Ba,
When you first came into my life, I didn’t know you, I was happy for my mom, but I didn’t know you and didn’t want to. I was happy for her, she would get off my back and that was good.
But you made her happy, and that was better than I had expected, and you guys were going to get married, so suddenly, I wanted to impress you. I still didn’t want to get to know you. That’s how teenagers are, we’re stupid and self-centered.
Then I got married, and became a father too. I wanted more than anything, for your admiration. I wanted you to admire the man I was becoming, the family I was making, the life I was building.
It was still all about me.
Now, now that the aches are starting to settle in, as the next phase of the kids’ lives is just around the corner. As I look around to everything I am and have, I can’t fight the feeling that I need you more than ever. And not to help with a crisis or a home project, but to hear the stories of your youth, your triumphs and your failures. To be impressed by you, to admire you, as you once were and still are.
I guess this is a long way of saying, I want to get to know you; my father, my dad, my “ba”.
Took long enough didn’t it?
Love, always,
Me
2021.06.18
is it really mine
is the rage, pain and anguish i feel truly mine or am i just keyed into yours?
the form of the question
the form of the question, intricately woven with intent and anticipation. and a bit of fear. never forget the fear, always there. the form of the question is a rose. but not just the petals and the pollen and the stem, it is also the thorn, the pin prick of having indulged. the bead of blood pooling through the swirl of the fingerprint, the impression already made, the mark of a stain yet to be made after leaving.
the form of the question to be decided, to be told, how to unfurl. a curtain draped over abandoned furniture, what’s under there? the scattering of dust, motes flung into late afternoon light, the gathering of refined wool, or is it linen, cotton, what makes the question and the thing it asks heavy enough for a snap of the wrist to bring it to the fore for the revelation? pock marked legs and scoffed cushions. velvet or leather, arm rests slightly out of alignment and the overwhelming feeling that something that was once there, once there often day in and day out, is now irrevocably gone.
the form of the question begs the question, where to begin, how to phrase it just right, to know what i want to know and do i even really want to know?
table turning
i was thinking the other day, how weird it is, to go from being admired by your daughter to admiring her. to go from expecting your daughter to impress you to wanting to impress her. to go from getting her to meet your expectations to realizing you can never match hers. it’s not meant to sound sad or morose, it’s more of how pleasantly the tables have turned.
liminal seventeen
3/2021
lim-i-nal
/’limenl/
1. relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.
So last year was a dud. Sweet sixteen and all that, but, you know, COVID and pretty much a near collapse of the world. No European world tour. Ok, not European world tour, but no Italy. No Rome, no Cinque Terre, no Florence, no Milan or Naples. No party, that was the trade off wasn’t it? No big coming of age gala at some hall with ridiculously loud music and awkwardness and maybe your parents being there or not. Preferably not. But again, no. Instead, COVID.
A year later, to the day, still COVID. And seventeen doesn’t seem as special. Seventeen feels like the day after something big and expensive. Seventeen is like the day after a parade where all the pretty floats are gone, the wonderful costumes are gone, the streets are empty but full of debris.
Seventeen feels like the guy who has to clean up all the confetti.
Now why the definition at the start of this little message to you? Why liminal? I can hear you in my head “What does that MEEAANN?” It’s where you are right now. It’s what seventeen actually is. Sixteen is really just symbolic. On paper, nothing really happens at 16 when you think about it. All the pomp and circumstance is just that: manufactured importance and arbitrary timing. Nothing really changes at 16.
Nothing really changes at 17 either… but it’s about to. It’s right at the cusp. It’s the transitional stage in your life. You’re not quite an adult, but you’re getting ready to be one. Making decisions about college, about to get your driver’s license, about what you want to do in your life, where do you want to go.
The “transitional or initial stage of a process” in this case is you. The becoming-you, the you-you that’s figuring itself out. That inbetween moment just before one thing ends and another begins. You are “occupying a position at, or on boths sides of, a boundary or threshold.”
And here’s the thing about liminality: YOU are the border and the threshold and the crossing. You are all the states of this transition, you are the baby, the child, the teenager, the lady and the woman. Seventeen is where everything, literally everything is in flux, it’s a wild storm. In the thick of high school but preparing your exit strategy. Laying the ground work for college but not sure which college to go to. Near home? Far away? Within driving distance? Excited to be free. Well, maybe not free as much excited to take ownership of yourself.
Seventeen is the year where all these morph and change and harden only to be recast over and over until the mold is set. It’s hard work. It’s effortless. It’s beautiful. Whether you like it or not. You’re being made and re-made right before our eyes.
It’s happening and I can’t stop watching.
-love, always
me
imagine a cane
there was a point in time that there was a point a time. it’s all a blur as to when. it’s all a blur as to now. now it’s all a blur. this is what i’m talking about. nothing is lost. it’s all been lost. time. my friend. my enemy. my elusive lover. my beast. my better. this is what is lost once i start talking. time is lost. the words get lost. there is no atmosphere here, there is only the impending silence. the impending doom of time. i’ve said it so many times it’s lost in time, about time, it’s about time we wrote about what we’ve lost. and it’s ridiculous. higher than ever before despite the pandemic. they’re still here, my children, my mortal reminders of my mortality. i shot up in the dark the other night. the inevitability, the steady course, the unwavering destination, i saw it in my mind’s eye but i felt it in my bones. we laugh now, we all sit around and laugh. yes i can deadlift 300, 400, 500 pounds, but it’s right around the corner, right there, can’t you see it? it’s not an imagined point on the other side of the horizon, it’s not even on the edge of the horizon, it’s the next fucking destination. stiff bones, stiff joints, the difficulty in the hip, in standing, the crick in the back, i kept imagining myself needing a cane. can you believe it? me, a cane, because i couldn’t get off the shitter.
