“-tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they’ll scarcely find us (if they do,
we’ll move away still further: into now”
-ee cummings.
Tag Archives: deep thoughts
{berets and bongos} 66;
“i’ve got a perfect body ’cause my eyelashes catch my sweat”;
realizing that my limbs aren’t just there to look nice is always an interesting lesson. realizing that, when i was seventeen, i never could relate to any of the “real girl” models in seventeen magazine and being okay with it. they never had tips that suited my short pixie hair cuts that i gave myself in my garage on particularly humid floridian afternoons in july (and again when i was nineteen, whoops). all i can think about is how cool it is that my hair is just a bunch of long strands of dead protein.
realizing that the body does really cool things like convert just-eaten bananas to muscle and energy (i mean, it’s much more than that. but i digress) is far more fascinating than finding out what size pants your friend wears at forever 21 (and to those girls who actually inquire about your friends’ sizes, i just.. ijustdon’tunderstandyou).
to be quite frank, i’d much rather have my legs covered by my favorite pair of bike shorts on their way to a place they’ve never been before. or covered in mud. god, i could write a whole novel about how much i like mud and getting muddy. or stained by the grass. or sticky with accidental cherry-red popsicle stains from an intermission at contra dancing. my body does cool things every second of the day. even when i’m sleeping.
a few weekends ago i had the pleasure of biking the boston marathon route at midnight. my old roommate remarked half way through the ride, “man, mackenzie. you have very nice, long legs.” at first i was flattered. and then i wanted to say, “these legs just biked thirteen mile. that’s not the point?!” but then i stifled myself because i like to keep my angry fire breathing feminist dragon at bay. and because my mother always taught me to take a compliment.
it’s taken me a while to get to this point. it’s taken a lot of listening to regina spektor’s “folding chair” on repeat to solidify this idea that a perfect body is one that has eyelashes to catch sweat. it’s taken a lot of eye-opening eve ensler ted talks like this one to realize that twenty year olds don’t need to feel bad about upper arm jiggle because it allows them to converse or relate with other twenty year old girls. i just want to shake those girls and say “your legs and torso GOT you to this clothing store. isn’t that amazing?!” to become disembodied from your own body is the saddest thing you can ever let happen. because really, i don’t even know what size i wear at forever 21, so why should you?
my body enjoys at least two cups of half-caf iced instant coffee a day with soy creamer. it doesn’t mind the feel and the history of thrifted clothing. it feels coziest on electric blankets, on a road bike going across the mass ave. bridge, and on my wooded floor when i have the time for my “diy-mani-pedi-’twilight zone’-viewing-hour”. it thrives off of new linguistic factoids, a new library book, a new route. if it could be described as any piece of clothing that i own, my body would be my knee-high mustard-colored boots.
it’s not here to look good. that’s not the point.
{berets and bongos} 64;
“one grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
one not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
one fine day.”
-lawrence ferlinghetti, recipe for happiness in khaborovsk or anyplace.
my happy spot;
listening to laura marling on repeat. especially this jam. and this one.
going on the this website and getting lost for a few hours. i don’t know how people can waste so much time scrolling through tumblr when this website exists.
wearing the flats my big brother picked me out for christmas, all silvery and bow’d and perfectly sized for my monster feet.
the rustle of the green line trains underneath my chair.
bright green peacoat and happy scarf, all nestled in my favorite part of the library that overlooks the common. on a friday afternoon, when it’s less social, more quiet, more conducive to listening to my favorite sub-genre of music, “pissed off english chicks”, and entering writing contests.
i am the happiness. this is my spot.
{berets and bongos} 55;
“i’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall i laugh all the time,
i don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
i’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind.
i want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. and if some aficionado of my mess says “that’s not like frank!,” all to the good! i don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time, do i? no. i wear workshirts to the opera,
often. i want my feet to be bare,
i want my face to be shaven, and my heart–you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.”
-frank o’hara, my heart.
how to beat the winter blues;
1. celebrate the fact that nick hornby and ben folds collaborated on an album together. hold back tears of joy upon listening to “claire’s ninth” on repeat for a month and a half whenever you walk to harvard square, or until it breaks 60 degrees outside.
2. appreciate the beauty of your city. jump in the dead leaves and get excited that those trees will have some less depressing foliage on them soon. eat at the only costa rican restaurant in town (i did this in chicago. i got a free smoothie. need i say more?) laugh at/with babies on the subway. pet puppies. dance through the park instead of walking. in short, nullify any expectations that winter brings grumpiness.
3. try new things. in my case, a few friends and i helped assemble a fake fire yesterday. we pillaged cambridge of its finest twigs, made some tea, and gave birth to a most majestic fire. totally worth it.
4. plan spring time adventures. new york city! cape cod! los angeles 21st birthday trip! summer road trips to maine! sky’s the limit. plan to come to boston. you can sleep on my air mattress and we can eat undercooked banana pancakes together.
