means I'm constantly scrambling to get everything done in time. I feel like I'm spinning a bunch of plates and they're all wobbling, but I can't/won't let any of them fall. It doesn't necessarily feel like it in this moment, but I suspect that I'm in survival mode. I'll know when I'm on the other side. 

It's times like this when self-care is the most important, and I'm not great at it. I let the sink pile up with dishes. I don't do my laundry as often as I should. I don't feel like washing my hair. And so on. You know how it is. 

This blog is part of my self-care. It's a way for me to re-center myself, when so much of my day is spent in service to others. And these damn blog posts that I talked about earlier that have overwhelmed me? They don't feel like self-care right now, but the fact that they exist, that they're waiting for me when I have time and energy to return to them -- that's self-care. I wouldn't have started them without Medusa Ironbox. 

So I'm going to channel my fearless 20-year-old self, and just publish this because dammit. This is a piece of my revolution. 

Hump Day Finds: Chromeo

Okay, so my "find" this week is more of a revival. My Youtube rabbit hole explorations led me back to Chromeo, a band that I was most in love with the summer before I moved for grad school. 

I know, all the disembodied and shapely women's legs are not awesome. I get that it's a little bit of a callback to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video, but in both instances, it's a literal objectification of women's bodies, and I'm not down for that. I am, however, down for the end of the video, where disembodied men's (?) legs join the party and tango with the other legs. So it's equal opportunity disembodiment? 

When I was at my peak obsession with this song, this is not the video that I watched a million times on early Youtube. This was before artists and musicians had official channels. So the video that accompanied "Fancy Footwork" in my day was grainy and of a guy in the middle of a crowded dance floor, working it out with his fancy footwork. He was a little nerdy, and not all his moves were awesome, but he was confident as hell. Who can't respect that? 

I can't find that video anymore, but it summed up why I loved Chromeo's music and vibe so much. They were a little nerdy, a little street, a little cheesy, and all kinds of retro, which made for a weird combo (at the time) that I adored. They made synthy music I could dance to AND their lyrics made me chuckle. 

***
At that time, there wasn't much out there that made the same kind of music as Chromeo. My heart longed for more of that synthpop/electrofunk goodness, and I wanted it ASAP. 

As grad school took over my life and more bands began creating the stuff that I craved (see Feminist Dance Rock), Chromeo fell off my radar.

And then, this.

Y'all, SOLANGE. And I know, I know, the crazed spontaneously impregnated women chasing the Chromeo guys down is not the best and most feminist thing that could happen here. But the end of the video kind of redeems all that, even though it kind of doesn't make a lot of sense? I don't know, I won't try to argue it. That hook, though, is something I will argue for until the day I can no longer argue for things.  

***
And then, I found out that Chromeo released an album a year or two ago. (Like I said before, I'm typically 6 months to 2 years late to the party.) 

Now, I may be biased here, but Chromeo has not only maintained their awesomeness, but have gotten better with age, like fine wine. (YES. You heard right. I just said that.) Someone could probably argue that they keep making the same kind of music, but it doesn't ever feel stale to me. Every song and single has its own personality.

I'm not going to touch the content of that video, but I will talk about my leather jacket envy and all of those dance moves.

***
I'll leave you with the Chromeo song I can't stop listening to these days. Some of the lyrics make a gesture toward something that resembles something with a feminist-ish sentiment, but then reverses itself into something that doesn't make sense to me. But I love the chorus, I love the guitars, I love its 80s-ish Dirty Dancing-ish swagger, I love that the song revolves around popping a nickel into a jukebox full of old 45s. And I love that Haim is in this video.   

Happy Wednesday, y'all. May you have a Chromeo dance party in your living room to try out all your fancy footwork. Here's to getting over that hump this week. xoxo.

Hump Day Finds: Mitski

I don't know how your Wednesday is going. Maybe you're thinking, UGH, it's only WEDNESDAY?! You might be thinking, I'm so tired, I don't care, I just want to go back to bed. Maybe you're thinking neither of these things because Wednesday isn't a mile marker in your week because you love your life and it doesn't matter what day it is. Or, alternately, Wednesday isn't a mile marker in your week because this is your longest work week and Wednesday isn't actually the middle of it, and you actually have no idea what day it is.

