prattlepeach

sea monkeys and illegal tiny turtles

When I was a kid I had a very precise fascination with small animals. It all started with sea monkeys. I remember my dad going to Fry’s Electronics often, although I can’t remember what he ever needed to go for. My family would split up and while my dad looked for whatever it was we went to Fry’s for, my little brothers and I would go wreak havoc on the toy aisle. One of the toys was the Amazing Live Sea Monkeys: The World’s Only Instant Pets.

I cannot eloquently enough explain the grip that those brine shrimp had on me, but I wanted them with every fiber of my being. I had never had a pet, but I knew I would be an excellent raiser of sea monkeys. I would beg him to let me buy the box that came with a watch that you could put the sea monkeys in to bring them with you everywhere you went. I wanted to hatch them and show my friends at school that I had leveled up from Nintendogs and gotten real-life pets.

Eventually, he let me get them, and I did hatch them. They didn’t actually do anything but float around, and there weren’t as many of them as I thought there would be, but I was very proud that I followed the directions and got my very own pets. I did attempt to put some of them in the clear watch tank, but it had a leak and the poor shrimp were lost somewhere on my walk to elementary school. The rest of the sea monkeys died when I tried to clean their little tank and my dad poured the glass I put them in down the sink.

I ended up setting my sights on a pet that was not nearly invisible to the naked eye.

During the summer, my family would go to the swap meet most Sundays. We would browse the tents, listen to whatever live classic rock cover band was playing, and my mom would let us get Slurpees. I received an allowance of $5 a week for vacuuming the house and had saved enough allowances to buy a turtle from a vendor at the swap meet who also sold little bamboo plants. I named him Pistachio, although I never did learn the gender of the turtle. It was very little and ate pellets that fogged up the water in its tank very quickly, smelling up my room so badly that it became a large point of contention in my household. My pet was stinky, but I loved him.

I only learned later that the turtle was likely very illegal to sell/buy/own, and it turns out that the same type of tiny turtles resulted in kids getting salmonella. I never got salmonella from him or from eating raw cookie dough (which I did very often as a kid), and the next time we went to the swap meet, the turtle seller was no longer a vendor. Pistachio stopped eating after about a month, and one day he closed his little eyes forever.

I came home to find his little corpse and the agony and grief my little 11-year-old self felt wracked my body for weeks. Today, at 25, I don’t think I would ever get another small pet like a turtle or hamster, but I have found myself researching sea monkeys.

nothing personal

I wonder, off and on, but always, if anyone will ever know me. I like getting to know people, and I want to listen. I aim to be and I can honestly say I am perceptive. I notice. I remember. Yet I have been scratching my head trying to remember the last time someone said anything to try and really get to know me. I am not sure there exists yet a person who has ever asked me anything very personal. And I want to bring up the definition of personal as “of, affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else.” Not my politics, because that can be shared with someone else, not my job, which is not unique to me, not my preferences for food and movies because others share those as well.

Personal. Just one person has it. We all have things about us that are just ours to share, but how often are we sharing it? And how do you even go about sharing something like that? If I bring it up, I’m spotlighting myself and it feels borderline disingenuous because it just isn’t a very natural thing to give yourself away. Someone would have to ask, I think, for it to feel natural. Yet my frustration is in the one-sidedness where I frequently ask others to tell me more about themselves and receive beautiful answers, while I am unnasked on the other side.

I feel like I am bubbling inside with these snippets about me to share with someone who will never ask, never care to know. Like how I write all my Fs in cursive because I read an old love letter when I was in college and the woman in the letter was very well-loved by her suitor. She wrote her Fs in a very particular way and it might be silly but I thought maybe if I wrote my Fs like that forever, one day I would find someone who thought of me in that way too. I borrowed that little fragment of that woman’s life and brought it into mine and it took on new meaning for me. Training my hand to write every F that way took a while, but I made sure it became a habit and now it is part of my handwriting. I secretly hope for a love that can be appreciated centuries after it is over with every handwritten note I make, and that is something very personal. That is me, and nobody will ever ask ~~but I wish someone would~~.

