One year later.

Grandpa is watching me as I scoop up the dust of his body and scatter it across America. Parts of him are floating in creeks and lakes and waterfalls. Parts of him are blowing in the red desert. Parts of him are drifting between the fiery leaves of eastern Autumn. But even as his body dissipates, pouring between my fingers, we feel the entirety of him, propping us up, we feel the full weight of his absence leaning on our shoulders.

One year after his death, he appears to me in a dream, smiling mysteriously. He has a tiny plant in his hands and even though there are suspicious eyes peering at us on all sides in this shadowy underworld, I squat and dig my fingers into the soil. I dig a small hole in the earth and sprinkle a handful of his ashes in the opening. Grandpa hands me the plant, and I tuck it in, covering and patting its roots gently. It's the smallest little thing, but it feels important — he's picked the exact spot for this unassuming little plant to flourish, its tiny roots pressing through the rubble of his bones.

It's been one year, Grandpa, but your presence has yet to diminish.

Things that are wonderful.

Seeing your trajectory in life slowly take shape in front of you, but still reveling in endless possibility, being available for the little things, the first blossoms of spring, picnics, having a beer with an old friend, knowing pay day is just around the corner, transplanting seedlings, the anticipation of summer produce, people watching, animal watching, hawks, baby goats, slowly winning a llama’s trust, sore forearms, sore shoulders, texts that make you laugh out loud, stumbling across strange and wonderful art projects, understanding your dreams, validation, reading books for fun, sharing books, being okay with uncertainty, lists, having an endlessly loving grandmother, the kind of nostalgia that makes you glad you have memories, day planners, feeling organized, pesto, small space living, the sounds of Bob Marley and rain all mixed up together, terms of endearment, personal growth, reaching.

Solitude.

Solitude means tilting back and saying anything to the ceiling, means taking inventory of yourself, prodding out the weak spots and mending yourself like a sock, peeling at all those other skins until you’re nothing but bones and stories. Being alone means finding some grain of ambition, some little coal of desire underneath all your ropey necessities and habits, slicing down to the tiny thing that makes you open your eyes in the morning, makes you go into the world despite all the things that scare you, despite that feeling that you will be found out, that those weak spots are bleeding into the water, despite the daily inundation of dread, despite the heaviness of wearing skin thick enough for other to see and feel you, despite having to exist as a series of arbitrary facts and figures that are irrelevant to the boiled down jelly of your essence.

Solitude means answering that ominous knock that comes in the midnight of your unconscious, means listening to the wavering decibels of your own voice; being alone means you don’t have to hold yourself in contrast to the other, to scrutinize the purple flaws of your skin and the achy gaps in your character, to count the lapses of judgment accumulated in your history, which you wear all across your shoulders, tangled in your hair. Instead, being alone means letting all the events of your past, all your loud regrets rest, simply exist in stillness, factual and whole and okay.

Witch & whale.

I am in some rusty vessel bobbing through the blue, isolated, enclosed, and in the shadows and hallways there is a resounding throaty growl, gripping, grabbing, and filling us all up with blackness, blackness that spreads, blackness, filling up our pupils and spreading to blot out our eyes. Bobbing, rocking, swaying, queasy seasick dread, eventually it’ll come for me. I can see out across the water, something looming, huge and gray beneath the surface, huge and gray, and waiting.

When she comes for me, I feel myself slipping towards the edge, all that vast blue looming heavy beneath me, ready to swallow me up, the yawning mouth, the abyss, the endless, endless depths, black as those iris-less eyes, darkness that reaches back into my soul and finds itself, waiting in the bitter bile of my secrets, all the failures stored up and waiting to pour out.

And as the whole rusty ship comes creaking down, tilting very slowly so that gravity is turned on its side and we are leaned over, backs parallel to the shimmering sea, parallel to the gray hulking mass, feet still touching the deck, and our hair spilling all around our faces, and all of us tumbling to certain death, I suddenly know that I am more than the sum of all that blackness and I push against it until I am staring into gray-blue eyes with tiny inky pinprick pupils, all emptied out. Everything evaporates.

In the next moment, I am walking away, huddled up and hurried. I encounter a person on the path that asks me where I’m headed, and I tell them I’m headed as far away from all that ominous water as I can go. Oh that, they say with a shrug, that’ll dry up any day now.