I have been all of the people I mentioned above. Whatever the case, I know that I always need an extra little something on Wednesdays, whether it's a boost of energy or something with a little bit of attitude to get me over the energetic hump of the week. 

This week, Mitski is everything to me. While venturing down a Youtube rabbit hole together recently, M said, "Ooh, play Mitski. I think you'll like her." Like her? I LOVE HER. (Warning: this video is borderline NSFW for a typical workplace, I think?)  

Y'all. If my poems were songs, I think I'd want them to be Mitski songs.

***
Listen. I'm not a music critic, I'm not a music snob. I will never pretend that I'm up-to-date in all the cool new music. Generally, I join the party 6 months to 2 years late. I will never claim to "discover" anyone like I'm Christopher Columbus or something. Having said that, I'll just say some facts about Mitski that I found on her Bandcamp page and her website. "Townie" is off her 2014 album called "Bury Me At Makeout Creek." (Isn't that an amazing title?!) She has a new album coming out in June called "Puberty 2." 

And her performances? Good lord. What follows was my introduction to Mitski. I don't think I even moved during this entire performance. 

***
And after hearing her talk in this Audiotree session, I'm completely in love.  

***
What I love about Mitski: to me, she has elements of Rachael Yamagata's self-deprecation and Bjork's ovaries-out vocals. I love her discordance and distortion and the sweetness of her voice and melodies that weave under and over all the noise. I love that she sings at the top of her lungs INTO her guitar. I love that she talks about centering women, people of color and trans folks in the music industry. Her lyrics are heart punches. I don't even know how to articulate all the other things I love about her because they're music things.  

I'll leave you all with her latest single. Happy Wednesday, friends. I hope you love Mitski as much as I do, and let her carry you through your day.  

Meditations on Prince

When M called me at work to tell me the news, I was in the middle of lugging a bunch of broken down diaper boxes to the recycling bin. I teetered for a moment on the stairs, regained my balance, and then went back inside to get out of the drizzling rain. I don't remember how the rest of the conversation went, but when I hung up the phone, I announced it to my office: "You guys. Prince died." 

One person said, "No. No. Prince? The Prince? Our Prince? Not like... some other Prince?" 

Another person said, "Who's Prince?"

(To be fair, she was young. Like she was probably born in a year starting with 20xx.)

***

I don't remember my first Prince song or my first Prince moment. I didn't have the access to Prince's work that others did, so I didn't/couldn't listen to him on the regular, but I loved him just the same. Maybe my first Prince songs were "Little Red Corvette," "When Doves Cry" and "1999." I don't know how they made it into my weird, filtered, rural life, but they did. 

***

Once, I got into an argument with a friend about Michael Jackson and Prince. Her POV was that MJ and Prince were "not that good" and that their music didn't stand the test of time. She argued that more current (white) artists like Justin Timberlake were the real innovators. This line of reasoning was (and is) preposterous to me and I got wound up (I'm getting wound up now, just thinking about it). I tried explaining to her that Prince and MJ changed everything -- when they made music, it was the future. They made music that sounded like nothing else in their era. Without Prince and MJ, pop music wouldn't be what it was today. I remember thinking, What the hell is happening here? What kind of conversation is this? Is she fucking with me? 

She wouldn't budge. I got steamed. People told me to calm down. 

I didn't calm down. But she and I remained friends (somehow and miraculously).

***

A couple of my favorite Prince songs, the deeper cuts, are ones I found through other artists. I found "The Beautiful Ones" because Mariah Carey covered it. I found "If I Was Your Girlfriend" because TLC covered it. I found out these were Prince songs because I had nothing better to do than sit in my room and read the liner notes of all my favorite albums. These particular tracks stood out to me because, even though they were covers, they sounded so different from the rest of the albums they were on. Sonically and lyrically, these songs intrigued me because they weren't the straight-up pop songs that I was used to hearing. 

