yesterday, as i was preparing myself for another grumpy sunday morning, spent in trying to slash of things from my long to-do list, i got a text from my friend S: would i like to accompany him to a trip in the nurseries at homestead, and then a small day-trip to key largo? i say yes. right away. because, while i am aware of all the heavy responsibilities of a tenure-track job, i also want to explore my life, this world.
s drives through the highway -- he, a white working class gay man who has grown up in texas. and me, a very very fucked up woman who has grown up in a refugee family in garia, kolkata. like all of our conversations so far, we meander into our scholarly projects, childhoods, films, politics, plants, food and back into our scholarship. we stop at homestead, in a nursery run by a mexican immigrant family. and we walk through the plants, stopping to talk about this and that, to touch a leaf here, to marvel at the color of a hibiscus petal there. and i wonder, what binds us together? how does one even begin to think about the queerness of friendship? at the end of it all, s gifts me with two plants -- a lemongrass sapling and a yellow hibiscus.
we drive some more. and he and i land at island grill. we eat their conch fritters, fish dip and share a whole fish. and we talk and talk and talk. Right now, from where I am writing this post, I can see their green tips trembling in air. there are butterflies in my porch. and, i can almost ignore the fact that i have called in sick today. because my body was so overwhelmed. i was so overwhelmed.
in between, i have copied from my journal onto my computer poems that had been lingering on my notebook for two long -- "Maternity Ward" and "When I Ask The Widow Ghost The Same Question Again And Again." I normally write in longhand as the poem comes to me -- either in block paragraphs or in arbitrary line-breaks. So, it is only when I copy the poems in my laptop, do i do the line-breaks. and, i feel good -- i think, with this widow ghost one and the other interview poem i wrote, i have succeeded to push my writerly comfort zones a bit. now, is the difficult part. putting them up for critiques in the workshops. but, i am looking forward to the process.
s drives through the highway -- he, a white working class gay man who has grown up in texas. and me, a very very fucked up woman who has grown up in a refugee family in garia, kolkata. like all of our conversations so far, we meander into our scholarly projects, childhoods, films, politics, plants, food and back into our scholarship. we stop at homestead, in a nursery run by a mexican immigrant family. and we walk through the plants, stopping to talk about this and that, to touch a leaf here, to marvel at the color of a hibiscus petal there. and i wonder, what binds us together? how does one even begin to think about the queerness of friendship? at the end of it all, s gifts me with two plants -- a lemongrass sapling and a yellow hibiscus.
we drive some more. and he and i land at island grill. we eat their conch fritters, fish dip and share a whole fish. and we talk and talk and talk. Right now, from where I am writing this post, I can see their green tips trembling in air. there are butterflies in my porch. and, i can almost ignore the fact that i have called in sick today. because my body was so overwhelmed. i was so overwhelmed.
in between, i have copied from my journal onto my computer poems that had been lingering on my notebook for two long -- "Maternity Ward" and "When I Ask The Widow Ghost The Same Question Again And Again." I normally write in longhand as the poem comes to me -- either in block paragraphs or in arbitrary line-breaks. So, it is only when I copy the poems in my laptop, do i do the line-breaks. and, i feel good -- i think, with this widow ghost one and the other interview poem i wrote, i have succeeded to push my writerly comfort zones a bit. now, is the difficult part. putting them up for critiques in the workshops. but, i am looking forward to the process.
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered."Yes, Piglet?""Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”--- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
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