and you won't look back

A year ago I ran through the front door with my phone in my hand. It was cold out but I didn't put a coat on. Cut glass rattled in wood as the door fell shut behind me. It would be my last ditch effort, and your response would be the last ditch period. You told me she was moving there to be with you, I paced the driveway. I asked you how that felt, you paused and said, pretty good. I went back inside and later I drove my car to a friend's house and made some more phone calls but this time no one picked up.

Just something about this place, if I'm here too long I feel swirls of a person I used to be, and it makes me surly. Sitting at a table of family friends, sweet people with happy unexamined lives, being asked over and over if I have a boyfriend yet. When am I getting married, ideally. I shrug and churn out a number. Really I'm only dreaming up answers, but I can't say that aloud. I'm already too strange, too far away.

She said, times have changed. She said, in my day, if you weren't married by 21, you were considered an old maid. I said yes, times have changed. The thing is, my parents didn't raise me to be an expert at finding boyfriends. They didn't buy me school workbooks at the toy store so that I would be a good wife. Most people can have babies, and most people do. Most people want to get married, and most people do. Most people vote, but it doesn't mean most people should. A woman in a mall looks me up and down and says she likes my outfit, asks me where I'm from. My mom smiles and says, she lives in New York, she's a writer.

I remember in high school, I got into this fight with my parents. I don't remember what we were fighting about, I can just vividly hear myself saying, I'd rather be alone at the top than not be at the top at all. The memory is transcendent, like I'm remembering someone else say it. I see myself standing there with a fire in my eyes. I find it equally comforting and frightening, like the old me knew the new me would eventually show up and was readying the fort. In my darkened bedroom, I taped my poetry to rose-colored walls.

There's this amazing poem that's stuck in my head since I read it. These lines: This is for every little boy and girl who stood between home and a tornado, weighed the options, and took a chance on the twister. The image of the tornado is violent and accurate, but I think the writer neglects the other half of the story, something the Dorothies may find comforting. That once you've chosen the tornado, it becomes your home.

People keep asking me when I'm coming home, coming back to the South. I just smile and say I don't know, we'll see, we'll see. But really the tornado is my home now. I love the turbulence, pressing my face to the wind and stretching my limbs over an unlimited expanse. I can never go back to living on the ground. I need the scorch to live. The only way to go is up. Up and away.

ask, tell

I woke up at 9:30 this morning and read Twitter. I'm in Alabama and I read that Obama was signing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal into law at 9:15 EST, and there was going to be a live video feed of it on the website. I had my time zones confused and thought that meant I could still watch it. But it was too late.

I went to the website anyway and there was a live video of a press conference with Robert Gibbs. I thought about how I hate publicists, how the implication of a publicist is that a person doesn't trust himself to self-represent in an appealing way. The implication of a publicist is that somewhere, truth is lost, or that truth doesn't matter. I don't like to think about how the artists I admire probably have publicists. I admire them because I believe they are telling me the truth about life.

I shut the computer and burrowed back into the covers and slept til noon for the first time in months. It felt good. While sleeping, I had a dream. I had a co-worker who was a teenager, maybe 16 or 17 years old, a boy. He asked me if he could come over after work and I said yes. He came over and we talked and he sat beside me on a couch and leaned in and buried his head in my neck. He cried and said his grandmother had died that morning. It made me very sad and I ran my hands through his hair and told him it would be okay and that I was sorry. Then he started to kiss me, but he didn't know how to kiss because he was so young. It was so sweet, it made me want to cry. I kissed him back.

A person I used to love works as a publicist now, or did the last time I spoke to him, nearly a year ago now. I thought about that as I crawled out of bed at 12:45 and fixed myself a sandwich. I don't know if it was breakfast or lunch.

teach me how to dougie

Just a couple thangs.

When I was home for Thanksgiving, my childhood best friend Ashley made me walk on train tracks in six-inch heels while she took photos of it. They are here.