***

Both the original and Mariah's versions of "The Beautiful Ones" bring the melody to a speed that almost gets stuck in its sweetness and simultaneous discordance. The vocals in both the original and Mariah's versions are breathy and spare. The lyrical narrative meanders, gets lost, finds something that could be a chorus, and then loses it. Over and over again. As the song progresses, it spirals into dramatic guitars and pure emotion. It sounds like the speaker can't wear the glossy facade of the song anymore, and they break out into emotional exhortations ("Do you want him? Or do you want me?"). Mariah's version features Dru Hill, so the vocals break from each other into their own separate stories and weave back together, then break apart again. Over and over.

This was probably one of the first songs I ever listened to and loved that didn't have a catchy hook. I couldn't stop listening to it and losing myself in the rich emotional and sonic landscape that both Mariah and Prince had laid out. 

***

TLC's version of "If I Was Your Girlfriend" sounds a lot like the original. The lyrics were nothing I'd ever heard before, whether it was TLC or Prince singing them. When Prince sings in a high and breathy voice, "If I was your girlfriend, would you let me pick out your clothes before we go out? Not that you're helpless, but sometimes, sometimes those are the things that being in love's about," he blurs the lines between lover and best friend, gender and sexuality. When TLC sings those same lyrics, it enters a more heteronormative space, but it still intrigues me, just the same. 

Structurally, the song has that catchy hook that I live for, but there are moments where, again, the glossy constraints of the pop song can no longer contain the speaker's emotion. In Prince's version, he breaks out and sings/says/begs, "Please" with such longing, he sounds like a human brought to the edge of their want and is begging to be pushed over. 

There are other moments in the song that I love, but I don't have the vocabulary to break them down in any coherent way.

***

The other thing about Prince songs that I love is how they ooze sex. Even the most poppy and sweet-sounding of his songs -- "I Wanna Be Your Lover"  -- is packed with innuendo and lust. 

Growing up, my parents wanted to stave off any talk about sex as long as possible. Even through high school, my parents demanded that my brothers and I cover our eyes during movie or tv scenes when people kissed. If there was a sex scene, we had to get up and leave the room until either parent told us it was "safe" to come back. 

When I got the "birds and bees" talk in middle school, my parent approached it in the most scientific terms. Even so, I remember being immensely relieved at having a space to finally ask some of my burning reproductive questions, like, Do pregnant women still get their periods while they're pregnant? I had a few other questions that I had saved up because I knew if I didn't ask them during this talk, I wouldn't be able to ask them later. I don't remember having questions about actual sex. It's possible that I did, but I don't remember them. 

***

You can't avoid sex in Prince songs. It's impossible. "Little Red Corvette" is not literally about a little red corvette, but you couldn't have told me that when I was younger.

Growing up in a house where sex and sexuality was so invisiblized left me on my own to figure out what I thought was sexy and what all the stuff surrounding sex should look like. How I figured that out was, in large part, through music. It was through TLC. It was through Janet Jackson. It was through Michael Jackson. It was through Prince. 

***

I believe deeply that without Prince, our music, our culture, our fashion, our gender expression would look so very different. We wouldn't have TLC or Janet Jackson in the same way. I know that in a lot of ways, Prince and MJ were at odds with each other, but I can't talk about one without mentioning the other. Without them, we wouldn't be who we are today. 

***

Prince wasn't perfect. A couple years ago, my BFF mentioned to me that Prince had said some homophobic shit, and that the stuff Prince said had tempered my BFF's fandom of him. I didn't want to believe it, but I googled it, and it was true. It hurt to read the things he said. And even though I read the things he said, I still can't wrap my mind around it -- how could Prince say homophobic things? Prince? The Prince? Our Prince? Not some other Prince? 

I thought about googling the news stories again to make sure it was true, to link the stories here, but I can't bring myself to do it. It hurts.

Even our pop culture gods are human. 

***

 The point is, I don't have every Prince album in existence. Partly because there's a shit ton of them, and partly because I didn't have the connection to him growing up that I wish I had. I'm definitely not a superfan, and I've never seen him live. Just like (most) everyone, I know all the hits. In the day immediately after Prince's death, "Purple Rain" played on a loop in my head. The day after: "Raspberry Beret" and "I Would Die 4 U." Yesterday: "Little Red Corvette" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover." 

