Man, I need to get better at updating.

Internet, this semester I took a course in astronomy. My feelings on the cosmos can be explained as thus: space is crazy. Things blow up and cease to exist and in the ceasing create new things all the time. Black holes are not, in fact, black; they are invisible. Wrap your head around that for a moment. There are enormous, vacuous nothings that continually suck in anything surrounding it, and you’ll only know about its existence after your body is ripped in twain by gravity. What.

The picture above was taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day, a nifty little website with beautiful, baffling, and humbling photos of space. It’s worth a gander.

I was most fascinated by the formation and death of stars. For our final project, we were able to write a fiction story about an aspect of space, so long as it was scientifically accurate.  I also made a hardcover book for my piece to live. (Which turned out wonderful, if I might be so bold. I’m not sure when I’ll get it back from my teacher. Once I do, I’ll be sure to post pictures.) So, this is my space story. It’s about a girl exploding. A weird one! But I’m very pleased with it. It’s violent, and educational!

2000 Lightyears From Home

My name is Grace. It is meek and forgettable. Since the discovery, I cannot be either of those things. The doctors try to re-name me. They call me Theta Tau, Upsilon Ori, Beta Lyr, Gamma Aur. They have not settled on a full name because they have not decided where they are going to put me. They are now putting me in a small, clear spaceship. I am going on a trip. I am going to die.

No one else has ever known the exact time they are going to go. They have to guess. All the babies, once they’re born, are given an injection of Hydrogen in the chest. The Hydrogen keeps their bodies running. No baby gets the same amount. When this Hydrogen runs out, they go OMS. If they’re OMS, or Off Main Sequence, their bodies start running on something else. First Helium, then Carbon, and so on. Everyone measures their height on the hour. When they go OMS, they grow six inches. They grow another six inches every time they begin running on something else. The tall ones die.

Deaths are frequent. I have seen people die at the movies, in line at the Post Office, in the middle of dinner, exiting the gym, waiting for the train, depositing paychecks. When they die, there is a loud pop like when a jar is opened for the first time. A white light emanates from their chests, radiating out until the whole body is smothered. An outline of the body is visible for a moment, until the edges blur and dissolve. The light dissipates. When it is gone, there is a steaming, hissing rock the size of a fist. This is called a dwarf. Sometimes a dwarf is retrieved, and tucked into a purse or coat pocket. More often, dwarfs are ignored. The streets are full of small, blackened remains. Strays take them in their mouths and gnaw. Children kick them in the absence of balls.

Nobody wants to go OMS. The longer they’re on MS, the longer they get to live. Because no one knows exactly when they will go, people try to do as much living in as little time possible. Childhood ends at seven. At eight, we are given the option to stop attending school. At ten, we are eligible to work. At twelve, we are permitted to marry.

I stayed in school because I wanted to learn. I liked science the best—how plants grow, what water is made of, where elements come from. If I were to dwarf anytime soon, I would want to do it with a head full of facts.

School was where I met Danny. Danny liked learning, too. He wanted to be an architect. He wanted things to be there after he goes, after spending his life making tall, bright things. When I met Danny, I was OMS and he was not. I was two and a half feet taller than him. He thought this was funny.

“You’re going to die soon,” he would say. “You’re going to die way before I do. I bet I’m going to wake up tomorrow and I’ll look for you and you’ll just be a dwarf. You’re so OMS, you’re probably going to die tomorrow. Not me, though.”

Danny was going to be my husband.

*

Danny didn’t think I should see a doctor about my feet. I had been having trouble walking because the muscles in my feet and ankles kept seizing. He thought I was being dramatic. By the time I got to the doctor, my arches had fallen completely.

“It hurts when I walk,” I told the doctor. “I have to keep them flat on the ground and shuffle. They’re like skates.”

The doctor put his thumb on my big toe and pressed. It felt like he was sticking a thin, steel rod up my shin, slicing muscles, scratching bone. I inhaled through my teeth, clutching fistfuls of my skirt.

“Does this hurt?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Very much. Please stop.”

He took my entire foot in his palm and squeezed. The pain swooped up my shin and over my knee. Instead of one tiny rod, it felt like he was prodding me with five big ones. My entire leg tightened and tensed. I feared my skin would tear. I almost screamed, but I did not want to seem rude.

“Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasestop,” I whispered. It was hard speak because I had so little breath. Danny hushed me.

“Be quiet, Gracie-Girl. The doctor is just doing his job.”

“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I don’t mean to belittle your profession.”

“That’s alright,” the doctor said, and he released. The pressure immediately drained from my body, and my foot swung down hard against his knee. I shuddered from the impact. I chewed on my tongue to keep myself from crying.

