An ending of sorts

I turned in my key for the Sun Star office and picked up a key for KSUA a few days ago.

I'm leaving my position as web editor at the Sun Star, and I'll be KSUA's multimedia director next semester. I'm really excited--for a lot of reasons including the fact that as long as I do something worthwhile, I can kind of do whatever I want in this job, and I've missed the creative freedom of being an editor.

But this is also, you know, a moment. I've worked at the Sun Star since literally day one at UAF (the honors program director marched me down to the old office in the Wood Center when I mentioned I wrote for my high school paper and introduced me to Andrew during Freshman Orientation). Over the last three and a half years, but especially last year, I poured a whole lot of my own blood, sweat and tears into that print. I wasn't ready to give it up when May rolled around.

Except no matter how wonderful your editor is and how understanding you are, if you've already done that job, it's hard to coexist without some struggling. Lakeidra is doing a phenomenal job at the paper and I'm constantly amazed at the things she decides to tackle. As a (hopefully understanding) former editor, I really respect her work. But still. It takes time to learn how to be editor, and it also takes time to unlearn.

It's also worth noting that the Sun Star wears. you. out. We're enmeshed in a nearly-year long complaint process alleging that we perpetuated rape culture and promoted sexual harassment. Then there are all the other things, like dealing with the budget, revising the governance agreement of the Publications Board and dealing with all the criticism that comes with the title. And, of course, producing the actual paper. As much as I didn't want to let go in May, I was worn out. I thought being web editor would be a happy medium, and I think it would have been if I wasn't already so exhausted by Sun Star politics and policies.

So Lakeidra and I sat down about a month and a half ago, and she said, "Look, I can't imagine being editor and then coming back to the editing staff and doing what I'm asking you to do. Do you still want to be web editor?"

I thought about it for a while. Around the same time, I asked Brady if KSUA was still looking for a multimedia director.

So here I am, jumping ship.

And I want to say, it's not like that! I'm still going to write articles! My loyalties still lie with this unloved newspaper! (all of which are true.)

But when the guy at the key shop at the bottom of campus pulled out my file and said, "Honey, you've got a lot of keys checked out. Want to turn any in?" and I gave him my key to the Sun Star office, it still felt like something important was ending.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry

1. I flipped open a to a page of a book I hadn't looked at since last spring earlier, and scrawled in margins was "ينغ مني" over and over again, which literally transliterates to "young money." I wasn't even translating the words into Arabic, I was just sounding it out and going for it.

2. This morning, my Middle Eastern History professor connected a laptop to the projector and announced he was going to show us what the Middle East looked like. "Hey, can you google image 'burka'?" He asked the kid in front of me. "It's spelled b-u-r-k-a." The other 5 white army guys in the class took this in stride.

3. As of this morning, I am no longer Valerie's best friend on snapchat.

 

By the numbers

I'm not keeping count, but if I were I'd know that there were 17 days left in the semester. Nine days of classes, four days of weekends and four days of finals. I'd know that there would be 15 classes left to go to, three rehearsals, one concert. One issue of the Sun Star.

I'd know that I have to write at least 20 pages in the next ten days. That's just an average of two pages a day though, and that sounds reasonable. But if I really understood the topics I should be writing about, I would be crushed with the uselessness of my education and the ensuing apathy.

I'd know that 17 days of the semester means 18 days until ISGP and 28 days until our roadtrip.

I'm not thinking this far ahead, but if I were, I would know that graduation is 159 days away. The marathon Valerie, Rebecca and I plan on running in Craig is 13 days after that and 1,074 miles from Fairbanks. I leave for Haifa 23 days after that, 5,693 miles away.

But because I have tunnel vision, and won't write those 20 pages if I think about anything beyond the next 17 days, here's what I am keeping track of:

I read 952 pages about a dystopian world over the weekend and enjoyed all of them. Then I came back to UAF and read 29 pages of an article written in 2003 and was underwhelmed. As of this afternoon, I'm 149 pages through Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali for my Middle Eastern History class, and I'm still not enjoying the thinly veiled bigoted propaganda, racist excuse for a book it is.

I am keeping track of  the fact that there are only two eggs left in our fridge, and zero bags of chamomile tea. But there are six pomegranates (down from eight last night).

And I am acutely aware that it was 24 below zero when I checked my phone this morning.

Picture windows

The thing I like best about living in Cutler are the two big picture windows--one looking out of our kitchen and onto the path down to campus, and the other looking out of our living room and onto the sidewalk.

If I'm at home during the day, I spend most of my time in the kitchen in a blanket cocoon, halfway reading the news on my laptop and halfway talking to whoever will listen to me. When it's light out, you can see everyone walking by from the kitchen, shuffling with their backpacks on their way to Reichardt one way, carrying lumpy bags full of laundry in the other direction. If you're lucky, sometimes you catch couples holding hands or distracted students checking their phones and tripping over something.

But when it starts to get dark, it gets hard to see and we become the silent moving pictures.

So at night, I move into the living room. We have two couches, both with unknown histories (at this point in my 4-year-relationship with ResLife furniture, I have settled for a peaceful don't-ask-don't-tell policy, and accept the squeaking at face value), and I sink down into the one next to the window and peek out over the top of it.

Outside the living room window, street lights illuminate the sidewalk and, as an extension, everyone that walks on it. The living room window on weekend nights is the best, especially when our neighbors host themed parties.

When it's late enough, we draw the blinds and go to bed. And in the morning, if I'm ever awake enough, open them again and, from the kitchen, watch the bundles of coats move on again.

Late season hiking

For some reason, even though it's definitively mid-October, it's not winter yet. It's snowed twice in town, but melted off really quickly. And it's barely been below freezing at all. I've used my raincoat more than my down coat so far.