The point is, I know just the hits and my love for Prince is still legitimate. He wasn't directly involved in my formation as a human, but that's because he was in the air already. By the time I fell in love with music, he made it possible for all the musicians I loved to exist. He paved the way for them to express their full and complex sexuality through music, and through them, I learned (and continue to learn) my own sexuality.    

***

Rest in power and in peace, Prince. You helped make this world we live in, and you made it possible for others to create and express their true and authentic genders and sexualities.  Thank you. xoxoxo

Throwback: Feminist dance rock

Like most, I often find myself roaming down the dark, dark rabbit hole of Youtube suggestions. I head to Youtube to do a yoga video, and then it suggests that I listen to Janelle Monae, and then it guides me to Jidenna, and then I head over to a John Legend video that makes me weep, and then I find myself watching every Miguel video in existence, and so on. 

A couple nights ago, I found myself tumbling down a nostalgia hole of my fave feminist dance rock tunes. 

***

Now, before I go any further here, I'm going to say that I'm definitely not a music snob. I'm not a geek in the sense that I can give you an accurate lineage of this genre (or any genre, really) or weirdly specific and/or obscure information about these bands. All I know is what my ears and what my heart tell me, and they tell me that my heart/mind/soul are all deeply in love with this music. Does there really need to be more than that? 

***

The year was 2008. Or maybe it was the summer of 2009. Maybe it was actually academic year 2009-2010? Anyway, I remember the bus line I took, and the stop I waited at to go home at the end of the day. I think it was definitely summer. Yeah, summer. 

At any rate, this is the first song that comes to mind when I think about the first year or so that I lived in Indiana.  I'm 99% sure I danced to this song at a bus stop. I still would, and I think you should try it.

***

CANSEI DE SER SEXY Music is My Hot Hot Sex

Oh my god, you guys. How do you not fall in love with a lyric like, "From all the bitches, the one I want to be is music?" 

And this one:

I love the talkiness and the sing-songiness of both C.S.S. and New Young Pony Club. I love C.S.S.'s playfulness and their raunchiness. I love that New Young Pony Club is dancy and riot-grrl-y. When I first heard these two bands, I thought, Thank god! Music I could dance to and not feel like I was participating in a misogynistic theater of dance floor objectification? SIGN ME UP. 

***

I can't believe I almost forgot about Le Tigre and Kathleen Hanna. Jesus. They're only the ones who kickstarted my love of this entire genre in the first place. How almost-blasphemous I was. 

I found Le Tigre when I was a DJ for my undergrad radio station. I co-hosted a show called Ninja Explosion with a friend, and some of my favorite memories are the times we had mini-dance parties in the tiny radio booth. We'd turn on the strobe light, pump up the jams, jump up onto the ancient puke green couch, and dance.

***  

One of my favorite ice breaker questions is, "If you could be any rock star, who would you be?" My answer is nearly always, "Karen O." Fever To Tell, their first album, had all the grit I loved and all the harsh vocals I wished I could express at the time. I heard tales of her spitting her beer out onto stoic front row hipsters who refused to move to the music -- god, what I wouldn't have given to be able to do that to some of the people I came in contact with on a daily basis -- in undergrad AND in grad school. Listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs made me feel like I had been rolling around on a garage floor for an hour. That was my favorite and ideal thing to feel. It still is. 

And then they came out with this?! 

I was so fucking excited, and so certain that I was in a golden age of feminist dance music. 

***

You might not be able to tell, but dancing and a song's dance-ability is important to me. These days, I know my stress levels are at their maximum when all I want to do is have a few cocktails and go dancing. Dancing is my way of reconnecting with my body, of clearing my mind of all the thought-shit that builds up, swirls around, and won't go away. Around the time Le Tigre came into my life, I went out dancing on the regular. I loved going dancing; I hated dealing with the men who danced with me without asking, who got angry when I told them I didn't want a drink and that I didn't really want to dance with them. I bought the gaudiest "engagement" ring I could find from Claire's and wore it when I went out because I thought that a) the ring would pass as a real ring, and b) that dudes would care.

When I talked about it to the person I was dating at the time, he shrugged and said, "You're cute. Just get used to it."  

It still makes me angry to think of that logic. That because I'm a woman, I didn't deserve to move my body in public without being hit on or ogled or accosted. That I needed to "get used" to being harassed.