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Decompression.

Spontaneous night drive, long hours in the dark talking deep and winding through San Francisco and up and east to party in a vineyard barn, full of mannequins and lights, mirrors and beautiful strangers in fur and feathers, spilled wine and cupcakes, dogs wandering through and picking at scraps, music and fire, paint and cold air, and then Santa Rosa at 5am, bleary eyed father and Karen with blankets, waking up late and lazy and walking through the brick buildings in Railroad Square with iced chai, tree-dappled sunlight and a screw lodged solidly in my tire, goop and gunk and air, father fixes and we’re off headed down through yellow hills that look soft to touch and into that panicky San Fran traffic, back into boots and fur, and expensive IPA and big search lights, snakes and dogs and babies with head phones, and a trio of dancing men in velvet and knickers and leggings, strutting and painting and dancing in bright lights, laughing at the silent disco, headphones on green or blue, and everyone convulsing, so silly in the silence but so earnest when you’re tuning in, lifting up, and then winding home down the 17, all darkness and empty belly and thinking about what it means to be home and what it means to have a suitcase in the back of your car.

For Grandpa.

Grandpa, I don’t know how to say goodbye.

It’s been nearly a year since we rolled you out of that hospital, into the dusty Mexican heat and soared back home, sweaty and uncertain. I remember the big black transparency the doctor showed us; we knew so little.

We’re all trying to look at this time as a blessing – these are the goodbyes you wish you’d said when someone is gone, but they don’t tell you how to go about interacting with someone so differently after a lifetime of habit.

You are the steady heartbeat in the center of this family – something so much a part of us that often you don’t realize how much work is being done to keep us all afloat. What do you say to your heart when it begins to falter? How can you tell it all that it has done, all that is has made possible?

I wish I were more like you, Grandpa. You always seem so certain, so strong, so true to exactly who you are. When I see old photos of you, it’s hard to imagine the other chapters of your life. To me it seems you have always been a big bearded man with wild hair and a mischievous grin, a laugh carried through cigar-scented smoke. No matter how big we’ve all grown, you have never grown any smaller by comparison.

I remember when we were driving back from the airport after we retuned from Mexico – everyone was so anxious to hear from you, and someone handed you the phone to say hi to Candace, I think. You spoke briefly and then said, “I love you,” handed the phone back, and asked, “Who was that?” And we laughed but you just shrugged and said, “I knew it was family, I love all of my family.” That’s exactly who you are to me.

It’s so hard to say goodbye, to find all the important things to say before our time is up, but I know you know the most important thing; that I love you. I think our relationship has always been largely non-verbal, it’s never been a complicated thing. It’s just as simple as love.

My first memories of you don’t even fit into a story, I just remember being in the old house on Brockhurst, and a feeling like a bubbling over of laughter, the kind that comes out of a child in a gleeful scream when they’re about to be tickled.

I don’t really know what you believe, or even what I believe, but I feel certain that you will be okay. I hope you are filled with that feeling of overflowing laughter; that you dissolve into it. I hope you get to see us, and that the next chapter is as adventure filled as this one. I hope you get to bring all this love with you.

Tressa

Grandma.

Grandpa is snoring with a blanket over his head.

“He’s in Hawaii,” Grandma tells us.

Lately he’s been going places that his body will never again reach. This afternoon we visited with his sisters and he told them in his low, quavering voice that he would be going golfing tomorrow. When he needs to be taken to the bathroom, to be hauled and shoved and cleaned and undressed and dressed, he goes to Hawaii, again.

Grandma sits back on the couch as we talk about the strange balancing act her life has become. We talk about death with dry eyes, it’s such a commonplace topic these days, now that Grandpa has begun to hear things that no one else hears, see things that are not visible to anyone else.

“In the hospice booklet they say illusions,” Grandma says, “I say illusions my ass, but to each their own.”

Last week, when Mom, Sis and Grandma took Grandpa on what may very well have been his last trip, he told Mom to go back into the hallway to see a painting that looked like me, but it wasn’t there.

Now, Grandma sits back on the couch and looks very tired.

