“It’s okay to remember”

“oh, you just stole that from me.”

“What? when’d you say that?

“Well, why’d you say that?

“I don’t know. It just felt like you needed to hear it.”

x

My Sethi told me just yesterday of a suspected intruder in her old, crumbling home. She’s often disregarded as delusional by the other members of our family and so I try my best to listen when she speaks; I have my doubts that she herself was not the one who left that light on in the play room for the week she was away.

“I know for certain that I switched off all the lights before we left for Seattle,” she tells me.

And I believe her, for the sake of conversation.

“So, you think someone came into the house?”

She sits across the table from me and blinks softly, slowly as our lunch goes cold; she speaks with the trepidation of a woman aged and accustomed to being written off.

“Did they take anything? What was missing when you came home?” I started to sound worried. Even to my own ears.

“No,” she continued with caution, “it wasn’t thieves.”

“What are you saying?”

It’s okay to remember, my love, the night and the belt. You were somewhere between 4 and 7 years old, maybe. And you were a pawn in your grandparents’ game of secrets. Your Sethi brought you to the office where she administrated for your Giddi’s many patients. And it was dark outside. It was dark inside, too. And you gathered from the unbuckled belt and the yelling and the ruckus and maybe even the violence that no one else but him and his lover was meant to be there. It’s okay to remember, now, child.

“It’s someone who used to work in Giddi’s office. She’s the reason I stopped working in Giddi’s office,”

She paused and shook a bit. But she’s always trembling these days.

“She’s messing with me.”

“So, you think she’s coming into your home and moving mugs and switching on lights just to mess with you?” I ask as my secret memory of the belt creeps from my bowels to my brain.

It’s still clear to me it’s not supposed to leave my brain

at least not from my mouth

at least not now

at least not to her

x

And Mal says to me, “I hate hearing my own voice on video.”

I respond, “I used to. Whether I’ve become accustomed to it over time or not, I like to think the reason I don’t mind it anymore is because I’m more comfortable with the sound of my own voice. I like to think my acceptance of my voice recorded is a result of all the work I’ve done to hone my voice. To know it better.”

I sense (and probably intentionally poked) his defenses: “it’s not that it makes me uncomfortable… It’s just that… it’s not what I actually sound like. Right? Like, I ask people if that’s what I actually sound like and they say ‘yes’ but it’s just… not.”

“Well, to every person, you sound different.”

his forehead wrinkles between his brows

“Yeah, okay, it’s the same way how you can’t ever know what you actually look like. When you look in the mirror, you just see a reflection of yourself. And when you see a photo of yourself, it’s just a photo. You’re not actually seeing you. And every person sees you differently. And hears you differently.”

And somehow, this means that there are thousands of different versions of you co-existing all at once, I’ve been told

And somehow, this fact releases you from wanting to be so good and perfect all the time to everyone, I’ve been told.

What if knowing too many people is the thing that keeps me from knowing myself? What if my search for my purpose and my identity can never amount to anything if I know too many people? what if this is the science of the detriment of the social communities we’ve created online? the ones that far outreach our scope? our capacities for connection within the tribe or the neighborhood or the family or the team?

If I know one thousand people, there are one thousand versions of me floating around out there, just waiting to be chosen, awaiting and opportunity to be freed, wanting trying begging to run the race all the way to the end, each one struggling after the air in my lungs,

my two hard-working lungs and their finite capacity to breathe for one body only.

“It’s pretty crazy how we think words are so important when they’re really so, so limiting,” Mal continued after a long silence. We held each other.

“Absolutely agree. I mean, try to explain to me what meat tastes like.”

“Umami,” he said with a grin.

“What does umami taste like?” I fought. “And what do I sound like?”

“A pirate.”

“And what does it feel like to surf a wave?”

he went on a joyful rendition of the feeling for maybe 60 seconds, his words dancing around the dimly lit room, each energized sentence meandering close to what could pass as an explanation, using words I wish I could remember,

smiling a sound I’ll never forget.

“and if I asked 100 other surfers to participate in the same exercise, I’d get 101 different answers.

And if I asked you to choose: for the rest of your life, you can either talk about what it feels like to catch a wave and never feel it or

feel what it feels like and never talk about it,

what would you choose?”

so little can be captured and so little is true enough to stand the test of time and if I inherit the land, it’s for me to tend; and if I inherit the stories, they are for me to tell.

For someone who claims to have no God, he buckles down on dharma. and for someone who has never ridden a train, she knows its trembles.

Railroad Springs
every 20 minutes, trains rushed past
she, in the bunk atop her only living brother,
knew the earthquake to be 
more tame than other days 
and it's okay to remember all the times
you mistook your place in the world as
incorrect or 
not enough or poorly positioned 
the streets of Auckland and their fancy cafés
the Zimbabwean side of the river 
your view of Table Mountain
your fifth floor apartment
overlooking sweating market-goers on Saturday
the same as Madrid before the sun hit the plaza,
hungry and loud
all the times you wished to be 
there
the fewer moments you found yourself 
here
some place with a great view of some place else

Until You Know Better

Listen to “Laundry Day Overalls” by Lake Street Dive

Listen to your brother’s laugh and remember it’s your favorite sound

Great Artists Steal

Zach Bryan’s “Down, Down Stream” : my sister laughin’ / the streets of London

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” articulated a question for which I’ve never before had perfect words: Why don’t the gods speak to us in a language we can actually understand? / the movie seemed to answer it, too. not with words, obviously.

And of the Siren song: “All the things you want it to be. Then, all the things you wish you never wished for. It was the delicious itch you go to scratch but find it’s under the skin. You can’t reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. (It) told you what you most want is what you most can’t have and what you most can’t have is what you already had… and lost. It was the song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don’t really want to go home.”