***

When I found Le Tigre, C.S.S., New Young Pony Club, Metric, it was like I could come up for air. I knew any place that played these songs would be a safe place for me to exist. And, in my area code, the only places that played these songs were my radio show and my dorm room.

Maybe that's why those small-scale dance parties I had with my friends (and on my own) are some of my favorite memories. Because I was safe to inhabit my body and move it in any way I desired without fearing the repercussions or feel like I was "asking" to be harassed. 

***

I'll admit that I'm not as up-to-date on music as I used to be. My aesthetic is still dance rock, synthpop, music that either was made or sounds like it was made in the 80s or early to mid-90s.  I have favorite feminist musicians/bands that are currently making music - Haim, MØ, Grimes, etc. I love them just as much, but in a different way. I love the grit and imperfection of the DIY music aesthetic (wait - is that just regular music? oh god). I'm not crazy about C.S.S. and New Young Pony Club's later music -- the charm of the earlier albums is replaced with polished, electronic beats. It feels too glossy in comparison to the albums and songs of theirs that are dear to me.

***

I don't go dancing as often as I used to or as I'd like to. My dream is to open a feminist dance club where everyone is welcome (except, of course, misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and generally shitty human beings), where the DJs actually DJ (not make Spotify playlists), the music is always good, and the drinks are always tasty and strong.

Until then, though... 

oh my god, my guy is marrying a sore loser (me).

Over the weekend, the love of my life (I'll call him M) and I began playing a game called Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. Yes, it is a game where you battle each other with decks of cards. I've never played a game like this before, mostly because card games are for nerds? Just kidding. I've never played a game like this before because it just didn't appeal to me -- why fight each other with cards when you can play a fighting video game, mash a bunch of buttons and get the instant satisfaction of hearing a bunch of realistic punching sound effects? It didn't make sense to me. Also, these kinds of games require strategizing, and I'm just not a strategizing kind of gal. I like to just run into things blindly, windmill my arms a bit, and see what happens. 

But M was so excited about this game that I couldn't say no. I promised him I would take it seriously and really try to play, strategy and all. I picked a character with a deck that seemed awesome, and one of my first moves was to conjure a blue jaguar. It's a pretty powerful card that can take out any of your opponent's cards without using any valuable resources. I felt pretty good about myself -- I'd conjured my jaguar, decided to have mercy on M by not exercising Ms. Blue Jaguar's power just yet, and planned to make shit happen on my next turn. 

And then M killed my blue jaguar. He killed her without even batting an eye. I was pissed. I didn't crack a joke for the rest of the game because I was so f'ing mad. I successfully held back my rage tears and managed not to flip the table over.

And then I thought, "Oh my god. M is marrying a sore loser."

***

This isn't new. M first found out about my sore loser tendencies when he kicked my ass at NCAA Football on the Playstation 3. I rage cried. It was not a dignified moment for me (obviously). M was shocked, but still proposed to me a few months later. Thank god.  

***

The last thing I remember playing with my brothers was MarioKart. I don't think I ever won, and the whole time I just screamed obscenities at the tv and my brothers' gokart characters. Anyone who knows me in real life would probably be shocked, appalled, and maybe amused to hear the filth that came out of my mouth while playing MarioKart with my brothers. We're a foul-mouthed bunch as it is, but my vocabulary was extreme, even for me.  

***

The thing is, I play games as if they're real life. In real life, I weigh my decisions. I make my next move thinking about what's best for me and what's best for the person I'm dealing with. I make my real life next moves thinking about gains and losses, what I can live with, happiness, compromise, love. 

After M killed my blue jaguar, I realized that I can't play games as if they're real life. Unless I'm playing a co-op game (those are my favorite), I have to make decisions solely on what's best for me and only me. And that's a huge shift in thinking for me.

It's also liberating. Because for the three hours that I'm playing M in a game of Ashes, I can be ruthless. I don't have to be fair, and I don't have to keep anyone else's welfare in mind. I get to make decisions based solely on me, what I want and what I need to win the goddamn game. 