5. read. while you are hibernating and definitely not shaving your legs (just me? oh.) reading is so so nice. lately i’ve been reading lots of humor essays, children’s books, and some classics from my youth. snow days aren’t a bummer when you can curl up with something that makes you laugh so hard in public that people shift a seat over from you on the subway.
6. sit in cafes. i really only find cafes alluring in the fall and wintertime, to be honest. this might make me a heathen on bostonian terms (you can stand at one cafe here, throw a rock and hit five other cafes), but in the summertime i’d rather exploit the heat by biking around in short shorts and eating raspberry sorbet. feel worldly as you drink your despicably priced coffee. mooching off wifi and people watching are on my list of favorite things, after pretending zooey deschanel is my best friend and daydreaming about nap-taking with puppies.
7. go out dancing. i admit, i basically forget what exercise is in the winter months. but guys, i went out contra (the northeast’s version of square dancing!) dancing last night with some friends. it was essentially 3 hours of dancing with men older than my dad. and it was awesome. i felt like i was in a jane austen film! and i worked my calves! both of which i think are the dreams of most girls in their 20s.
8. and if all fails, eat. my friend sam and i have declared that we are basically going to get through winter by eating through it. “let’s get fat together”, she said to me wisely. eat and get fat, i shall. i’ve gotten pretty lucky with friends swiping me into their dining halls (eating on harvard’s dime is especially tasty), so this has definitely helped my goal.
on who i am at the moment;
at this moment in time…
….i’m much more content going to concerts solo. crocheting on a friday night and listening to songs like these. spend the evening prancing around beacon hill, arm in arm with a small group of friends.
…i’m so, so, so hopeful. of everything. of the future book i dream about finishing. of the mountain-top home that will house me and my pack of dogs post-graduation. of this glittery city that i luckily call home. even so hopeful of the next book i want to read and the next pot of coffee i will make. the hope is getting scattered everywhere and i’m in no hurry to clean it up.
…i’m so at peace when i find myself daydream about my thesis (i don’t graduate until 2013. i am gross). when i listen to my coffee grinder grind up my coffee for my french press. when i glance over my book to catch a look-see of the charles when my train car crosses over it.
…i’m in disbelief that in a month i will get to go home for the first time in six months. i will get to see my platonic soul mate. and eat black bean burgers at my favorite deli. and eat tofu stir-fries at my favorite chinese restaurant. actually, all of my excitement is wrapped up in eating, so i will stop while i’m ahead.
…i’m my own best company. i’m my own best friend. that is not to say i am some hermit, but what it really boils down to, i have this bubbling little cauldron of happy in me that i alone have made for myself. and that’s an important distinction, don’t you think?
…i’m really loving the collection of baubles and moments i call my life. from squirrels crawling on my lap. to getting mauled with love by puppies in beacon hill. to my hilarious romantic misadventures (someday i will have to chronicle those. they are too ridiculous to not to be told). to being quidditch team mom. i’ve perched all of them on my dresser to gaze at them, in all their misshapen, yet endearing, loveliness.
{photos courtesy of the lovely maya munoz}
snitch-stagramming the world cup, pt 1.;
if you couldn’t tell from my near-obsessive instagram-ing over this past weekend, i went to the quidditch world cup in nyc!
surrounded by my fellow team moms (emerson doesn’t mess around. we gots to make sure our quidditch babies are fed!), a bunch of nerds on broom sticks, wizard rock bands, and an intense love of the game of quidditch, i realized just how smitten i am with my new school and the people i luckily got to surround myself with this weekend.
(holy run-on sentence, batman! this is most depressing because i am a writing/publishing major. but we’ll just forget that major now, won’t we? )
we spent the weekend eating waffles (waffle food truck= the only food at randall’s island where we played quidditch. the iqa knows how to have a party), drinking hot cocoa, and trying not to catch pneumonia between cheering our hearts out at each game (emerson quidditch also has a special team of cheerleaders for the cup. once again, we don’t mess around).
i’ve never felt so much pride in wearing my college sweatshirt. if you know me well you’ll know that i have an embarrassing array of college sweatshirts from schools i’ve never attended. even though middlebury college won (the creators of the game went there. this was the 5th year in a row that they won. LAME) but this time, i felt so glad to be a part of a community of people where any ke$ha and lady gaga song = our school’s fight song. where glitter is an acceptable addition to any outfit. where boylston street is essentially a runway of fashionable, ambitious kids who are so used to studying in the library next to the set of “will and grace” that it has become commonplace.
needless to say, i’m glad that i have two-ish years more of parading around the common on a broomstick and shaking out glitter from my clothes.