I think that’s why I write. It has to be because there is a chance that if I write things like that here, someone might see it. And they might see themselves in that too, or connect with it for a moment. And in that connection that’s what I’m longing for, to be known. I write to be known by others in the way people could not possibly know I have been waiting for them to, so I leave it up to chance. Maybe you see this, maybe you are just the right person to see this and you understand. I hope someone understands because I just don’t think I can be alone in this.

Do we just go around asking personal questions? Is that even crazy to ask for? It feels kind of like it is, right now.

you have to believe it all works out. then you have to make it work out.

The world has told you lies about how small you are. You will look back on this time and say, ‘I had it all, but I didn’t even know it. I was at the center, I could breathe in happiness, I could swim to the moon. I had everything I needed.’
Heather Havrilesky

I have a bone to pick with the idea of manifesting and letting go and saying if it’s meant to be it’ll be. If you go on TikTok, you can find thousands of videos of people explaining how to visualize what you want, and then just let it go and wait for it to happen, because the universe has got it. You are taken care of.

But the thing is, at the end of the day you are just left with you. There are people and there are obstacles and you have to navigate life but none of that really truly can affect you unless you let it. If you’re just daydreaming about great things happening to you, it’s all just going to stay in your head. The universe does not care that you want to move across the country and make six figures. The universe should probably care about bigger things than you. So who’s taking care of you?

I was so tired of waiting for good things that I became the good thing. I worked out when I didn’t want to work out. I studied for my classes, met with my groups, went to class, went to work, finished my work, finished my homework, wrote my papers, woke up at 5:30 a.m., saw my friends, did more of my hobbies, stopped being worried and just lived in the moment to see if I could make it feel good always, and finally I started seeing progress. I was not waiting for the universe any more, whatever that really even means. I was just being who I wanted to be, finally.

Did you know that at any time, you can just apply for a new job if you don’t like your current job? You can just start saving money and in six months you will have a savings. You can use that savings to move wherever you want and you can sell your car and never have to sit in an hour of traffic to get home ever again?

You can just do whatever you want to do because you are so small, the world does not care about you. But you are also the world. You will never ever know what someone else is truly thinking, but you will always know what you think. Why would you not listen to yourself? Why would you not get to know the wants, needs, hates, and ailments of yourself? You are everything you need to be wrapped up in a neat little person. You are the whole entire world and you are not.

Are you sad? What makes you not sad? Do you know? Figure it out. Figure out what makes you happy, angry, insecure, jealous, excited, scared, and everything else you could possibly feel, and learn how to counteract or live in it. Learn how to feel the bad less and feel the good more.

I was so worried all the time that I was just not ever going to be good enough, or smart enough, or strong enough to do the things that I wanted to do and it scared me to think I would get stuck wishing for more and missing out. I was worried because I didn’t have any real proof that I could do better – I’d never done it. I know how to mess up, I know how to ruin things, but I had very limited experience with exceeding expectations. I learned more about the things I wanted to achieve and I set goals so I would have the confidence to make it happen.

I wanted a great relationship where I wasn’t anxious and deferring to my partner and becoming my partner, and I wanted it to last a very long time. So I started falling in love with what I like again. I ripped my acrylic nails off and I started playing guitar again, read a new book from my favorite author, binge-watched the shows I like, listened to my favorite podcasts, cooked new recipes, made plans with my friends and reconnected with them, and at some point in there I stopped worrying. I saw my partner less but I had more to talk about with him, and I think he definitely appreciated that I just had more interests to bring to the table. I love you and I love all these things, and this is what makes me a complete person. I love you and I am me, and you love me for me, not because I am you, but we are also one. Like a Venn diagram with the middle part overlapping, that’s us. We’re two complete circles, but we choose to be together.

And once you believe you can just be different, you don’t really have a capacity to accept anything other than what you really want. I don’t want to feel bad, so I don’t let myself dwell on things that would make me feel bad. I give the benefit of the doubt to situations where I would normally get sensitive and feel prickly, and 99% of the time I forget about it in an hour. Will this really matter in 5 days? 5 weeks? 5 months? Where do I really want to spend my energy? Getting upset over something small, or just having a good time and continuing to feel good?

