anachronistic heart

There is a girl in the Valley who grew up from the ground. I never knew her until now, but from what I felt, I could have guessed that her hair was scented with the orange groves she grew up on. Like nights spent building fires unsupervised on front lawns. Her hands smelled like dirt in the way it’s only understood by children, and they pointed straight up at the sky. Unmarred by industry or coldness of heart, the plain stretched uninterrupted, and in every direction, it came to meet the sky. We spoke for the first time; I asked if the stars could be mine. She didn’t speak, only looked into my childhood.

She smiled and pointed up.

She hadn’t given me the sky, she had simply introduced us.
-
There were reasons I never knew the sky. Mostly because in the depths of my own concrete jungle, she and I never chanced upon each other during any of the lives I had spent sprawled across asphalt greens.

But there were signs.
When I was 7 I raced the boys across the playground lined with wrought iron, blooming from the concrete, pointing to something that appeared to be hidden behind the silhouetted buildings. But it was above our heads. Sirens spinning crimson and the steadily frantic cadence of car alarms formed the susurrations that lulled me to sleep each night. They hinted at something more. Because everything where I’m from is jaded, even the sounds know they’ll dissolve into the wind.

I Have a Chronic Need to Explain Myself

1. Tonight is my last night in the Philippines. I will miss Biblical flooding and laying on the bed being too hot to move and being too shy to speak too much in public and getting drunk in my grandma's house after she insists that I eat lasagna.
2. Last night was my second to last night in the Philippines, and it was wonderful, and it reminded me feel that I have a lot to come back for.
3. There are gays here. As a general statement, they're cute and always willing to talk to my drunk ass.
4. Have you received your postcard yet? Well that's because I didn't send it. Here's a preview!

For anyone who doesn't know about Katrina 'Asian' Casino Postcard Project 2009, here's a brief explanation.

A couple of days before I left, I collected addresses of people who wanted postcards (this part is relatively straightforward). Now, I was going to write you all personalized rap songs, but as I have a tendency to always insist on being embarrassingly honest, I decided to put a spin on it (the postcard project, not the rap songs. That could come later though). I collected the names, and drawing them at random, assigned the recipients to one another. I also threw in some extra people who I haven't been talking to/didn't ask for a postcard. Just for funsies. And because I didn't have any dark secrets to reveal to some people. Everyone who's receiving a postcard is receiving a confession, secret, or general pointless rambling/crazytalk to another person. Just something I've never told them because I'm too awkward or shy or lazy or I have social tact or something (this is a lie, I have no social tact). Each postcard begins with "You don't know this, but" and then continues on to whatever one-sided conversation I wanted to have. I feel like this post is going to turn into some absurd Filipino post-secret ripoff, but sometimes that's just how it is.















Also I tried to get the tackiest postcards available.
Also I'm a really poor planner, and these will probably be mailed from New York.

So without further ado, I bring you a series of really serious statements followed by really hilarious pictures.

---------------------------------------------
You don't know this, but...

Sometimes I get a little scared that we'll never be who we were on that first night.

You're one of my favorites, but I'll never admit this to you because I'll always be too afraid to hear I'm not one of yours.

Everyone knows it's always been about you.

And I don't know if you'll ever believe it, but I'm fine.
(The rice paddies that my ancestors slaved on so that I'd never have to wear sunscreen in the summers)

Once I was lurking your Facebook page, and I accidentally liked one of your wall posts, then freaked out because I was way too high to figure out that I could unlike it.
(Alternatively: Meeting you was like meeting myself.)
(Fuck yeah, tigers!)

You and I both need to calm the fuck down.

I'm fully aware that all I really do is break promises to you.

You're the reason I question anything at all.
(Am I the only one who finds proud eagles of all nationalities to be hilarious?)

You're the reason for the flowers in my hair.

Every action that has defined our relationship has also perfectly and explicitly conveyed my deepest personality flaws in a way that I never could have anticipated or expressed.

When I was younger and thought that I wanted to get married and thought that I wanted to get married to a man, that man I pictured was just like you.
(Mabuhay a las Filipinas! We sell slippers, brooms, fans, and...wedding cakes made out of beads?)