I didn't write about it (not really), but at the beginning of November I went to a taping of Inside The Actor's Studio with James Franco. It was so amazing and inspiring. A few weeks later, author/fave writer Stephen Elliott wrote about Franco in his Daily Rumpus e-mail. Franco optioned The Adderall Diaries and plans to direct/star in a film version of the memoir. I wrote Stephen back and told him about the taping, and he asked me to edit my notes into an article. So I did. Then it was linked to by USA Today. So that was a good day.

Because good things usually come in threes: I have watched this like ten times. I think it says something.

we cannot always predict rough air, a short

shot over america.

Gate 5A

We live in a world where children and adults alike are obsessed with colorful rubber bracelets shaped like animals. Except that they're only shaped like animals until you slide them onto your wrist - then they're just shaped like squiggly circles. All these people, I think, have in common that they like to distort and be distorted. And they partially like these things because everyone else does, or at least seems to.

Anyone who says the mass appeal of a thing doesn't make it less attractive is either lying or desperately holding onto their childhood. The first time I saw the animal v. squiggly bracelets, a little girl on the train was wearing them and passing them back and forth with her little sister. That day, I was wearing rubber bracelets too. They were neon and had little gold and silver charms dangling off them, and I felt an instant connection with this tiny human. Like I was looking into the past and she was looking back at me.

Then, a couple weeks later, I started to notice those very same bracelets on other children on other trains. Then on adults. Then on my contemporaries. I felt like something had been stolen from me. In my moment with that little girl, I had seen something. And now my vision was gone. Either that, or everyone else saw exactly what I had seen. Either way, something once living was dead.

I hate those bracelets now. They follow me and haunt me. La Guardia Airport sells them, in packs of 20 or 30 or 50, for the low cost of your individuality. I see them while I'm standing lockjawed at a checkout counter, trying to help the cashier figure out how much change she owes me. I gave her $20.50 for a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts that cost $4.34. I silently bemoan our nation's rudimentary education system, until I realize that I'm mindlessly fishing my iPhone out of my bag to double-check the math, my own insecurity the reel on the hook.

Over the loudspeaker a very gay flight attendant announces that Jonathan Singer is late for his flight to Savannah. Suh-van-uh. I think to myself, popping peanuts into my mouth, that Jonathan Singer sounds like a name I've heard. Jonathan Singer sounds like a famous writer. Jonathan Singer sounds like he has something to say that the world needs to hear. I pop more peanuts and decide I'll google him later.

I walk by the frozen yogurt stand, which at 8 p.m. has been gated and shuttered, prompting my peanut purchase. This is of course the only time I've ever craved frozen yogurt while inside La Guardia. I take this as a very bad omen and think about what it would feel like to be inside a plane that is crashing to the ground. I think about tweeting my concerns, hoping that such a tweet would jinx the universe into not letting me die. The universe, however, does not respond to pinch/poke/you owe me some coke.

Sitting at my gate, I see that the girl across from me is carrying three items: a LeSportSac, a Longchamp, and a Crumbs bag filled with cupcakes. The holy trinity of consumerism. I imagine her ambling through her parents' front door, presenting them with cupcakes which they then cut with plasticware and share before bedtime. They hug her and tell her how proud they are of her for moving to the big city and starting to make a life for herself. She divides her face with a pretty little smile, wondering why the kitchen counters suddenly look so small and far away.

Behind me, I hear a jump rope hitting the carpet. I hear the distinct mmph-whack-mmph-whack-mmph-whack of plastic rope hitting carpet. I recall that sound vividly from a million gym classes of my childhood, plastic rope against rubber floor and sometimes against flesh legs when kids miscalculated the distance between their soles and the floor. I whip my head around to discover it is the sound of a woman's flip-flops slapping against the heels of her feet as she hurries from gate to gate. My heart sinks deep into my abdomen, anchoring me to the sticky pleather seat.