Anyway, Saturday was another unseasonably nice day, so Valerie, Brooks, Aviva and I went hiking up on Ester Dome.

It's taken me a few years to warm up to the beauty of interior Alaska. At first, I was completely unimpressed by the lack of ocean and jagged mountains, but I love it now.

believing v. knowing

last week, she asks me in the car,
"but how do you know for sure?"

it's evening, but the sun isn't going down.
instead it's turning the mountains
golden-brown, baking them.
and i concentrate on driving,
like i'm barely 16 and
this is the only test i can ever imagine failing.

sometimes i feel immovable,
like my faith is an ocean filling my fingers.
when i raise my arms, the tide goes out
and i can see what's under the water for miles,
every hidden secret, every grain of sand, every lost toy.

sometimes i feel like every breath
is a gust of wind, hurricane-strong,
that will crash the trees of my elbows
into the roofs of my sides.
on those days, it feels to precarious
to make sudden movements, so i wait until
the storm is over.

"it's not about knowing," i say eventually.

it's about believing that holding still
when your mind is at war with your heart
will make it better. it's about studying every
lost memento that surfaces on shore when you
can see it clearly so you can remember it
next time.

it's about knowing that the sun will move eventually.
it's nearly 11 p.m., and the mountains are still golden brown,
and she nods.

Bracelets

I used to be one of those girls with bracelets up to her elbows.

October 2011.

It was a traveling thing. A way to keep some memories tangibly present--this one was from visiting Valerie in Ecuador; this one was from the fair in Lucca; this one was from Souk Jara; this one I found in the back of a drawer at home and it reminded me of something distant. At one point, there were nearly a dozen, living together on my wrists.

Lately, they've all started to fall off. In tune with the leaves on the trees, my arms are getting ready for their own winter of being shoved into coat sleeves with hands in pockets that hold secrets of a life colder than those bracelets remember.

The string with bells on it put up a good fight, but the last bead broke through the worn out thread and rolled away a few weeks ago. The bracelet from a dollar store in Tel Aviv fell apart this summer, spilling beads all over the floor during a doctor's appointment, startling the nurse.

"I'll help you find all the beads," she said. But it was time to move on.

I miss the weight and the noise. The comforting presence. The residual dampness left after washing the dishes. The physically present reminders of distant moments.

But somehow, this is a chance to tie new colors together. I've always worn other places under my sleeves, but never Alaska. I don't know where next year will bring me, but it would be nice to say, "this one is from home."

geography

i took the train 11 times that week.
each day i got a little better at
asking for a one-way ticket.

by now, i know my way around your corner
well enough to blend in with the
businessmen in suits heading to work.

i figured there'd be room for me
anywhere. my shoes have been worn out
by a million different sidewalks.

but home is a place covered in my
own fingerprints, and this city is yours.
on the last morning i took the last train out.

always headed East

This time, I'm going as far East
as they'll let me with indistinguishable olive eyes,
until I blend in so well that my
mother could not pick me out of the
noon-day market crowd, but I'll
be the one knocking on watermelons.

I won't have an address to write to
for a while, but I'll leave the number
of a payphone I hope to show up near in
early September.

After this, I'm never coming back.
The leaving always feels un-permanent,
soaked with all the insincerity,
of your winter-chapped-lipped-claims that
the sun is coming.

It's always coming,
but it's never warm enough.

I'll close my eyes
on the way out of town, so I
won't figure out the way back.
This time, I'm going as far East as I can,
and I'm never coming back.

timing is everything

it took the rest of the summer,
before i stopped wearing
pants in the heat--
before cigarette smoke
surprised me again.
my hair is almost
grown out past where
it used to be,
before i tripped,
and stumbled--
but never quite fell--
over the boy who'd
walked more miles than me.
timing is everything
when it comes to love,
and too much time has passed now.
there used to be lines
on my skin,
visible marks of
belonging somewhere else.
like everything else,
they faded in their time.

Ambivalent endings

This week is my last week of work.

Last week, I turned to my mom and said, "Now that I'm almost done working at the library, I'm starting to have capital-I-Insight, and that insight is that it wasn't that bad."

My biggest complaint is that this job wasn't what I was expecting, which isn't much to stand on.

On Friday, two of my regular kids came in at the tail end of the meal program, after everyone else had drifted off for the afternoon.  Cally, 13, and Kate, 8, are sisters, and have spent a good proportion of their summer vacation at the library reading comic books and playing games with me.

Cally told me that her boyfriend was moving to Florida on Tuesday.  Kate said they wanted to bring their other sister to the movies but she didn't come.  I told them next week was my last week.

At the end of the day, Kate ran out of the library with a cursory wave.  "Bye if I never see you again!" she shouted.

It was an aloof and touching moment, all too reminiscent of my preferred method of goodbyes.

Cally stuck around a little longer and asked me what I was going to do next.  I told her I was going to visit family and that I'd probably come back and visit the library a few times before I moved back to Fairbanks, which is probably a lie, but it made the answer a little bit easier to handle.

I'm starting to wrap up the ends of a summer I never thought I'd have.  I had such grandiose plans for these few months.  I'd work hard all year at the paper and then do some important internship somewhere during the summer.  Come fall, I'd be ready to take my last year of school pretty easy.  I've always been a goal-oriented, if not impulsive, person, and I've had this timeline charted for a long time.

It's not like I've never dealt with the unexpected before.  But this summer was so unplanned, coming together at the last minute, but never truly coming through.  My library job is about to end and turn into another anecdote, like all the others that have come before it.