Unlike real life, I can exact revenge on my opponent. Unlike real life, I can plan ahead a couple moves because I know the resources I have and I have a vague idea of what my opponent has at their disposal and what moves they might make. 

***

This is not to say that I secretly wish I could be ruthless and make real life decisions based solely on self-interest. Hell no. The revolution will not come from acting on self-interest. Social and reproductive justice will not come if we each act for ourselves. 

In real life, I try to be mindful and heartful. Rather than blindly react to stimuli, I try to act with compassion and thought and a firm hand if I need it. In tabletop game life, though, that shit won't work. 

I guess what I'm realizing is that looking out for myself in a card game gives me permission to look out for myself a little bit in real life. 

What I'm talking about is self-care. Again. 

Looking out for myself and taking care of myself on the regular is not bad. It's not selfish. It gives me the tools (rest, energy, nurturing, self-love) to continue the work I do. If I don't look out for myself, I will burn out. 

(I had to work not to write that previous paragraph with "we" and "our." A reminder to speak for myself and let y'all speak for yourselves.) 

***

I swear, I didn't mean to end up at self-care again. I just wanted to explore why I'm such a sore loser. 

***

I might be a sore loser because I don't look out for myself in game play. We'll have to see if I continue to be a sore loser. However, with my new game-playing philosophy, I should only be winning. 

A (Very) Brief Chronology of Anger, Writing & Activism

I don't know how to describe the feeling I get when people in positions of power make bold moves to police and oppress entire groups of people. Right now, I'm talking about Mike Pence and Co. signing the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the country into Indiana law. I'm also talking about Pat McCrory and Co. passing sweeping anti-LGBT legislature in North Carolina.

(These are not the only things I'm thinking about, but if I were to name every last thing that's on my mind every single day, there would be no time to do anything but name and name and name.) 

When I hear about this shit, I get exhausted. Physically and spiritually and emotionally exhausted.

*** 

When I was a young gun in my early 20s and learned the vocabulary for all the things that were oppressing me (patriarchy, racism, misogyny, colonialism, etc.), I got pissed. More than that, actually; I was fucking angry. I wanted to (and occasionally did) mouth off to paternalistic white men, I wanted to protest, I wanted to burn everything down and start all over again. 

I became a member of the leadership team of the feminist club on campus. And even though I was actively doing things like raising awareness, I was angry all the time.  I was angry about the ignorant things people said in class. I was angry about all the colonizing missionary work to which my fellow students devoted their lives. I was exhausted all the time, but my anger fueled me. I often thought things like, there are people in the world who don't have the privilege that I do -- I have to keep working and If I don't do this -- if I don't speak up -- who will?  Between my more-than-full class load, my part-time jobs, and my campus activist work, I often found myself physically ill. I once got so sick (but still tried to soldier through it) that the health center had to prescribe (read: force me into) bedrest for 2 weeks. 

***

My creative writing classes were the only places where I could calm down for a minute. I could write about going to the Philippines to visit my family, and I could write about my trip to study human trafficking in Thailand, and I could write about romantic relationships without letting my anger and despair take over. My emotions were the fuel, but the words were the most important. They were the only way I could clearly articulate my emotions, my experiences, and the things I had witnessed. 

I had long talks with my poetry professor in her office after class had finished. We talked about poetry, (in)justice, witness, and, yes, my anger. On more than one occasion, she told me, "You can't live at this volume. If you do, you will burn out."

I knew what she meant, and I agreed with her. But I didn't know how to not live at that volume. I didn't know how to stop working myself into the ground. I felt that if I didn't work as much as I did, I wasn't doing enough. It was a privilege to rest, and I didn't know how to rest without feeling guilty.

***

Flash forward to graduate school, where social justice and poetry were siloed. It was as if our workshops existed in a vacuum, and no one was equipped or wanted to have conversations about representations of race or gender as it applied to our own work. 

My MFA program and the university were so isolated from the local community that I worked hard to find ways to feel like I was doing something. When I taught, I taught to show my students that they had voices and experiences that mattered. I tried to teach them to value their own voices and to truly listen to voices speaking experiences they had never heard before. 