I wonder if pilots think about how easy it would be to crash a plane each time they find themselves behind the controls. I know I would.

I miss the South

Lately, I've been missing the South. Like never before since I moved to the city, I miss it. It's a movie playing in my head, pausing more than it moves forward, a series of images of things I equate with the South. One moment, I see my foot on the dash, wind blowing through my hair, music cranked up, watching a lightening storm as the sun goes down in the distance. A little later, I see blackness as I wake up in the middle of the night to a loud crack of thunder. God, I miss thunder and lightening and storms more than anything. It doesn't storm up here. It rains for short amounts of time, and even then it sounds so different because it's pitter-pattering on my AC in the window, not on my roof. And thunder in the distance just doesn't exist in New York. I crave that.

Then it's something vague, like a grassy hill. Or those hills in Mississippi, on the drive from Birmingham to Oxford, that rise and fall against the blunt flatness of the Delta to the south. I remember driving that route on the prettiest days the universe ever threw together, and thinking, even then - when I absolutely took it for granted - how the sky seemed to stretch on forever and the clouds were the happy residents of that infinity. The grass stalks on the sides of the highway were tall, and depending on the time of year, they were green or yellow or brown, sometimes all three. But they were always there, and they seemed to constantly sway in the wind, all the blades moving together in one swooping motion, as if they were waving at me along my journey.


It's odd, because I'm not sad in New York. Maybe I just haven't gotten to that point yet, but I oddly feel sort of comforted by my ardent longing for the South. Maybe because it comes from somewhere outside of myself - or at least that's my inclination, since I'm certainly not forcing myself to feel this way - I think each missin' pang brings me closer to where I need to be and what I need to do. As if the script to that movie in my head isn't completed, but is actively being written. The plot is revealed to me in flashes, and the ending doesn't even exist yet.

Remember when I told y'all I'm reading North Toward Home by Willie Morris? Well the same day I started reading it, I noticed a note on the last page, written by one of the previous owners. When I tried to read it, I couldn't decipher the handwriting, which might be referred to as "chicken scratch," and looks like it could have been written by my mom or her mama or her momma before. Then I sort of forgot about it. Yesterday, I looked at it again and it was perfectly clear to me.

I finished!
Great day in the morning
I finished
1/22/88
betw Boca & Atlanta
You come back now you hear!

My birthday is 1/21/86. I was two years and two days old when this person finished the book and felt compelled to make a note of it. Also, no one above the Mason-Dixon line says "great day in the morning." Ever. AND, don't people normally say "y'all come back now ya hear"? This person, for some reason, replaced the "y'all" with "you." And 22 years later, I read it at a particularly vulnerable time, when I miss the South and home with every part of myself. Art - and therefore life - is a complete mindfuck sometimes.

When I read it on the train yesterday, I started laugh-crying. I'm sure I looked insane. But it's just like, OK, universe - after the message this book already gave me when I was sitting in the window of the salon in Chelsea, I can't ignore it.

I'm coming home. I don't know when. I don't even know where or why or how, but I just feel the truth of that statement, without even understanding it.

home, home, i'm already there

north toward home

I feel like two people
Living in two places
At the same time.
Like never before in my life,
I feel as though I live a divided life.
 
I'm just an Etch-A-Sketch filled with sand,
A couple knob turns, and a line down the middle -
A couple shakes, and
It's gone.

I live in the breath of trees
Moving in the moonlight,
Crickets chirping in their shadows
Beneath tiny blankets of humidity,
Crafted carefully just for them.

And then under a blanket of my own,
I feel legs rub together,
Making a song: katydid, katydidn't,
Katy did, Katy didn't.
Their accompaniment:
Sunkissed hair splashed across a pillow.

Sitting on the subway,
A pretty little girl wearing a peace sign ring
Smiles at me under her blonde bangs.
Tunnel wind whooshes by,
The wheels crack-a-lack on the tracks,
And I am happy.