I'm used to caring intensely about endings, and right now I feel mostly ambivalent.  Kate's exuberant goodbye pretty much summed it up.

pastel yarn

when she was 13, she drove across the continent.
the beginning of growing up and chasing the horizon,

when she spins her skirt twirls in a perfect circle.
bare arms and with bells tied to the ribbons
in her braids, it is hard not to see there's music there.

in the winter, she knit 8 scarves,
all of which she lost by june.
5 of them were various shades of red,
and the other 3 were pastel shades, she thinks,
but colors that pale are hard to remember.

for girls with weird names who are loved for their edges

you have always loved edges, whether it
it the horizon or the shoreline or my sides,
and i am good at pretending to be an outline.

i have 15 favorite sweaters, and they all hide
my insides when the snow hides the ground.
we have always had a winter friendship.

you studied something that involved a lot of ideas,
and i just happened to come along when you
were looking for an idea yourself.

it's ok, because i'm just starting to look
inside the crooked edges of the skirt i sewed
last april. but i am not a theory. even though:
i always seemed like a good idea, didn't i?

reverse

one year since i broke my heart,
tripping over cement i thought was sandstone.

one year and one month since my wrists
made their own music from bracelets with
bells that have long since fallen off.

one year and two months since it was my birthday
and we drank orange juice on the top of a hill
while the sun set.

one year and a half since i was too lost to walk straight anymore,
so i spun and spun until my dizzy soul pointed me East.
i cried so hard i could barely see where i was going.

two years since the last campfire that mattered,
where you took me aside, already far into the bonfire and the whiskey--
but i was too naive to understand that it meant
you wouldn't have brushed the ash off my cheek otherwise,
and the eye contact wasn't yours.

two years since i counted down not back.

this is what you are:

you are the one that tugged too hard on my wrist
when my bracelet broke,
and beads fell to the ground in a rainstick clatter.

you are the reason behind the stain in my shirt.
i don't look good in pastel blue anyway.

you are the one who jumped first,
that day at the pond at the top of the tallest tree.
i climbed up faster than you, but you let go faster than me.

you are the last letter i got in the mail that wasn't a political pamphlet.
you are top left piece of yellow fabric sewn into my quilt.
you are the one that broke my space heater
(i wore three pairs of wool socks to retain some body heat).

you are every stray thread i wanted to tug at but never did for fear of pulling everything apart.

Things people have told me

A friend once told me I was like a real life manic pixie dream girl, which given the ukulele, I get.  I've never been one to draw brooding men out of their shells though.

I've only been asked seriously if I was a lesbian once by an acquaintance who couldn't get over the fact that I didn't have a boyfriend.  Like if you added it all up it didn't make sense because I was pretty enough and smart enough and normal enough so obviously there was no logical explanation to my singledom except that I hadn't found the right girl yet.

In my junior year of high school, someone told me I was beautiful in a text message but it was so awkwardly slipped in, I thought it was a typo.

Several people called in to our radio show this year and told us We were great and They totally loved our show and Listening to us on the way home made their day and Could we play this song?

Last summer, someone quoted a piece of my own writing back to myself.

Everyone I know over the age of 45 tells me journalism is dying.  They want to know if I have a backup plan, not that they don't think I'll make it because I'm a very bright girl, of course, but have I thought about PR at all?

When I was 18 my mom told me that I really have to stop calling myself a girl because I'm a woman now.  It's just that I feel distinctly in between.

I was told I was both a terrible editor and a great editor this year.  My guess is the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Indirectly, someone told me to keep writing earlier tonight.

Midsummer night's thoughts

Ah, midsummer: when the cottonwood trees woo each other.  How appropriate that they lose their own white dresses in the middle of wedding season.

Last week, I was talking to a parent during the meal service program I run at the library.  His daughter was making a paper bag puppet and eating a cheese stick, so she was otherwise occupied.  Our conversation went in a predictable direction.

"So what are you studying?"
"Journalism."
Pause.
"What do you want to do with it?"
Cue overly-processed answer.
"Well, I like writing, so--"
Knowing nod.
"I thought so.  So you want to do creative writing?  Like short stories?"
"Well, no."

Our conversation went nowhere fast after that.  He works part time as a high-rise window washer.  The money's really good, he said.  You get paid full time for a few hours of work and you get benefits.  Then his daughter was done with lunch and it was time to go.  She drew a pink and green striped dress onto her puppet.

His knee-jerk assumption about writing threw me off a little bit.  I've been thinking about it a lot since then in the empty summer days.

Like, why did he immediately assume I was interested in writing fiction?  Is it because I was shamelessly reading a young adult book with a title like Sweetheart or Lush when they came in?  Is it because I work in a library?  Because I look like an indie young woman who just gives off the vibe starving artist and can't commit to anything serious?

My self-confidence is trying to convince me it's the latter, even though I've always had higher aspirations than starving artist.  But where are you really getting with those aspirations, my self-confidence asks as a follow-up.  It's always a ruthless interview.

Summer is rough.  I always think I like it, running full speed at it to be done with finals and classes I've been in for too long.  But truthfully I don't handle it all that gracefully.  At least school keeps me busy enough to dissuade these funks, between classes, friends and work.  But during the summer it's just me and my constantly running brain over-analyzing every hope, dream and aspiration I've considered lately with nothing to distract me.

The last time I really remember having one of those put-your-arms-out-the-car-window-because-you-feel-as-carefree-as-your-loose-fitting-clothing was a few years ago when the cottonwood trees were writing love letters to each other and McDonald's still had 50 cent ice cream cones.