You have to believe it all works out. And then you have to make it work out. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it always feels better to feel better than to feel bad. Once you figure out what you want, and then how to align yourself with what you want (in the big ways and the small ways), you don’t have to wait for some Jesus Take the Wheel type of situation. You are your own Jesus and you take your own wheel. The universe does not make you a better person – you do. There are no miracles coming to save you except for the miracle of you finally snapping out of your own personal thought-prison and figuring your shit out.

on being unloveable or silent love

Sometimes you wake up and just feel a little unloved, unloveable. Nobody tells you they love you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t.

The first hour of your eyes being open and your brain running is really the moodsetter, the vibes o’ the day, if you will.

What are you thinking about? Who is in the room? Are they looking at you and are you lucky enough to wake up being loved? Has the cat kept your feet warm all night? Are your thoughts good? Are they bad? Why? What do you have to do today? What will you do first?

I was in a head-on car crash recently, and I was very lucky to not be harmed at all. A couple bruised knees and some brain fog, but overall, my face and body look the same and the bruises are gone. When I wake up now, it is usually to a thought about how I’m happy that I can keep waking up the same way I have always woken up. How the crash did not change my life. The synapses and neurons are still firing on all cylinders. I am lucky that I do not have more serious things to worry about or side effects that will never leave me.

Today I woke up thinking the same thing as yesterday, thinking I am very lucky to be looking at the person I am looking at and how I want to do this forever. I want to always look at this person in the morning and make him feel loved for the first moment of the day. I can’t help him in business, in his interactions with others, in what the world does to him, but I can love him every morning and hope that when he breathes in his first few awake breaths, they are full of the millions of tiny invisible hearts emanating from me. I can’t ask for them to be reciprocated or acknowledged, but I hope they are just felt somehow. We may not have much time in the day to offer each other soon as we get busier and grow and follow our dreams, but there will hopefully always be the morning moments. The grounding love, the constant love, the love that makes it so I can go confidently towards my goals with my head up and my mind focused.

Some days, like today, those tiny hearts are deflected, ignored. They evaporate. The vibe o’ the day is quietness, tinged with rejection. I think look at me! Look at me! Love me love me. If you would just say it I would just feel it. I physically try to pull it towards me and I am only met with resistance. I am quiet. We are quiet. I do my makeup silently and I think, I should go. I collect my little hearts off the floor and stuff them in my bag to bring home to my cat.

For mornings, I love podcasts and music and the sounds of faucets and the coffeemaker. I love getting tangled up and staying in bed to cuddle and laugh about what happened yesterday, and it is in hushed tones but it is the loudest thing in the world to me because it is all I can pay attention to at that moment. I would bang all the pots and pans in the house together to let the world know that in the face of the uncertainty I feel every day and not knowing where I stand in terms of anything, I am violently, ferally here and ready to fucking go. Whether it’s to just walk and get a coffee, to prepare for a big moment, or to do work or homework. I appreciate a strong or lovely first hour of my morning.

Today there was a trail of unloveableness that simply followed me wherever I went. I did homework for 8 hours and I learned and I took notes, I ate brownie brittle and I watched Grimm and I listened to requiems on Spotify. I held my cat hostage in my arms against his will and I could not shake the sticky and boggy feeling that nobody will ever know the depth of my love and I will never feel the reciprocation of it. I will work hard and I will become who I want to be but I may never hear someone say I love you. And I will be quiet and wonder which parts of me need to be traded, upgraded, or revised in order to be lovable.

I know I will go to sleep and tomorrow will be better, and in three sleeps I will forget this sticky unlovable feeling entirely.

But I can be this unlovable thing, and I can still be everything I want to be. I may not have it all, but I can do everything I want. And in spite of not being loved today, I loved. Maybe my place is not to be dipped upside down and kissed all over the face and be whispered lovely things to, but maybe it is to make someone else feel that way. Maybe I am not the wellspring, but the faucet that has to abide by the rules of gravity and give and give and give.

