December 22nd

When I finished the Muriel Sparks’ book just before half past 11, I felt full of trembling promise, excitement. Heady with balmy. Lying in bed beside the piercing cries of unfamiliar night birds, one like the creak of a swing, back and forth. It could be that I was overrun with images from the book still, those characters marooned on an island, growing desperation, fierceness, bloodiness, all underneath a tropical sky…

The windows here have no glass, but shutters full of wooden slats that you can close against mosquitoes in the dusk. Mostly decorative though, as we saw them flying inside.

It’s so strange and jarring and childlike, opening shutters right into air. Like we’re just playing at this living. I suppose we are- holidays are make-believe.

Indiana closes all of the pretend doors before we go to sleep. Even though the woman told us everyone here lives with their houses wide open. Indiana slants their slats til flat and carefully slides the hanging hook in to keep them there. Then he nudges a door with his foot gently enough but it bulges over the threshold. “This is no good, really,” he said.
“The woman said to just leave them open. I think that’s really what they do here.”
“Yes. It’s no good for my fear of people breaking in to kill us.”
(I didn’t know we shared this fear. I wondered if I’d accidentally passed it on to him, ptsd-by-proxy after years of me jabbering anxiously about it at night and whenever I tried to sleep during the day.)

But of course, he went straight to sleep, right on top of his book even, and when I moved us into the bedroom, he went right back into it, barely stirring at me observing that the bedroom door could not be locked from the inside.

April

What has really happened is I’ve started writing a few times weekly, in an unlined little book I carry in my backpack, but it rarely makes it to the computer.

March 31st

Re that NYT article everyone’s been posting about whether recovery ruins creativity - while it obviously does not, technically-speaking, I have noticed that as a mostly no-longer-depressed person, I do not feel the urge or inspiration to write anymore.

It is such a jarring thing. I have always identified first and foremost, on this deep, desperate level, as a writer. For a long time growing up, I thought becoming published would “prove” this identity, maybe help me take a breath, gain some balance, but of course, publishing poems felt no different. It was all essentially the same, the aftermath of the urge. I really miss it, that inspiration that would fall on me out of nowhere, always feeling otherwordly, forcing me up even in the middle of the night, scrabbling about for a pen, all that feverish writing, struffling to get it all out before the gift left.

For the last 3 years, I’ve lost my core identity and I haven’t found anything to replace it. (Cooking has fallen into the space, but it’s not natural to me. It’s not a driving force.) I really really really miss the inspiration to write. But not, I’ve eventually decided, as much as I don’t miss being a suicidal wreck.

I was telling my mum about this recently and she said the poet Philip Larkin used to always complain about his mother - in real life and in poems - and then she died, and he never wrote again.

April 9th

I heard the lead singer of Eels interviewed on NPR this week, and I thought I didn’t know them but then Terry played a snippet of Elizabeth on the bathroom floor, which he had written after finding his sister in one of her suicide attempts -

And I think, oh, in a swelling, memory-bursting way. My heart remembers it before my brain does. When I was growing up, I always thought sad songs were the most comforting. The show went out on Go on, Be Hurt, which I don’t like as much musically, but really resonates with me. Hurt isn’t the end of the world. Even of your world.

Writing more often again about little things in normal life makes me miss Lucia Berlin again. Something about the beginning of sunny days.
The only author I’ve discovered after her death and still been devastated by it.

March

February 25th, Sunday

Things I consume every day:

tulsi tea, apple cider vinegar, probiotics, flonase, claritin, strattera, peppermint tea, small latte with a lot of cream, barry’s tea with 2% milk, flavored seltzer

And a friend’s chinese acupuncturist just recommended these for menstrual cramps & menopause pain.

March 1st, Thursday

I return to my doctor after a year and a half and she hugs me, something we have never done before. When I lay out the fears that led me to return she says, actually, people who are naturally more anxious are always in the ebb and flow of it. And when their anxiety pulls up and crashes overhead again, rather than recognizing it for what it is, they invent a story for it. It’s a very human things to do- we spend our whole lives experiencing events and then feelings as a result of those events. So when we have feelings alone, we try to find their event. And if it’s not there, we invent one. And - don’t be offended - these fears you have described are among the most common anxious people in this situation latch on to. You’re just experiencing a period of heightened emotional fragility, which happens in anxiety disorder.

So, take note, my fellow nervous wrecks.

Recommended Reading (especially for white people)

“This Will Be My Undoing,” by Morgan Jenkins.