Since then summer has felt a lot like stopping abruptly in the middle of a race.  I spent the whole rest of the time thinking really hard about everything that happened during those first few miles.  It's almost more exhausting than just going on.

single-lane sad stories

there were two lanes of empty highway heart-to-hearts.
she said, you have to have the blues to sing the blues.
i have never been so sad that my chords turn that minor,
but there's poetry in the rosy glow from beneath the window.
i keep it propped open, resting the pane on an old paint stick that
should have broke a long time ago under the weight of all her sadness.
but i like the promise of the cross-breeze, so i keep risking it.

some days

Some days make me want to squeeze my soul,
like it's an almost empty tube of toothpaste.

Some days, my momma told me, are elbow grease days.
And so I scrub my heart on those days,
and let the soap suds rinse off old grit.

Some days never come at all,
no matter how patiently I wait.

Some days I have to reread everything, because
the sun is too damn hot for me to
figure it out the first time around.

Some days, pictures aren't enough and words aren't
enough and mud is just a memory.

cinematic

the difference between the movies and my life,
is that if my life were a movie
this part of it would be a montage.

a change in composition

you know how melting ice in water,
sweating nervous on the counter,
leaves behind a different taste?

disappearing and invisible, with
no trace but a drop in temperature
and an altered reality.

after that summer, you were as gone
as the midnight sun; as the wildflowers;
as the melting ice in the cup
of water on the counter.

A year and three days ago I moved away from Amman

Sometimes I get this feeling where my heart is, like all my blood is waiting to be somewhere else again.  It feels like holding your breath and looks like forgetting something important.

I miss Jordan a lot.

planning escape

i keep thinking someone will find all
of my favorite exits, and move chairs
and bookcases in front of them,

some become inaccessible,
but i'm thorough,
and there are more.
everyone with an impatient soul
is good at sleight of hand.

Spring cleaning my life

I'm having this moment right now where I just want to throw everything superfluous in my life away.

e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.  Guys.  EVERYTHING.

While packing up my apartment in Fairbanks, I threw things away.  And while unpacking at home in Anchorage, I threw things away.  And now everything is clean and organized, and I want to just go through all my shelves several more times to find things to throw away.

Even though this militant spring (prolonged winter?) cleaning feels physical (stuff, stuff and more stuff), it's a metaphor.

I spent the last year pouring my soul into the newspaper.  It was frustrating and rewarding, but mostly really busy.  It sucked up all my time to think, so I just plunged into what was the next logical step: journalism internships.  I have good experience and good writing clips, but none of the roughly 40 places I applied for summer journalism internships at hired me.

This is not a woe is me fest.  In addition to being great, I am also terrible: I tweet too casually, I sometimes throw away things that should be recycled and I don't do my fair share of the dishes.  Honestly, I can see why nobody wanted me as their little reporting intern.

But, leveling with y'all: I'm frustrated.  This experience is making me reevaluate my whole relationship with my future.  Which, admittedly, has never been particularly clear.  But I feel like I've pursued journalism wholeheartedly and single-mindedly for a little while, and I used to have other interests, guys.  I like classical music and history and Arabic.  What did I miss out on this year?

I'm approaching the question of: wait, do I even like journalism with the same cavalier attitude I'm using to ask: wait, do I even like that sweatshirt?  Do I see myself wearing it in the future and liking it?

If no one comes up with a good answer, it's all going to Value Village.

Empty suitcases and organized bookcases

While I pride myself on being very efficient at packing, I utterly fail at unpacking.  Generally, my mantra is "Obviously it has to get way worse before it gets better so stop asking about it, Mom."

Moving out of the apartment last weekend was a fair bit of work, but the mess on our kitchen table on Saturday night was nothing compared to the mess spilling out of my room into the common area right now.

It's just that packing feels full of infinite possibilities.  Unpacking is tied a lot more closely to reality and space constraints.  Packing is the promise of adventure, and unpacking is coming home from all of it.  Packing has always felt like dreaming to me and unpacking like waking up.

And obviously, I'll choose adventure over reality any day.  But until I can, I need to find a place to put all my winter coats for the next few months.

I survived

The last Sun Star issue of the year came out today.

Ask me in a week how I'm feeling.  Right now I'm too close to all of it to properly form thoughts that aren't overshadowed by lingering frustration.

Lakeidra and I finished packing up the office this afternoon.

Today's paper was the last issue that will ever be put together in that office.  As far as I can tell, the Sun Star has been there since the mid-'80s.

It's the end of an era for the paper in a few different ways.  But for now, it's the end of my semester.  We can talk about it after finals.

movie memories

there are important aches wrapped up in
the missing crinkling of the DVD wrapper.

i can't stand watching movies i don't know
the end to. (sorry to bother you, but can
you let me know which leaf to watch for
important plot development points?)

i forgot that the stone floor kept us cool
after the fan broke, and the salesman's good
looks distracted us from finding the stories
we really wanted.

remember the thunderstorm? the glows of living
room lights reflected onto shining asphalt streets,
i put on my raincoat and crept up to the roof to see.
the sound of rain on canvas will always take me
back to feeling too young.

last may, the water was so clear. i thought it would
always be like that.
i re-watch those movies now, because i remember them.
but the living room floor isn't the same.

missing messages

there is a hole in the fabric of your sneakers
sitting silent on your porch. you abandoned them
a while ago, in the effulgent cries of spring.
opting instead for worn out sandals, that shaped
themselves over time to the shape of your wandering feet.

when no one is looking, i stand in your shoes
on the abandoned porch. and it feels closer than holding
hands; closer than listening to your mixtapes;
closer than spying on notes written in your looping
handwriting in the margins of books i never gave back.

inspired by "Born Confused" by Tanjua Desai Hidier

So it's May in two days

You can't really tell in the photo, but it's snowing.  Again.

This has been one of the colder springs on record, with lower than average temperatures and snowfall predicted to keep happening for the next two weeks.

