mona1347

happy easter to them what celebrate, and to them what don't a lovely and restful sunday. today was beautiful like yesterday but a tch colder so after zoom with the fam (during which my sister defended the sixteen comic book boxes under my bed when my mom wondered why i didn't go through them and get rid of some of them), grocery store (which was not crowded because easter), and lunch (i sat on the front porch for like twenty minutes and then went inside because my feet were cold), i put on shoes and a jacket and went Out. and sat in the sun (sort of) and read my book and drank my iced chai and tried vainly to ignore the fact that i should have worn more clothes. but it was SO NICE. i mean, it's spring.

and then i came home and read some more and made dinner (as passover is now over i can eat bread but instead i had, uh, matzo brei which is basically scrambed eggs with farfel) (ok and also a red bean bread i got at h-mart) (i was going to go out for dinner with my sister but did i mention it's easter? and almost everything is closed) and watched an episode of andor s1 with the confab discord in preparation for s2 which starts on TUESDAY. we haven't caught up yet. if you haven't seen andor i highly recommend it. it's kind of harsh but really well done and diego luna is exceptionally cute. also it has stellan skarsgard and he's always worth watching.

On the edge of another blue world
the lake looms like salvation. Over
coffee, my mom and tía speak excitedly

about the vibrant villages along the shore,
how you can only get there by boat
across the lake’s beautiful depths, how

the volcanos stand piously over the water,
how each village is named for one of the twelve
apostles. I ask, with complete sincerity,

if that means one is named for Judas.
The waitress brings our food. My mom
and tía eat slowly with side-eyes and silence.

--Ariel Francisco, "On the Shore of Lake Atitlán, Apparently I Ruined Breakfast"

today was beautiful (warm, mostly sunny, nice breeze) and i celebrated by a. going to the dentist (all good), b. meeting friend l and tamalinn for a snack and a walk (we saw small turtles and large fish, and there was a goose watching us), and c. watching sinners with michael b jordan (playing twins!), hailee steinfeld, and delroy lindo. ok, and a bunch of other actors but those are the names i know. ( it was billed as horror. ) the story is that the twins come home to mississippi from chicago in 1932 and open a juke joint and discover evil afoot, and there's a scene during the joint's opening night that is fantastic, and overall i enjoyed it and i'm glad i went to see it. the only thing i think i'd change is that i went at four when it was still nice out and maybe i could've gone to the five o'clock show instead.

(previews were the next and i think last mission impossible, another final destination, and one battle after another with leonardo dicaprio which looks really interesting. and i sat a couple rows too close to the screen. >.< )

the james webb space telescope might have discovered signs of life on another planet. could be really cool, could be not as big a deal as we think. we'll see!

may the fourth (meal box) be with you! by which i mean, clover (my favorite local chain) is doing a star wars inspired meal box for may fourth. it includes green pancake mix (for making baby yoda pancakes, natch) and blue milk and bantha gyros, among other things.

"When Benny Agbayani Became a Met"

my ancestors rose and cheered.
From their ancient graves,

pairs of arms rose to make the wave.
Every burial site, a stadium and,

for every one of his at-bats
Mayon Volcano spat a puff of smoke

visible for miles. Children in T-shirts
with the number 50, hand-scrawled by Sharpies

would run into the streets and clang
on metal pans calling all to feast

and when Benny’s cleats dug into the box,
the little cloud of dust rising from his spikes

would drift across continents, into the living room
of every Filipino, issuing a sneeze

which would be followed by a blessing.
The diaspora, a flood of blessings,

watching the orange, blue, and white uniforms
pixelated into millions of screens.

Tens of thousands of nurses held their breaths
when they looked up between shifts

and saw him rest the bat on his shoulder
staring down the pitcher. When Benny Agbayani

was a Met, whole families, once torn apart
by distance held each other close, wrapped

together tightly in the embrace of phone cords,
the web of telephone lines crisscrossing the nation.

Each long distance call the shimmering pulse of a wrist
bracing for the recoil of the bat making contact.

When Benny fielded fly balls we’d all look
into the sun for the speck of something—

something to ease us into the heartbeat
of Americana where it was always

summer and the lawn markings
formed grids visible from space.

When Benny Agbayani was a Met we thought
the organ’s roar was for us and the syncopated applause

put us into a rhythm in tune to our hearts.
When Benny Agbayani put his mitt to the ground

to stop a daisy cutter, millions of us put our ears
to the earth to hear the rumblings

of what we hoped would be thousands of footsteps,
following his path. But instead they were galloping

towards home. We’d raise the brim of our caps
and nod our chins at a cool breeze

or the smell of fryer oil. And when Shea
sang in one voice “B-B-B-Benny and the Mets”

we stood and put are hands to our hearts.
We rocked back and forth on our heels

watching the strike zone get smaller
and smaller. Watched as the sun made

our shadows grow and we waited until the roster
made room for us in the show, now and in the ever after.