TRICKS

You can freshen the taste of certain out-of-season vegetables by salting them. Say, tomatoes and cucumbers. Chop and toss in salt. Place in a colander and let drain for half an hour. Then proceed with recipe- no need to add more taste unless you confirm there is from a taste test.

Try this if you want to eat THIS DELICIOUS JUMBLE out of season, like I did this past week.

And when these vegetables are in season, make it again with any edible flowers you can find, like the little yellow buds that grow on cucumber stalks winding close to the ground.

-

Similarly/differently, salt eggplants to release bitterness & to draw out all their moisture- this turns them from sponges to lean, firm flesh that crisps on the surface when cooked, but leaves a fleshy, soft inside. If I have time and have thickly-sliced the eggplants, I also weight them- covered in 2 layers of paper towel first and then pressed down with canned goods - for at least 2 hours.

Then, fry the eggplants in olive oil. You can fill the pan a finger pad deep or more without guilt because these salted and pressed eggplants don’t suck the oil in. You can fry cups and cups of salted eggplant, and then funnel the oil back in the bottle.

-

If you’re trying to cut down on sugar or salt, use vinegar instead. Black balsamic vinegar on strawberries. Unseasoned rice vinegar on raw vegetables. White wine vinegar on poached chicken. Malt vinegar on baked potatoes or oven-baked french fries. White balsamic on raw spinach or mixed into onions while pan-frying them. Red red vinegar on fried eggs.

-

If a piece of eggshell breaks off and falls into the mixing bowl/ingredients, use another piece of the shell to scoop it up/draw it back out. Eggshell runs from human fingers and spoons, but is attracted to its own.

The Unforgettable Fire

Wednesday, February 7th

With my newly widowed friend, Dia, whom I met at a neighborhood gathering in October and bonded with over manners going out of style:

“Why aren’t there more black people here?” I asked her. Our neighborhood is very diverse.

“They saw ice cream social on the flyer,” she said, mimed primly eating, and then laughed uproariously. “What a white idea!”

I go over once a week since for tea and we talk about books and she talks to me about her past and her pain. Such a diversity of pain in the world.

It took several times of her launching into an anti-white diatribe and then stuttering to a stop, suddenly heavily stressed, leaning forward worriedly, “I mean, I do know it’s not every white person, but so many, I mean, clearly you and I wouldn’t, if, I mean,”

Imagine having to give a disclaimer every time you just want to relax and talk out your trauma. Christ.

***

I am not a crier, she says. I had to be the strong one in my family and I think things are buried down too deep to come out now. I’ve only cried twice in my life, and those times still it was really just tearing up around my eyes.

(This after I’d shared that my great-grandfather, “the gentleman arsonist”, is the one burnt down Moydrum castle, as seen on the cover of that U2 album.)

And, do you know, one of those times was over that Irish book. You know the one?

***
“Don’t hold on so hard to who you are now.
You’re going to change, you know,” Dia said last Thursday. “You’re going to be a completely different person when you’re 74 like me. Oh, don’t look so worried, it might be changing for the better.”

Monday, February 12th

A customer at the bar looking into his coffee saying slowly but deliberately, “our friendship is over as of today.”
“Oh no,” says the barista. Pause. “Why?” The customer stirs his drink.
“I would very much like to continue,” says the barista.
“Well.” says the customer very seriously, “I’ll think about it.”
Then he starts casually talking about his life again.

Thursday, Feb. 15th
Stayed in my car, listening, as a mother of a student who survived came on to NPR. I thought of all the parents who drove madly to the school hoping for their child,
And unexpectedly burst into tears.

Friday, February 16th
I am very tired in all the ways.

I always get depressed when a big project event ends (French Revolutionary Dinner) and I’ve pretty much been in bed all day, just going out for coffee and then to get my hair cut.

Saturday, Feb. 17th
Indiana is gone for the weekend and I’m feeling lonely

so I went to the fancy supermarket
and bought all the vulnerable looking things:

5 dirty golden beets

broccolini

scallions

a palm-size of smoked salmon

2 hyacinth plants that haven’t yet bloomed

a wilting crocus plant

a chives plant

watermelon mint lemonade

jun-kombucha flavored with blackberry & mint & honey

Meditations before a Blue Blood Moon

After picking up the text message that says it isn’t what I think with them, that actually he’s gone.

What did the recently bereaved do before they had social media to flip to? Mind-numbing electric ghosts.

