Awkward teleportation moments

Advantages of teleportation: No more vehicular accidents, carsickness, or any other drawbacks of taking a long trip. Also, no more gasoline.

Disadvantages: Can no longer use the "I was stuck in traffic" excuse. Also, might accidentally appear in somebody's bedroom, leading to a lot of "honey, it's not what it looks like!" moments. Could just as easily accidentally teleport to people's closets or bathrooms, which isn't much better.

Deer dream

I dreamed I was keeping a pet deer in the laundry room and avoided suspicion by putting a collar on it and telling everyone in the building that it was a dog.

No one should lease an apartment to my subconscious.

I'm intrigued by the common and immediate assumption that if a grown adult behaves badly, they must have had bad parents. I can understand why someone might believe that about a child--even though all children sometimes misbehave. But while our upbringings do affect us a great deal in adult life, we can consciously choose to be better or worse than how we were raised. The assumption that shitty behavior is always an outgrowth of shitty parents offers a sense of control. It placates us into believing that as long as we are good, we'll raise good people. That line of thinking is interesting if you follow it into a family timeline. According to its internal logic, a person is bad or good because of their parents--and their parents would have learned those habits from their own parents in turn. So nobody is fully accountable for their actions, but they are fully accountable for the actions of others.

Split screen memory

I wish that every time you walked into an abandoned house or building, you developed split-screen vision. Half would show you what it looks like today, and the other half would depict the place when it was busy and teeming with life. That side would also show you who used to live and work there, and the most important things that happened in the spot where you're standing.

From March

Yesterday I went to see my 92-year-old grandma. She doesn't remember very much, and gets really confused and distressed at the end of the day. It soothes her to see family, though. Even if she doesn't remember who a lot of us are, she recognizes the familiarity and the affection.

When I came into her room, she was anxiously trying to pack bags. She has been doing this lately because she never feels like she's home. Some part of her brain is aware it's her house, but another part doesn't know where she is. So she always says that she's packing to go home. The way that she packs seems random and wouldn't make sense to others. She tries to stuff socks into books and places spoons with hairbrushes. On some level, though, the packing makes sense. My grandma was always a very organized and capable person. She was smart and a leader; someone who everyone respected. We all used to seek her advice. So it follows that, even in deep-set dementia, she's trying to sort things out and devise plans; to create order. The difference is that now, it's like trying to combine puzzle pieces that won't fit.

A lot of people will try to romanticize dementia. They'll describe it in ways that sound poetic, or act as though the process is somehow "cute." I really cannot do that. I can't assign any kind of fanciful metaphors to what is happening to my grandma. It's heartbreaking and she is frightened. She still finds pleasure in small things, though, in the moments where she's able to be present. She found a penny on her bed and didn't recognize what a penny was, but she thought it was pretty and gave it to me. She said, "Look at this neat little thing!" And, amazingly, she remembered her late daughter Mary when she saw a photo of her from the '80s, grinning mischievously in her tie-dye Grateful Dead shirt and patch-covered jacket.

At one point during the night, my grandma told me, "I think I should go away. And then someone else can take my place so it won't be lost." She may not be aware of very much right now, but I am certain of what she meant by that.

I took a photo of all the things she was organizing, but then deleted it from my phone. That's not the image I want to hold onto. Instead, here is this. It's her and my grandpa at some point in the early 1950s. The picture was hanging on her door. It may be grainy, but there's a look of shared adoration so palatable that it radiates from the page. This is what I want to come back to.

Diagnosis

Let me curl up inside you
while you murmur
"Don't worry.
You don't have to do anything
No need to try
if you drop my name."
Let me drift off to sleep
to the hum of
symptoms listed,
A clinical lullaby. 

Let me try to rip you off
and scream 
because 
I thought you were a label
but you are really my skin.

Let me step around you awkwardly,
A scarf too long
tripped over by others.
I wish you were an accessory 
easily cast off, but
maybe we can live together 
if you're a tattoo.
You are not all of my skin,
Just etched into it
Sometimes covered
and
always worn.

Advertising

Growing up, I was always fascinated by the way that certain fashion brands printed their logos onto their clothing in giant letters, and how a lot of people who wore those clothes would shame others who didn't. I realized the companies came up with a way to cheat their consumers which is so underhanded (and unfortunately clever): They achieve more than free advertising. They actually reach a point where their customers pay to advertise for them.