The doctor did not understand what was wrong, and so took me to get X-Rays. Afterwards, he showed me blue and white pictures of my feet.

I had a basic understanding of anatomy from school. The pictures of my feet did not look like real feet. Instead of bones, there was a single, fat mass stretching from my heel to my toes. The doctor put the picture up on a screen and pointed.

“Those aren’t bones,” I said.

“Is it a tumor?” Danny asked. I looked at him fearfully. He was staring at the picture with fascination and awe.

“No, no,” the doctor said. He stroked his beard and sighed. “Grace, let me try to explain this to you the best I can. What you are looking at—what is inside your feet—is iron. You are so OMS that your body has reached the end of its fusion chain. All that’s left in you is iron. Iron does not make energy, only takes it. Your body is filling up with iron. When you are totally full, you’re going to die.”

I held out my hand for Danny to take, but he did not see it. He was still staring up at the picture of my feet with a wild admiration. I wiggled my fingers to get his attention, to no avail. I pretended I was just stretching my arm out, and then I put my hands back in my lap.

“So…she’s gonna be a dwarf?” Danny asked. The doctor shook his head.

“No no, and this is the really exciting part.” The doctor removed his glasses and smiled. “You’re not going to be a dwarf. You’re going to be a supernova.”

My heart stiffened and rose to my throat like a buoy.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“What does it mean?” The doctor was grinning now. “It means you’re the very first person with a mass high enough to create a supernova explosion. We doctors have only speculated about this stuff. This has never happened before. You’re a very lucky girl.”

*

The doctor sent me to a lab down south. Danny came with me. In the lab, there were lots of other doctors who were just as excited as the one who diagnosed me, if not more. By the time we got down there, my legs had totally seized. They jutted out in front of me like two steel beams. I could not bend my knees anymore, and so I was pushed around the lab in a chair that was more like a bed.

Danny was angry that I got to be pushed while he had to walk. I let him sit on the foot of the bed, even though he pressed against my ankles. To steady the pain, I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth.

“Did you enjoy your trip?” a lady doctor questioned.

“I’ve never been on an airplane before,” I replied. In truth, I had not enjoyed my trip. The rumblings of the airplane’s engine had caused the pain in my legs to vibrate all the way up to my shoulders. I was very close to wailing. But Danny was next to me, and he said my whining was making it hard for him to watch the movie. So I stayed quiet.

“Good, that’s good,” another doctor said. “We’re going to take you to get a few more X-Rays, just to see how far along you are. Is this your husband?”

“Almost,” I said.

“No,” Danny said.

“He’s not my husband yet,” I explained. “He will be.”

The lady doctor smiled and turned to Danny. “That’s nice. You’re more than welcome to come watch her if—“

“I don’t want to,” Danny interjected. He hopped off the bed-chair.

“That’s fine,” another doctor said. “We’ve set up a nice little place for you and your almost-wife to stay in during your visit. You can go and wait there if you like.”

The lady doctor took Danny’s hand and brought him out of the room. I waved goodbye to the back of his head.

*

The new X-Rays showed my body with all the normal bones and such, and below the hips there was a swallowing darkness. It filled up my thighs, calves, feet, and toes like ink. One of the doctors patted my knee, and I turned my head to conceal my grimace.

I asked the doctors what was going to happen to me.

The lady doctor put her hand on my forehead, and her fingers crawled over my hairline. I had forgotten how it felt to be touched and have it not hurt.

“What’s going to happen,” she said, “is the iron is going to continue to build inside you, like mold. Do you know what mold is?”

I told her I learned about mold in science class.

“You’re still in school!” The lady doctor lit up. She ran her thumb over my eyebrow. “That’s very nice. Well, you know then what mold looks like. Imagine all the iron in you is mold. It’s going to keep growing. Over your ribs, up your throat, even stuffed up in your skull.”

“After that,” another doctor cut in, “your core—“

He prodded the middle of my chest with his index finger. It knocked the wind out of me. I asked him if he means my heart. He smiled as though I had said something stupid.

“Right. Okay, sure, your heart. After that it’s going to fall in on itself. Then it’s going to suck in the rest of you, too.”

All the doctors started talking at once.

“Your skin.”

“Your bones.”

“Your organs.”

“Your hair,” the lady doctor said. She closed her hand, and my hair stuck out between her fingers.

“But then if I fall in,” I said, “What’s going to be left?”

The doctors all smiled.

“Nothing,” the lady doctor said.

“You see, when you go supernova, you’re body is going to collapse past the density of a regular dwarf.”

