Cabbages and Queens

Dear Katsufrakis,

The Sun Also Rises in Your Pants

The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Your Pants

The Sigh in Your Pants

The Elegance of the Hedgehog in Your Pants

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in Your Pants

I Capture the Castle in Your Pants

Thriving in Your Pants

A Long Way Gone in Your Pants

The Idiot in Your Pants

Horton Hears a Who in Your Pants

The Sneetches in Your Pants

Little Women in Your Pants

P.S.

I listened to/read this commencement speech by David Foster Wallace and  you need to read/listen to this because it’s beautiful and I love it and so will you. http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

Dear Katsufrakis,

My feelings this afternoon are better expressed in this letter I just wrote to my uncle who’s in prison right now, so I’m just going to copy and paste it here. (This is the  pre-self-censoring version- I’m going to edit it and send a different version that’s more likely to get past the people that read his mail- so I apologize to anyone who’s offended by my language. My opinion is that there’s enough bullcrap in this world to necessitate some cursing to ease the pain).

Dear Uncle Jake,

So this afternoon I was scooping myself some ice cream and I had to go into the bathroom to cry because I suddenly thought, you know, there are people who can’t have ice cream. There are people who can’t have ice cream and who don’t have sweaters for when it’s cold and who are locked up in prisons and fucking concentration camps and get tortured and abused and children who are dying of rotavirus because they don’t have clean fucking water. Innocent people, guilty people, but they’re people. They’re fucking human and the only reason this shit happens is that we can’t just respect that. And then I thought to myself, what the hell is wrong with you? Your own uncle is sitting in some concrete cell in Arizona where he can’t get mailed jalapenos and you haven’t written him a letter in years- not even a goddamn letter because you can’t deal with the emotional baggage of writing to another human being just because you never write to him. Do you understand how fucked up that is?

So here I am. Writing to you because I hate the fact that your humanity can be denied and that I’m a part of that denial. How are you? Do you still feed the pigeons sometimes? Do you remember the letter I sent you in code about my caterpillar when I was eight? I do. I miss you and I think about you and I love you and you’re my uncle and you’re a human being and nothing anyone ever says or does will ever change that. Ever.

I have the birthday card you made me when I was born and it’s beautiful and thoughtful and remarkably human.

I remember playing cards with you. I don’t remember much of you but I remember your hugs and the pigeons and playing cards and the letter you sent in code and the letter you sent a few years a go that I never replied to because I didn’t know how to.

I don’t know what to tell you, so I’ll just share a few snippets of my human existence so far and maybe when/if you write back I’ll get some snippets of yours and we’ll find some way to share this life despite the miles and fences between us and I’ll start writing regularly and we’ll be like actual people.

I fell out of my chair in Spanish yesterday. My favorite shoes ever are the hiking boots I stole from my dad. I fence with some lovely people and I eat lunch with my Sociology teacher, whose existence basically just validates everything that I am and everything that I think. I’m on my school’s debate team, and the other kids are wonderful humans and we write silly ditties and rules make jokes about nihilism and AIDS. I have a crush on a girl on my fencing team and she says words like “adorabibble” and she used to walk around on all fours for much longer than is generally considered developmentally appropriate and she has the cutest collie dog named Tashtego after the Native American from Moby Dick that falls into a barrel. One of my favorite books of all time is Winkie by Clifford Chase and I think you’d like it, too and I promise to find a way to get a copy to you. I wrote a letter to my county commissioner about the anti-gay marriage amendment being proposed to North Carolina’s constitution and my Civics teacher’s husband wants to publish it. I have nightmares about getting my math tests back. I’m addicted to Youtube and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who and Star Trek and books that have words in them and I’ve met Dave Eggers, so I can pretty much die happy.

And I miss you.

Loads of very human love,

Me

P.S. (to Katsufrakis)

Yes, I am just going to ignore the fact that the whole “daily update” thing is pretty much a joke now; and yes I do realize that by typing this I am doing the opposite of ignoring it. My logic ran away with a band of caterpillars.

Dear Katsufrakis,

Given the excruciating uneventfulness of today, I refuse to actually write anything because it’s late and I don’t feel like it and I am just that sort of lazy bitca.

Instead, have this:

P.S.

I promise I will have legitimate things to say soon.

Dear Katsufrakis,

Autobiography has always been an aspiration of mine which I’ve never really managed to get around to realizing. Because starting a diary is hard, have this brief and crappy bit of free verse. I despise bad poetry, and hope to God that I never write poetry seriously (i.e. as something other than an excuse to write badly organized prose), but anyway, here is an introduction to the Chronicles of Me:

When I was younger

I sniffed an entire petunia up my nose

For hours I snorted into the toilet

Then I sneezed and the snot-coated misery was gone.