The subway ghost tells me,
And all of us,
To please, pretty, mind the gap.
I feel the city,
For the hundredth thousandth first and last time,
Wrap its arms around me.
And I am happy.

in which I compare the South in Spring to... other activities

So I went home last Thursday for an extended weekend trip. It was glorious. I got in late Thursday night, feeling exhausted and sort of down about stuff blah blah blah, went to bed and woke up Friday morning pretty early and felt completely rejuvenated already. I looked outside and saw blooming flowers and green everywhere. I could feel a sort of Southern energy humming in the air, and it pulsed through my body excitedly. I had not felt that happy and in love and content for months. So, naturally, I wrote something to express what I was feeling.

I was half-asleep when I wrote this, still in bed in the fairly early morning hours. I did not think about what I was writing. It remains mostly unedited. This is probably as close as I've come thus far to just letting words literally flow through me and onto the page. I was sort of surprised to find myself comparing being in the South for the first time in months to having sex with someone you're completely in lust with. But, here it is. This is sort of... explicit. Definitely the most explicit thing I've posted on this blog. So if that kind of thing makes you queasy, on to the next bullet in your blog feed!








the south is sex

the south is sex
the south is
fucking
sex
right now.
I woke up this morning
looked
out
side
(it's so hot
you have to look through
the thick air
to see to the other side)
anyway
I looked outside
Perfect sunlight
Perfect green
Blooming
Bursting
pink
flowers
on the azalea bush
outside my childhood window.
I arched my back.
I wanted to masturbate
no
I wanted to fuck the South
bend over my bed
and let it fuck me from behind
hands gripping my ass
pulling my hair
pinching my nipples
god
so
slow
teasing my pussy
and clit
and heart
then faster.
hearts beating
faster
faster
writhing in my bed
imagining everyone and no one
imagining long, open roads
just driving
foot on the dash
(because I do that sometimes when I drive)
Why do I feel like this?
seduced to tears
so
fucking
seduced
by my hometown
my childhood
who I am and
who I used to be
Freedom
Freedom
Fucking
Freedom
I taste it here
I taste him in my mouth
Freedom
Happiness
Fucking my mouth
Exploding in my throat
letting it drip down my neck
I smile for years
I see myself
fat
and
happy
again
In his arms
he kisses my breasts
ribs
belly
hips
down
down
down
starts goin down on me
I grab his long hair
two glowing handfuls
and think
Maybe we just always want to be where we're not
But I never want New York
When I'm down here
When he's down there
New York doesn't like to eat pussy
or at least
she's never eaten mine
so no
I don't think that's it
I'm just lusting for the South
I just am
stop asking questions, all will be revealed
he said through licks
so I just laid back
and enjoyed
all the while feeling this pull
heart to heartland
heart
to
fucking
heartland
oh
my
god
his
fingers
inside
me
blissssssssssssssss
bliss.

she know where her clothes supposed to be

Y'all. I know my blog has kind of been all over the place recently, what with poems about love, sex, heartbreak, art, joy, life, etc etc. Hopefully you've enjoyed some of what I've written and haven't found it too heavy or whatever. And if you have, then that's OK. In the words of Gaga, you can leave. And in the words of me, fuck you.

HOWEVER. I'm feeling rather light and happy today, mostly because I'm going home to the dirty dirty tomorrow for a few days to see my parents, eat some good food, hear the rain, absorb the humidity, et al. I'm quite excited. As if the universe wanted to nudge me along in my excitement - and, speaking of poetry, this seems relevant - I was listening to my David Banner Pandora station this morning (oh yes - it's the shit) when Petey Pablo's Freak-A-Leek came on. I became visibly aroused. I remember driving around Birmingham in, like, the 10th grade bumping this song at full bass and rapping along with every word. I still know them all.

ANYWAY. Here's the video. He's from Raleigh, North Carolina, proving (once again) that all the best rap music comes from the South. DON'T PLAY.  It's true.