“That’s very small.”

“Very very small.”

“The gravity on your body is going to grow, severely warping the fabric of space.”

“Space is going to curve back on itself, cutting you off from the rest of the universe.”

“You’re going to be a black hole,” the lady doctor elaborated. “Nothing can escape a black hole, not even light.”

I was quiet for a long time. The lady doctor began to pet me, like a dog. I reached up and pretended to itch my scalp, and on the way down I tapped her hand. Hard. She kept it on my head, but stopped stroking.

“What do you mean, space?”

The lady doctor laughed.

“Well, we can’t let you stay here, can we? You’ll blow up the whole planet! We’re going to launch you into a nearby galaxy. That way, you won’t hurt anybody, and we’ll still be able to observe you.”

“But people die here all the time,” I said. “Why can’t I?”

The lady doctor laughed again and pinched my cheekbone between her thumb and forefinger. “Because, you’re special. You’re very, very special.”

*

The doctors kept Danny and I in a little house. There were tiny cactuses in every room. It was the sort of place I planned on living in after Danny and I got married. We were going to have a little coral-colored house, with white shutters, and a mailbox shaped like a birdfeeder. And a dog. We would name him Spike.

The iron had grown up to my armpits. I could not sit anymore, but I could still move my arms. I laid next to Danny. I shoved his shoulders into the pillow. It hurt me to move that much, so I started to pull his hair.

“Danny. Danny Danny Danny.”

He made a muffled noise and covered his eyes with the bend of his elbow—his arm was a mask.

“What?” he mumbled.

“I want you to come with me.”

Danny groaned. “Come where?”

“When I go. The doctors said I’m going to be a supernova. They’re going to put me in space so I can explode. I want you to come with me.”

Danny rolled over so I had to talk to his back.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“No. Danny.” I put my hand between his shoulder blades. His back muscles tightened under my palm. “I want you to see me go from up close. I want you to because I am going to be your wife and soon I will be your dead wife and you should see me die because we were supposed to get married and you are my husband almost.”

“You’re not my wife.”

“Yes I am, almost.”

“I would have married you if I knew you wouldn’t go.” He crossed his ankles and hung them over the edge of the bed. “Even if we get married tomorrow, you’re still going to die. Then you won’t be my wife. You will be the thing that used to be my wife. And then I’ll have to say I was married to that discoloring in the sky and people will only look at my buildings because my wife is dead. I don’t want to waste my marriage on you.”

The moonlight through the blinds made lines on Danny’s body. They fattened when he exhaled, and slimmed when he inhaled. I could not touch him. I instead took the tip of his hair between my knuckles. For a little while, I held it against my skin. He did not notice.

*

My spaceship looks like a glass telephone booth. The iron has locked my jaw, so I cannot answer the doctors’ questions. They are not careful with my body. They load me as though they are putting me in a coffin. They do not tell me where they’re sending me, but I also do not want to know. The lady doctor told me I was going to be as bright as an entire galaxy. A galaxy is billions of stars, so I guess that’s pretty bright.

Danny does come to watch me go. I am not angry. I do not have the capacity to want for his failure. I want him to make a lot of money. I want him to spend a lifetime building necessary, ugly things. Parking garages, office complexes, strip malls, chain restaurants.

The launch is successful, in that I successfully was launched into space. My body aches from the pressure of the atmosphere. I keep flying out and out and out; stars whirl from red to blue, nebulas coil their fluorescent arms. I watch my galaxy twirl further and further into the distance, until I can no longer distinguish it from any of the globular points surrounding it.

In science class we learned about space. My teacher said a supernova expels ninety percent of its mass and shoots the elements far out into the galaxy. Oxygen for lungs; carbon for muscles; calcium for bones; iron for blood. I thought about all the iron in me, and all the blood my body is going to make. My body is going to make other bodies. When I go, people may remember me for how bright I am, or my high mass, or any of those other science things. But I was more concerned with the people who would not know me. In tens of billions of years, there will be other people somewhere who breathe and run and bleed. They will bleed the blood I have made for them. Thinking this makes me feel okay.

Suddenly, it feels as though my heart has been vacuumed out the back of me. I feel myself turn in—skin, bones, organs, hair. But before my brain goes, I think once more about Danny. I hope to be bright enough for him. I hoped to discolor the sky, so that he may gesture up and say, “That was almost my wife.”

For example!