Sometimes I find you to be so unbelievably plain that I can't help but find you irresistibly attractive.
(Hello, favorite.)

Though you probably do, I should have kissed you right when I had you.

I love you...not like that, not really, anyway.
(I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention, but I have never fucking seen one of these.)

I'm really sorry we didn't get to talk in the brief time we were together, that time we existed in 3D.
(I have no idea why I don't own one of these hats yet.)

I wasn't even really sure if I liked you until recently.

I think you're really beautiful.

You should stick around.
(Hi, drag show this year plz?)

You're a little boring, but you're so so sincere, and I guess that's okay.

You might well be the reason I don't regret coming home this summer.

(I ran out of photos/postcards, so here's a picture of me getting attacked by a crab at my grandma's house.)

This postcard was discarded because I couldn't verify its truth:

I'D LIKE TO KNOW what you think of this. What you think of that, that thing I just said. I'd like to know if you knew, and if you knew then when you knew and why you haven't said anything, and come to think of it, why I haven't said anything either, but I suppose that's not for you to answer. I'd like a lot of things. I'd like hot nights with rolled down windows and loud music. I want to sing along. I'd like questions without answers and open ends and true belief in possibility. I'd like the fifty-yard line. I'd like a deluge, a rainstorm, silencing the world outside my car; I'd like to drive with no headlights. I'd like to know the corner of your jawline and what it feels like to thread my fingers through your beltloops. I'd like the rooftop where I learned to smoke and sneak and eventually not get caught. I'd like my hometown nostalgia. Fuck, I'd like any nostalgia.

And I don't know if you know this, but when I'm gone, I miss you the most.

They Call It Way Too Rowdy, We Call It Finally Free

It's like my notebooks threw up on my wall.
My notebooks hide the contents of my head, thoughts, scrawled out in code, meanings revealed by ink color or placement on the page, once sandwiched into a leather binding, are now hanging up over my desk. Pinned up against the wall as if they escaped from my notebook and found themselves disoriented by the explosion with which they were released.
My lists are on my walls. I can look at them all at the same time. Even if I can't understand what they're trying to tell me. They're overwhelming, but as they sit there staring at me, they remind me...something's happening.

Something's happening. Something's fucking happening.

I should have known it because lately I've been so restless and eager and anxious in the very best way, but also in a way that totally keeps making me nervous. Toward the end of the school year, I used to do this thing where I'd take present me and look back on past me, and almost feel envious. It would never be distant past me, it'd just be like...me three months ago before I knew that such-and-such was going to happen, like I never knew I'd stop caring about money or I never knew I'd end up on the floor of this total beatniky apartment, or hey, I never knew I wouldn't regret coming home for the summer.
Anyway, what really characterized the me in the past was that she never knew that her life had the potential to go somewhere else. I mean, she knew that there was growing to do, and that growing meant change, but this girl never felt what I feel now...like I'm on the brink.

Things just keep fucking happening.
Before I was always expecting my luck to run out or for things to slow down or for me to try to have to be a real person. But it's been all ups. And I'm finally starting to believe in it.

What I'm trying to say is, I just had one of the best weekends everever, the weekend that was supposed to be the peak of my summer, and though I did go through this two-and-a-half day period of real/fake/real devastation when it was over, what I'm beginning to realize is that what happened this past weekend isn't over at all.

So here we go. Starting off with a little vocabulary:

gaygrounding (n) - a common punishment for teenagers of the homosexual persuasion, where the subject in question is not forbidden from leaving her home, but from leaving her home to...do gay shit. This may include Pride events, hanging out with that girl with the short hair from down the block, or secretly running downstairs to watch Logo every time the parents leave. This last part, of course, still continues, as that is the point of secretly running downstairs. Gay grounding is usually highly ineffective and tends to promote increased homosexual behavior, but with a sexy, vindictive edge.

See: X, KC Danger

Gaygrounding is what I narrowly escaped this weekend after a blowout of sorts with my parents that almost kept Emily out of my house and me out of a momentously absurd pride weekend.

But. There are some things that are worth modeling through it for.
And one of those things is Autostraddle.

