Orange Season

I came home today to a platter of oranges.

Grandma loves oranges. I have vivid childhood memories of her slowly peeling them, taking her time to groom them as she would had she been brushing a baby's head. It's how I knew winter was here, back when I had no concept of seasons, or time.

I knew oranges meant winter before I knew I spoke two languages, or what it meant to look at a person and feel safe.

I remember looking at her, as she achingly peeled those oranges for what felt like a small eternity. She wasn't bothered by me watching her, she wasn't ignoring me either. Her presence contained me, her act was inseparable from its environment.

When she was done peeling them, she would make them into little "cat ears", as she called them.

She never faltered while peeling them to take a bite, or steal one of the little pieces to satiate her craving. She always took her time, and she always finished the process.

And then she would give them to me.

Even as a child, who is born selfish, I always tried not to take them. I would lovingly manipulate her into eating them by giving her an ultimatum that I wouldn't eat unless she did, or that I wasn't hungry or felt sick. I would always fail.

I never really liked oranges. They were a lame fruit.

And I ate an orange field growing up.

Today, I came home to find a platter of oranges.

I wasn't supposed to come home.

I was supposed to be with grandma, but I couldn't go.

She said she needed me. They said I was the only one who could help.

I ran through an orange field to get home, only to come home to a platter of oranges.

She wouldn't have done the same.

She would have peeled them too, for me.

Right now, grandma cannot peel oranges.

Or eat them.

I don't think she has for a while, back when she could, because we always forgot to get her some.

I always forgot to get her some.

I came home to a platter of oranges.

And winter is here.

Fading

I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats

With scarves of red tied 'round their throats

To keep their little heads from falling in the snow, 

and I turned 'round and there you go

And Michael, you would fall 

and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime

Of Dark Dentists & Baby Balloons

I sifted through some of my recent blog posts before I started writing this. It seems that my primary complaint about life for the past months has been the same; the rush of it all. Ironically, I've come here to talk about how it wasn't fast at all, because if it were, then I'm in a whooping whirlpool worthy of being the entry gate to Atlantis.

Will Atlantis be there on the other side? Now that's a debate that takes a few thousands years. 

I have a dentist appointment tonight. My second this week, after I ran out of the first. You see, I am phobic of dentists. My phobias are an assortment of pinata candy; they have nothing to do with each other, but are equally explosive if quite harmless. Of all the horrors that pervade our war-torn, famine-shred and drug-ravaged reality, my biggest fears are of the following: The dark, babies, balloons and dentists. 

I cannot trace any of them to a viable starting point, and I'm not sure it would help if I can, despite the insistence of scientific method. Would it help much to know that you're actually just afraid of the knife if a violent stranger is waving it at you? It wouldn't help much, even if you were otherwise just distraught by his shoddy use of language or hobo-chic fashion sense. I know phobias are basically neurological wires that accidentally connected in your brain, and that it takes a whole lot of turning it off and on again for dissociation, but who the fuck cares? I'd rather save my virgin wires for a problem that means business. 

Meanwhile...

I feel older with every passing day. I wish I didn't understand as much as I do. I wish I understood more. But most of all, I wish I didn't have to understand it. 

My boyfriend tells me that when I'm upset, I tend to sound like Tumblr then change the subject. I feel that food should generally by less chewy and shipping be subsidized. 

I have a lot of running around to do this week. A friend I knew from back in college is getting married, it's surreal. I need to buy a dress, and wear it. It's all very confusing. 

I'm trying to find my inner JD. He ran off a couple of months ago and I haven't seen him since. This is my first tree poster. 

What's to May?

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Spring

Spring is young. It gets caught up in its own feelings. 

It feels, untuned, and without ear, merely following the rhythm to an uncharted location. Following where the roads takes it, for the sheer fuck of it.

It's full of energy, that's burned up by a good powerful poem, but is delusional enough, drunk enough on youth, to use the awakening as a transition into another state of equal delusion. Different, is as close as it gets to awakening. I envy Spring, in its hopeful nihilism, in its violent shamelessness. 