And even more groundbreaking and world-shattering and thought-provoking is – What if I am receiving love, but it is silent? I will never hear it but it will wrap itself around me like the softest, warmest blanket. It is a constant, always there, supporting me and protecting me. It is not little hearts emanating from him but a bubble that is so expansive around us that I cannot see the boundaries and I cannot hear the buzz of its energy.

I prefer to think that this is the case, as unlovable as I am today.

eudaimonia and daydreaming and premonitions

Not unlike the toaster, I control darkness.
Christopher Moore

Well well well if it isn’t me waking up at 5:30 a.m. again to start another day with my positive life affirmations and instead of getting a cold brew trying to breathe fire (like in yoga, not so much like a pyro – it is simply too early for flames). I inhaleexhaleinhaleexhaleinhaleexhale so fast trying to wake up, and it actually does work.

Well well well if it isn’t me sitting at my desk at 7:30 a.m. trying to stop falling into hypochondriac thoughts and thinking my knees are broken, my wrists have succumbed to carpal tunnel, and my eyes will never stop rejecting the contacts I force them to hold onto for dear sight. I have watery eyes and crackling wrists but I survived a car crash last week that totaled my car so if this is all that I have as a side effect of a head-on collision I think it’s okay.

Someone brought butterscotch toffee flavored coffee grinds to work but no one knew how much to add to the coffee maker to make those 2.2-liter dispensers. I did. I made it and listened while people were excited that the coffee tasted so much better today and how good it smells, and it made me happy that I was the secret benevolent coffee brewer.

WeLL well WELL if it isn’t me taking a walk in the park next to work at 10 a.m. because it is a very beautiful day, after all. My earbuds are on their last leg and there is a hole in my shirt in the armpit and nobody knows either of these things and nobody should know nor should they care about my hole-y armpit and how I keep trying to listen to but keep disconnecting from my podcast about the lives of bees and how I secretly plan their downfall because I am allergic.

Well. It’s 1 p.m. and I have decided to get myself an iced coffee and the Greek salad/tomato soup combo from Panera. The dressing on this salad has a very intense kickback not unlike breathing in a salt and vinegar chip, and choking to death on spiced air at my desk is not how I wanted this day to end not how I wanted my life to end!!!!!

The thing about working for nine hours a day is you get bored at sitting in the same place for so long, but you have to. The mind wanders and you stop thinking about you and the tasks you have and you think about your favorite things to think about.

There is a window I look out of and there are construction workers doing something to a house and it makes me a little sad that I will be here for five months without you. It is comforting knowing you are a 15 minute drive away and that after work I could see you any day. This city has become more than just where I work but where I have spent the most time with you and watching movies, cooking together, laughing, playing games, misunderstanding and understanding each other more than I could with anyone else. I love you and the thought that you are near me, even if I will not see you until Friday.

I have seen you two or three times a week for a year, spent many nights on your awful bed and wondered how even though you are virtually scentless I love the way you smell. Soon I will see you for four days a month over one week but I will try to see you more. Whatever flights I can get I will take. I will miss you so much for those five months we spend apart and then I will see you every day for as long as you’ll let me.

It is 5 p.m. and I am going home to work out and watch Grimm and probably make a salmon and rice bowl for dinner and I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.

a monstrous and comic miming

It was as though the scene through which I had just lived had been a monstrous and comic miming for ends I could not conceive and for an audience I could not see but which I knew was leering from the shadow.
Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

How do you reintroduce yourself to yourself after losing her for some time? This is what I have been wondering nonstop for the past three days. I am using everything I have to get back to her. I will push and I will defy whatever stupid bad cognitive habits I have fallen into until I am done with this monstrous and comic miming of this girl who is unhappy, bitter, and mean.

This moment is my worst fear, I am this awful imposter who cannot possibly deserve happiness with the love of my life because I am a ruiner. I am a saboteur. I can’t feel my heartbeat any more and I think my lungs have dived into my colon. I deserve it, because I have wrecked it. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know how this happened. My throat is constricting in on itself like a boa, like a big fat snake, like me.