--Oliver de la Paz

i feel like same shit, different day. at least the different day is friday. (i had to call a hotel this morning to get a bill and when the woman on the other end of the line asked how she could help me i got as far as "i need a, uh, i'm sorry, i just lost the entire rest of that sentence". because it's friday and my brain was already pfft. she laughed. she understood. and then she figured out what i needed and sent it to me.)

cave explorers in mexico find evidence of a lost civilization in a hidden room. because as the article says, you always have to check inside the hidden chamber. how cool, tho.

Listen, I promise you, I have
no stake in this world. No
political affiliations unless
love is a political tool, unless
my body is a political tool,
unless my comrades are a
political tool. I have no
high stake in this world, no
children to want to leave
a better world to, nothing
but fucking & bookmaking
that is my legacy & it is as
undeniable as smoke; yet
may disappear like it too. I
turn on the news & not
owning pearls, I clutch my
fancy juicer to my chest
I gather around me my art
& my mirrors, my plants &
my price of the ticket—a bible.
I think they’re coming for
me. For it. For all my
million little nothings they
consider stakes in this world.
I got no gun, I got no pickup
I got no desire to burn the
world; I don’t own the world
I own stand mixers & an
eggplant colored Le Creuset
a tiny apartment with bad pipes
& creaking floors. I have
no stakes. I barely got health,
I barely got muscle. I want
a garden near an ocean
that won’t eventually swallow
me. I want my only job to be this:
clawing at a white page until Black
appears. & suddenly, in that moment
I got something—

--Yesenia Montilla, "High Stakes"

i have an episode of andor to watch and i need to catch up on grosse point garden society and i'm so, so tired. (it's shark week in my house and while i'm not excited for menopause i'm ready to stop bleeding from the nether bits.) (if i just grossed you out i apologize.) i just want to lie in bed and watch tv except the tv i need to watch i need to concentrate on. my life, so hard. sigh.

i meant to mention this in the last post but it's finally spring here. there was snow on my car last saturday when i left for atlanta - SNOW. on my CAR. in APRIL. - but when i came home the sky was blue and all the trees were starting to turn green and the little pink tree across the street has finally started producing little pink flowers. and in atlanta it was SPRING. like, trees in full leaf, flowers blooming everywhere, green grass, the whole thing. it's nice to see greater boston trying to catch up.

there was a french bulldog on the t this morning. his name was mezcal ("like the tequila") and he was very cute.

small boy disappears from his house in arizona. the next morning a rancher seven miles away finds him. the rancher's dog led the kid to him. the dog's name is buford and he is a very good boy.

apparently the hottest tv show in sweden is a livestream of the epic moose migration. seriously. people get really invested.

the unholy trinity of suburban late-night salvation
barring seemingly endless options of worship

bean burrito breadsticks and mashed potatoes
or a soft taco pan pizza and a buttered biscuit

an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents

and yet none of the options feel quite right
so maybe I should call it Self-Portrait as idling

in a drive-thru with your friends crammed
across the sunken bench seats avoiding

the glow of the check engine light with black tape
pressed with a precision unseen anywhere else

in their lives as a fractured voice says don’t worry
take your time and order whenever you’re ready

from behind a menu backlit like the window
inside of a confessional booth as the hands

of the driver open up like a collection basket
for the wadded-up bills and loose change

that slowly stack up as the years go by
and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be

in this analogy but I know about masking
warning signs and hearing out of tune

voices scream WE’RE THE KIDS WHO FEEL
LIKE DEAD ENDS so instead I’ll call it Self-