I picked not-the-official video because the official one was edited and omitted some of the best words in Petey's poetry. The only thing I despise more than edited rap music is the smell of bleach. Both things make me audibly gag.

Happy Hump Day!

How to reach maximum cat annoyance: Tha Queen B edition

One of my favorite things about being home in the South is spending time with Queenie, my family's kitty cat. I usually refer to her as Tha Queen B, and I spend most of my time at home trying to get her to love me. The following is typical Queen B/Meghan behavior, concluding with her reaching the crest on her bell curve of annoyance with me.

1. I try to get Tha Queen B to pose for the camera. She is squirmy in resistance.

2. Success, bitch!

3. She slinks away and shuns me for the great humiliation I have caused her.

4. I am sad and filled with remorse.

5. I prepare a sneak attack to gain her affections back.

6. She is alerted to my presence, despite my amazing fish disguise. (???)

7. Maximum annoyance achieved.

Editor's note: Upon further review, I think this post probably makes me look like a crazy fucking cat lady. And I'm OK with it.

Southern nap, FTW

I haven't been sleeping well in New York recently. My roommate has been home a lot and I have this psychological thing where even if she's not being loud and I can barely tell she's home at all, I know she's home, and that makes me antsy and anxious and I can't sleep well.

So naturally, when I came home to Bama Friday, after getting up at 5:30 a.m. to make my flight, I was exhausted and took a mid-afternoon nap. It was a nap for the win (FTW), or what I prefer to call a nap to the face.

This is why.

Because that's what I look like when I wake up from a nap to the face. My hair is fucked and my face is barely recognizable and - as I so helpfully point out in the bottom photo - I have a big mascara smear mysteriously located at least one full inch from my eye.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, my thought process went something like:

1. FUCK. Whoooooooa. Damn girl. Rough.
2. Ooooh! I should blog photos of how shitty I look.

Currently re-considering the wisdom of this sleepy decision.

The South: Another dedication

Disclaimer one: I don't write that much poetry, and I sort of cringe whenever I do. I don't think I'm particularly good at it, and I usually feel really embarrassed to share it with other people, and in general I like to leave its creation to the greats (or at least my favorites): cummings, Rilke and Eliot. But sometimes I feel inspired to write a poem, and when that happens, I do.
Disclaimer two: I have never published a poem on my blog. This is the first time this has happened, and will probably be the last.
Disclaimer three: I wrote this on the plane from New York to Alabama, when I was depressed and pining away for something that turned out to be living in my own heart. I missed home, yes, but I also was starved for a love I thought I could only find in the South; turned out, it was inside me all along. I read back over these words and they seem like something I wrote years ago, when in reality this poem is only two weeks old. I wanted to convey how I was feeling about home at the time, while also painting an accurate picture of what life in the South is like. I hope someone besides my mom thinks I may have accomplished these goals.
Disclaimer four: I am not leaving New York.







The South

The air hangs thick, the silence thicker,
And above dewed grass that's slick like molasses,
The darkness is a welcomed relief.

No buildings, no lights, no human graffiti,
Just stars, stars, stars,
And still, still, still-
I can actually feel my heartbeat slow.

When life demands a pause,
This place can deliver,
A twangy release from the push, from the go,
Like a rocking chair swaying in time.

Not just a place - it's a way of existing,
A real way of life, honest, strong and fulfilling,
The South just keeps calling me, "Come."

I'm reminded of youth, of driving and kissing;
My heart lurches backward, and stings in the present,
Because I desperately miss what before went unnoticed.

The smell of the wet,
That dew on the grass,
How impossibly, quietly, the wind stirs the trees -
But mostly I miss what no one can see:
The Southern life unexamined,
Worth living, and more,
Worth exulting and
Worthy of me.

Disclaimer five: I took that photo from the window of a plane from Birmingham to Memphis. On that flight, I saw the entire sunset from above the clouds and the South and all the rest of America. It was stunning, and more appropriately poetic than I could ever hope to recreate.