I enjoy listening to music when I write. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Beirut while I work. Beirut is a World music/Balkan Folk/Eastern European/Electronica band. (Led by a 25 year old guy from Santa Fe, who knew?) They’re very theatrical, and they incorporate a wide range of instruments into their compositions. Because no one was around, I was able to play this lovely music at full volume instead of though headphones. (Headphones purchased at a bodega for two dollars that refuse to stay in place and are quite painful.) Here is one such song that I played on a loop this week, likely to the chagrin of my neighbors.

Here is another one because Ilovethemsomuch. This song will be used in the final scene of the mini-series that will be based on the novel that my thesis will become. (That is thinking ahead, right there.)

SPEAKING OF THESIS I turned in for my last workshop of the semester. Frightening! Internet, I’m not typically cocky about my work. But let me tell you: what I turned in Thursday? It is so good. Like, I’m not really sure I was the one that wrote it. It’s very long (eighteen pages!) but it doesn’t have an ending yet, and two very important scenes had to be reduced to bracketed summaries. So here is an excerpt! To set you up: The narrator, Alan, is a thirty-seven year old dentist. He is moderately suicidal, and he has an intense fixation on his brother James’ fiancee, Alyssa Baker. In this bit, he is in Greenwood Cemetery with his childhood neighbor, Stella. Her husband Martin has just died, and they went to look at his family’s plot. Stella saw that one of the headstones had fallen over, and she attempts to lift it, and fails miserably. Oh, there’s also a passing reference to The Devil’s Tree, a Weird New Jersey staple. Okay, that should be enough information. Alright!

She is filthy. Her dress and her swollen legs are caked in mud. Her fingers are split and raw from clawing at the stone, the tips glistening with what is either sopping earth or blood. The white stone is streaked rusted red. The blood is not Stella’s. It came from Stella’s veins, but it no longer belongs to her. The plot, the dirt, the things that are not people under the soil gulp her blood and hoard it.  Stella bleeds life into death. She puts her hands on her temples and slides them to her mouth in a V. Her face is smeared with darkness, like a hunter who has slaughtered his first deer.

“Don’t move. Don’t do anything anymore. I’m going to find someone to fix this.”

“This is important.”

I remove my jacket and drape it over her head. Rain gathers in the collar as it would in a gutter. “I am going to fix this.”

I run, my shoes filling with water. My clothes and hair slap against my skin. Weaving through the markers, I feel haunted. Each headstone I touch, every gate I push shut, even the papery crush of leaves in my steps is part of something that is decidedly not mine. This place belongs to death. Beneath me are miles of people that are not people anymore. They are rotted through, gutted and oozing like old pumpkins. They are bone fragments, fingernails, hair follicles, molars. Most are even less than that. What used to be mothers, fathers, wives, brothers, aunts, grandparents, sisters, cousins, fiancées, supervisors, underlings, sons are in the bellies of worms, twined around tree roots, resurfaced as grass. These things used to be people who used their teeth to chew food, who used their throats to swallow, and their organs to digest. They walked through other graveyards in other places and saw their own names on markers, and a blast of cold blood moved swiftly from one end of their body to the other. They filled their lungs with air as the valves in their hearts opened and closed, their blood rushing in an elegant, biological circuit.

And in ten or fifty or one hundred and seventy seven years there will be other Alans and other Stellas, other Martins and other Margarets, other Jameses, Laurens, Caroles, Bernards, Michaels, Roberts, Alexandras, Dianes, Thomases, Julies, Franks, Josephs, Marians, Alyssas. These others will see their names on headstones and think, briefly, of the what used to be the person below with whom they shared such an intimacy. They will linger, put their fingers that still have prints in the smooth letters on the headstone, as though the bits of what used to be a person rose and coalesced into a slab of stone. An embodiment of what is no longer an is. An echo of permanence.

I vault over a headstone, but I misjudge my leap. My foot hooks, and my momentum swings up to my chest. The landing is hard and wobbling, the wet earth closes around my ankles like hands. I extend my stride, straighten my fingers to their full length. I breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I thought the colors in my heart were feeling. I thought it was love, and Alyssa was angry with me for letting this love grow thick on the walls of my heart. I was wrong. The colors in my heart are blood. Blood is blue inside and red outside. My blood is green and purple and yellow and orange and black, black, black. My heart has been heavy with all this blood.  My sick heart is rotten with the bad blood that I have allowed to spread out through me like lichen. My heart is dirty, a web of arteries and ventricles. My heart is not an apple. My heart is a tree. My heart is the solitary oak in Martinsville—warped, bony, and half dead. Alyssa was not angry with me for my love. She was angry because I had no love, because I had a heart too sick to love. Beneath me, there are hearts that have dissolved into mud. My heart is not mud.

