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My love for “Bien Pretty”
I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.
-Sandra Cisneros “Bien Pretty”
This week, I wanted to talk about literature. Some of my favorite literature to be exact. Since graduating college, I’ve really missed having in-depth conversations about a good piece of literature and absolutely freaking out about how much a passage means to me. Of course working at a bookstore I get to dip my toe into a good book conversation with my coworkers from time to time but we’re always interrupted by customers half way through (no shade to customers though! I’ll chat their ears off too when given the chance). But since this is a blog focused on my writing I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my biggest writing inspirations.
Sandra Cisneros is one of my favorite authors. The way she describes the experiences of women, especially women of color, is magical. Better than magical! She perfectly puts into words all of these little thoughts and aches that I’ve never even known could be described out loud. When I read something she’s written it’s like I’m reading about myself. In my own writing, I hope to channel her even a little bit.
Her short story, “Bien Pretty”, is one of my favorite stories to read. I read it when I’m sad, when I’m yearning, when I’m feeling hopelessly poetic and wrapped up in my own mind. It’s about a young woman who falls in love with a man and as her affection for him grows she turns away from loving herself. She realizes that her love for him is what made him special in the first place. She essentially created the man she loved from scratch. What is more feminine than making your lover into what you’ve always wanted? Creating them from the very beginning. Forming your lover into a story.
My writing often attempts to make my lovers into stories or poems or recipes or lessons or chapters. It’s therapeutic in a way. Literature is much easier to understand than a whole person. I believe that Sandra Cisneros would get that. I’d love to meet her one day. I bet she would have phenomenal things to say about loving and being loved.
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Sick and Hungry
I’ve been sick for the past week. Yes, the mighty Sinus Infection struck me down. After the events of the past 2 years, I was just happy to say that I didn’t have Covid, despite the fact that I still felt unspeakably shitty. And I don’t get sick very often so my immune system was working overtime. I mean, I was exhausted!
But while I was sick I lost my sense of taste and smell. I’m regaining it slowly now as my congestion is passing, but that loss of taste and smell was by far the worst part of this whole thing.
I bit into a slice of pizza and it might has well have been a chunk of soggy cardboard. A fluffy round of garlic bread was nothing more than a beautiful decoration on my plate. Nothing breaks your heart more than garlic bread sitting tasteless and unappetizing on a plate. Or perhaps only foodies can lament this way about garlic bread…
Thankfully, food blogs were my saving grace. Everytime I saw someone cutting into blueberry cheesecake or opening a Nutella filled cronut or tearing into their foccacia bread or basting their honey chicken tenders (I watch hours worth of instagram reels of this stuff lol), I felt that I could taste it! Even with my senses being completely out of wack, I could taste every single spice, every drop of fresh squeezed juice, felt that texture of perfectly cooked chicken breaking apart in my mouth.
Shoutout to my favorite food blog, Moribyan.com, for constantly making me crave things I’ve never actually tasted but taste in my dreams over and over again. I swear I can smell her kitchen if I sniff hard enough!
As summer is on its tailend, I’m starting to get excited for autumn! With Autumn comes the hearty spirit of making baked goods and I plan to make as many as possible this year. Hopefully I can master a new baked treat every Friday starting in September. I attempted to do this last year but the Ghost of Autumn got my soul and I lost all steam midway through October (the Ghost of Autumn is simply another name for seasonal depression, as “Ghost of Autumn” sounds a lot more like a mysterious, endearing, storybook character rather than an intangible general feeling of the cold and dark weather making me cry on a random Tuesday).
Colder seasons approach, as does the mug of hot cider to my lips! I plan on consuming as much pumpkin things and cinnamon things and apple things and walnut things as possible. And yes, I’m a pumpkin spice girl. Life is too short not to be. -
One of Many Poems
This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is a fresh baked potato with bacon and gouda and green chiles.
This poem is an icy blue margarita that’s more sugar than tequila
This poem is red hot.
This poem is metal fork to mouth, juicy and savory and dripping down your chin, staining your white shirt!
This poem is Indian food in your apartment on a Saturday night.
It’s tikka masala and gluten free naan and mango lassi with a straw.
This poem is edible.
This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is a well moisturized afro and a bright colored shirt and roller skates.
This poem is a summer night in the backseat of a pickup with the stars glittering down on us.
This poem is red hot.
This poem is corn rows and sweet potato pie and coconut oil skin.
This poem is sitting on your porch with you in a fold up chair as you sip on iced tea, smoking menthols with your cousin who’s not your cousin and is really just your mom’s cousin’s best friend.
This poem is tangible.