The true meaning of Christmas

Sometimes, if we are lucky, things happen to us and we know they have meaning as they are happening. This is not usually the case - typically, we understand the meaning of things much better after the fact (read: hindsight, y'all). The other night, as I was flying into Birmingham, the universe sent me one of these things. It was a big, huge Christmas package with a label that read, "Wake up and be thankful, Meghan."

First of all, it's worth noting that my flights home from NYC were not even remotely stress-free. The weather was shitty in the South that night, so flights into Atlanta - where I was catching my connecting flight - were delayed. I barely made it to my flight from Atlanta to Birmingham because my flight from NYC to Atlanta was so late. After running the length of the ATL airport at full speed, I made it to my gate and the air traffic controllers graciously agreed to open the plane door and let me on.

The flight from Atlanta to Birmingham is ridiculously short, and after we landed, the pilot came over the cabin speakers and informed us that there was a fallen soldier on our plane. It took a few seconds for the meaning of this to set in, then my hand shot up to my mouth and tears welled in my eyes. He asked us to please remain seated out of respect for the soldier and his family. Then something bizarre happened. I started crying, and I couldn't stop.

I hate crying in public. In fact, I hate crying in front of anyone. If I cry in front of you, it means that we are somehow intimately involved. You are either my mom or my dad, or my boyfriend, or my best friend in the whole world. But when I looked out the window and saw the soldiers lined up at attention, saluting and waiting for the flag-covered casket to roll out of the belly of our plane, I stopped caring that a bunch of strangers could see me. Something clicked in my brain and I was suddenly very aware that sometimes life is hard, and things are fucking sad, and emotions are inevitable.

After we sat there for about five minutes, the pilot came back on and gave us the OK to deboard the plane. The casket still had not come out, but people slowly started gathering their things and making their way to the exit. I had been sitting on the side of the plane opposite the ceremony, so I crossed over and sat in a window and watched. I debated for a while whether or not to take (and then publish) photos of what was going on, because it was obviously a really personal thing I was watching. I decided to go ahead and take them, because I'm a blogger and that's what I do. I blog about things that affect me; and nothing has affected me quite as much as seeing what I saw that night.

It took a while, but eventually the casket rolled out of the cargo area of the plane. It was draped in an American flag and wrapped in plastic. I looked over to the family, standing to the left of what you see in the photo above, and a woman I assume was the mother had her hand to her mouth and was crying. A younger girl - the soldier's sister, maybe - had her arms around her. There were a few other family members there, too.

As I watched all this happening, through a thick layer of tears and a couple layers of even thicker airplane windows, I realized I had never seen anything so tragic in my life. I felt like I was watching a movie, except that this was very, very real. This person really fought in a war - one of two that our country is currently involved in - and really died. And now the family really has to go through Christmas without him. And they will really never see this person again. This person made the ultimate sacrifice, and all I could ask myself as I watched the soldiers pick up the casket and carry it toward the hearse was, For what?

My dad is in the military. He has been my whole life. Luckily he ranks high enough to where he's not active in combat zones - and I thanked the universe for that as I watched the ceremony - but even with a close family member in the military, I still found myself asking, Why are our people dying over there? What are they protecting us from? What are these wars even about?

The thing that initially struck me about the fallen soldier was not the profound sacrifice he made to better the average citizen's existence in America - it was the even more profound tragedy that, ultimately, his death was mostly in vain. If it was my son or brother or father in that casket, I would not feel any comfort from the knowledge that he died for a good cause. I'm not saying I don't support the troops, because I do - I do support them, precisely because they need it more than ever, because they are fighting in a meaningless war that should have ended years and years ago.