I guess if it was actually above 25, the mud wouldn't be frozen and the floor of our apartment would be more of a mess than it already is.

BUT.

I'm ready for summer.  Or at least a passable spring.  Or maybe temperatures in the 40s so I don't have to wear a coat anymore, if we're really bargaining.

update 1 hr and 30 minutes later (11 p.m.)

The snow is coming down hard and definitely sticking around out there.  Maybe they'll cancel finals?

Sundays that make me happy to be a week away from never being editoragain

Pretty much everything that could go wrong did today in the newsroom.

Oh, also, our office is getting knocked down this summer during construction to the Wood Center. So before we move out, we've started drawing (or editing) the walls.[/caption]

Access to the wordpress host of our site was spotty all day, which made it hard to log on and get, oh you know, the articles that we needed to layout for the issue in inDesign.

Also, a concerned citizen dropped by the office in the afternoon to let us know that one of last week's articles was libel.  He talked to a lawyer so that was that, obviously, and could be please retract the story?  I politely told him no.

Immediately following that, I had to take a 2 hour absence to go play in the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra.  It was kind of challenging to focus on Beethoven's ninth when, you know, someone had just threatened to sue us for libel.  Newsroom separation anxiety ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Then I came back and tried to get some things done and the site was down (again) for a solid hour.

Then it came back around 9 p.m., and we finished a decent layout.  Only to realize we had forgotten to include a full page ad.

You know, I'm trying to be positive and good-naturedly reflective about my year as EIC.  But at the moment I'm just happy I only have to do this one more time.

traveling in two aprils

i used to count in arabic,
i forgot it all in dreams that
started showing wispy pictures
of mountains.

keep connecting clouds,
while waiting for the stars.
we dug our toes in the sand
and gave up on shoes;
careless of scorpions.

you tell stories so well.
i get twisted in them,
tripping over my own tales
and tongue.

storyteller

you write like you talk:
all sharp angles,
no metaphors,
dressed in black.
there's a story tucked
into the pocket of
your pants, i'm sure
if i had nimble fingers,
i'd find it in no time.

the cost of remembering

"it's a birthday present,"
i said to justify the
notebook on the counter. to the
cashier with familiar sloping
shoulders, reminiscent of a time
of blue sweaters and tchaikovsky.

better to be thought a girl who
doesn't write at all, than a girl
who writes and then stops and waits
for new notebooks.

either he didn't recognize me,
or he did a damn good job staring
through my grown up body.

as if i had been so far on the
fringe of this circle, that i
had tumbled out of the world
altogether, and the only record kept
of my existence were countless pages
recorded September through May 5 years ago.

he shrugged familiar sloping shoulders,
ringing up the cost of new pages.

novelty cost $5.79 that particular
Wednesday in January.

breakup roadtrip

i went south,
because the sun stopped setting.
there's a notebook in my backpack,
the pages are worn out from too much information.
i stopped keeping track of the mountains.
there are memories under this snow.
i'm anxious to see what they look like again.

eastern constellations

you are smoking hookah in a crowded café,
the lamps are giving off lazy light;
there is an alphabet i'm learning to read
on your receipt.

i always thought these pomegranate memories would
stay whole. instead we are seeds spread out.
everyone has roots somewhere else,
i wish mine were here.

i get your updates now in intangible ways.
you smelled like lemon last time we hugged.
i miss your citrus;
it doesn't come through the same over email.

i waited for sunset, but i forgot to notice
the afternoon. i used to think the future was a
grape leaf [دوالي]: i know what it looks like, but i
don't know how to cook with it.

translate my mistakes, because i don't know where
the vowels go. remind me what the rooftop sounds
like. the sidewalk will remember me. i know how
to understand again, but not how to explain anymore.

instructions

she is wrapped up
in her hood and sweatshirt.
winter lingers,
so cover your hair.
discover her uncertainty
masked under laughter.
the sunset blinded everyone tonight.
the snow turned pink.
if you run, you will only slip--
be careful.
wear yellow.
catch the drops from
the icicles on your porch
and keep them in an old juice bottle.
label it: Winter Cries.
develop film of memories you wish you had
on your Sunday mornings.
be wary:
her stories are too well-written
to be right.

spring stories

1.
it is the bookcase
that keeps us from moving.
she is so attached to her novels,
there are roots.

2.
this slow spring
is capturing his heart.
you wear a yellow dress and red shoes:
spring embodied.
but no one runs.
there's still too much ice.

3.
let's drive 400 miles
because the sun through the windshield
is more nourishing than
the sun through the dining room window.

4.
your mama checks your thank you cards
for spelling mistakes.
hold your breath; you sound like wind chimes.

5.
she leaves the light on inside.
it is an accident.
the late-evening sun makes
it hard to tell where the
illumination comes from.

never mind the calligraphy

i keep trying to write poems about people.
they quickly become poems about places.
i have never loved you as much
as i loved sunset on sandstone.
let's walk, because the humidity makes me
appreciate your company.
you are all commas,
too many pauses,
i keep my editing to myself.

momentarily transplanted

your arms are barbed wire,
i scratched my hand trying to hold onto them;
it's hard to hear over this waterfall.
honey, your city is rain.
i can't see my breath when i tell you
about my world.
it makes me feel less real.