When I stopped teaching, I volunteered at an after-school program for girls. And somewhere in between finishing my thesis and being a camp counselor at a summer camp for girls, I became disillusioned with writing and academia. From what I had seen, there was no point in pretending that writing poetry within academia could spark significant change. 

So I gave up on poetry as activism. 

***

And then came Wendy Davis and her epic filibuster in Texas. And all the anti-choice legislation that came after, and that continues to step forward. 

And then comes the old, familiar anger once again. The anger that fills my chest, squeezes my lungs in one large fist, and crunches my heart in its other. The anger that forces me to close my eyes and breathe deep, to keep my feet on the ground and my mind on what I can control.  

***

These days, my day job is activism. I don't know if I would be able to say that my anger isn't at the volume it used to be. I'm still pretty fucking angry. My anger and my desire to work for a world where every person has the right and access to resources to make the choices that are best for them and their families are what fuel me.

And, at the end of the day, writing is still the only thing that calms me.  It remains the only way for me to articulate my emotions, my experiences, and the things I witness every day. 

I'm still skeptical of academia as a place where true change can ever happen. But I know so many poet-activists who are in academia and not in academia that do amazing work and write incredible poetry. 

Slowly, but surely, I'm figuring out what poetry and writing as revolution look like for me. I'm going to figure this out. I'm a late bloomer. 

***

I was going to finish there, but as I did a final read-through, it became really obvious that I need to talk about self-care. Self-care is clearly something I haven't been good at, hence the constant exhaustion, prescribed bedrest, and burnout.

I'm just as angry, but I'm much better at self-care. I'm better at listening to my body, knowing when I'm nearing the end of my shit, and being able to take a few steps back. It took Audre Lorde saying, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare" for me to take self-care seriously.  

So, to all you activists out there who, like me, have a tendency to spread yourselves thin -- be good and kind to yourself. Take good care of yourself. Treat yourself. The fight will still be there tomorrow. 

On sassing my recipes & making a childhood favorite with a stranger's recipe

As I write this, I'm in the middle of making empanadas. Growing up, my mom always made empanadas in huge batches. She made them for parties, and she'd give them away to her friends, then freeze the rest. I always thought she made them in huge quantities because that was just the Filipino way -- make every recipe as if you were about to feed a crowd of 50. 

And now, I'm making my own empanadas and I'm beginning to see why my mother made so many at a time. They're a pain in the ass. There's a lot of making things and then waiting. Making and waiting. Making and...waiting.

Empanadas in waiting.

***

I didn't realize this until just now, as I'm writing this, but I have high expectations for these empanadas. I'm not even using my mother's recipe. I'm using a recipe from Cooking Light -- how sacrilegious is this. And there's not even meat in the filling (!!!!). In the waiting between the making, I'm becoming more and more worried. What am I thinking, making these things without my mom's recipe? I'm making these things without meat?! And I'm making this dough with wine?! My mom doesn't make her dough with wine. 

My fiance ate empanadas growing up, too. That's part of the reason why I'm sweating these things. Empanadas are a relic of home for both of us, and I'm potentially fucking up our mutual culinary homecomings with a zucchini filling and dough made with wine.

Zucchini filling cooling. And then chilling. 

***

Of course, the love of my life would never put any kind of pressure on me to replicate his mother's empanadas. The pressure is all me. The urge I've had since childhood to do everything perfectly and exceptionally -- the first time I do it. I've since learned to coexist peacefully and productively with that tendency, but sometimes it still overwhelms me. 

***

I'm a meal planner, so Sundays and Mondays are usually big baking and cooking days for me. This week, I've been squabbling with my recipes. I've been getting frustrated with the ones that tell me to do something, but they don't tell me why. Or they tell me to do something, but they don't tell me what it's supposed to look like while I'm doing it.

For example, I tried a new cookie recipe today. It used honey instead of sugar and lots of whole wheat flour. It told me to "beat the mixture until just combined." Now, in regular cookie terms, I know what this means. In this cookie's terms, I did not know what that meant. The dough was crumbly and it wasn't sticking together. The recipe author did not provide notes on this, and I wanted them to say something like, "Don't worry if your cookie dough is crumbly! That's just because [insert reason here]." I'm not enough of a baking connoisseur yet to know what's going on when my cookie dough is more crumbly than sticky.