I am approaching the base of the hill. Ahead, the ground drops swiftly into the solid, paved road below. I do not want to decelerate, so I rock forward onto the balls of my feet. I can feel the tendons in my calves—hot and tight. My lungs burn when I inhale. I reach the edge, and expel all of the bad, heavy blood from my heart. I launch into the air, and I am weightless. I am Alan Wheatley. I am thirty-seven years old, and I am alive.

I hit the road, and I stumble. My hand slams down, and pebbles of tar stick to the fleshy heel of my palm. There is a squad car parked near the main gate. The slant of the hill makes my legs move pendulum-like in front of me. Inside the car, a police officer sips coffee. When I clamber against the passenger seat window, he rolls it down slowly and regards me over the lip of the paper cup.

“I need an ambulance.” I am yelling. I cannot stop yelling. “Ambulance. Need an ambulance.”

“Alright, alright.” The officer tosses the empty cup into the passenger seat well. “What’s going on, kid? Are you hurt?”

Air hurts my chest. I clamp the car. My weight shifts into my hands. Water filters down my spine. My arms tremble. Stella has a tumor the size of a pomegranate.

“Ambulance. A woman. There’s a woman up there and. She needs a. Hospital.”

The mud has soaked through my pants. My legs are strained with old hearts.

Gaze upon my creation until your heart rots with jealousy.

Look at this book I made you guys it took me like six hours and it is beautiful look at it look at it look at it.

Special guest appearances by my desk and horrendously chipping nails.

Internet, I am very pleased with my creation. Granted, I do think some content on the pages are a little sloppy (halfway through I ran out of glue and had to use scotch tape. I am nothing if not resourceful.) but the crafting of the actual book turned out much better than expected. This was my first attempt with honest-to-goodness materials. (The mockup I did in class was made with poster board and sketch paper, not book board and nice paper like this.) I am happy! I may have pulled a muscle or twelve in my back and spent ten dollars on a single bridal magazine that is now tattered beyond recognition, but look what I have to show for it! This thing!

I used the slightly-modified text of a piece I wrote last year, something that will eventually be retooled and worked into my thesis. My thesis is going to be about a wedding, so I have been doing some very serious research on the subject. (Say Yes to the Dress, Bridezillas, and all of the bridal programming on WETV are significant works that require citing.) You’re probably unable to read much of the text in the pictures, internet, as I had only the camera in Molly the Mac to take these photos. So here is is! I broke it up the same way it appears in the book. Hooray!

They’ve been rewiring my building for two weeks. I keep waking up to the sound of a fat spring being pushed through a thin, ridged hole. Hammers and screws plink against pipes, clunking in a riotous harmony. Some pipes were filled with water, and the sound would sallow with saturation.One morning, maybe one of the first, I felt the whir of a drill and I thought it was the wall’s heart beat. Then I thought it was my heart beat. Then the whirring quieted, and an echoing mechanical rip moved down the length of my body. I am breaking, I thought.

The woman from the shop is very sweet. I feel guilty that I won’t be purchasing anything. I feel worse to have brought this breaking sound with me. At first I thought it was just the engine of Maggie’s car. It seems to have trailed me out of my building, clicking around my feet and tapping at my ankles. I thought I could ignore it. It was just a muted grind, a distempered crunch.

When we arrived at the shop, the drone of gears had spun up over my thighs. Inside, the terrible gnashing of chrome is so loud that I cannot hear what the shop owner is saying. She is talking about dresses, but when her mouth moves I hear buzz saws. Wires snap and hiss sparks. Copper slaps against the wheels, dir-dir-dir-dir-dir-dir-dir. My body is speaking in morse code. I’m breaking. I can’t blame the walls anymore. I’M BREAKING AND EVERYONE CAN HEAR IT.

I have to leave. I try to be polite but it sounds wrong. It comes out choked because now the rust is starting to rise up my throat, and I have to leave before it plumes out of my mouth like a red mushroom cloud.

And to think, all this time I thought I was full of white blood cells. I was wrong. White blood cells don’t make noises like this. I’m full of bolts and nuts and screws, and now they’re all falling out of place and rattling around my stomach like a sock full of nickels. I hear a high, panicked whistle and I can smell motor oil as I turn into the bathroom and clank to my knees in front of the toilet. The rust erupts  out of me but it’s not red it’s gray. I feel sweat behind my ears. The corners of my mouth taste salty. I put my forehead to the cool tile wall.

My fingers tighten around the bowl, and I jolt forward again.