This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is the feeling in the pit of your stomach
The throbbing of your brain against your skull
The pinch of the muscle in your arm
The weight on your organs
The burning in your eyes
This poem is red hot.
This poem is electricity striking across the night sky, casting a white vein between the clouds.
This poem is the thunder and the snow and the crack in the road.
This poem is weather.
This poem is a crime of passion.
This poem is on fire.
This poem is nothing more than a poem.
This poem is words on a page.
This poem is whatever I say it is.
This poem is my mind and now it’s yours.
This poem is red hot. -
Halved
I’ve never half loved you.
Everything with you is whole.
Whole self
Whole breath
Whole gaze.
To half love a person would be to give half the heart,
I suppose.
I never had that chance.
Each half of my heart held you together.
It created all of you from nothing.
But I only half loved myself during this time.
I half loved the summer in the same way.
When the red sun
Brightened your eyes
My heart fumbled
And gave itself over to you,
Leaving only a fraction left for me. -
The piece of you stuck in me
On nights like this I think of him
By nights like this, I mean every other night
And by think of him I mean lament
I mean mourn
I mean smile while I’m doing something else
Smile to myself while I’m showering
and drinking chamomile tea
and playing Animal Crossing
and blinking slowly and cleaning my room
His name is a hum
It’s a song I can’t get out of my head
The rhythm thrums against my brain, tapping on every nerve at all times
I am the pollen of the echinacea
and he is the wind or the bumblebee or the rain or whatever other handsome and lovely thing that shakes me from my core.
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You. In Many Parts. 2
My post this week is a continuation of “You. In Many Parts”. I had fun writing this one, though the subject matter seems bleak. This piece is unfinished (as every writer says), but I think it perfectly sums up my feelings towards this “you” and thus, must be published!
2. When you look at me, you don’t really look at me. You look through me.
You don’t look through me like I’m a mirror or a window or a ghost or something helplessly poetic like that, but you look through me like I’m eyeglasses. Like you’re happy that I’m there so you can use me to see things more clearly.
And when I take my clothes off for you there’s surprise in your eyes. It’s like you’re seeing me for the first time, but really you’re not. You’ve seen me a million times before this, in a million different iterations before this, only just now you’re seeing my body.
And is this how it is? Do you really have to see my body to know that I have one? Just like you think you’d have to see my brain to know that I have that too?
I have existed before you for many years. Centuries, it seems, and in many universes. I am a constant for you. Always here and ready to make myself an extension to you. I’m your extra limb in this life. In another life perhaps I’m the chains on your tires. In the next, the spare blanket beneath your bed. And in your favorite life, maybe I’m your mother, loving you without conditions or expectations.
Don’t I exist for you? Don’t I exist in real space? Don’t I prove to you everyday that I deserve you? That I deserve your gaze? Your soul? Don’t I give you my mind every night and my skin every morning? Don’t you beg for it? It feels that way, at least.
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A Wonderful Writer
Writers are specially made individuals. There are writers who feel the need to tell the story of a young boy gaining a magical gift and fighting dragons and writers who tell the story of an old woman who has lost her husband and is trying not to lose herself. There are so many books on this planet and poems and rhymes and short stories about the human experience as writers have compiled it into words.
We’re different from movie directors who tell stories through the power of a visual, and we’re close to, but not quite musicians who tell a story through a beat. As a story lover, I believe all forms of storytelling are fantastic, but of course, as a writer specifically, I find that there’s something particularly special in writing words that touch the soul. When I’m in a moment of great emotion, words usually escape me. There are only feelings swirling and bouncing up against my brain. But later on when I can begin to clearly understand those feelings and I find the words to describe it, I feel fulfilled. Like I’m validating that emotion to the highest degree. I’m allowing myself to exist in the reality of language.
In my experience, writers are very emo! It seems like we all have this center of gravity rooted in our heartspace. We are tapped into feeling everything as we are constantly seeking words for our floating thoughts, and because of that, we can be dramatic.
I think that being emotional is good. Feeling everything is good. Writers exist in a space that is half earth and half dream. We are here, but more importantly, we are not. We are also inside of ourselves. We are always making up inside of ourselves, for the outside pieces that lack. We are always “trying to make sense”. But it’s hard to make a lot of sense when feelings often seem senseless.
And when we write all of these things and publish them we just want someone out there to read it and think “Yes! I get it!” We want to know that you can see us. Our half life between Earth and dream state. You can see us here.
In other words, writers work hard, so readers don’t have to.