Last Friday I shook the milk carton

Forgetting I’d already taken off the lid

The kitchen was a pearly puddle of milky appliances and countertops

I had to change out of my Slaughterhouse-Five T-shirt

I am a bumbling human.

I only hope she finds my awkwardness endearing*.

*So you know how a couple months ago I said I wasn’t gay? Hello, gay now!

In my opinion, “plan” is the most hilarious of all English-Spanish cognates. There is absolutely no factual or logical background for this opinion of mine. I just thought I’d point out the fact that the word “plan” becomes Spanish as soon as you put an “el” in front of it.

So, here’s “el plan” for my future posts on this blog. Since I am a newly anointed vlogger with a pre-existing wordpress, I was recently faced with the universal dilemma of the multi-media-creator-of-internet-content-person: What do I talk about where?

Since I feel it’s important to me to have a purely textual forum in which I may express my thoughts and feelings, I want to keep this blog. However, I’ve decided that in order to increase the frequency of my posts here, henceforth my thoughts on “topics” will be expressed via youtube, and this blog will become what essentially amounts to a public diary. My posts will be addressed to Katsufrakis, who is my laptop. These will (God willing) be posted daily. It is now really early and I just almost spelled early with a “u” so I think it’s time I turned in but you will hear from me later today with my first diary entry.

Oi! With the poodles are ready!

That is all.

I’m on youtube! Go watch me have absolutely no idea how to in front of camera. Comment and subscribe so that you can inflate my delicate ego!

  

To fear or not to fear? That is the question.

There is no truth. There’s just what you believe.

—Joss Whedon

I took a wonderful stroll yesterday with my sociology teacher in which I unloaded a lot of baggage about the Circumstances and how I feel lost because I don’t feel like I know anything and I don’t understand why geometry is such a rutting pain in the backside. I left wonderfully serene- full of the same sort of serenity I’ve only felt when praying in school courtyards at debate tournaments and walking past Chritmas lights at night after a good cry. Because not only were my feelings and opinions honored and validated, but when I finished he looked conspiratorially around and said, “I’m going to tell you something I’d never even bring up to another student… just because… just,”here he lowered his voice to a whisper, “believe in the power of prayer… er… meditation… whatever. Because that’s something that’s real.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” I replied. “Because faith does seem to be the only thing I have left to believe in, and know that I believe in… It’s just, that’s hard, too ’cause I’ve kind of been having a sort of faith crisis lately.”

“The funny thing about faith,” he said, “Is that it always seems to bring about a crisis of some sort. I’ve been going through my own thing, lately- trying to sort through what’s true and what’s just crap from the institutional aspect of religion… because there’s some stuff that’s really real, and true; and there’s other stuff that was put there in the interest of an institution.”

God is there. I know that much. And I know that there are things that can’t be explained, and that there are special things, really real things like prayer that might be realler than anything else. But that comes with religion. And religion is scary, and hard, and confusing. Because there’s the never-ending issue of faith.

For example, I recently began questioning my sexuality when someone referred to one of my very close friends as “your girlfriend”. It all began with the realization that I liked the way that sounded. I liked the idea. And I thought a lot about it, and about what factors might contribute to my feeling that way since I’d never really had reason to question my sexuality. And as I was thinking about it, and wondering if I might be even more like Willow Rosenberg than I initially suspected, I was scared. And confused. And tried to stop the wheels from turning, because I didn’t like where they were going. Because Muslims aren’t allowed to be gay. Even though I’d never understood how love could be a sin. But I never once doubted the fact that I was a Muslim, in every sense of the word, that I was willing to surrender to the will of God. I just wasn’t sure how those two convictions could coexist without my turning into the barber who shaves only those who do not shave themselves (I might have butchered that right there, but it sounds impossible enough to me).  I have a lot of problems with female gender roles, but I’m not sure it’s because I lean toward womenfolk. I liked the way “my girlfriend” sounded  more than I liked the sound of “my boyfriend” because of the implied power, possession, authority. I liked the thought of my romantic partner being mine, rather than my being his. Because the feelings associated with “my boyfriend” are feelings of submission, of having been won over, of losing some of my autonomy. Naturally, that’s not quite as appealing.

But what my sociology teacher said yesterday made me realize that when I question religion, I’m not being blasphemous or arrogant- I’m not pitting my opinions against God’s. I have the freedom to interpret the Qur’an in a way that doesn’t necessarily jive with what the experts and scholars say. Because they belong to an institution. They are human, like me. What they have learned, they have learned from people who had political, power-motivated agendas. The fact that I don’t believe that God hates f**s doesn’t mean I’m challenging God. Of course, I always knew that.

