I feelirrigation. Look at my head sprouting from the soil. The neck is nothing more than a bulbous root. My body is a pillar of cold, covered in dirt and rocks, yet I still grow. Still, I cower from the blind sun. Even so, at 45, I feel like a child pushing itself out of the womb. What is this? Is this the world? If so, I want a redo. A refund. A chat with the supervisor.
Whether I broke the ground or broke my body, I knew from the light of the hospital that I couldn't find my place, so I recoiled from the sunlight of the day. My home at the end of the world.
Five months ago, I stopped drinking because I wanted to see things. There is no joy in blurred edges. I never had a problem with drinks - it was a tricky release. I am neither alcohol nor normal. I am neither happy nor sad. So, when I stop drinking, perhaps it was to expand my ambivalence, the feeling that I am still here? I never asked for this. I never sought brave fists or soil. I never asked to grow up in a generation without plot twists to see young people write their own stories. I keep watching the documentary KID90 and remember what I lost. Blasting Go Gos, Led Zeppelin, Eric B. & Rakim's "Don't Sweat the Technique," but I can't find the beat.
I wasn't good at mixtapes. My tapes were a collection of st sounds, staccato, acoustic and beatbox. Sometimes, I would hear songs on the radio and record them halfway - trying to remember the beginnings of things. How did it start? What was that first line?
Last week, I watched a documentary and remembered a Friday in 1987. We blasted Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" on the B69 bus and had gone to Manhattan a few times, smashing Gatorade bottles on the street. To recreate the sparkle and glass I saw on the road. Back then, the city was a mythical place filled with rich, white people, and Brooklyn felt far away. I was 12 years old with posters of cocaine addicts on the wall, posters of Robert Downey Jr. and Corey Haim. I was 12, and my boyfriend was probably gay even if he didn't know it...