“When people ask, you know, what I’m going to do when he passes,” she says, thoughtful, “I think I’d just like to rent a room somewhere…and just sleep for a week.” She shakes her head a little. “It sounds funny, but that’s what I’d like to do. No cell phones, nothing, just sleep for a long time.”

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Grass stains.

Little brother had five medals hanging from his neck on colored ribbons when he squared off on the grass for one last competition. His opponent was a tall, tan boy; undecorated. And as they wrestled, little brother paused for a moment, thinking of his medals and the boy’s barren neck, and wondering if he should crumble and let the other walk, victorious. Instead he brought the boy to his knee, and walked away with six medals clanking from his chest.

But in the car, winding home as the sun slipped away, he was not victorious but ashamed and he cried for the other boy, imagining the defeated boy in his own mother’s car, wondering if the boy's friends would tease him, wondering if he, too, would cry when he arrived home with nothing but grass stains to show for the day.

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How to be.

Here is me being useless and surrendering to the futility of my ant-hill life. I guess we’re all going nowhere, busy in carpeted rooms that smell like popcorn, that sit against our souls in greenish despair — we’re all going nowhere, going to the copy room and running our fingers over hot pages of meaningless text that we’ll press into some other hands and later, come home to our lovers, and have nothing to show. Working up to, working on, and never leaving, spinning in the endless spiral of our old stories, and getting lost in the familiar grooves of our once-upon-a-times, and here we are, clacking away and muttering with sore throats, stapling and shaking hands and trading facts. The fact is that we are sitting very still in all this claustrophobic motion, hoping for a way out. Fuck.

There’s a chance of showers, dust storms, and a welling up in my chest that will make me cry small tears and open and close my hands, wordless with desire and nowhere to put it. I am not enough people, I am only me, bruised shins and freckles, and no idea how the fuck to be. I remember sitting in the temple and wondering if I was comfortable, even in my own head, reverberating with the music of gongs and the sigh and murmur of all the sad fucking people, so sad, so heavy, with the burden of our limited years, all the dying, every day, all the living, all the choosing. And it feels so hard, but it’s the only thing we’ve ever done.

Outside the parking lot is bright, and there’s my car, cracked windshield and cluttered seats, rattling speakers and streaked windows, and a few things that I carry around from here to there, and back, spending long hours sitting and letting the Californian landscape rush past on either side. What the fuck am I even waiting for? More time to elapse behind a window, with all my fears bunching up around my bones until they grow solid and unmovable, imaginary zeros to march away from my bank account, despite my lack of motivation? I am not supposed to be this petrified person with a life behind walls, with boxes and stale letters, am I?

Gauze.

All my memories feel like gauzed wrapped up around my brain, pushed up behind my eyes. Who is what and who is who are things I no longer remember. It’s all just thick and white, all the years muffled like there are so many curtains fluttering in layers before my eyes.

Yesterday.

Good morning, my name is Tressa. This is the first day of the rest of my fucking life. Outside, there are loud chickens, screaming from behind the fence. Mishka is pawing at her bone, trying to pull an elusive treat out of its hollow center, where Casey shoved it before he left to skateboard. There is a wax stain on the tablecloth I sewed. There is a passing ambulance. There are two cinnamon buns growing cold on a baking dish next to the stove. There is warm coffee in the pot, and cold coffee in my mug, the green mug, which I do not like.

Today I am thinking of taking Mishka for a walk. I am thinking about going to the bookstore, or the library, but the thought is also exhausting. I am thinking of going to the art store, or walking, or staying.

I wonder what other people do all day. I wonder if I should cut my fingernails.

Other things I’m considering are: turning the tablecloth to hide the stain, making small books with scrap paper, going back to sleep. I don’t think that’s an option because I’ve had too much coffee, and besides, if I sleep in the middle of the day, I’ll wake up with a headache.

Everyday adventures.

It's funny how when it comes down to it, I know what's important. What's important is love. I know that time is limited and life is unpredictable and ultimately all I can do is make sure to squeeze everything out of every little moment I'm given, yet in any given moment I am worried about thousands of things that don't matter. But every so often I have a moment of clarity and I just want to hug the earth and myself and every person I've ever met because the sun is out, and there is kale growing in garden, and I can play loud music and dance around the house, and my dog is ridiculous and my family loves me. 