Any time somebody tells me I’m going to go to hell on the grounds that I’m not christian, I tell them that I like to think that God values one’s compliance with His proposed archetype of righteousness than one’s rationale for doing so, and if they tell me I’m wrong and God is going to send good people to hell for not believing in Him then I mention that that’s not really the type of person I want to spend eternity with anyway.

It’s ok to be gay. It’s ok not to be gay. Either way, God is there. And he cares. And he listens. And he loves me. And I’m never really lost, and it’s ok that I’m not exactly staying afloat in geometry at the moment. “I am the only person who can change the world the way I can. Not because I’m so special, but because everyone has something only they can do for the world, something they, personally, were sent for.”

Don't warn the tadpoles!

I just read something on Sience not Fiction that made me think a lot about reality; and so I started thinking about my emotional reality and my lack of ability to accept and live in it and the way I drive myself insane with cyclical feelings and second arrows and whatnot. But in thinking about my emotional reality in the context of basic reality versus virtual reality, I had an epiphany.

If I’m ok with there being a world in which I can control everything, in which my choices don’t need to be second-guessed, in which I am basically able to do, be, say, and make anything I want without affecting anyone else; If I’m ok with everything my virtual self can say and do, then why can’t I accept my brain as MY emotional space. My personal other world where nobody can even see what I’m thinking and feeling, let alone judge it. Where I don’t affect anybody else, and therefore am entitled to everything in that space.

Nothing I feel can ever be wrong.

Nothing I think can ever be wrong.

Nothing I dream can ever be wrong.

Nothing I imagine can ever be wrong.

Nothing I hope can ever be wrong.

Reality in my head is MY reality. Nobody else is allowed to log into my emotional account and alter my world. Only I have the password. If I think it, then it is true for me, period. Nothing anybody says or implies about what I think matters. That’s what they think, and they should keep it to themselves.

It’s ok to be ok when other people aren’t. That’s how I feel and nobody can tell me it’s wrong. They can, however, get the eff off of my emotional lawn.

I will see my world how I want to, and no power in the ‘verse can stop me.

I am the 20%. Cooler.

  If I had a gentleman caller…

We’d pull over on the highway and go for long walks in the woods, hand in hand. We’d play kickball in the rain with our friends. We’d hide in closets to eat raw cookie dough without being judged. We’d dance in grocery store aisles. He’d be awkward and clumsy and have a goofy smile and a Xander-esque sense of humor.

We would cuddle and watch Firefly and Friendship is Magic and Buffy and Top Gear and Monty Python for hours. We would read comics together. He would get all of my pop-culture references and laugh at all my jokes. He would introduce me to the wider world of gaming beyond The Hobbit for Playstation 2, and he wouldn’t judge me for my lack of exposure. We would stay up late reading the internets together. He would fence beautifully and I’d always beat him, but only by one touch. And he wouldn’t mind.

We would be big damn heroes together. There would be plenty of chivalrous punching. There would be a total re-enactment of that episode of Firefly where Mal punches that jerk that called Inara a… woman of easy virtue (but in cruder terms) and then beats him in a fencing duel like a total badass and then there’s that part where he stabs him and says that line about how mercy is the mark of a great man that makes my knees go weak every time.  And we would teach all the bullies out there a lesson. And we would make giant cauldrons of soup and feed everybody who was hungry. And we would mess with all the corporate douches who capitalize on other people’s poverty. And we would go around saving people and sticking it to the Alliance- I mean man. We would be total Robin Hoods. With swords.

His love would give me faith. I would grow strong. I would hold on to the rope of God and I would pray sincerely and fervently all the time. I would believe that my prayers were heard. I would believe that God cared. I would feel love from and for God and all of His creation. I would be grounded, humbled, and one with everything. I would believe in myself. I would believe that I was lovable. I would feel safe and warm and loved and like I belonged. I would be able to sort through all my complexes and fix all my broken parts and be at peace with my whole family. I wouldn’t need to run away from the family mess. He would fix me.

I would be witty and intelligent and better than everyone else at most things. I would be delightful both to look at and to sing with. I would enchant everyone I met with my superhuman kindness and good looks, I would awe them with my strength, inspire them with my wisdom, brighten their lives with my wonderful quips. Birds would help me get dressed in the mornings.

All the boys would want to take me in a manly fashion, because I would be pretty (but I would be loyal to my gentleman). And yet; I would not have to be conventionally effeminate. I would be gallant and brave, I would save lives, I would build things and lift stuff and fix cars. I would throw a football farther than any star quarterback, I would out-fence all the boys. I would be able to do fifty chin ups in one go. I would sucker-punch scumbags for doing scummy things that merit punching. George Bush would have several shiners from me. As would Cheney. And Ahmedinejad. And every jerk who has ever bullied a kid on the playground.