for lovers, soon to be lovers, quiet lovers, shy lovers
my love,
we think of valentine’s day as one for lovers, soon to be lovers, quiet lovers, shy lovers emboldened to burst free and proclaim their earnestness. we think of valentine’s day as a day for old lovers, cute wrinkled raisons, holding hands on a porch, teasing each other, gently bickering, confident that as they end their lives they’ve made the right decision in each other, as if it was the only inevitable to decision to make.
when we think of valentine’s day, we don’t think of the steady-state lovers. the halfway through this life lovers, the ones who have had ups and downs and hardship and fight and make peace and laugh not knowing why or how but for the sheer joy of laughing with each other. the lovers who have found their groove, who move in and through each other with learned grace and expert care. the lovers who know better, the lovers who know too much, the lovers who are often no longer though of as lovers.
and i am vexed. i’m not ready to be the old-timey’s: there’s a certain kind of fatality with them, a certain resignation. yes they found their souls mates but it was inevitable, it was long decided, it was …hopeless? and i don’t want to a youthful one either: too much anxiety, too much dread, too much how do i look and too much i don’t want to say anything stupid. there’s too much in the way of actually just being with someone that has nothing to do with the someone you want to be with.
i looked it up: st valentine was a martyr. he married people that were forbidden to do so. while imprisoned he cured the sight of his jailer’s daughter. there was also more than one. it makes me think of that song by depeche mode, a man in love becoming a missionary or that other song by seal, future love paradise, embracing all forms of love. and i think of the summer nights that led up to september of 1995, the isolation and determination i had felt to be alone, to be one and only. i think of the darkness of those nights and the ones after, where you shattered it.
where you brought warmth, where you brought a tentative, shy kind of hope. where you freed me by being free yourself. and that’s what i want valentine’s day to be: not to remember and hope, dream and forgive, but to be, to be in love, to be with each other as each other. to be timeless, forever and always.
-me
2021.02.14
it’s where you came from
my love,
there is a place in the world, where the virus does not touch. there is a place in the world where all things are eternal. there is a place in the world where everything that was once broken is shiny and new again without fracture. there is a place in the world where the trees of the forest sing to one another with limbs entwined. there is a place in the world where children ride ferocious blue bears with glee. there is a place in the world where flowers blossom never the same color twice. there is a place in the world where the sun literally caresses your cheek with the scent of honey. there is a place in the world where porcelain squirrels store food in the cupboards of the old. there is a place in the world where cliffs sprout slides into warm rivers for weary travelers. there is a place in a world where ants cheer the toils of bees as they hitch flights to and fro. there is a place in the world where dolphins teach chimpanzees the wonders of the sea. there is a place in the world where the steel of skyscrapers in vast cities are soft to the touch. there is a place in the world where men and women spontaneously disco to a beat everyone instinctively knows. there is a place in the world where cars at intersections are polite with one another and insist on “no, after you.” there is a place in the world where the next step instantly takes someone across continents.
does it sound familiar? does it echo something primal in your heart? oh wonderful girl, it should.
it’s where you came from.
love, always
2020.11.26
Sajjad Bacchus
i need to say my piece here, i feel a more public forum is inappropriate: it’s too broad, the audience too wide, i would come off as too pretentious. so i choose to do it here, where some of you knew sajjad as long as i did, some of you didnt know him at all and others who knew him from the very beginning.
i am devasted. truly and resolutely devasted.
sajjad was, is, was, no, IS one of the sweetest kindest people i have ever met. he always helped you. he always forgave you. he always thanked you. he laughed with you. he had your back when things went sideways. he had no ego whatsoever. he was committed to the people around him. he shaped the culture around him, he was a balm to all the ills and stresses that comes from working for an MSP.
when he went to texas, i missed him, i missed hearing him say “…or whatevah” from across the aisle. but just as he set the tone in ny, he did the same in tx. he raised the bar in how to be a professional while also having an unoffensive and contagious sense of humor. he laughed easy, he tackled complicated problems with curiousity and eagerness to learn what he did not understand.
he then went to the UK to be our point person for one of our most complex and demanding clients. even i was unsure if he could handle it. this same client almost broke me. but he didn’t break. he mastered it. he had them eating out of his hand. he was confident and knowledgeable. he put them in his rearview mirror.
when he came back to the ny office, it was wildly different. we broke down the wall between us and the office next door. we took it over, we grew. we weren’t just an aisle or two apart. but still, i was happy, the way you are when you’re working with an old friend from that other company you both started your careers in long ago.
now he’s gone. my friend is gone. in a time when i barely had any time to talk to him as a human being, to just shoot the shit. i had his back like he had mine when i first started work wise, but between this virtuality we are all now living in and the demands of the day to day, i barely had time.
i wish i could hear, outside of my head, outside of my memories, his voice, one more time saying, an end to a sentence on some complicated technical thing, “…or whatevah”
can i dream
Can I dream of a world where we never had children
Where we walked the earth and turned the corners of a dozen cobblestoned streets
Where we huddled in the rain, in the snow, in the wind, in the breeze of a sunny day
Can I dream of a world where we had dozens of children
Where we couldn’t spread our arms wide enough to hug them all
Where we admired them from afar as they tousled and teased and taught one another
Can I dream of a world where we’re old but strong
Can I dream of a world where we’re young but weak
Can I dream of a world where there is no one else
Can I dream of a world where we made it all up