Posted on May 20, 2012
Words mean a lot to someone like me. They’re weighed and measured constantly: heavy with symbolism or light with indifference. And when I read them, they feel just as significant, leaving me smarting or singing inside just through simple metered rhyme or prose. When you speak to me, I’m listening for feeling in your diction, for the lilt of your voice that signals curiosity or the hitch that betrays pain. Most telling, possibly, are the words you use to address me—pet names or nicknames or even my own name, whispered with reverence or breathed out in a heavy sigh dripping with exasperation (much more typical). Names that my parents have given my sister and me since birth (mush mouse and punkin puss) and names we’ve given them: old man and “ma” and, when you think about it, even “mom” and “dad” are versions of nicknames we use almost exclusively in exchange for their given names.
There are playful versions that I’ve been called, that have stuck with me through high school and into college, becoming my moniker for social media purposes (erbear, erbearin). Words like “bitch” and “whore” are thrown around amongst friends as terms of endearment or as damning evidence of hatred, jealousy, and anger. The in-between ones, like “baby” and “honey” and “babe” and “boo” are the names I’m consistently left on the fence about. I can’t decide if I like them or not, and usually it depends solely on whether or not the user is someone close to my heart, if he’s using it sarcastically, if I can feel weight in the word or whether it’s just tossed around with disregard.
If you’ve seen Pride and Prejudice (the Kiera Knightley version), you must remember the final scene. Darcy and Elizabeth are sitting on their new front porch, intertwined and in love as ever. Elizabeth chastises Darcy for his using “dear”, protesting that her father only calls her that when cross. He asks her what he may call her, independent, feisty spirit that she is. She replies with pet names—Lizzie and Goddess Divine on special occasions and “My Pearl” on Sundays, only Sundays. And then, and here’s where there is perfection, Darcy questions her on what he shall call her when he is cross—Mrs. Darcy perhaps? Her reply is everything romance should be:
No! No. You may only call me “Mrs. Darcy”… when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.
And he kisses her forehead, her cheeks, and finally, her mouth, whispering all the while “Mrs. Darcy”, “Mrs. Darcy”, “Mrs. Darcy” and the scene fades to the words “The End” written in script and you can’t move because you’re smiling too big to even register any emotion other than joy and elation at the characters on the screen. Those names, similar to “darling” or “my _____” are the very best, then. They’re what romance and happiness ought to be. They’re the emotional equivalent of a warm hug, of bare shoulders and strong arms, of trust and passion all rolled together into one ball of syllabic warmth.
Every word, every name and every term of endearment carries weight behind its syllables. It holds comfort or aching and has the power behind its supposed simplicity to transform moods, relationships even, and should be treated reverentially as such. Words don’t just mean “a lot”, then. They’re simple, amazing human interaction at its most important level. And, my dears, bitches, loves, sweet angel readers: that’s everything.
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Posted on May 19, 2012
Hiatus at best friend’s (who’s back from India finally) for the weekend.
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Posted on May 9, 2012
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
BREAKING: Obama Embraces Marriage Equality | ThinkProgress
Welcome, Mr. President. The mini-quiches have gone cold and the ice is all melted, but we’re glad you’re finally at the party.
(via rachelfershleiser)
And sorry, we ate all the cookies while we were waiting for you to show up…
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
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Posted on May 8, 2012
This is what will happen if I let you into my life.
I’ll send you poetry in a text, at 11 am on a Tuesday morning because something about the cadence reminds me of your fingers picking at a guitar.
I’ll find ways to put you in my work, a hug outside a classroom in late November or how you told me that even just writing helps (although I’m starting to think you just told me that to feel better, you couldn’t have actually meant it).
I’ll romanticize and analyze and turn everything you do into metaphors for life or music or love, and then I’ll turn everything off and laugh at you when you tell me you fell for the girl at the party two weeks ago, or for me, because falling for people is stupid, it’s for people who haven’t thought anything through, it’s for the old and we’re young, so young, too young.