I’d just purchased a human collarbone on the internet when I met G in 2012. There’s something terribly lonely about the insides of a person - who once ate with relish and cried themselves to sleep and laughed with friends - being available, piece by piece, for purchase. There are several reasons I bought it and this was one.

Years later learning at a party from a forensic scientist that you have the legal right to take your own amputated limbs home, no matter what the hospital says. I remember my grandmother - the water diviner - wanting me to have her bones, to reassemble her in my bedroom at home.

Not knowing what to do with the profiles of Facebook friends who have died.

When I first moved to Philadelphia, I pretended I was dead each night to be able to sleep.

Leaning a beautiful, darkly fragrant flower, crippled with buds, against the window to pretend it isn’t on its way out.

If you had to live like each day might be your last, what would you change?

I finished Roxane Gay’s “Hunger” memoir on Monday, and been thinking for a day and a half about writing her a letter. Torn between the urge for commiseration- and self-loathing, for thinking she’d be concerned with the minutiae of some random little person.

Monday I also learned someone important to me has relapsed on heroin. How fucking terrifying. She says, I’ve got to go away, and you can hear the crack of fear in her voice.

This is a time when everyone we know is dying. One girl we know had thirteen friends for years and years. And now, in the last sixteen months, she has none.

Roxane Gay’s memoir about us all equating thinness with happiness has me thinking a lot and especially about T. and how she thought getting the right body would make the world stop hurting. What each moment in those two weeks following post-op must have been like, then, before she chose to die.

-

And spending a lot of nights these past few months leaving work an angry, resentful blur. Then by the time I get to the dark tree pulling up the sidewalk, not even a full block down from the house, with its grotty little kitchen, I think to myself, confused and amazed, I’m still alive. I pass the meeting house on my left that’s I’m 75% sure is for anonymous groups- pretty sure I recognize my people out front, diversely bedraggled, hunching over their cigarettes and oversized coffees. This makes me stop, always, and think wow. Living on borrowed time.

Wonder makes colors hotter and lines stronger and feelings harder just like amphetamines did.

My new year’s resolutions are:

Be a more attentive friend

Return to making art

Get cell-phone sober

It’s that time of winter when I think, fuck everything seasonal.

Marinated Roasted Peppers

Oven to 450 degrees.

Slice bell peppers in half and remove their tops, white pith, seeds.

PAM some sheet pans and place peppers on them, cut-side down.

Roast 40 minutes, then check every few minutes after that-
you’re looking for deep charring,

large dark spots.

You can flip them halfway through if you’d like.

Scrape pepper halves and all collected pan juices into a large glass bowl

and cover tightly with saran wrap.

Rest 30 minutes.

Return to carefully peel off the pepper skins-

They’ll come off in pieces. It is a slow job, but silky smooth soft texture!

Tear the peppers into large pieces and return them to the glass bowl.

Cover with red wine vinegar. Slivered garlic. Pinch flaky sea salt.

Cover with saran wrap.

Leave a day.

Writing Group: Week Three

August 21st

Not realizing until later, when clicking through his photographs from the dinner, that he was there beside us, snapping away, the whole time she told me about her son and I said, I’m so sorry. And I said, I am an addict too, so i get it, and she gripped my wrist so tightly and turned her head away.

-

I didn’t look at the eclipse. I just couldn’t make myself care enough.

August 23rd

I hear the kettle boil from the living room and come back in.

August 27th

I was at work when she called and I’d missed the last two calls and the facility doesn’t accept incoming calls and I raced outside. I am busy and yes I will talk to you. The strangest sensation of slowly losing a person. Thank you, she says, for all the things. She says, they won’t let me be alone and I’m losing it here. She says, I can’t wait to get out so I can use again.

She says, I have to remember to call you instead of my mother, because you always make me laugh.

Trying to let go. Trying to be present. Twenty minutes of ravaging each time.

Thinking, I’ll just let in the pieces of her while she’s still here. Thinking, I’ll just bask. I’ll let back out the glow. Thinking, how do you let go of hoping they’ll live?

I remember reading in a novel that once you’ve loved a person, you’ll do anything for them except fall in love with them again.

It wasn’t true for most, but it’s true for me with her.

Writing Group: Week 2

i.

He says, could we make tomato sauce with these? It’s what, a few hours of simmering? What’s in a tomato sauce, anyway?

I am shocked by living in the world without some things.