It's cocky and impulsive, but when it doesn't have an audience; it usually takes a couple of minutes to catch up to itself, and see through the delusion. 

It takes it time to feel. It feels by default. It feels because it lives, it lives because it feels; it knows no other way to live. 

It makes mistakes, bold and unattended, albeit sheltered and inexperienced. It's drunk without stimulus or matter. It is living matter, in volatile state. A volcano, without shame. 

It grieves without grieving, it creates beauty by destruction, that doesn't destroy. It is infinite, in wearing a cape, stored from last halloween and brought out on April 3rd at 2pm in a fit of disbelief. It is Schrodinger's cat, it is life. Breaking life and reassembling it on a quite afternoon, for no reason, for all reason - unknowing - in violent passion. 

A force of nature, without force. Tender in its violence, vulnerble in its ferocity, and young in its closure. Closure without Reason. Self-centered closure, reached only by need, just as it started. 

It is the beauty of unadulterated force; in its contradiction, in its confidence, in its reason, that has gone mad and lost its path from reason.

Completely independent, completely crazy, and completely destructive, with 0 collateral damage. With 0 actual damage. A cold war, made cold by its unrequited, unnatural nature. Made cold by not finding a worthy opponent. Made cold by not finding a willing opponent. Made cold by not finding an opponent. 

Spring is young, in its readiness. Readiness for battle, that isn't there. Readiness for love, that doesn't exist. Readiness for heartbreak, that's been rendered obsolete by time, convenience and crippling civilization. Readiness for everything, rendered useless - and impotent - by time. Readiness that grieves itself, and only itself, in its joy for everything that's no longer needed by time. Readiness, that isn't needed. A futile, but beautifully powerful, existence. 

Does it know? It doesn't. It's still too young. 

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Summer

Summer takes its time. It thinks it's older. It's certainly taken up enough time. It's neurotic enough. It's confused enough, when it's not looking. When it lets its guard down, traces of spring seep in. In its intensity, it becomes too much of spring to be anything but Summer. Then it catches up on itself, and grieves knowingly. A new feeling; pity. Self-consciousness. Where, on the timeline of living things, did it pick up this terrible habit? It grieves its youth, by being young and not knowing. It grieves its youth, instantly, wasting more of it. 

Because it's young, it enjoys the walk. A walk filled with grief. A walk, heavy with feeling. Feeling, unknown to the old and knowing. A walk that's heavy. It now knows anger, but doesn't know how to contain it effectively. It lets it out in short bursts that are equally young - if not younger - than how it started out. It grieves that too, ironically. 

Then it realizes what it's done.

Summer is bipolar. It rejects is extremity with fashion, leftover from olden times and sheer habit. It talks too much to drown itself out. It doesn't know what it's capable of, because it's too busy grieving what it used to be, and reacting to how it got there in the first place. It thinks it's trying to understand, but it's just lashing out. Like a 19 year old, that just got a license and thinks it needs to use it for something for it matter. Like a 19 year old, that thinks it needs to use something for it to matter. Like a 19 year old, that cannot accept how futile life is, and is still trying to trace the reasoning of adults, along alice lines and rabbit roads that don't exist. It's too young to know that adults don't know what they're doing. It's too young to know that adults are adults because they see no reason; and still wake up the next day. It's still too young to know how to live without reason, or why to live without reason. It's too young to be old, and it still doesn't know it. It's too old to know it, but not old enough.

And somewhere down there, it knows it's not old enough. It knows that's the real reason it's grieving, but it's too young to know it loudly, and the sadness comes out happy, and lively, and full of hope. 

Hope of understanding the past, which isn't true. Hope of knowing what to do, which it doesn't. Hope of seeing, which it's too busy feeling to see for what it is. Hope of feeling like it used to, which it grieves too much to realize that it is. Hope of feeling, which it grieves, not knowing that it's still capable. 

Hope. Distraught hope, fueled by the confusion of youth, one that thinks it's too old too hope, and doesn't know it's distraught. 