I’ll forget that friendships take work— haven’t I already told you that I’m flaky? I assume that you know that when I love someone, I love them like the way you do a security blanket after years of wear. I’ll need to know that you’re still there, tucked away and smelling the same as ever and full of comfort, but I won’t take you everywhere anymore, unless you count being stored away in my heart for safekeeping (i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)). I still love you just as much, maybe even more, because I’ll know we can cross distance and time and be okay.
I’ll have too much to say on a blank word document or scrawled away in my awful loopy chicken scratch that hasn’t changed since middle school and looks exactly like my sister’s. And when I’m right in front of you, I won’t have enough to say about whatever it is that you’re pressing me for- stop pressing, I have to take my time, can’t you tell that each word I want to say to you is calculated for rhythm and strength and heat (or cold, if it’s that kind of conversation).
I’ll be dramatic about everything. There’s just no getting around that.
I’ll give you nicknames. Probably just a shorter version of your name or “boo” or something little I can call you to let you know that you’re special to me, and I have weird nicknames too, given to me by my family after 20 years of being really odd like “the orangutang” and others that are too embarrassing to write here and you can come up with some of your own for me but if you call me dude I’ll probably ask you to stop, please.
I’ll never be on time, either. I’m always running late because my real life is ten minutes behind yours and I think that might mean I’m not meant to live in America, because I heard in Europe everyone moves at this pace.
I’ll hear you in my favorite songs, the ones that change from day-to-day and I’ll probably tell you to listen, just to see if you hear it too.
If I let you into my life, I’ll want you there. I’ll need you at times, and push you away at others. I’ll carry you, ee cummings style in my heart and, if we’re a couple of people who work well together, as friends, lovers, peers, I’ll find myself nestled away in yours, too.
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Posted on May 7, 2012
It hurts to write lately. Not the usual pain—the heart-wrenching, blood-rushing jolts of sensation that cut deep into me and out to my typing fingers—but a dull, aching feeling instead. Pain that comes when I know that I have things to say, yet can’t bring myself to put into words. I hate that I have so much inside of me that I can’t let out, because you might read it. Or him. Or her. The woman who knows my mother at work. My mother herself.
And it sucks so fucking badly because all of this began with you all. I served myself up on a silver platter made of words and you helped me along, pushing me in this direction, or that one. And your support means the world to me.But now that it’s censoring my thoughts and feelings and that silver platter made of words is scratched and dull, I’m finding it harder and harder to present myself.
The things I think and feel are still there, stronger than ever, maybe, because I have time in the evenings or mornings to consider the way a pair of arms feels around me at five in the morning and how I always forget to call when I say I will and how I will call when I’m drunk instead, even though I shouldn’t. There are thousands of things I can say about how you’ve changed, how I’ve stayed the same, in some ways, and how I couldn’t ever get married or even think about it this young but the same isn’t true for so much of my hometown.
These things are inside of me and they feel sometimes like poetry, other writers could understand that, the way it makes you feel inside, and I want you all to get it too but I’llbedamned if I let it into the wrong hands that twist everything into some meaning I never intended. I want to scream things that Neruda or Collins could’ve written in their teens into the darkness or early afternoon haze or at the couple hugging right in front of me, feet off the ground and eyes closed and happy, so goddamn happy, that captures a moment or a feeling in words that are there, somewhere, entrenched beneath the judgmental gazes of my family or the curious eyes of my peers.
Now, these things are held close to my heart. I bury them away for safekeeping, like hearing “Walking in Memphis” and thinking of my dad or smelling jasmine and remembering our old house and the potted plant on the back porch that bloomed only at night, and if I had the courage I would tell you in five different ways how that’s like me. I can tell you all things that won’t hurt me later on, like that my favorite color is forest green and I forget sometimes that not everyone thinks like I do and that I’m tired and living off of eggs and tuna and peanut butter. But not that you lost your power over me, that I look up to Rachel Maddow (because that might make me gay), that I go out at night because, dammit, I work hard and I can have a little fun, right? I can’t say any of those things out loud any more. I’m too afraid.
This feeling that every word I write will be analyzed, bit-by-every-bit, until what was left of my silver platter is nothing but a sad excuse for rusting scrap metal— does it disappear?
Even this feels flat. I just want my words back.
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