We were eating Chinese when he did it. He went to the kitchen to get more napkins and he came back with a copy of Great Expectations. It is my favorite book, and he was holding my copy. He has never read it. I thought he was bringing it to me so that I may read him a passage. He set it in front of me, and I tried to think of an appropriate passage, one filled with ache and misery and loveliness. James needed to love this book as I did.

When I opened it there was a hole. A box had been cut into the pages, and inside was the ring. When he asked me I didn’t know what to say. How could I? He had taken the words. He had sliced them out to fill it with this ring, where they will no doubt mold at the bottom of the trash.

I do not want to mold like this. I do not want Baker to be cut out and tossed aside to be stained by coffee and chicken broth.

The work in my building stopped this morning. Still though, without it I can’t sleep. I listen instead to the soft rush of shower water through pipes. It is not the same. I lay in bed, pressed to the wall, feeling for the wall’s heartbeat.

Aww, silly crabs acting all fancy.

Also, here is a short piece I wrote for “Reading and Writing in Brooklyn.” It’s set in Red Hook! And it’s about a hooker! Crazy!

I used to be a nice girl. I come from a nice town, full of nice people. A lot of them wanted to get out. I wanted to get out and I did. I’m smart. That’s what makes me better.

I don’t think about that stuff too much. It’s funny. I used to be a girl who wore argyle. Argyle! That’s funny. I don’t wear argyle anymore. Sometimes I say it if I’m around longshoremen and I want them to know I’m smart. I say words like argyle, miscellaneous, existentialism, myriad. That’s one of my favorites, myriad. When I say it, I like to take a puff of my cigarette and let out the smoke through my nose. I been with a myriad of guys. Puff, exhale.

Sometimes I need to remind these guys where I came from. I don’t talk about it much, but I use those words and some others and they get the idea I’m not from here. That’s funny, too; I’m better than the people still in that nice town cause I’m not there, and I’m better than the guys here because I’m a transplant who knows what myriad means. A lot. It means a lot.

I think a lot about that town when I’m on the water. The water always reminds me of that place. I don’t call it home. I don’t call anything home. I live here, I used to live there. Maybe someday I’ll live somewhere else, and that’s where I’ll be. It still won’t be a home, though, it’ll just be a place I am. I don’t like calling that place home, so I don’t.

Anyway, whenever I go out on the pier I get reminded of that place. I don’t know why. I lived inland, so we only went to the shore in the summer. Me and my family would go on vacations there. I used to go out on the boardwalk and sit on the edge so the front of my shoes would fill up with sand. The wood on the boardwalk was always sticky and wet and when I got up I’d have to check the back of my pants to see if the wood had soaked though. My family would go into the arcades and I’d sit there and watch the seagulls cycle and bob around in the ocean. Seagulls sound the same everywhere.

Anyway, that’s what makes me think about the nice town. The beach was at least an hour down the parkway, but I don’t care. If I were to call anything anywhere my home, it would be that.

I come out here, but I don’t sit. It’s not the same wood as the boardwalk. It’s newer, sturdier, even. The wood on the planks in that place that could be my home are old and dark and warped. Sometimes the nails would trip people or, if I were sitting, get caught on the back pockets of my pants. So here, I stand. I like to hold the railings and lean over a little, just enough to watch the water move up on the rocks. Sometimes it leaves behind foam, like a necklace. I like that.

One night I was out here after I met with a customer and this guy came over and sat on the railing next to me. Well, he kinda leaned into it. Either way, he was facing me. I kept looking at the lights on the boats out on the water, murky and small. He told me he came out to look at stars, cause where he’s from he can’t see them much. Well, I knew he wanted me to ask him where he was from, but instead I told him he should have gone further out onto Long Island if he wanted stars. Too bright here. He said he knew that, I guess he knew a lot of things about stars, and he said he wanted to come here anyway for some sentimental reason. I don’t know. Then I guess I did something to make him think I really wanted to listen to him. I’m always doing that. I push my hair aside or angle my body different and the guy knows I’m saying Okay I’m yours. I don’t even know I’m doing it most times. It’s like my body’s reminding my head Hey, hey. This is what you are now.

The guy, he starts talking about what happens when stars die. He said they get real big, like real big, cause the stuff that makes them go runs out, and they got to use something else instead, so they grow kinda. He said when all the other stuff runs out, they get crushed, cause the stuff that kept them going was also keeping the gravity from pushing it in and falling. I don’t know. He said some of the stars get real tiny and hot and dim and people don’t see them anymore. The big ones, he said, get tiny and then blow up. He said they make a giant explosion and all the little stuff inside them gets put in other places. I asked him where it went. He said I had bits of iron and hydrogen and all other stuff in me from a star explosion. He touched the inside of my elbow. He said I was a star.