After all, it's still young enough to get carried away, but is old enough to be exhausted by it. Old enough to be hurt by it. Old enough to not notice how young it is, unless it's in retrospect. 

It still has fight, and doesn't know what it's for. It's too old.

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Fall

It's now had enough time to think, and grow a little older. It's had enough time to know better, in the ways of living, but not in the reason. In the course of life, it forgot that was the real reason. It's had enough time to take its time to know the reason, and sound like it, without knowing.

But on lonely nights, it still gets hit by bouts of sadness. Existential sadness, without reason. Targeted sadness that has lost aim. Scheduled sadness, that forgot why it made an appointment in the first place. Sadness, for the sheer fuck of it. Without reason, with all the reason in the world. 

Enjoyable sadness; filling time, making time, the only way it knows how. 

It doesn't know why it's here, but it is anyway, and it's too old too question it, but it's young enough to get angry about it. Repetitively, ferociously, without apparent reason, like an old lost battle being replayed in a retired general's head, only the in the general's head, he's still at war. He's at war, but gets lost trying to get to the cupboard. He's at war, but he's forgotten why he's fighting at all. 

Too old to question itself, even in its incessant grief. Even in its constant torture, and elaborate pain. Tequila for consciousness, and a machete wielding mad scientist for a heart, one that's forgotten why it started dissecting.

Young enough to keep up the fight. Old enough to forget why he started fighting in the first place. 

Young enough to fight anyway. 

Young enough to continue fighting, long after he's forgotten the reason, long after he's forgotten he was after a reason, and long after he's forgotten he's kept fighting to remember that reason.

Long enough. 

An ode to time. An ode to life, that can't recognize itself, but remembers it shouldn't be ashamed to feel it, even if it doesn't remember the reason.

An ode to life in anger, anger that doesn't stop itself. In its old age, it's not old enough, just yet. 

An ode to the fall, and its real glory. 

An ode to the fall of a good life; remembered, forgotten, and still remembered, on a visceral level. One that's too important to need reason. One that deserves being angry about, without shame, or the shame of reason.

Thoughts on Piazzolla: Winter

It's now old enough to take its time. It's now old enough not to question why it takes it time, or to judge itself when it slips. It still questions, maniacally. It's already had its fall from glory, it's known how glorious it was, and it's confident that it doesn't need glory, but grieves it all the same, and enjoys it all the same. It's old with reason - long forgotten, but never let go. Reason enough, it thinks, in its existential torture. 

It remembers the anger, but now the anger is enjoyable. It has aged enough to realize the beauty of temporal states - ones without aim. It's old enough to relive, without the joy of living taken away. It now knows the beauty of aimlessness, and how they can't be avoided, no matter how old you get. Especially because of how old you get. It takes pleasure in reliving; not because of defeat, but because of ultimate understanding of the uselessness and aimlessness of life, and the realization that it's found its true and only meaning in wasting its life trying to react to it, rather than understand it. 

It's now old enough to know that's the only way to live, without really knowing it. Knowing is no longer the aim. 

It sings its last victory, in the face of imaginary enemies, with equal vigour and happiness. It exaggerates its wins, and their fluency - all the while grieving a perfectly well wasted life. A perfectly well felt life. A perfectly well lived life.

It gives itself space to have a tantrum, one that's quiet, and tender. One that asks for the sake of asking, asks for the sake of feeling, completely and utterly, and never asking for the sake of knowing. 

Ageing, in its original form. Ageing, for its original reason. Living for its only reason. 

Ageing, that doesn't affect wellness, but improves it. Ageing, that doesn't affect dexterity, but improves it. Ageing, that doesn't affect reason, but annuls it. Ageing, that fulfills. 

It knows its time has come, a long time ago, and its sings itself to sleep, in its own time, and at its own uninterrupted pace. 

It has lived, unjudged, and with complete laughable feeling.

It has lived, without reason. 

It has lived, with all reason. 

It has lived, for a reason. 

It has lived, for the only reason known to man, since the dawn of time, since man knew life for what it is, and never really knew what it was for. It has lived, and accepted the futility.