When I got in bed that night, I started thinking about the soldier's family going home and holding each other, knowing that 2009 would forever be remembered as the year their son or brother or grandson died. I asked the universe, as fervently as I could, to please give my entire heart to that family, because I felt like I didn't need it anymore. I offered them every bit of love left in my heart, because who could possibly need it more than a family who lost their loved one to a fruitless war a week before Christmas?

And then, there in the palpable still of an Alabama night, I realized that this person had not died in vain at all. Everyone on that plane who stayed to watch the ceremony - we were all affected by the profound sadness of what had happened to this soldier whose name none of us knew. It made us all think and feel things we probably wouldn't have thought or felt otherwise, and be more grateful for what we have. Even in my darkest hour, I still give thanks that I am alive, and so are all the people I love. I came home on a plane, wrapped in depression and homesickness and exhaustion from a city that is beating me down, but I can be thankful I didn't come home wrapped in a box and a flag, symbolic of everything and nothing at the same time.

To my fallen soldier's family, and to all the families of all the soldiers who will come home in a similar fashion: My thoughts and prayers are always with you. Prior to last week, I'm ashamed to say I never really thought about the sacrifices you make; now, I will think about them everyday. You are not alone, and for as long as these wars go on - and as long as I am lucky enough to keep breathing - I will dedicate my heart every Christmas to the people who have made the ultimate sacrifice, remembering with acute clarity how I felt when I saw the family of my fallen soldier standing outside on a clear, cold Southern night.

Christmas in La Guardia

As you all know, I flew home for Crimma Friday evening. The halls of my choice New York airport, La Guardia, were definitely decked with boughs of holly and wreaths and all kinds of spirited stuff, but the best Crimma decorations are always the most unexpected. Such as.

The fact that they had to pay someone to design these signs, then pay someone else to print said signs, and then pay yet another person to place them in standing placard holders randomly dispersed throughout the security checkpoint lines - all these things amaze me*.

Santa himself, natch. Bag full o' gifts (possibly) included.

*Almost as much as it does that they feel they have a very legitimate need to produce these signs

Throwback Thursday: A dedication to the South

I am going home to the dirty dirty tomorrow, and I could not be more excited. I felt much better when I woke up this morning, much more like myself, which naturally means I'm in the mood to listen to some hardass, gritty Southern hip-hop. This includes but is not at all limited to Three 6 Mafia, Trillville, Lil Scrappy, Bone Crusher, Outkast, Ludacris, Rich Boy, T.I., Gucci Mane, Weezy, Young Joc, Pastor Troy and Crime Mob.

I don't understand why I love this music so much, but I'm sort of beyond analyzing it. The first single I ever bought was B.I.G. ft. Puff Daddy and MA$E "Mo Money, Mo Problems." At the time, I was a 12-year-old white girl growing up in the suburbs, and now I'm a 23-year-old white girl living in Harlem. After listening to this shit for nearly 12 years, it now reminds me of home. It reminds me of driving around bumping the bass at full volume, or going to the club and dancing until I was drenched in sweat, eating greasy food at 4 a.m., then going home and washing the cigarette smoke out of my hair. It reminds me of this one night my friend M (who helped introduce me to a lot of this music) and I went to the grittiest club in Birmingham, a place we had no business being, and I tragically lost my Blackberry. Because sometimes you just throw too hard, nomesayin.

So now, the first in a new series I'll call Throwback Thursdays: a song I used to bump loud and often as I drove around the South. 'Cuz there ain't no place like home, y'all.



And nothing says home like booty dancing, high school drum lines, college football, heavy bass, slurred speech, accents, sippin' on whiskey sours, dropping it, thick air, thick women and the men who love them. Fuck. Yes.

Schmom B. Says

Sigh, I dropped the ball on the Schmom B. Says feature. It's been like at least a month since I posted one. Well, Schmom B. came through last night with the following e-mailed words of wisdom, this time totally unsolicited by me. (Usually she doles them out in response to a pitiful text message or phone call from yours truly about how I miss my ex or work is hard or blablabla other uninteresting things about my life.) This just further illustrates that Schmom B. is the best.

