Beginning Again
Another oldie from the Medium archive - written in July 2020
When did I stop considering myself a writer? Did I forget? With every caption, post & comment, I write. I produce free content for socials, a character on the platform. My words, my energy, my image… stamped in the html of my owner.
Fireworks are going off again, it seemed like there was a pause. They aren’t bothering me tonight for some reason. I’m not a big drinker, but at this moment I feel like a whiskey.
The first sip gives me a rush. It’s almost 1am and I’m just having my first drink. What will it do to me? provide energy for this renewed sense of writerly power? or snap it away? Will it help me focus and zero in on my truest expressions or will cause my mind to wander, back to the insidious applications of digital communication.
I don’t hate them, I love them. Too much perhaps. I love talking to people. Too much perhaps. I love smiling and sharing my beauty… but when its published… I wonder, what is the purpose?
Of course the world needs another selfie, my face has the power to lighten someones day! My friends and fans love me and want to see me all the time. Tik tok is full of kids dancing. My pages are full of awkward silences.
I feel the blood rush to my face… is it getting hotter in here? Mid July heat, with an icy whiskey in my repurposed jam jar. I turn on the AC — I’m an environmental terrorist — I secretly think, although I know its ridiculous. A SOLAR POWERED AIR CONDITIONER. A SOLAR POWERED FREEZER. To be able to cool things with the power of the sun… what a delicious paradox
The next sip I take is harder to swallow, like the genocide in Xinjiang, the missing indigenous women, the ICE detention camps, the occupation in Palestine, the rising anti-semitism, the continued and relentless murder of black people by the police, the wealth inequality, the destruction of our planet — all this time and these rich white men could have done something. Everyone has to pay but them. They collect. In the end we will all die, but I guess they think they are gods.
Bonne Maman — grandmother in French. The inscription on the glass jar stares at me “are you drinking too fast?” I imagine it saying. I just opened a new tab to find out more about Bonne Maman, I learned it means grandmother. I learned its produced in France. This is not a local jam. I buy it because I am collecting the jars. They use a sticker that easily rubs off in warm water. I really don’t like fighting with labels on jars. One day I’ll have berry bushes and cherry trees growing near my home. Once day I’ll can my own jam. Local as fuck.
When I cook I think of Safta — grandmother in Hebrew. Safta Rina was a really interesting woman. Powerful but deeply disturbed. She hurt my mother, and that wound has never healed. When I think about my relationship with my mother, it could never be the same. Safta Rina never gave her anything, my mom has given me a lot.
I’m not sure where this is all going, maybe it is finished for now. Once again when I publish I will not know how to feel. Is this meaningful? Am I just a drunk woman presenting identifying person, typing as they get drunker, with no real purpose? vomiting on the screen so to speak? The end of the entry, did I make any meaningful discoveries or did I just puke? Or maybe both? I guess its for the reader to decide. You? I may very well think I know you.
The point is that this isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning. Those things are intertwined, interchangeable, intersecting. The internet is my new journal. My journal is my new novel. My thoughts are powerful and I will continue to write them and publish them. What I will discontinue is the culture of fear and shame passed down to me. I am not ashamed. I am emerging. A chick in an egg on a chair typing her heart out. Let it pour. I begin here.