How to live out in the harshness without coming home to coddle over a low flame.

The microaggression of an extra eyelid flicker, an eyebrow movement, involuntary

A stranger’s hand in your hair

the always-casualness of men leaning into our bodies.

Grasping onto privilege like a mantra

this exists, this exists

Holding it at night to fall asleep

But still, realizing just now, (reading the news after a week of isolation)

That I am still dissociating

Coming apart into pieces

Looking down on my body to see what it does

When the man in line behind it touches a shoulder to say, hurry

When the police kill anyone weaker

When hatred hardens into a human

When men

.

Boys, even

ii.

This white man, he means, of course, you could make tomato sauce with them. As with anything else.

So it goes.

iii.

I don’t peel my tomatoes.

Chop quickly, almost lazily, shapes every which way, then in with

A glug of olive oil into a deep pan.

Low flame.

Stirring spooning in, until the tight skins expand

and then suddenly relax with the letting out of air

Until the flesh softens into strings, pulpiness

Add water, add wine

Add two cloves of peeled garlic

Turn up the flame and once the water boils,

Turn down the flame

just a little, until the liquid bubbles off,

Leaving that familiar soupy thickness

Red.

Pull out the garlic and taste.

As with everything in life, do not undersalt.

june 18th

two deaths in three days. we addicts are living in a warzone. every move is life or death.

-

christ, i’m lucky to be alive.

-

she posted excitedly about six months sober on tuesday & was dead by overdose by sunday.

-

one of the hardest things is thinking of how alone they were. i hope in the moments before they died, they didn’t know.

-

i have four more days until i’m three years sober. at this point i’m crawling to the finish line.

June 9th

The groom who is in love with me and cried the first time I cooked at the farm stopped me on the dusty path. She was wearing her riding helmet; she took hold of my arm and stroked it. “I’m so sorry we forgot your birthday yesterday,” she said. “We’ll make it up to you at lunch on Friday. I promise!”

Two days later, she called out, “Claire! Come sit beside me!” as I set down the last of the meal’s dishes on the picnic table across the grass. When I slid in, one person away, she beamed at me with a wide open face. Young. Trusting. I wondered if I should find some way to bring up Indiana. She made an awkward joke about boyfriends and the table laughed and she smiled at me, grateful and hungry.

She doesn’t even know what this is, I thought.

notes on my phone, may 2017

May 7, 2017

Found her name on a list of people I’ve mistreated, written in 2013.

In 2017, I no longer know how

Or why

May 8, 2017

New business cards:

Chef & custom conceptual events

May 11, 2017

Tarragon & apple cheesecake

May 17, 2017

Suddenly remembering my biggest secret

When i was young wasn’t gayness

But that i was psychic

May 18, 2017

What do bad kids think about

Before they sleep?

May 19, 2017

Can I tell you a gentle joke?

My uber driver says

May 20, 2017

NEW HOUSE!

Basement walls & floor

Clear out garage

Security system

Prime & paint

Plumbers finalize everything

Freezer to the dump

New windows

May 29, 2017

Her poems were always about religion

Well, we write about what ruins us,

I say, shrugging

May 30, 2017

Realized i’ve been trying to get my 18 year old body back now for over a decade

Time to give up

Monday

A conversation held as I fell into sleep:

“What kind of bone is this?” A girl, her hand reaching out to the piece hanging from my neck with butcher string.

“Human collarbone.”

She snatches her hand back and holds the fingertips as if scalded.

“Oh my God, that’s horrible! How- how can…?”

I don’t remember my answer because then I was asleep.

Was it, dust to dust?

Was it, death is the only thing we know for sure?

Was it, [ ]?

All I remember is holding the collarbone like a worry stone between my thumb and forefinger. All I remember is a deep sinking of relief.

Tuesday

Walking to work, I am scared by a napkin rustling suddenly on the ground in front of me.

Last night, I think darkly to myself.

That girl with the dead doll-eyes following me with her limp-shuffle. The train station, still at night, lit up with my fear.

-

After work, I came home and made lists for the new house.

Ate chocolate and soup and chocolate.