I think I mentioned before a few of the reasons why I love this fucking site and how I can't possibly believe I'm lucky enough to be working (I've been told that's sort of an inaccurate verb, interning perhaps?) for them. It always turns into gushing. Just to be sort of repetitive, this place isn't just a website, it's a community. A community run and organized by some of the smartest, wittiest, most interesting, self-assured, and unapologetically fucking crazy (and potentially superattractive, who knows, oh wait I do) queer ladies I've yet had the privilege of knowing. Like, I thought in a group of lesbians, there's always the one really cool girl who sort of rallies and carries the rest. But in this group it's all of them. And they're the ones giving a new kind of lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise inclined women a voice. They can have fun and get shit done. And it's just nice to know that that exists.

Oh, and did I mention that the interns are totes bomb-ass too?

And did I mention that both those groups of people hauled ass to New York (or, y'know, bused in like 20 miles like me) for dinner and a parade and a spoof on Tyra mail and a Rodeo Disco Party? Because that happened. And it was glorious.

Here are the vague concepts:
1. Meeting People from the Internets
So bitches always be like, "Isn't it weird that you don't really know any of these people? Like, won't that be weird?" Well, let me answer that for you. I do know these people, and they are weird. And crazy as shit. But there's too much love to deny it. The thing about meeting people on the Internet and then meeting them in real life is that you've already got it out in the open--we're weird. Like, yep, we exist pretty functionally in 3D, and maybe we've got jobs and friends and school and shit, but at the end of the day, I don't have to second guess what you're doing, because I read it on Twitter. I didn't have to be there for your last significant experience. Read it on your blog. Let's just talk about it, how we're all kind of weirdos who feel the need to broadcast our lives online. And we're unapologetic, because we wish other people would do it too. Give 20 people like this a weekend together, see what happens.

2. Drunk
The number one feeling of the weekend. There was little/no time to not be like this. I think most of the interns ingested their daily amount of grains through liquids this weekend. But why not? I mean what better way to get to know someone than by getting all loud and getting all touchy and getting all honest and covering each other while peeing because the line in the men's room is shorter and ending up in a room full of juice bottles in the corner of Stonewall Inn? Were those last parts just me? Woops, sorry then. What I'm trying to say is good times all around.

3. Persistence
In flyering alwaysalwaysalways, in getting up before noon despite wicked hangovers, in believing that eight people can stay in one hotel room. In fighting gaygrounding because we that what we did wasn't wrong. And in sneaking back into a bar over and over again, only to be escorted out by the same cowboy bartender three times.

4. Embarassing Honesty
I've got this tendency left over from DC that goes like this: amphetamines + alcohol = rambling honesty and an abundance of feelings/the need to tell them all to you. And so I did. Sitting outside Mason Dixon for two hours while the party reached its peak and eventually cleared out, Emily and I were visited by various members of Team Autostraddle who shared a number of drunken gems and relics from their young gay past (no, we totally heard everyone's coming out story, and it was all really cute, especially since everyone was in cowboy hats). We sat out there for two hours and watched everyone go by, half dazed, never sober, always talkative, and half in love with everything and everyone and the feeling of a dream finally realized, though realization didn't mean an end.

And it's all just so fall-against-the-wall-and-take-it-in-because-what-if-you-never-feel-this-new-or-real-again. ((But you do and you will and you know it, but you don't thikn you're allowed to admit it just yet)).

5. Withdrawl
It was like having everything happen at once. And the fastest of events make for the slowest of goodbyes, and after two straight days of being surrounded by peoplepeoplepeople (rather, girlsgirlsgirls), waking up alone in an all-too-spacious bed just doesn't do it. All day I can talk and work and run around my town, but when I finally stop, all it is is, why is my bed so big, and why am I the only one in it? And where are the other ten people I've attached myself to in these two days? And why aren't we getting stared at in public? Where are those naked feathered guys who walked behind us in the parade? Why aren't the following my car around? (Actually, if someone could arrange this, that'd be great). I miss everyone; I never wanted them to go back to 2D.

Everything's a little duller now, a little muted. But at the same time, everything's a possibility. Everything is what it could be, or could be again (and again and again), because maybe the apex is just a plateau, and we're all just really into climbing.