I asked him what he was doing tonight, and he said he was buying me a drink. He didn’t know where to get one now, so I took him to this one place on Van Dyke where they make French fries from real potatoes. I like that. My mom used to get potatoes from a farm near our house. She’d cut them up into disks so thin you could almost see through them. Then she’d throw them in oil and they’d sizzle up real fast, and they’d be real tiny and crunchy and good. The guy asks me what I want to drink. That throws me a little. Most guys don’t ask. They just get me whatever’s cheap. I tell him whatever he feels like paying for. He orders something pink and sweet. Pink! And sweet! There was even a tiny paper umbrella stuck inside an orange in the glass. That killed me. I told him I hadn’t had a drink like this in a long time. He told me he thought it suited me. I tried to find the straw without looking, my tongue wagging in the air like a metal detector. I found it, and I drank slow.

I asked him what happens to stars after they blow up, cause now I really did want to know. He said they turn into black holes. Things go into black holes, he said, but they don’t come out. There’s a whole part inside just full of all the light the hole swallowed up. He said it’s so bright in there it would vaporize you in a second. He snapped his fingers. He said you’re dead.  Someone at the other end of the bar looked up when he snapped, and I put my hand on his arm.

The wild thing about black holes, he said, is they aren’t black. They’re invisible. People can only see them cause the stars and stuff behind them looks all warped and distorted. That killed me. That there are giant, invisible spirals way out in space that no one can see, the darkest things in the universe filled with a whole core of light. A whole core! I asked him where he was staying and he said with his aunt. I asked him if he wanted a ride, and he said he took the train in but he could walk. I put my hand on his leg and said I was very walkable. He looked at me like I don’t know how. Chagrined. That’s another word I use, and I think that’s what his face was doing.

He pushed my hand off and I thought he was going to hit me. I get hit sometimes and I don’t like it but I know how to take them now, how to fall right so my face doesn’t split open on a chair or table leg. He didn’t hit me. He got up and rubbed the place where I had my hand. He rubbed it with the heel of his hand, like he was grinding pepper. Then he threw some bills on the bar, looked at me again. I don’t think it was chagrined anymore. It was like more angry and sad or something. He looked how I always imagined my mom looking after she found her diamond necklace missing and me gone. It was a face I never saw but still never forgot. That killed me a little. It made my heart sick.

Anyway, the guy stormed out and when the bartender had his back turned I took the bills and put them down my dress and went out too. I could still see the guy’s figure walking away, wobbly like the shadows of the boats out on the water. I probably could go get him, but I went back to the pier. I went up to the end and sat down, touching the rocks with the tips of my shoes. I watched a seagull land neatly onto the water, his wings still unfolded. I wonder if he’s a seagull that came from home. Sometimes I think about going back there. Sometimes I think about a lot of things.

Internet, it is no secret that I am proud of my intrepid little state. (We’re the cranberry capital of the world!) I am so proud of my state, in fact, I often forget that not everyone lives there. (A recent example: during my first Thesis Critique, I mentioned my characters were very Bergen County, and my teacher stared at me blankly before saying he had no idea what that meant. It means they have money. For anyone curious.)  So let me tell you something about Newark, New Jersey, internet: it’s not a great place.  In the sixties and seventies it was plagued with race riots, and still today there are major problems with gang violence, poverty, and unemployment. It’s also the largest city in New Jersey, and usually gets the attention.

Now that the history lesson is over, let me tell you something about Newark’s Mayor, Cory Booker: He is awesome.  You may be saying to yourself, internet, “Oh hay, wait, I think I know that guy. Didn’t he pick a fight with Conan O’Brien and ban him from Newark Airport?” You bet your ass he did. But scraping with late-night television hosts isn’t what makes this guy a dude.

What makes this guy a dude is how much he truly loves and intends to improve his city. When he was a councilman, he would camp out in a motor home in areas where the most drug-trafficking occured. He personally patrols the streets until as late as four in the morning. Under him, Newark leads the nation in Violent Crime Reduction. Murders are down 42%, rapes 41%, and overall robberies 12%.

What. I know. Check out this super reputible source, it is wild.

This is all very exciting stuff. Newark politicians have been so corrupt for so long, it’s redonk seeing someone so hands-on and committed to fixing everything. Wanna know how committed? After being elected, President Barack Obama offered Cory the chance to head the Office of Urban Affairs Policy, and he turned it down. He turned down the president of the Goddamn United States because he wasn’t done fixing Newark.

Damn.

Stephen Colbert was right, Cory Booker. You might be The Batman.