4 years ago

i remember standing in the sloped down section
of the pool, blue and purple bathing suit,
with hands on my hips. when we raced under
the water i kept my eyes open.
this maze feels all too familiar,
we ate chinese food in the back room of
an empty mall-- i laughed so much.
you forgot.
i thought i remembered the way back,
delighted that my sense of direction
(that doesn't hold up so well in the moment)
had aged gracefully.
it didn't.
i had to walk one more block.
it stumps me where i got so lost in the middle.
there was an orange-banana smoothie in a
crowded airport and a girl with red sneakers
sitting down in a busy hallway.
this time my story is different.
my hair doesn't weigh me down as much,
there are whole chapters i would never have imagined then--
but dammit if these lingering memories don't stop distracting me.

tall enough, for now

she let a dreamer measure her height
against the staircase, always counting
one more stair. and when she (smaller
than most girls, if you incorrectly thought
most girls were obscenely tall)
stopped growing up, she stretched her arms out--
but her hands were to small to
catch the edges of her silver-shade sky.
all wiry curls, always looking through,
there is an unexpected hue that shows
up in her hair under the Northern Lights.
if you can catch it, keep it. you earned it.
mama didn't raise no fool, she let a small
one with quick feet grow up in the East bedroom.
there's a record of her anarchy scratched into
the underneath of the windowsill and a mark
of triumph under the fifth stair.

broken beading

Travelers wear more bracelets
than their less adventurous counterparts;
as if ratted string ties them
more closely to memories of
unfamiliar voices echoing from
blue domes. There is dancing in
my beads, and when I close my eyes
there is a cream girl who's elbows
are catching the eyes of her dance
partners. She wears a red and white
dress and has no shadow. She sounds
like a rainstick. I have several shells
strung together for her, but I go
bare-wristed more often than not these days,
leaving my memories in a jewelry box, as if
the history is forgettable. My edges
were never quite smoothed back out.
My thighs still sound like wind inside of a tent,
too noisy to go unnoticed; so I keep my stories
unobtrusive under my sleeves until they fall off.

ninth

I want to tell you that the great moments
in history are set to the music of the
Romantic period: all passionate cellists
with stage lights catching the dust
that their lint rollers missed.
The anticipation the waiting choir
breathes is your naked truth.
You are his third movement,
with your melancholy beauty--
loved for what you are, you evaporate.
You brush him off because you
know what's coming next.
You tell me, the great moments in history--
they're all caused by heartbreak.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXgGRQrqxvE

cicada soundtrack

There is fraying yarn sitting on top of
old records playing a katydid cacophony.
You smell like old nail polish,
sitting regal at the kitchen table,
hands poised, ready to whisper about the
memories of off-white pearls.
Once fresh pages of Today's News,
your headlines have yellowed
from exposure to the elements.
And when she asks "what elements?"
You have a secret, sad expression that
keeps us guessing, curious and cross-legged
on the summer-sticky-linoleum.

no more san francisco

there are too many songs named after California cities,

and not enough for the tall grass Great Plains acoustic stories,
that get stuck into the corners of literature. where in
the alley behind the school, spaceships exist.

there are no songs for knee-knocking sticky Southerners
with nervous hands held, attached to bewildered young listeners
with an unfortunate conflict of interest in their unsung song.

there are songs for New York City, but none for the edges
of Maine where fools gold fools children who don't mind the
fooling, and their parents keep track of the rocks tossed aside.

no one sings about the desert that glows orange, where once
sand crept into your backpack and it took several months to
get out. a token of harsh sun and unrequited love.

and there are far too few songs about rocky mountain love.
i traveled on mountain ridges to find summersaulting vistas.
you were under melted snow, before the grass woke up,
it seemed like the wrong time, so i kept an un-kissed memory
as a memento, and no one sings about that.

you are a simile, not a smile

you steal the minutes of my saturdays,
and hoard them in the top drawer of your
dresser--where i used to keep an emergency
stash of bobby pins and reading material.
i am all slept on curls; my exhaustion
plays on a shape i took for granted once,
and my notebook lies untouched under
all this dirty laundry. i am too straightforward
for clever language, i tell my missing
weekend hours. there is no response.

blanket secrets

When I stop paying attention, I mix up
the seasons. It smells like fall, again.
I tied the blanket corners with a new fabric.
It was supposed to be a reminder. But the new
hue got lost in the folds of too many quilts,
and I forgot that once I had muddy feet used
to running forward. And I would sweep this
blanket around me but always off the ground.
Tidy edges that never needed it but were always
getting straightened by hands too nervous to
keep still. It's all recorded for posterity
in velvet-covered pages that smudge their secrets,
and I forget about most of it. But today, I
lost track of the season for a moment. Later on,
I went looking for hidden fabric in pockets
unexamined, and found them living quietly.

melt-re-freeze-re-melt-re-freeze

i got caught.
the same way
spring's promise
trapped me.

and like the melting snow,
my soul re-froze
in the overnight frost.
so i put on a warmer coat.

and hoped for something
not so metaphorically green.

but rather,
literal signs
of new growth.

a history of writing

i used to write poems
with the blind innocence
of lips un-kissed.

the history of writing
is built on ancient architecture.
seemingly simple in the loss of perspective
with every passing year.
(as real as blueberry stained memories;
if they were real.
i was never sure.)

it is the held-breath of
corn mazes in autumn
that grow taller for every young cousin
shuffled in.

one too many departures

it is all misremembered moments.
achingly inaccurate, unheard stories
that still elicit tears.

unwashed hair felt
beautiful in an unappreciated way.

things happened in the nostalgic filter of a film photo.
unrealistic.
but we remember.
we saw so in the photograph.
it happened.

unclear metaphors

nothing makes me nervous
in the raspberry-stained, self-governing way
rainy summers past used to.

for months
there was sand under the insole
of electric-blue shoes.

i wore them anyway.

until i forgot to, one day.
in all the excitement of first snowfalls,
i forgot about the sand.

i decided to write a poem for every day of april

i used to try to catch refracted light
on camera.

just like i used
try to
understand
line
breaks.

neither makes sense when examined
too
closely.

so i wrote both quests off
as
futile,
and memorized the music
my elbows play
when they
travel.

they sing in a language
i haven't learned yet.
or knew once,
and forgot.