The duality of my brain is amazing and terrifying to me sometimes. I have so much love for humans, but half the time I'm terrified of them. I spend so much time burrowing into my own brain and getting lost in my own flaws that I forget how wonderful is can be to experience other people. There's no way of putting it that isn't silly. I think I often come across as an extrovert, and in the right circumstances I definitely am, but there's a huge part of me that is totally petrified by my own fabricated fears. What am I always so afraid of?

So much of the time, within the confines of everyday life, I find it so hard to reach out to people and to connect and make friends and relax and be myself, but when I get outside of that routine and enter into the realm of inhibition and wildness, into travel mode or festival mode, and I feel all my knots come undone and I'm able interact with people in a way that is totally different, that is totally genuine and uninhibited. I don't know why I can't do that every day.

It's nice to be aware of some of the differences within myself. This summer I'm going to have so much time on my hands, I'm really hoping I can use it to find fulfilling things to do and find people to be around that will pull me out of myself a little. In Spain, I was so aware of the necessity of taking advantage of every opportunity that presented itself, and I think because of that, I was able to give myself up to the universe and to the possibilities of life in a way that was really freeing and exciting. I want to start looking at every day as an adventure again.

What We Have

Now we have four walls, creamy white, yellow curtains and an overgrown front yard, spicy with nasturtiums. Home is a marble, rolling across our dark wooden floors, home is our ragtag free-cycle furniture, the yellow striped chair hanging threads, often sandy. We have put up posters, dangling beer-can cut outs, and painted skateboards, shadow boxes with candles and our tiny handful of DVDs; little things that feel familiar.

At sunset our bedroom glows green, slats of light across our matching black and white desks, pockmarked and covered in stacks of poems and long proofs. Our dog, the color of toasted marshmallows, sprawls across our striped bed, and blinks with lazy yellow eyes. Bits of fur may gather like tumbleweed in the corners, but we have animal print, books, big mugs, and a good coffee grinder.

We have a fraying home made tablecloth and silly cups with stories, your grandmother’s clay jar full of sugar, and outside our lettuce grows big and bitter. We have disorganized cilantro and kale, snap peas and bok choy. We have wriggling pink worms in a shady box, covered in newspaper. We have a blue shed.

We have a globe and a broken typewriter. We have secret boxes beneath the bed. We have a sewing machine and a pile of fabric and yarn, and a dresser with stupid knobs. We have Christmas lights around the doorway, and half a bottle of laundry detergent; we have our whole lives ahead of us.

California, I love you.

California, I love you, You are all green and brown and purple, dotted hillsides and trees feathered out like amazing plumage. Up in Humboldt, strangely friendly hippies come out of their houses and RVs with stocky babies, full of good tidings and dark warnings.

Mishka rubs her muzzle in the dark soil and bounds with incredible buoyancy over fallen branches. Later, she will curl up on a mossy stump, nestled between the redwoods, and take a nap, looking royal and exhausted. We will dig a fire pit and burn dry wood and pine cones, their sap sizzling as they glow black, red, white, and then dissipate into the crisp air.

We've brought too much food, not enough booze, and wonder if we should ration our beer or start drinking cinnamon whiskey at dusk. The sky goes cold and we hang a bright lantern, drinking around the fire, and in the damp morning we drink watery coffee and seek out little patches of sunlight to defrost in. I change my clothes on a sunny hill and marvel at the soft sun all across my bare shoulders.

After scrambling eggs on a wobbling single burner, we gather bread and water and blankets and go tromping down a trail marked with big arrows made of sticks on the forest floor. The ground is soft with layers of fallen leaves and crackling twigs. We weave between skinny saplings and dark madrones, climbing beneath fallen trunks, and above branches that grasp at our ankles.

Up on the hilltop we spread our blanket in a sunny clearing and sprawl and explore and snack. Mishka disappears into the rustling bushes and emerges grinning and dirty, her long tongue lolling. We paint each others' faces, laying on our backs with our eyes closed, soft strokes turning us vibrant blue purple, yellow and red, stark white, smooth brown.