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“You.” In Many Parts. 1
A little different from my other pieces on here, I have a collection of saved works entitled “You” that I have written about many “you’s” in my life. I write these pieces in order to sort out my feelings about someone and better understand my emotions toward them. Often, what I think of someone initially, isn’t really who they are. And sometimes the subjects for these pieces aren’t really people at all, but only the image of the person with the personality I made up in my head. These pieces are mostly streams of my consciousness and make little to no sense without context, but they’re clarifying for me. They’re sort of like little letters that I would mail to the person or read to their face uninterrupted if it weren’t for my own cowardice. I figured that I would start publishing these here because maybe you all have similar feelings about similar people and maybe you can relish in that with me 🙂
1. I was surprised when it was you I saw at the door.
I mean, in a way, I have always been waiting for you.
Yes, I knew you would come and greet me. My friends had long told me that you existed and that you would be here to take me away or make me cry or something awful and terrific like that. You would take your hat and coat off and set them on the rack. And perhaps you would put your hands in your pockets and watch me from across the foyer.
And I imagined that I would be excited to see you. Or that I would feel, butterflies in the very least.
But what I felt, when you actually appeared, wasn’t that. It was the absence of breath and speech. It was air swirling between us without purpose or direction. It was empty.
You just weren’t what I expected.
Your hand was warm in my cold one, yes, but your eyes were all wrong. And your hair wasn’t done right. And you wore all the wrong clothes. All wrong. But you were there at my door, waiting for me. Yes, it was only me there for you. I was relieved to see you but not excited. Not the way I thought that I would be, don’t you see that?
And you! Relieved to see me too, but not surprised. The expression on your face was downright bored. You wore no hat but you adjusted the watch on your hand. Had you been waiting for the right moment to turn and leave? Had you preferred the abyss to me?
Can’t you see that I’m not what you expected either?
But there was hope in my chest for the future. Hope that time would be slow and that we would grow in, rather than up. Perhaps we still can. -
Lemon Curd and Such
Much of my thinking time is spent on food. I think about eating food, smelling food, baking food. I think about food dripping off my fork onto the plate. I think about food filling the hole in my stomach and satisfying me completely.
And then I talk about food. God, I could talk about food for ages. All bakers know that there are these little intricate sciences to baking things that are so detailed and nerdy and annoying to remember but essential to the recipe, and it’s so entertaining to talk about.
Like, in order to make lemon curd, one must use cold butter pats. Not room temperature, otherwise the curd won’t be thick enough. Not the entire stick at once, otherwise the butter won’t melt in time and the consistency won’t be perfect. About 10 nice and cold butter pats to mix straight into your thick lemon sugar mixture.
And then of course you put it in a jar and you leave it on the counter for a few hours. Don’t put it in the fridge right away, otherwise it can mold. After a night in the fridge your lemon curd is thick, rich, and perfect on cake or toast.
Lemons, sugar, butter. All the ingredients needed for a perfect recipe. Learning the recipe ruined me. I can eat it all the time, now. Smother it on everything. I wish I could make vats of it to keep in my house just in case of a lemon curd emergency.The tangy flavor that hits the back of my tongue followed by the sweetness that plays on the tip is unmatched.
I use Alton Brown’s lemon curd recipe. That man is a genius and if I keep listening to him, my food addiction can only grow. -
Life: Far-Sighted
When I look at my life from up close, everything seems very important. The most important. Getting projects done and having set time-lines and appointments. Sometimes it feels like my life is this really big thing, like a 30 story tower of Jenga pieces that I have to keep from falling on my face.
Sometimes life feels like a hamster wheel. Just keep running. I’m not getting anywhere but when I got off I’ll feel accomplished… maybe?
More often than not, life feels like an ocean and I’m a krill. As a krill, a small organism that whales eat, I may encounter a dangerous foe, like said whale, or a friend, like a clownfish*. Or maybe I’ll swim for ages and ages and see nothing and even wonder to myself why and if I wanna swim at all.
But when I look at my life from afar, I see that it’s much smaller. It’s not a tower of Jenga pieces or a hamster wheel or an ocean. It’s just a life. A life full of heartbreak and love. Running and sitting. Talking and sleeping. Reading and Listening. Crying and laughing. That is what a life is. Just a life.
And sometimes my soul is passing by another soul and we are both living and breathing the same air and that is all. We are literal. We are living our lives. There are no guide books or rules. All we have to do is be in the moment. We have to feel.
I think in metaphors and similes because sometimes it’s hard for me to process reality simply as it is. And it is. Simple, in fact.
*let it be known that I have no knowledge of the friendliness of clownfish towards krill. All my clownfish knowledge comes from the 2003 Disney film, Finding Nemo, and I can only make the assumption, based off of that movie, that clownfish would be lovely friends to have.
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