I have almost everything I could want, and I am on the path to attainment. I did not work this hard just to inflict misery on myself and others. I will not do it any longer. I regret every single time I was offended, offensive, obtuse. But I can’t go back, and I never will be able to.

I have made myself into a big fat crybaby, and now I am putting her on a diet and chucking her into the sun to hang up and dry. The amount of disgust I feel is immeasurable. But when we make a mess, we clean it up.

All I can do is be better today, and be better tomorrow, and put myself fully in this moment. I will not make problems for myself any longer. I am capable of deciding and choosing to be happy, and to make others happy, and to create a sunbeam where there was once a mold.

Why does it seem so easy to become a useless, cynical being? If the opposite is to be helpful and loving, then should it not take the same amount of effort to swing from one pendulum to the other? I have decided to make it easy. It is more natural to smile than to frown, it takes the same amount of effort to make yourself awful than to be magnificent. If I put all this wasted effort into only good, I know I can turn this ship around and set myself back on the path.

I felt the currents move. The grains of sand whispered against each other. His wings were lifting. The darkness around us shimmered with clouds of his gilded blood. Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer.

Then, child, make another.
Madeline Miller, Circe

Exit Music (For A Film)

I am so many things, always inspired by a song or a book or a movie or the way someone said something or the way they didn’t or the things I want to do or the things I do not. I follow the beauty in life and look for symbols everywhere and find myself in them. I like that there are words that describe things in other languages that we do not have in English, so I learn them. I love the way people with different accents place their lips and tongues in foreign places to speak, and that it sounds differently from how I say the same words, and I find myself absently and not-so-absently memorizing those placements to recreate their sounds. I don’t like candles or perfumes that smell like flowers, but I could inhale a gallon of vanilla extract, and I would drink every drop if it didn’t taste like poison. I do like sunflowers, and feel the need to point them out if I see them. I like cold weather and blankets and fireplaces and trying to get my cat to talk to me. And you know what, he does most of the time. Not anything discernible but there are definitely inflections to his meows and mmmphs. I like to fill up shopping carts online and then exit out, but I do not like walking around the mall or going through rack after rack after rack of clothes at the store. I like to listen to one song on repeat sometimes when it really speaks to me, and I love lyrics maybe more than I love melodies, but sometimes I listen to music in different languages and so then I guess that doesn’t really apply. Today I woke up and listened to opera for two hours, and yes it made me cry. Today even though I really just wanted to lay in bed all day, and I could have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for my rotten fear of wasting my day, I still did an hour on my stationary bike and I tried not to feel bad about not eating as well as I should have yesterday. I have a disposition to look forward or back, and not entirely be in the moment so when I remember to stop and be HERE and NOW, I feel better. When I reign myself in from looking at what I have to do this week, this month, this quarter, and instead just focus on taking on today, I am happier. I am not the best at reminding myself, but lately I have been putting in much more effort to ground myself in the now now now. If I think about working out five times this week it seems daunting, but if I think about how I have 7 to 8:15 p.m. tonight to hop on the bike while I watch Arrested Development, I can do it. I am working on it. When I do not overwhelm myself, I think I am good to know. I am at my best when I am more careless instead of so fixated on perfecting things that are not entirely in my control. I want to find more moments of myself in that state of mind, and be able to rely on my responsible and serious self when I need to. I should show my love more.

I guess really barring some out-of-the-blue event, what’s going to happen and what is happening will do so whether I find ways to enjoy it or not, so why on earth would I not want to make the best of it all?

the form of love, or swans and black coffee

Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the shadow they throw as they pass by, upon hillock or wall, is but the fleeting image of a mightier shadow, which, like the wing of an imperishable swan, floats over every soul that draws near to their soul. Do not believe that thoughts such as these can be mere ornaments, and without influence upon the lives of those who admit them. It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.
Maurice Maeterlinck

Swans. In theory, as in, in paintings, I think are beautiful. In real life, as in, at the park, I am terrified of.