So I trusted my gut. I stopped using my hand mixer and started using a spatula. It didn't make the dough less crumbly, but I figured out how to salvage it. And it turned out delicious. 

Crunchy-chewy salted chocolate chunk cookies.

***

I had more conversations like this with my recipes, and I won't detail them here. (I will say, though, that I sassed a recipe when it told me to "wrap the dough tightly in plastic." Why? How tightly? How tight is tightly? What happens if I don't wrap it tightly? I'm just going to wrap it in two layers of plastic wrap just to make sure -- is that okay with you? ) 

What's important is that I worked through my moments of frustration and trusted my instincts. (I have cooking and baking instincts now?!) It feels good to view these moments as small life victories. When it seemed like my empanada dough was going to hell, I didn't panic. I kept working it, and everything turned out okay. 

Just like life. (I'm being a little bit snarky here, but I'm actually mostly sincere.)

***

The empanadas have finished baking. Most of them have exploded. They literally cannot contain themselves. My love has eaten one, and he says they're delicious. (Even without meat?! my brain responds incredulously. Yes, even without meat.)  

Exploding empanadas. Little Pac-men.

Cooking and baking continue to remind me to be patient and not to panic. They also remind me that I can fix things (usually) if I'm paying attention. And they also show me when I need to let go and just make sure I do things differently next time. 

So, little empanadas, you turned out wonderfully. It's better that I made you for the first time with a stranger's recipe. When I make you with my mother's recipe, I will be a wiser cook. And maybe the next time I make you, I'll figure out how to make it so you don't explode. So that you are able to contain yourself.  

Empanadas. And Lil Pepita, top right. 

Bonus: I injured myself on the serrated plastic wrap blade. No blood, but I managed to shave off some finger skin. Hooray! 

Intentions, Master Chef Junior, and the Reason I'm Here

New Year's Eve has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love the anticipation of a fresh start and a blank canvas. I love having a day specifically dedicated to looking back at the past 12 months and looking at everything that's made up the fabric of my life. It's a chance to take a step back and look at everything I've done and at everything that's happened to me. It doesn't matter if looking back makes me think, "Glad that's over with -- good riddance!" or "Holy shit, I can't believe I was doing xyz only a year ago" or both.  What counts is being able to take stock, close that chapter and look ahead to the next 6 months and get excited for all the possibility of a new year. 

I make intentions at the beginning of every year. I keep them purposefully vague. I find the more specific I am with an intention, the more I set myself up for failure. Keeping my intentions conceptual allows me to be kinder to myself. It also give me room to evolve my ideas about my intention.  

This year, my intention is to nourish myself. Right now, that mostly means staying active (taking walk breaks at work, doing yoga at least twice a week), eating better, and carving time out for my writing and creativity. 6 months from now, my idea of nourishment might be completely different. 10 months from now? Who knows. 

***

At the beginning of the year, I was watching Master Chef Junior and marveling at these young humans who, at the ages of 6-12 years, have more cooking & baking skills and knowledge than I currently possess after being alive for 30 years. They were asked to make their "signature dish," which meant "putting themselves on a plate." 

I asked myself what my signature dish would be. What would my signature dish look and taste like? What would it look like to put myself on a plate? 

***

I love to cook. That doesn't mean I'm skilled at it. It just means that I love to do it, and I injure myself a lot in the kitchen in really weird ways. I love the idea of baking, but until recently, it's not something I've had patience for. I'm at a point in my cooking/baking life where I can go off-recipe and not panic. I can make substitutions and not panic. Something in the course of my cooking/baking adventure can go terribly wrong, and I can take steps to fix it without feeling like the world is ending.  

***

All this is to say that this website is part of my intention of nourishment. I'm going to keep the mission statement of this blog loose; I'm going to let it evolve. Right now, I'll write about my food adventures and injuries, and I know it will lead to the intersections food has with memory. I'm also going to write about whatever else I want -- the books I'm reading, the movies I love, the things I'm nostalgic for.   

So, here's to 2016 : the year of nourishment. And, I guess, it's also the year of putting myself on a plate. 

***

Why Medusa Ironbox? I'll save that for later. One thing at a time.