Posted on

The F Word

GRADE_FI hear it everywhere, from on the streets, to at work, on television shows, and even from my own children. It’s pervasive in this culture, and I can’t stand it. Every single time I hear that word I want to scream because it’s probably the single most overused, and most incorrectly used, word in the language. When I was younger I used to use it to excess too, so I understand why it’s so widely used, but as I’ve gotten older it just grates on me and I want to say something every time I hear someone say it. The other day I was at work when a little kid was whining to her mom, and she said the F word. I wanted to say something to her, but her mother did it instead, explaining what that word really meant. I was proud of her; it’s not often that I hear anyone corrected for its use.

Then I told my seven-year old she couldn’t have her iPad this morning, and I heard it for the umpteenth time come out of her mouth.

“But Dad, it’s not FAIR!” she told me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s not fair that some people don’t have anything to eat while others waste food,” I said. “It’s not fair that other kids don’t have an iPad and you do. You want to give them yours?” Continue reading “The F Word”

Posted on

Fleeting

Magic is fleeting A fine wisp of smoke It twists its way upward As it stirs the breeze Before drifting away Back to where it’s from A spark that expires Like a breath of air Waiting to inhale To take it deep inside Secrete it in my skin Where it belongs But that is not … Continue reading Fleeting

Posted on

Sleep is the Cousin of Death

secrets-good-sleep_311“It drops deep as it does in my breath. I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.” -Nas

I remember when I was younger than I am now and I thought that being asleep meant dying, and waking up again was being reborn. It made me afraid to go to sleep for fear that I would never awaken in the morning. I would lie in my bed with my headphones plugged into my black and white television and the sound down low when I was supposed to be asleep. The flickering images on that little screen would keep me awake for probably fifteen minutes longer than I otherwise would have been, then my eyes would droop and I would fade. At some point during the night the headphones would get twisted up and pull themselves out of the TV and the sound would somehow be louder than I thought it was, but I wouldn’t wake up. I slept the sleep of the dead.

And I always have. When I was in high school I would always be the last one up, and my roommate would generally get me up by banging on the bottom of my top bunk or jumping on me when I had the bottom bunk. I was lucky he wouldn’t stick my hand in warm water instead. That would have been very uncomfortable and embarrassing, but I was spared such treatment at least. Continue reading “Sleep is the Cousin of Death”

Posted on

“Messy” is the new “Blue”

Shades_Of_Blue_Wallpaper_1ad0gI’ve always wondered where the idea of blue being used to describe a sad emotion came from. Blue can be an incredibly vibrant color when at its best. I remember when I was a kid my “uncle” had this bright blue shirt that he would always wear on Sundays. It was something we could count on whenever we saw him on a Sunday, that bright blue shirt and a smile on his unshaven face. I never asked him about that blue shirt but I always thought about it, and what it might have meant to him. As I got older I realized there actually must have been a number of different shirts all in the same color because just one would have worn out or faded with time. He was always happy in that shirt, so I equated that color with happiness. Back then when anyone would tell me they were feeling blue, I would smile and say, “Great!” never minding their confused expressions.

There are so many different shades of blue, too, something else that didn’t truly resonate as a child. The sky was blue, and I knew it wasn’t the same blue as my uncle’s shirt, but my brain didn’t really process. My uniform for private school was a yellow shirt with navy blue pants. They were so dark they were hard to distinguish from black. I couldn’t reconcile the bright blue of the shirt with the light blue of the sky with the dark blue of the navy pants. That every single one of those things could be blue and yet be so distinguishable from each other was mind boggling. Blue seemed to me to be in just about everything around me, and I looked for it everywhere. Continue reading ““Messy” is the new “Blue””

Posted on

Write What You Know?

I’ve heard it more times than I care to admit, those people reading my writing, clucking their tongues and saying, “You write what you know.” And I get exasperated, because they’ve probably just read my treatise on the glory of the socialist state, or my poem about a trip to hell, or the story I wrote from the perspective of a girl who lost her virginity at 13. How would I know anything about any of that, having never lived in a socialist state (that I know of), never having been to hell (although maybe Brooklyn qualifies these days), and never having been a girl (my virginity was intact until I was 21, by the way)? Yet they somehow try to force me into the narrative, into the dialogue somehow, as if there is no other way of writing, as if my imagination isn’t good enough (or perhaps too good) to come up with something like that out of thin air.

Give writers more credit. Or at least give some writers more credit. You know the writer who only writes about their daily lives, their troubles, their issues, and their foibles. And that’s okay. Some of my favorite bloggers are those who write that and only that. It’s what they know, and they’re experts at it. If I can’t live inside their skin, it’s a close second to read through their emotional baggage laid out on the screen. I know, too, for so many of those writers, it’s a therapeutic exercise, to get it all out, like focused breathing. In and out. Repeat. Some writers have that gift, to connect the readers with the experience, just as it happened and nothing else. Continue reading “Write What You Know?”