Portrait as From Under the Cork Tree
or maybe even Self-Portrait as whatever

album people listen to when they love
their friends and still want to feel connected

to the grass walls of a teenage wasteland
that they can’t help but run away from

--Aaron Tyler Hand, "Self-Portrait as Combination Taco Bell / Pizza Hut / KFC"

i'm home from passover with the fam - i actually got home yesterday but didn't feel like posting - there were a lot of people and my cousin had two seders which i'm not used to any more but meant i got to wear nice clothes twice. (by which i mean my red steve madden shoes that i love with a love that is unseemly and which i almost never wear because they're suede and i don't want to ruin them.) but mostly there were a lot of people and i got to hang with cousins i never see and talk to cousin j's kids and get excited about the youngest who's getting married in december. aside from the seders we did nothing but sit around the house and play games and eat and chat. yesterday i was ready to go altho i wasn't ready to go home, if that makes sense. like, i was peopled out and didn't need to stay in atlanta any longer but i didn't want to come home. but fun was had, good food was et, my mom told me and my sister that she's moving in with her boyfriend by the end of june and no she doesn't want/need our help because they've already started moving shit over. (he has a house and she's ready to not be paying as much rent as she's now paying. she said even if she wasn't having financial angst she'd still want to move in with him, just slightly later in the year. i am 100% unsurprised. i think this was always his endgame altho i don't think he was ever going to push mom into it and when she tells you "oh i started to miss him when i was sitting on the plane" - before she'd even left florida - you know she's moving in as soon as she can.)

a fun thing about my cousin's second seder - the hebs in the audience and people who have been to seders before can skip to the end of this paragraph - among other things on the table is a small stack of three matzos and earlyish in the seder you break the middle one in half. you break one half into little pieces and pass them around so everyone can have one ("this is the bread of affliction", etc etc) and you hide the other half. this is called the afikoman. at some point in the evening, i think generally around dinnertime, the kids at the seder are supposed to look for the afikoman and whoever finds it ransoms it back after dinner, and then everyone gets a little piece of it and that's supposed to be the last thing you eat. nothing left but the singing and a couple more glasses of wine. instead of giving something to just the person who found the afikoman, everyone at my cousin's seder gets a little something. the first seder, it was little rocks with "hope" inscribed on them, and the second seder it was... kosher for passover cbd gummies.

my cousin does not do edibles and i'm not sure what possessed her to get passover safe gummies for her seder guests. but she did! everyone got one in a little bag. i put mine down somewhere when i was helping clean up and i think someone took it by mistake so i did not go home with a passover gummy. but the fact that my cousin gave them out at her seder was a source of some wtf? but mostly vast amusement.

and now i'm home and back to work and quarantining in my room for a week because my roommate is covid nervous and i spent four days in airplanes and airports and in close proximity to lots of people. (i'm also currently covid negative but that could change, who knows.) we had the support staff lunch today and admin p who ordered the food made a point to consult with me last week to make sure i could eat whatever he ordered - he went with mexican which in retrospect probably wasn't the greatest idea but it was burritos and you can, y'know, just unroll your burrito and eat the innards but not the tortilla. which is what i did. but someone from fiscal gave him a hard time - "no jewish person would eat this!" - and then i felt bad because i was the consultant whose job was theoretically to help him find a passover friendly caterer. but you know what, if someone is going to be really picky about keeping passover they maybe shouldn't go to the group lunch when they know in advance what the group lunch is going to be.

burrito was good, tho. and big. and i did not eat the tortilla or the taco chips and was very proud of myself.

i'm starting to get nervous about finding a place to live because the places i can afford are either available now or in september. and i can't wait until september.

a positive thing, however - i'm working on this story for writing group that's kind of a side story to the thing i should've written for nano but didn't, and i think i know how i want it to end. which is a very different ending than my first idea. maybe i'll write them both and one of them will be, like, fanfic of my own story.

for my fellow hebs, i bring you the pezuzah. if you were feeling nostalgic but also wanted to mark the doorposts of your house.

and for my fellow gen x-ers, the cast of the breakfast club reunited for the first time in forty years. well, the five kids did. paul gleeson who played the principal died in 2006. do you feel old now? because i kind of do. (screws fall out all the time. the world's an imperfect place. :D )

as a reward for slogging through all that, here's a poem.

There’s nothing left except to try.
—Mrs. Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time

I tried, believe me, I did, but my cheap Caribou jeans
and Buster Brown polos couldn’t match the prestige
of Levi’s, Nikes, Lacoste worn by my fifth-grade classmates
who visited Magic Kingdom every summer. There was
Claudia with her button-y nose and perfect smile;
blonde and green-eyed Caroline. Despite her rumpled clothes,
she looked like a queen. And then Federico, who pulled
my braids and boasted about meeting Mickey Mouse. I said
mice are dirty, they poop everywhere, will make you sick.
You’d know, he sneered—I wished him gone. Abuela told me
about giving mal de ojo to a woman who spoke ill of her.
The woman got sick, almost died. One day Federico fell,
pierced his knee on a sharp piece of metal. I whispered in his ear
as he wailed: I don’t need to go to Magic Kingdom. Magic is in my blood.

--Leonora Simonovis, "Little Bruja"