Time to celebrate Fail Week again

I was going to write up a post on all the visiting lecturers I've sat in on over the past several days.  But dammit guys, it's Fail Week 2013 Round 2.  So excuse me while I curl up with my tea and ooze insecurities for a minute.

This is always a horrible time of year, caught up between finishing up applications for summer jobs and internships but not yet knowing what will pan out.  Not to mention, it's the post-spring break you-don't-have-nearly-as-much-time-on-that-semester-long-project-as-you-thought-you-did panic moment.  Factor in my waning interest in work and school, and it's a recipe for a long, consoling shower.

If you're not up on my life, which you most likely aren't considering I've abandoned this blog like a momma leaving her baby in a marshmallow box on an orphanage doorstep, then it would behoove you to know I've been spending a lot of time editing my cover letter to send out again and again for summer internship applications.  So far, this has ended in nothing but form rejection emails.

Guys, can I just move back to Amman?  My beautiful zamilaati are all celebrating spring break eating Arab food together in Texas right now.  And, you know, life was good with those ladies.  I could speak intelligently about international politics and was the star of my Arabic 101 class, sounding out the hard letters like a natural.  Meanwhile in Alaska, I keep up the dance of bad student with good grades that probably makes me one of the most disliked students in the department if the never ending disapproving looks are any indication.

If you've been rejected from any summer jobs this week or experienced any other sort of fail, you qualify to come get tacos with Valerie and I tonight.  Let's make this a real celebration.

Reminder

It's the last gasp of the Baha'i new year on this side of the globe.

Naw-Ruz is supposed to be one of those holy days where work is suspended, but I usually ignore this particular part of my religion: there's too much to do and see and think and go.

But stopping for a moment might have done me some good.

For the last 19 days, I fasted and prayed and felt centered by something greater than myself.

Today, I woke up at the last possible moment, grabbed leftovers for breakfast to eat in the back of class and danced through a day of school, work and meetings.

It was just 20 minutes ago that I finally sat down with my laptop in an empty room to think about the last year of my life.

If I could, I'd rewind.  And isn't that the cardinal sin of free spirits who Never Regret Anything?  But I'm too organized to qualify for that title.  And if I could rewind, I would.  Through the various continents and oceans and states of distress.  I loved Amman.  Loved it differently, but loved the feel of it, and I doubt that it is my geographical soulmate--or even that I will go back there for more than a visit someday--but it clued me in that where I am is not.  Necessary for the moment; irrelevant for the long term, and the itch to move on gets strong some days.

So I keep reminding myself to slow down.

March is for dreams, April is for dashing them and May is for reality.  Spring is for new beginnings and Naw-Ruz is for celebrating.  So today, I did.

A good end to a good break

This is fairly blurry since I had my camera jammed to my face at a slow exposure while trying to hold my breath.  But I'm posting this mostly to say... the family that looks at the nothern lights together stays together! Nice end to spring break.

In-between days

It's spring!  But, of course, it's not.

I wore a yellow dress yesterday.  I danced on the walk home.  I spotted wet pavement that looked suspiciously like it was wet because ice had melted in the sunshine.

Happy Ayyam-i-Ha, world!  The celebration of in-between and before and days that don't count on the calendar, but count just enough to warrant this beautiful sunshine.

Last year, I waited on the sidewalk outside the Food City that was 20 minutes away from my apartment for someone to pick me up and give me a ride to an Ayyam-i-Ha celebration.  I was on the wrong side of the building and the wrong side of the world.  But when I made it, there was so much delicious food and we played games that I didn't understand and told jokes that had Arabic punch lines that lost their punch in translation and it felt like the beginning of something monumentally important.

This year is less adventurous.  I am making plans to stock up on grapefruit for the fast.  Clearing spaces beside my bed for a water bottle.  Wondering how I will make it until spring break without collapsing of exhausting.  There is a time for celebration, but there is so much work to get done.

My parents mailed me a hat, but I'm hoping I won't need it soon.  The sun is playing with my emotions, but I am too far gone to care.

Fun Sundays

Today was a fun Sunday.  At one point there were seven people hanging out not getting things done in the newsroom at the same time.  I actually think about half the staff dropped by throughout the course of the day.

I'm getting into this editor thing.  The staff is great, the paper is consistent and the publication errors are still there, but dammit guys with only two people on typo-catching duty they're always going to be there.  So really.  You can stop storming angrily into the office and bothering the ad manager now.  My office hours are clearly listed on the door.

Of course, I'm getting it now that I'm two-thirds of the way through my year as editor.  And not that I want to do this for longer, because 1. I miss weekends and 2. I like being responsible for just myself, not a legion of procrastinators.  But I like the independence of this position.  I like being around to help freelancers with their work and watch them figure out what they're doing.  I like the last few thing's Brady's written for his column. I like the new cover.  I like Danny's layout of the page with the engineering arch story on it this week.

Life is just so much better now that I've figured out how to do my job.  Can I just keep repeating that?  So much better, so much better, so much better.

(Disclaimer: Editorials are not better.  I am really tired of writing editorials.  I just don't have 500 words worth of opinions I want to print in the paper every week.  And sometimes I am home alone on Friday nights with 16 tabs open on my browser and it is just a struggle fest.)

The last two weeks were a little rough, but midterms always are.  And there was no mental breakdown like last semester, there was only militant to-do list making and finishing (guys, I am a machine. A really personable, vivacious machine who just GETS STUFF DONE*).