It has lived. 

The Boat

Leon The Professional

I think being called a writer was the worst thing that happened to my writing. Part of me believes it was the worst thing that happened to my life.

Gibran Khalil Gibran said that those who understand us enslave something in us, and perhaps that is one explanation; with every person that saw a piece of writing and thought it was good, and decided not to say “that’s a good piece” but instead said “that’s great, keep at it and you’ll be a great writer one day.” And genuinely believed it. “You have the potential,” they assured with all the love that comes from introspection on a convenient sunny day over a nice cup of coffee and cake, when all is easy with the world and companionship and nothing bad is happening.

That’s the poison; the potential, and how it tosses and turns with every paycheck and every commendation.

Six days ago, I walked out on my first full-time job. I had to check the calendar and surprised myself, but I’ll get to that later. As I’m tempted to turn this into an honest retelling, let’s just leave it at this: It was one that I deeply cared about that challenged me every day, and one that constantly fueled my tendency to define myself by my work with positive re-enforcement and structural workplace abuse. I was part of a broken hierarchy, containing a group of enabled, incompetent toads who thought they were defined by how expensive their lunch is, and how badly they inflected a vowel in a phony, malicious hello. I was overloaded with work under impossible deadlines with such low pay that when I finally left the place, they had to post 4 separate vacancies to replace me. The irony; why not pay your employees well and treat them like human beings in the first place? Isn’t that better ROI?

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. It isn’t, I decide, because it shouldn’t be. I know the story, there’s no point in retelling it than to blow fire into the embers that I’m trying to kill. It’s counterintuitive.

What I’m here to talk about are the 6 days.

For 6 days, I have been caught into the cycle of crying and working, with no rest assigned to a waking hour. It’s been like I was chained to the desk with a gun to my head, trying to figure out how to work again and when no opportunity presents itself; work on getting work incessantly by applying to a thousand places, revamping my website, posting hourlies, brushing up on sales copies, downloading SEO textbooks, getting into in-depth web analytics at 4 in the morning and taking notes to read about email newsletters the next day. Correction: Feeling bad about not knowing enough about it already.

It’s been a total mess. I haven’t been able to snap out of it, I physically couldn’t. I worked compulsively on virtually nothing, through phone calls and bathroom breaks. I was on a frenzy to learn all that can be learned and find out why it is I’m not working right now, and immediately fix it.

But I already knew why I was not working, it was because I left. Right?

I managed to get an interview at two shitty places, and missed one of them because I just didn’t feel like waking up. I was tempted to not even call to reschedule it, because nothing is more insulting than only getting a bad (Read: worse) job, even not getting a job is better. For 6 days, I doubted myself. I rewrote history and berated myself over wrong decisions and fucking things up, I forgot all the reasons I had for leaving and all the unhappiness that working there caused me. I forgot all the stress, the breakdowns, the sleepless nights, the shameless assholery and the crazy I had to put up with each day. I forgot that I’d started counting hours at the office, and how long they got towards the end. I’d forgotten how much that place broke inside of me, like a goddamn miley cyrus on a wrecking ball, moaning and crashing into walls of sanity and niceness, of space and growth, of creativity and hope.

And that’s when it hit me. For a year, I’ve been waking up in the morning and working on an offensive amount of things and spending my evening thinking about the next morning. And now I’m free. What I’m experiencing is not grief, introspection, regret or an identity crisis…it’s withdrawal.

Corporate life is not built for homo sapiens. It was built around them out of a collateral bad decision, driven by the capitalist obsession with efficiency and profit, and for decades, homo sapiens have been trying to break in their new stubborn cement boots. 

All over the internet, you read stories that go along the same line: “I worked a 60-hour week and had high expectations of myself. The paychecks were a thrill, but I had no life. It wasn’t until I completely burned out that I decided to be a nomad and eat shoes with barbecue sauce off the naked belly of a communist fiddler and only then did I find what I was really missing out on in life. I am happy now.”