The sun droops, shadows stretching long across the yellow-brown leaves, and we gather up and head back down the hill, scattered in clumps. When we arrive at our spot, aglow with late afternoon sunshine, the rickety log benches, the still fire pit, our green and blue tents side by side, the little table perched in the shade, if feels strangely familiar. We spread out, building a fire, reading, gathering bread and pesto, slicing tomatoes. We cook paninis in a cast iron fireplace press, and eat them in little shared pieces. They are sticky and melty, warm and crisp.

California, I love you, and the golden singing treetops high up and green, while down below we crouch low to the cold packed dirt, listening to the crackle and hiss of the fire. The pine cones hold on tight, and the ashes come floating down, elusive and white.

I love the cold apricot ale at dusk, and layers of smoke-smelling clothing, bundled in hats and thick socks. California, I love you, and the promise of spring and the promise of pasta. I love you and the painted faces of my friends, wavering behind a plume of smoke across the fire, and my lover, with his hands on my shoulders, and my dog, gnawing on pine cones and bringing us twisted sticks, triumphant.

Springtime Drizzle

Caffeine, dried up in the back part of my skull and aching in my teeth. The sky is heavy and full, pregnant with all our discontent, will all our folded back dreams seeping up through the exhausted skin of the clouds. When will it all open up and come crashing back down upon our insubstantial shoulders?

In the springtime drizzle, we curl and unfurl, hoping to be entered by sunshine, to be kissed by indulgent bees. What else is in the wind? Our desires are too big to be buried beneath soil, we come creeping out onto the surface, tendrils needy as infants. Show me the white underbelly. Show me the ways in which you are not a tree, after all, but a small thing, a forgotten acorn.

Despite wet socks and unrestful sleep, we come out thirsty, bones cracking for more— keep shifting the earth from one place to the next, keeping sifting through the dust of me for some little treasure, amongst the moldy tea bags, the greenish orange peels, and the slick avocado pits. Somewhere is a soul, I think, waiting to be loosened with the curious fingers of summer, with the feverish call of the road.

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Easter egg endeavors.

Normally I think Easter is pretty lame. Conceptually it's a weird mixture of religion, zombies, rabbits, chickens, and candy that doesn't really make sense to me, plus as a kid I hated Easter egg hunts because everyone was always super intense about it and it didn't seem worth all that vigorous searching just to get some gross blue hard boiled eggs or like barely a handful of jelly beans. The best Easter celebration I've been to thus far was actually a zombie themed party at my house a few years ago, but the fake blood cleanup the day after detracted from some of the highlights.

Zombie throwback!

Anyway, I've been trying to do more projects and DIY type shit lately because I'm turning into a recluse and all, and my stepmom recently gave me some super sweet geese, turkey and chickens eggs, so I thought it'd be fun to try and hollow them out and make them purdy.

Three geese eggs, one turkey egg, one brown chicken egg- from Twin Palms Ranch,
plus two store bought white chicken eggs.

I followed some pretty generic instructions I found online:
1.) Poke a hole in each end (one bigger than the other) with a needle of some sort

2.) Use the needle to jab and scramble about the insides to break up the yolk

3.) Blow on one end and catch the goop that comes out the other in something

Apparently some people are freaked out about dying of salmonella but I just like...didn't ingest any of the egg, and kinda rinsed my mouth region as I went. 

The chicken eggs were pretty easy to poke into with a pin or needle, but the geese eggs (goose eggs?) were a LOT tougher, and I actually managed to break one of my thicker sewing needles! I actually found that using the tip of a small knife to break a little slit in it first and then following it with a thick needle (I used my cabling needle thingy) worked best. My first goose egg was a pretty big pain because the innards were a lot thicker than the chicken and turkey eggs, so for the next two I made the exit hole a bit bigger and that helped a lot.

I recently stumbled across this blog that inspired me to play with some natural dyes, and since I only had a few eggs I decided to just go with the turmeric, cayenne pepper and red cabbage. For the turmeric, I followed the directions and mixed 3tbs turmeric with 2 cups of warm water and 1/8 cup of white vinegar. I had a lot more paprika than cayenne pepper, so I decided to use them both to see how it turned out and mixed 2tbs paprika, 2tbs cayenne pepper and 2 cups of water with 1/8 cup of white vinegar. For the cabbage I followed the "hot method" directions and chopped up half a head of cabbage with 1/8 cup of vinegar and enough water to fill the pot, brought it to a boil, then a simmer, and then let them sit. Unfortunately, i didn't think at ALL about the fact that my eggs were hollow and wouldn't sink, so I had to get, uh, creative, to submerge them.