We would climb trees together and sit among the leaves and look at the toy-world below and talk about nothing and everything. We would snuggle up under blankets on snowy afternoons before a fire and read to each other. We would go for walks in the wintry woods and he would give me his coat and I’d give him my mittens. We would watch musicals and mock them but secretly we’d know that there was a void in us that was filled by the spontaneous singing. Sometimes we would pretend we were in a musical and sing songs that applied to our situations.

We would have a bird named Jacques and a cat named Miss Kitty Fantastico. We would eat ice cream for breakfast on rainy mornings. I would wear my dockers to our wedding. And we would adopt and foster tons of kids and give them a real home. We would teach them all to fence and they’d join the bigger family that I’ve found in fencing. We would have an old volkswagen bus and we’d call her Serenity. We would help people for a living and I would write revolutionary comic books, comics that redefined the medium forever, and donate all the profit to charity.

I would have my own home. If I had a gentleman-caller.

UPDATE: So, wrong pronouns, same wistfulness.

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.     —Dawn Summers

 

Not to carry its weight on your shoulders, not to escape it, not to save it, but simply to live in it. To accept your impotence and watch the cruel juxtaposition of suffering and opulence all around you and do what you can and be okay because you really and truly believe that God is taking care of us. You believe it, even as you look out and see genocide and hunger and war and poverty and Jersey Shore and are completely powerless. Thanks, but I’d much rather go on carrying this cross down this lonely winding country road and screw the chiropractor because this backache is nothing compared to the heartache of being utterly powerless in the face of injustice. But maybe, one day, when I grow up… I’ll be brave enough, strong enough, to lay down my burden and trust in God. Someday. Someday when things are better.

But I’ve been mostly happy this summer. Mostly. I’ve pushed my feelings about the mess the world is in to the back of my mind and enjoyed my new upper-middle class spoiled-ness. I fenced as much as possible. And watched Buffy when I couldn’t. And in the few moments where I was forced to be alone with my thoughts, I cried. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that in an imperfect world, all acts of pure goodness are equal. That there is no way to change things in a big way. That I can’t be Buffy. Even Buffy couldn’t really save the world. She could prevent its impending destruction by supernatural forces, but she couldn’t save us from war and poverty and all the natural forces of destruction we create for ourselves. We don’t all have the luxury of living on the Hellmouth where we can use our superpowers to fulfill our need for a sense of purpose every day. Some of us have to be human. Some of us have to go to school or to work and work as hard as we can because maybe, just maybe, we’ll get somewhere and then if we work even harder from that point, we’ll get somewhere better, and maybe, just maybe, when we get there we’ll be able to help someone else. And, as Anya so eloquently says, “we have no purpose that unites us, so we just drift around, blundering through life until we die, which we know is coming, yet every single one of us is surprised when it happens to them. We’re incapable of thinking about what we want beyond the moment. We kill each other, which is clearly insane… and yet here’s the thing. When it’s something that really matters, we fight. I mean, we’re lame morons for fighting, but we do! We never… we never quit.” But do we really never quit? When the cameras are off and we’re out of character and the writers are at home sipping tea and we’re just living our lives, don’t we sometimes give up? Even when it really matters? Isn’t that why the world is and always will be the way it is? Because we’re lame morons for fighting, and we know it. Because we could always be reading the internets instead of striving for some lost cause like idiots. Because that makes more sense.

But it isn’t about making sense. Being human involves many things, but making sense is not one of them. How do you explain the thrill of fighting for a lost cause? Why is it that when we know we’re going to lose, we take that much more pleasure out of frustrating our opponent? Why does every bead of sweat on his brow feel like a medal, and every touch we score feel like a winning a war and not a battle? (I’m sorry, am I speaking Fencer again?) Humanity is a beautifully twisted thing. You see, we all have this little flickering bit of innocence somewhere deep down inside of us, and when things get really, really bad; when we reach the final battle scene, it leads us out onto the field and arms us with something that is either faith or delusion- but either way it’s frakking powerful. Why should it matter that it takes literal impending doom to ignite the flames of innocence in most of us? Why shouldn’t those of us who can see the urgency of injustice and all the worlds that need saving wield the swords of compassion-albeit clumsily- and take on the whole world?  I may be alone, but as long as I can see suffering around me, I will walk through the gosh-darn fire for my fellow humans, even if all I can save is one measly scrap of happiness for someone else. Even if it means going to grad school.* Which I really do not want to do.

*This is PSAT anxiety talking- I’m thinking way farther ahead than is necessary or possible because I have no tangible goal in sight and that is what caused me to need to write myself this motivational speech. I don’t even know what I’m going to major in yet. Granted, I’m a sophomore in high school. I just don’t know what I’m getting through high school for, exactly. How is this a step farther in the direction of opening a foster home? And high school is not something one can screw up the willpower to get through just for the fancy diploma. It needs to fit into the master plan. But anyway.