Anyway, Tuesday's cover is great.  My homework is done.  For the first time in two weeks I can actually shower during my 11:30 to 1 p.m. break tomorrow instead of run errands.  My editorial is really cheesy, but the rest of the paper is fairly decent.  And I am going to bed.

 

*Is this what growing up feels like?

On voice

A few weeks ago, we were talking about voice in one of my classes.  And my professor said, if this were a writing class, at this point in the semester I would be able to tell who wrote what without any names on your assignments.

And I thought, wow, magic.

And then I thought, oh wait, I can do that.

It's just that everyone's writing is so distinctive.  Their adjective uses are distinctive.  Their paragraph lengths are distinctive.  Their headlines are distinctive, their chronic errors are distinctive--even their photo captions are distinctive.

I compare authors' writing voices all the time.  Natalie Standiford is a little John Green-esque.  Tanjua Desai Hidier has some things in common with Michael Chabon.  E. Lockhart is a standalone genius of prose and plot.

Since I've been blogging for more than three years and writing articles for almost as long, I'm starting to get really well acquainted with my writing voice.  It's the reason I struggle with updating this blog every once in a while--because everything I write sounds like everything else I've ever written.

But consistency is nothing to despair over.  I avidly read pieces written by my favorite authors just for their voice all the time, regardless of their content (case in point: John Green's second zombie novella.  So bad. But also, good?).

A few years ago, someone said, Elika, you write how you talk.  I don't.  Or at least, I don't anymore.  But I write how I think.  And I use the phrase 'I feel like' and the words 'increasingly' and 'just' with overwhelming consistency, and sometimes I feel like I'm so unoriginal that if I left a shopping list sitting around someone would be able to identify it as mine.

But then again, I can pick out who's headlines are who's within seconds most of the time.  So maybe we're all distinct shopping lists.

Intersecting paths

There are so many stories I want to tell from this weekend.  So I'll start with this one.

I met a girl from Amman.  She's an exchange student in Kenai.  Her older sister goes to school at Al Ahliyyah, the university I went to in Amman.

She left after dinner, but before that she stopped.  "I just have to ask," she said.  "Do you miss mansaf?"

I remember that phase.  The I've-been-in-it-for-long-enough-to-know-what-I'm-doing-but-there-are-things-that-I-miss-so-much phase.  It was this moment where we were intersecting and I knew and I knew that I couldn't do anything because everyone lives through their travels in the same way at different rates.

"I'm just homesick for the food," she said.  Which I got, because halal pepperoni pizza is not pizza.

It was exactly a year ago that I moved to Jordan.  I'm keeping track of my days and reliving the corresponding events.  This is the day we moved in.  This is the day pigeons landed on our head.  This is the day we went to the citadel and ate at Reem Al-Bawadi.  This is the day school started and Jaime and I perilously navigated the bus home.  This is the day after that where nothing noteworthy happened which was noteworthy in and of itself because I foolishly felt that I would figure it out so quickly.

This weekend, I went to the Alaska version of the Northwest Returnee Conference.  It was a bunch of former exchange students telling pretentious travel stories and it was wonderful.  Before the sessions started, we were asked to write a piece of advice on a notecard for the exchange students that would be returning home at the end of the semester.

I wrote, "You're going to be sad and it's going to be ok."

I was sad.  I still am sad.  I miss it.  I miss my friends, I miss the cat that hung out near our apartment, I miss mansaf, I miss speaking Arabic.  But it's ok.  I'm finally getting to a point where I'm understanding how Amman impacted me and I'm ok.

NWRC was one of those seemingly unimportant things that ended up making me think a lot.  I'm really glad I decided to take (half of) the weekend off from work and attend the conference.  I'm glad I got to talk about all these things that I haven't spent much time thinking about between school and work and people who aren't interested.

It's just that there aren't that many Arabs, no Arab food and no place to practice Arabic in Alaska.  How was I supposed to ease my way in?  The 4 Arab exchange students from Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan I met in Juneau agree with me.

Angst like it's 2009

The entire year of 2009 was one of those periods of angst in my life.  I remember the sources, but not why I found them so distressing at the time.

I am a chronic playlist maker.  Today, I am working on one called "Angst Like It's 2009."  There are a lot of tracks from The Decemberists.  And a couple Shins songs.  And I can't remember what else I was really into back then?  Boys with long hair and Mozart, maybe.  I owned a lot of blue tank tops.

Late at night on Monday, I got a call.  "Elika, do you have time to play in FSO this semester?  We need someone to play last oboe."

I signed up for a poetry class, but then dropped it again when I thought about what a slut time is (she screws everyone).*  The professor asked us who we were--why we were there--what are we doing--where are we going.  And I said I wanted to write.with.pauses./tell stories that weren'tsostraightforward--didn't have such c.l.e.a.r. facts--couldn't be Understood From Headlines.  I wanted to take the class, but dammit the required reading would have killed me.

Now that there is Beethoven in my future [update: there is Beethoven in my future], I am examining my hands and reaching for something that used to be.  It's good it wasn't Tchaikovsky; I probably would have passed out.  But it's not like Beethoven's Ninth doesn't have any memories attached to it.

I got stuck at nine songs.  No, really.  What did I listen to back then?

My best friends all ended up on the front page of Reddit the other night in their underwear, which is a searing reminder that when they took that picture, I was breaking a European terrorism law to live on Deshani's couch and how I've barely talked to her all year.  Traveling is a harsh lesson in moving on.

When I went to go pick up music for the symphony last night, Candy said, "You look good. You look like you've grown up."  I feel like I have.  I'm not a confused affair who perennially feels as if she's on the edge of something important.

But, then again, I listened to a loop of nine songs by The Decemberists and The Shins today.

 

*attributed to John Green in his novel The Fault in Our Stars