Last night’s work dinner event sat me across from (diagonally, one seat to her right, my left) a woman who facilitates cacao ceremonies in town

of course

and we got on and on about all sorts of mystical and magical things, thank Goodness, and she said she likes how I enunciate all of the letters in the word

important

she said it sounds like a spell

at least, that’s what I heard from what she said about me because, well, I’m flattered yes thank you

anyway

she said something quite resonant about

“as long as I remember to”

and it reminded me of something I had just read where Krishna tells Arjuna

he who remembers me at the time of death achieves union

something like that. I’m paraphrasing, of course.

and I can’t help but think that it’s unfair (too tame a word) to freeze a dead girl in time. it seems a crime to take one thing from one journal entry she wrote before she had the twenty years she would never have, near the end of her life without having the slightest idea she was in her last 7 months of living on earth and claim you are

remembering her.

honoring her, even.

it seems rather selfish to read one sentence barely legible in pencil and hammer it, stain it, brand it, bind it forever to the walls of your house, to flimsily construct the walls to standards of your own liking only, to then throw a dinner party and exclaim, “look! she would have decorated it exactly this way and lived out the rest of her days happily here!”

acknowledge that you cannot know her dreams

take responsibility for the wrinkle you cause, the pain you inflict when you assume you know who she wanted to be

know that sure, maybe she wanted to volunteer her time

but she also wanted to fall in love, to make love

and she maybe wanted to punch her best friend in the face

and she maybe wanted to run away from her family

and she maybe wanted to open a coffee shop and ride a horse and buy a pair of Converse and learn to bake sourdough bread and write a blockbuster movie and run a 5-minute mile, too.

some of you knew her, less of you loved her, and not a single one of you knows who she would have been if she were alive today

do not claim to know that this is what she would have done with her years had she had more of them

own the fact that these are your dreams

that you justify your actions (actions in service to others, sure) with her words

few of the many

surely

because I write things all the time. In journals? I write things one night and wake up the next morning without a clue as to whose voice sits on the page I left open while I dozed off to sleep.

This does not absolve you.

You are not at fault and also

this does not absolve you. Sitting here, watching and not hearing Black African children run across a small screen in a big room while they thank you for your donations?????

Ironic, isn’t it? That my opinion is that you shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion? I realize that my thoughts on the matter don’t matter but because I’m sat here at this dinner, I’m having thoughts and this is my blog so just one last thought I’ll allow myself here before I go:

let my ghost speak for herself

P.S. my ghost doesn’t want those kids to have brand new iPads. my ghost believes you have far more to learn from those kids than they do from you and your fucking brand new iPads. and my ghost is angry that you won’t hear her. she’s screaming.

Until You Know Better

Love Like It Will Last Forever. That’s what my Costar says.

Say, “I like like you,” instead 😉

Be Yourself for Halloween

Great Artists Steal

In episode 66 of the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast, guest Martha Beck says something like, “Play until you need rest. Rest until you need play,” and it’s rewiring my brain as we speak.

Jen Winston wrote a fantastically bisexual memoir titled Greedy and I just signed up for her newsletter and I think you should, too!