Schmom B. Says: Don't forget, you are loved

Hey sweetie,

Heard something today that's very meaningful to me.  Struck me, you would appreciate it too.  "Scars remind us where we've been; they don't have to dictate where we're going." Something else I read:  "We tend to seek happiness when happiness is actually a choice." Happy "two weeks before Christmas."  See you soon.  Take care.  I love you.

Mom




This honestly couldn't have come at a better time. The city's been closing in, and I've been feeling really anxious, and my inner peace has slipped away from me, and I needed a reminder that I have people who love me, even if some of them are way down South in Alabama. 

Up here in the city, feels like things are closing in;
The sunset's just my light bulb burning out.
I miss Kentucky, and I miss my family;
All the sweetest winds they blow across the South...

Ugh please forgive me for the excessive song lyric usage recently.  I sort of hate myself for it.... but I just watched this live version of Ryan Adams' Oh My Sweet Carolina, and it made me cry more than anyone should ever cry in a public place ever. I actually had to stop watching. Self-sustenance. Shake it out.

Home sweet home

I'm in Birmingham for a few nights. I have mixed feelings about it. It's obvs really nice to be home and see my momma and my dad and Queen B., and to sleep in my own bed and hear the crickets chirping at night - I forget how loud they are - and smell the rain. Nothing smells like the South after a good rain.

But being down here brings back a lot of good memories of me and A, ones that are too painful to think about since our recent breakup. We're doing that weird post-breakup thing where we both know we need to be apart, but neither of us is ready slash wants to let the other person go. We keep texting and e-mailing and leaving voicemails and dragging this thang right on out, despite the fact that we broke up more than two weeks ago. Not that two weeks is all that long or anything, it's really not. It just sucks that we both keep leading the other person on when at the end of the day the truth remains: now is not a good time. It's not a good time for me to commit myself to him, and it's not a good time for me to split my life between two cities. It's not a good time for me to be able to trust him. It's just not the right time, which sucks because we still care about each other a lot.

So much that really letting the other person go is something neither of us seems to yet be capable of. Secretly, I'm okay with that. Because I still feel happy when I get a text from him, or when he calls me his girl, or when I hear his voice. Ugh. Turns out love isn't enough to keep a relationship alive. No one tells you that when you're little.

Still, I feel thankful and am trying to focus on the amazing things in my life. My one true love, New York, and my newly budding love for Harlem. My family. My friends. My job. My blog. Summer. Loving myself. Life.

Until next time.

The Harlem singing man

I have a singing man. I first heard him soon after I moved into my apartment in East Harlem, but somehow I have never blogged about him. This is a massive oversight on my part, which I am now correcting.

Basically there's a guy who walks by my apartment late at night, usually sometime between 10 and midnight, signing along (I assume) to his iPod or whatevz. Apparently he loves current pop music as well as pop music from the 80s and 90s. I've heard him four times now, so it's not like an every night thing, his walking/singing routine, but it's common enough that I like to think of him as my singing man. Here is his playlist so far:

Missing - Everything But The Girl


Cry Me A River - Justin Timberlake


No Scrubs - TLC


Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper

Apparently Cyndi doesn't want me to have fun, because she won't let me embed her videos. Mmmmmmbooface.

Anyway, I will update whenever I hear THSM again. Every time I hear him, I am pleasantly reminded of the songs of my childhood slash high school experiences. Speaking of, how UHMAZING is Justin Timberlake? I had never seen that performance, but it just reinforces my undying love for him. Siiiiiiiigh.

In other news, I'm coming home TOMORROW for a long weekend. The South is beckoning, y'all. And I'm making a one-night trip to Oxford Thursday-Friday. I'm not going to lie-I'm really excited. I'm sure I'll go out Thursday night. I got a new dress that I plan on debuting. Mebbe I'll see some uh you bitches out and about.

Until next time.