Wrote and sent my first amends, Indiana sleeping curled around my feet like a cat.

lines second week of january

thursday

mixing a chocolate cake in the early morning hours

pattering around in the dark

naked against the refrigerator door, elderberry cordial

I wrapped in two sweaters and brought back from the motherland

spooned into boiling water

putting milk into the oven

herbs into the dishwasher,

strung out on pain

the fever breaks

i keep trying to work my way around this headache

this full-on face ache, dull and deep,

feeling my thoughts as moving outward, gingerly, like fingers

hitting up hard each time like a shock

heady visions of falling into a deep softness

light triangulating

after sitting in a hot steaming,

back in bed unfollowing anyone who posts pictures of mixed drinks

or hashtags anything about jesus on their instagram

today i read that legally, in the states, you can take your amputated limbs home. a woman in the comments posted pictures of a bloody human rib, muscled, torn. carnage. i then cleaned and bleached it with a taxidermy kit, she said. it was very hard to touch even though it is my rib.

my grandmother wanted me to have her bones

to reassemble her in my bedroom at home

it’s not the same, ashes deep in a graveled grave plot an ocean away

wistful,

I wonder what it’s like to hold a bag of bones

… I’ve hugged junkies but it’s probably not the same

I decide to tell people my new year’s resolution is to eat more delicious things

even though i am quietly starving myself again

if you tell your secrets, you drain their power over you

tuesday

this is the first time in my life that i wouldn’t rather be dead

I don’t know what to do with this revelation

I am fucking terrified

how do people live like this?

notes on my phone

10/08/2016

I heard about her murder this morning, a week after everyone else.

Such a fucking unbelievably senseless thing. Such a bright light.

All our desperate little lives.

10/06/2016

Since I moved to Philadelphia, I’ve been pretending to be dead at night,

so I can go to sleep. Crossed hands over my lower stomach, casket-style. Eyelids heavy.

Everything is over. Nothing matters. Everything is over. Nothing matters.

Everything is over. Nothing matters.

10/05/2016

Always yearning for the 22nd nowadays. Whenever I’m feeling stagnant,

I find myself checking the calendar.

How much longer until another month of sobriety?

Every 22nd hurts and helps my heart.

10/03/2016

I’ve been thinking about blood a lot lately. The stretch of Indiana’s soft neck making my jaw ache. The rumor that Angelina wore a vial of his blood around her neck, the disappointment of finding out it was only a pinprick, asmear. Wanting to eat a steak during restaurant week, but not knowing what to pair it with, as a sober person.

“Milk or blood,” I say to Indiana. “Pig’s blood?” he says.

“Too tannic. I was thinking human blood.”

9/22/2016

27 months sober today. Things falling apart. Tightly wound.

9/1/2016

The wind blew and a dried leaf

crawled along the ground like a rat

8/23/2016

“I don’t share often but I feel compelled to today. I lost my fiance to this disease this morning.

So…This is real.”

7/28/2016

A melatonin poem: black rice, edible moss, heads of flowers grown from seed, sage, thyme, mint, curly parsley, that other kind of lavender, dill blossoms, upside-down mushrooms, soft cheese balls rolled in forest floor, agar agar, soft tongued rosy, peach nectar & watermelon juice, tomato juice rivers, something blue and cold

7/23/2016

One hour awake, softly tracing the contours of Indiana’s face with the back of my hand, whispering

Poetry about them.

7/15/2016

The cashier looks at my backpack and up at me again and calls me “baby” lightly, endearingly.

She might be a grandmother, thinking she knows I’m just a kid.

I ask Indiana about this when he gets home. He says my younger pictures just look like a different person. I grew up a decade into a different teenager.

7/14/2016

Streets filled with people slowly staggering around, red-faced, hair straggly and wet. Lot of drunks,

I think, before realizing it’s the heat.

7/11/2016

Thought i saw legs but it was just light

shaped against the brick wall

6/30/2016

Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right?

5/21/2016

Eat Your Grief

chocolate panna cotta

rhubarb sorbet

strawberries in lavender vinegar

10/08/2016

I heard about her murder only this morning, a week after everyone else. Such a fucking unbelievably senseless thing.

Such a bright light.

////////////////////////////////////////////

All our desperate little lives.

self know

everythingisruinedforever:

a hard struggle against the first steps of enlightenment, as i’d always been determinedly a Good Person.
you have a lot of anger.
that can’t be it. i want to help. i have always wanted to help.
(are these mutually exclusive?)
i have a lot of anger. i tried saying it to myself, i have a lot of anger.
eventually it became a question, then a prayer, a mantra i repeated to myself like a rosary on the subway to work, in grocery store aisles, in my dark bedroom at night.
i have a lot of anger.
it became strangely freeing.

everythingisruinedforever