They’re loud, and make a hjonk hjonk noise that is startling. I read somewhere that they can break a person’s arm with their wings. Imagine getting backhand slapped by a swan’s wing, and being like wow. they are such beautiful creatures. the creature of love.

I don’t like that the Hjonk Hjonk Arm Breaker 3600 is allegedly the symbol for love when there are much better things.

What’s better: the sound of the piano from far away or through a recording, or sitting next to someone playing the piano and hearing their fingers press the keys and their feet tap the pedals?

If it were to be turned into a questionable symbol, my love would not be a swan. I think it would be something like black coffee. An acquired taste.

If you are used to light, agreeable, creamy, sugary, often barista-made coffee, you might not have a taste for what I have to offer. My coffee is dark and opaque, slightly acidic, strong, and often comes in a big can with a seal that’s tough to open. It’s the kind of thing you probably don’t like initially because it doesn’t taste great right away, but at some point you might decide to wean yourself off of the cream and sugar.

I don’t think anyone ever starts off liking just black coffee, but many people create a habit out of drinking black coffee until they develop a palette for the base notes. Then it doesn’t just taste like an ash tray. It tastes smoky and rich, and maybe even a little nutty.

In presentation, it’s just ground up dark sand, but the real kicker is the smell. The smell of coffee grounds is referred to as “the bouquet.” I think that is fitting.

I wish sometimes my love was easy and graceful like the swan looks in pictures and is described in poems. It is not. It is complex and hard to describe unless you know what to look for, which takes time. Which is acquired through time.

In spite of that, I think it is worth it. I don’t mind not being a swan if it means that someone sees past the face value and the on paper and in paintings. If it means someone has gotten past the seal that preserves the coffee and uncovered the richness inside.

I think it is happening, or maybe has happened already. Does the coffee ever know when the seal is broken? Can it sense itself being known? I want to. I think that I am.

At the end of the day, it is what it is. A swan is just a mean bird, and coffee is just a spicy hot water. I am, too, just me, and trying my best to be that.

the act of unraveling

So much of my time is spent photographing others, writing on behalf of others, and using a different voice to portray a certain message. I have found it hard to really know myself because I focus so much on everyone else.

It is easy for me to pick someone apart by listening carefully and paying attention to their responses and the things they say and do not say. I am an expert understander.

It is not easy for me to put into words how I feel about things, maybe because I am not often asked. I am the asker.

Lately I’ve been asking myself how I can open up more and trying to mirror the vulnerability of others. I write so much, and sometimes feel so in tune with myself, but I don’t know if I have ever truly shared that with someone else. I don’t think I’ve ever voiced my deepest darkest thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears, and I don’t remember ever wanting in such a precise way before.

I have kept me close to me, worn my emotions and complexities like a tight second skin. I wrap myself around myself around myself around myself like a snake coiling and ready to strike in case someone tries to get too close.

But what am I protecting myself from? Where did I learn this behavior?

How do I put the fangs away and unravel myself, now that I want to let someone really know me?

This is what I’ve been trying to do, I am currently in the pursuit of being known by someone that I want so badly to know me. To like me for me, and isn’t that all that anybody has ever asked for?

passionately, not reasonably

Do you really love me? Much?
Passionately, not reasonably?
Virginia Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West
December 29, 1928

I have been working so hard to better myself this year, in just about every way. I am working toward things I don’t want to jinx by writing out.

I’m trying to stay in the present as much as possible and not focus too much on outcomes. I want to enjoy the things that are good now, and not be impatient. I am happy, now.

I am not yet where I want to be, and I believe by the end of July I will be. I think in 6 weeks I will be much better than I am now. In 9 weeks I will be even better.

By the time I’m 24 I think my life will be a lot different, with more to balance. But more is good, it means my life is fuller.

I know it because I’m working so hard towards it all. It’s inevitable, unless something that I can’t plan against happens. If you put in the work you will get the reward, and I refuse to listen to people who say otherwise.

It is both passionate and reasonable to chase after everything I want and earn it all and love the moments in between the beginning and the goal.