It just doesn’t fucking work. That’s what escapes me; millennia of human evolution whose starting point was tribalism, and the BEST thing we could come up with is “Hey, let’s take away human contact and space for creativity and stuff them all in cubicles, put them in uniforms, hold them hostage with an obscene 9-hour work day that they can’t function with or escape so they won’t starve, give them 21 days a year for themselves that they can’t take in bulk, force them to email the next person in an endless, pedantic cycle of uselessness and turn Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs into a giant oxymoron! That’s a sustainable idea! That will surely drive progress and lead humankind forward.”

No, it won’t. It will drive people off glass-buildings every other month, though. You’ve solved the age-old riddle of survival instinct, you’ve unraveled the DNA of the thinking, autonomous being, but you have not created a model where people could thrive.

I remember another quote I read somewhere: We’re all hairless apes with anxieties.

Making the realization that I was experiencing withdrawal gave me the first 3 minutes off I had since I quit. It made me stop in my derailed tracks. What was I doing? I need a break. I needed a break, remember? That’s why I quit, remember? How come I forgot that?

The rules of credible writing say there is a conclusion, or build-up to a conclusion, right about now. You peak, you resolve and you fall. But my gears are stuck on peaking and I’m burning out, and I have no idea if resolution is near, or what this realization could mean for me.

I have decided to take a break…again, and I’m writing this to remind me. This is a reminder to smile, enjoy my time off and the little things, and to regain my sense of time that has been so obviously maimed beyond repair. Regain that sense of time, regain that sense of self, and sense will come in due time.

Here’s to the crossed fingers, the pinky promise and the thumbs up. The pointer has done enough. 

I'll go watch Leon: The Professional, and wake up tomorrow without a checklist.

Out of Focus

The Economist

It's been a while, and unlike every other time it was for lack of time, not intention. It's a time of great change, and perhaps this is what defines this period of my life; that everything feels like it happened a lifetime ago.

Moving is difficult, if exciting still. It's nostalgic, if tainted by broken bonds and forced communication. This is a general statement, but it cannot be any more specific. It is a time when I cannot find ground, granted, but it is also a time when I don't remember the last time finding ground wasn't a belated rationalization. I accept it, and I move on in calculated adult steps, that lack the spontaneous tint of childhood and the illusion of choice, even as I make a choice. I do not know where I'm going, but I know what I want, and for the first time of my life, I'm overwhelmed by the support of friends and loved ones; a curious feeling that I am not used to but am figuring out how to deal with, alongside everything else.

I remember my last letter, it was clearer. A farewell that is emotional and driven with satisfied closure. A memory I will not touch by understanding. This one is not the same; I struggle with many emotions, most of which I cannot record yet, and the rest I will not, even if I did, just because I don't want to admit that I grew up this much.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about this place, but perhaps the one thing I'll miss the most is the dog-eared issue of the economist waiting for me on the reception counter every month, having traveled through many hands, table surfaces, coffee rings and unidentified liquids. An issue that entertains and lends insight as it confounds and lends esteem. A curious, complicated society we live in, where the simple gesture of holding a magazine can turn an impression around.

For me, it was the holy grail of Mondays; my source of hope and awe for the next few weeks. As a copywriter, I'd pine over paragraph twists and loaded sentences, drinking it all in as a student would who'd snuck into an advanced class. And as a copywriter, who procures millions of dollars worth of premium, branding content for other people, I could not afford the 86 EGP I'd invest in an issue each month on my paycheck. On good days, it made me think of third world development and the superiority of what we're investing vs. what we're taking on the bigger scale of things. On bad days, I had to choose between an average commute and a decent lunch.  

The issue was separate from its reasoning, and the feelings that clung to its pages were different from the feelings that clung to it. It reminded me of how much I had to learn still, and what constitutes integrity of profession, passion and fulfillment. I'd keep myself grounded by thinking about the writer's day; how stressful it was, how frustrating and painfully normal it might have been to get this piece through, even as it preached ideals of a bygone age of knighthood and pontificated the tortured idealism of political thinkers that thought a paradise was viable with law and education. How many people yelled at him/her, and how many sources turned him/her down. How caustic the editor was, and whether the writer might have been a conservative right that was forced to go liberal for the paycheck, losing integrity as he/she called for it. Did the paycheck even pay rent? So many factors that could break a fairy tale; and perhaps a sign of this age is knowing these factors and clinging to the magic still - without delusion, but with desperate hands that climb all the way out from childhood's hold and into the pulverized ashes of the real world, so utterly devoid of magic, meaning, stability or probable cause.