Yeah, those are cups on top of the eggs. Of course I could have dyed first, then hollowed, but I'm not sure that would have worked with the "hot method" and the cabbage ended up being my favorite color, so whatever. I let the eggs sit about 3 hours, at which point the cabbage and turmeric eggs looked pretty nice, but the paprika/cayenne ones looked pretty unexciting and brownish, so I rinsed them off and put them in the turmeric. But then I sorta forgot and went to bed, so they came out pretty dark and brownish anyway, but at least I was like, you know, well rested...

The brown eggs looked predictably dumb, so I decided to scrap it and use 3 yellow and 3 blue. The frustrating thing was that all the tutorials I found online explained the hollowing process in detail, but then just said something like, "String a ribbon through the eggs and you're done!" Which was not helpful because a normal needle wouldn't reach all the way through so I floundered for a while until someone sent me this link, which suggested using an unfolded paper clip with a hook at the end. I didn't have/couldn't find any pliers, so I just wrapped the yard (I used yarn, not ribbon, because it's what I had) around the clip and that worked fine.

Yippee! Some of the chicken eggs holes cracked a little when I was pulling the yarn through, but OH WELL. I just knotted the yarn so that it'd rest beneath the top hole and hold it up, then hung them in the door way at different lengths. A branch of some sort would also have been cool but our house is pretty teensy, so this seemed less obtrusive.

Ta-daa!

Mishka was obviously unimpressed by my efforts, but I had fun. Perhaps next year I'll try dying with red onion skins or tea or BEETS! Conclusions: geese rule, chickens drool. As far as egg-awesomeness goes, at least.

To the future:

Do not forget the slick green leaves, wet under February rain. Do not forget spilled coffee.

We were once a planet of questions and sore backs—what are you now? Do you have a lottery? We have a lottery; orange tickets sold over dirty glass counters. We pay for the fantasies of what we could become.

We cut down trees and turn their wood into pulp and turn the pulp into paper, pressed into thick notebooks that we carry, and when it rains they go soft. I hope you have paper and trees. I hope you have yellow books.

I hope you eat curly pasta, that you paint your faces sometimes, and that sex is safe and legal and good. I hope you are not defined by the arbitrary conditions of your flesh, desire, and belief.

I was born in a long state full of trees and sea. I hope your oceans are full and blue. I hope your lungs are big and clean. I hope you have beautiful homes, to cry in, to eat in, to fill up with memories.

Do not forget the grass bursting through cracks in black asphalt. Do not forget the spicy smell of nasturtium flowers, do not forget the feel of old tennis shoes. Do not forget how good it is to hold hands.

I hope you are better than I am.

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Pondering the Post-Humous Powerpoint on Thought Catalog

I just wrote an article about a weird professor I had in Spain, my delusions of grandeur, and death!
Check it out on Thought Catalog: Pondering the Post-Humous PowerPoint.

The Receptacle of Everything Unsalvageable

I, too, am the receptacle of everything unsalvageable, unwound dreams circulate in the vessel of me. Deposit in me: your dead ends, scrapped projects and lost lists. I am the expanding hole in your nylon tights, popping and stretching back over your bare skin. I am the faded jubilation shared with some extroverted stranger, sloppy intentions dissipated in cold morning air. I am the space between the mouths of your bickering parents. Deposit in me: the words you should have said, the long glance you did not return, the mold on leftovers from some beautiful meal made for you and not eaten. I am the blackened bottom of a neglected pot, the cracks running all through your grandmother's old dishes. I am the invisible aching hole in your slick tooth. Deposit in me: the health crumbled and dissipated into your unfaithful body, the naivete that you outgrew along with your high school jeans. I am the dream that slips away in the blue light of dawn, the sick brown leaves of a shriveled plant, dry as bone.

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Forever.

I read about splintered marriages and shipwrecks and hold onto your shoulders, hoping we don't go under. Love is ordinary, but I'm finally coming to terms with that. As your next birthday approaches, and we take turns hunting for silver hairs, I say the word  forever with closed eyes.

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