IT’S A BOOK. THAT I MADE. IN MY BOOKMAKING CLASS. THAT I’M TAKING. TO LEARN TO MAKE BOOKS.

If I have not been clear I am pretty pumped for this book, you guys.

(Also if writing doesn’t pan out, these photos would be an excellent start for my portfolio for my hand modeling career am I right or am I right.)

This is only my first try, but I’m still really excited about it. I am not a crafter. Usually if I am not immediately good at something, I burst into tears or throw something breakable against a wall and give up ever trying that thing again because obviously it’s stupid and dumb and I didn’t even want to do that thing anyway God. But I think this is pretty good! Colleen and I are going to have an adventure this weekend and seek out actual bookmaking items to use, instead of improvising with whatever art materials we possess. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Expect more I’M A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE LOOK AT THIS THING posts in the future. 

When the town re-did this area, they sold bricks that you could have messages carved into. My dad bought one. It says, “The Mullens: Living in the City of Dreams since 1986.”

Sometimes I get homesick for no real reason.

I turned in my treatment for my thesis Thursday. (A treatment is basically a brief plan of what you plan to do with a project. It’s sort of like a proposal, but more specific.) Thrilling stuff! It’s a little terrifying knowing all this stuff that’s been fermenting in my brain for the past year is going to be on paper soon, and people will be able to, like, look at it. I’m really anxious to start though. I think it’ll be great, or horrible. My attitude changes on any given day.

This is not related to my thesis. It’s a piece a wrote for my “Reading and Writing in Brooklyn” class. We had to write about a “Brooklyn moment” we experienced. The ending is a little too and then this cah-raaaaazy thing happened isn’t that wild but generally I like it. So here it is. Huzzah.

Small Town Impulse

I forgot my gloves again. I push my hands down into my coat pockets so my knuckles touch the seams. I press the nail of my middle finger tightly to the center of my palm. In the cold I often supplement pain for heat, and I release once a muted pang spreads down to my wrist.

I climb the steps out of the Clinton/Washington station and the cold stings my face. I don’t like walking without using the railing, but I do so because I know the metal will be freezing. I also have a habit of accidentally putting my fingers in my mouth. I wish they would invent Purell for the mouth. Mouthwash isn’t good enough. It doesn’t give the satisfying bite of cleanliness Purell does. I also worry that if I don’t use the railing, I will slip on the dulled, rounded steps. There have been moments where I thought friction would fail me and I would split my teeth on the concrete.  I don’t enjoy the thought of my mouth filling with Brooklyn. I imagine the taste of a thousand commuters—like salted copper—and gag.

The cold makes everything seem darker. The trees are spindly silohettes against the brownstones, their roots gnarled through the sidewalk. On the pavement, windows are illuminated flat and yellow. I am always a little startled by the rush of almost-silence after exiting the subway. On most days I find this quiet lonely, especially after the whirr of Manhattan. Today it is a welcome surprise. I turn at the corner and continue down the uneven sidewalk. Black cabs ghost through the street.

I wait at the corner as the light changes. A white van rolls toward the crosswalk, and though it has the right of way it stops. I can see inside; it’s full of broad, sallow men who are all looking at me. I smile. I once read a story where the character was described as so stupid that she would smile at strangers. I often seem stupid. It is a small town impulse that I will not allow New York to filter out of me.

The driver tilts his chin in my direction. “What’s up, snowflake?” he asks. The car behind him blares, and he completes the van’s turn while still watching me.

I enter my campus, wondering why he chose to address me as “snowflake.” I am heavily bundled to shield myself from the cold, and think this might be the reason. Realization then hits me, the story’s description of its character suddenly bloated with new meaning.

“Oh,” I say aloud. “It’s because I’m white.”

Here’s the other piece I wrote for Bookmaking. I might make a book for it later in the year, but as I learned this weekend, making books is a horrible death trap of cutting paper and pulling the muscles in your back and getting rubber cement all over your legs and also in your hair. But I digress. Here you go. 

After you, I delude myself into believing I am Russia. I imagine you trudging though me, your footprints filling as quickly as you make them. All around you is the steady, silent rush of snow.  I am sticking to your clothes, building in the folds like barnacles. I kick the feeling out of your feet, your legs, your skin. I envision myself becoming solid in your veins, and making your frozen bones shatter.           

            This is just what I tell myself in my darker, bitter moments. These times are infrequent.  I do often wonder if you have wild fantasies like this. I wish I could ask you. There is no way to word the question Do you ever pretend to be an icy wasteland that I am trapped in without sounding absolutely insane. Which is unfortunate.