I thought of the mystery writer still, what their passions really are, how they thought of themselves as they twisted their own education to fulfill a superior accusatory tonality that comes from a place of right and wrong, points fingers and blames with the authority of an OP Rorschach, and I compared it against how powerless he/she is in person; to every person involved in the process of publishing - be it writer, editor, son, source or disagreeing aunt - and whether they got out for themselves what I'm getting out of their piece on the toilet. Do they know they're creating this beautiful illusion? Did they, at any point? Does it matter? Did it matter?

Does it really matter?

As children and educated teenagers, we hate corporations idealistically. We look on to the matter from the abstract eyes of great thinkers, and get the passion of hate through books of legislated anger and righteous emotional projection. We hate them because they do, and because the feelings were so true, we do not feel the lie as we partake; in all innocence, honesty and idealism that might even trump the author's. We are genuine, but we do not see. It is not our fault, for how would we see otherwise? Through the boring monologues and soliloquies of our parents over dinner? From the tales of woe of our friends? From the bad days of our loved ones? It is not powerful enough to contain a belief; it only commends a passing - if strong - feeling.

Then we grow up, and we revisit our hate for corporations with eyes full of dust and mouths full of memos. We see the little things; the small elements of the process that thinkers looked on and communicated to masses through political frameworks and narratives that divine human rights, justice and fairness from an act as simple as office terms of service. We re-learn the hate with new eyes; eyes that cannot always afford integrity if given the choice between making a stand and making rent. Because of these thinkers' ingenuity, we skip over the Kubler Ross model with the agility of a veteran ballerina, and find ourselves wallowing in bitterness faster than your head could spin at the mention of vacation.

Yet, we grow up. And with the acceptance come the bitter let-downs of idealism and childhood fairy tales of goodness. In getting over one small fact, we get over an entire system of belief, warranted for generations by hope, thought and genuine desire for development.

"Stick it to the big guy!" We giggle. Which? For how much longer? And who's going to feed me in the process of my intellectual jihad?

Thought is paused, for lunch break is over, and one must keep up with the game if one wants to live.

How much of your day is forced upon you by corporate culture? Take a moment and actually think. Is that all I'm worth? Is a meager paycheck worth giving up your head?

Yes, because your head was wrong; you might as well have been looking for giants in the bean stalks. And it's no one's fault, an adult once told you that big friendly giants existed, and that the fight goes on until you find better because compromise is a choice that only the sell-outs make. But who's buying? Is there demand, really?

And yet, I look back with affection. It is not one moment that breaks the shell of childhood; not the birds and bees, or corrupted officials, or the first time you fall prey to friendly scam, or the first time you lose a friend for wanting something different, or for no reason at all. It is not one thing, but many. And it doesn't stop as you grow up. You lose bits of it overtime, and they shatter louder in your head as you think they were the last. That was it, you think. I've finally grown up. This is the last thing I'll have to go through before I know better and the tectonic plates of adulthood settle down into their imperfect crevices. You get better, and you settle, and you wince at the memory, until you're hit by the primordial waves of the second coming and you realize you were still a kid when another part of childhood is broken.

And it keeps happening, and you keep getting surprised. Until one day you see the pattern; and that one day is the only day that you may call yourself a full-fledged grownup. You'll know it when it's here, for it will be the saddest day of your life. It's so sad, in fact, that everything else will feel better afterwards.

Good luck, and keep packing your cereal with your favorite colored latches. Keep buying stationery, and keep investing in glittery pens and other useless oddities because you felt like it. One day, years or months from now, they might be the forgotten relics that tickle your senses back to a time when you were younger, more innocent and better off.