{1. the fabled hoops. 2.view of nyc from the gw bridge. 3. team moms trekking over the tappan zee bridge. 4. view from our ecquidditch headquarters, jersey. 5. the world cup camp grounds. 6. rosie, she was my main homegirl of the weekend. we snuggled all day. 7. post world-cup hooters with my fellow team moms, of course}
veganism, labels, and lobster dreams;
you may have noticed or you may be learning this for the first time.
i’ve crossed over to the slightly darker side.
let me explain. i swear i have a good argument.
i started getting these dreams. these vivid, tasty dreams. yes, dreams of lobsters.more specifically speaking, dreams of eating lobsters.
i know, i know. please hold your gasping for later.
my first thought was, “no! that lobster has a family! he has to provide for his little lobster family! why must his claws be so tasty? WHY?” and that the fact that i have this t shirt would officially be ironic.
i kept these thoughts secret for months as i choked down my tofu curries. until finally, i couldn’t have it any more. i was living in new england, in the summertime, and i still had not eaten the ridiculous sandwich that is the lobster roll.
and so, needless to say, without a thought of what other vegans, peta, ingrid newkirk, or an unsuspecting lobster family would think, i conceded. i went to the kitschiest dive bar my friend and i could find and i prepared myself mentally for the event. i answered tedious questions that were being asked on jeopardy on the bar’s television as i let my friend order for me. 20 minutes and many answers yelled at the tv later, the moment had finally come. i had a lobster roll placed in front of me. actually, two lobster rolls. for some reason fate has a sense of humor and misheard my friend’s order, and so an order of “double lobster rolls” were placed in front of me. two lobster families sacrificed for me.
i’m sure those lobsters were the breadwinners of their families (plankton-winners?) and they spent afternoons pushing their little lobster children on little lobster swings in little lobster playgrounds. they made politically incorrect jokes about crabs to their families over dinner. and lobster fathers gave their lobster daughters away at lobster weddings. but i pushed those thoughts out of my mind ate my multiple lobster rolls as i yelled at alex trebek.
and holy jesus. i’d been converted. soon, i started to travel to the progressively darker side, then went back to the light side, and then gosh darnit, the egg sandwich dreams began. and we all know how those go, right?
and so here i am. this little amorphous blob of labels, opinions, and dreams of food products. and even through 1.5 years of veganism and countless years of vegetarianism, of holding my tongue when questioning my choice in becoming vegan, of whispering “i’m vegan” when invited to family gatherings, of only eating the potatoes (and mojitos..wait, what?) at my cousin’s wedding because that was the only vegan thing they had, i realized one simple thing: i’m 20 years old and if i’m having dreams about eating lobsters, i should eat the damn lobster. that is not to say i am going on a lobster-eating rampage (truth be told, i ate it once and then i got creeped out and haven’t really wanted to partake in eating them since), pillaging the ocean of all their crustaceans. quite the opposite.
but i will say that labels just further you from the point of being a vegan. it shouldn’t be something you say to appear as noble, cool, or trendy. you should abstain from eating animals due to your ethics, beliefs, or if dreaming of lobster families creeps the hell out of you. i will admit, dairy is something i still will never find myself eating. but egg sandwiches, lord mercy, they have been a welcome addition. do i still love animals dearly? of course. do i still care for their welfare? yessiree. but do i think that being vegan is the only option in order to show that i care deeply about these things? not necessarily.
this might lead me to have nightmares about little chicken families. this might lead me to guilt for a few months. and ingrid newkirk might throw tomatoes at my door. but life is too short not to eat egg sandwiches when you really, truly want to.
so if you will allow me, i have to jet. i have to make it to a lobster family dinner. we’re going to crack some crab jokes over some plankton-loaf.
sweet dreams, my prince;
i have no words, really.
actually that is a lie.
i have about twelve lovely years of love bunched up in my fist, a little bit angry, a little bit shell-shocked, a little bit more than a bit saddened.
i remember the first time i saw him at the animal shelter. he had a fan club, even then. he wasn’t like the others. he was only five months old and seemed too large for his cage, but that didn’t stop him from relaxing, stretching out his paws to touch both ends of his kennel.
we knew it was love when we saw him there, his legs wide open, flat on his back with the most non-chalant look on his face, when other dogs around him scurried around their cages barking frantically.
what we got from him was twelve years of laughter. twelve years of the occasional lick on the cheek if you were lucky (those were very rare, i tell you. i myself called myself lucky to get even the occasional kiss). twelve years of rolling around in the back yard on his back without a care about how badly his hips hurt him as he got older. twelve years of car rides, when we both stuck our heads out the window to feel the cold air fill our lungs like little happy balloons.
we spent so many days during hurricane season, huddled in the closet drinking sprite and animal crackers as i told him all my biggest secrets. i pretended each walk we went on was a scene from “homeward bound” and we were on some grand adventure. i always “accidentally” slipped him peanut butter sandwiches and made sure my yoga mat was always near him so he could sleep on it. i probably had more deep talks with him than most other people on this earth.
sweet prince, handsome boy, furry love of my life,
i miss you more than you even know.
i know that you’re up in doggy heaven right now, frolicking and rolling in the grass, eating up peanut butter sandwiches, and getting more belly rubs than you ever thought possible.
and as i sit here what seems a million miles away from you, i know that each little, warm tear i’ve had roll down my cheek these past few days is really just a big, rare, warm kiss from you.
i know it, i know it, i know it.
