[iceland] colors.

when i travel, i write love stories, and this story is about you.

it's when i travel that i want a partner most, and it's when i travel that i miss you most. to say "i miss you" is an odd idea in and of itself because you're still an idea — i'm afraid you'll always be an idea — but "i miss you" is the only accurate way to describe these feelings, this ache. i miss you, i miss you, i miss you — i miss you though we never were.

i come to iceland blind, and by that i mean that i come to iceland without a story in mind. when i backpacked through japan in 2012, i had a story i was working on, one i'd started writing as i was planning the trip, doing more research than i would ever do for any other trip, imagining the country and wondering how i would experience it in real life.

japan aligned surprisingly well with the japan i saw in my brain, and that story grew, expanded, as i made my way around that country. i kept a regular travel journal that time, filling the silent spaces with words i'd jot down in a notebook, notes on characters i'd see and situate in the country around me. as i spent time in hostels, i wondered about the interactions between strangers, something i've discovered is an obsession of mine — i'm still curious about how we meet people, how we interact with each other, how strangers become acquaintances become friends and lovers and family and more.

and, so, i think about you, a stranger i've brought to life in my head, and i compose stories about you, about us. for some reason, traveling brings out the sentimental in me.

THE COLOR OF VEGETATION

a few years ago, i wrote a story with the same title as this blog, a story about two people who meet when one is traveling and arrives in the other's city. they're not total strangers; they share a mutual friend who's spoken of them to each other; but they meet by coincidence and kiss and start getting to know each other.

it's a story in epistolary form, one writing to the other as they continue their friendship with an ocean between them, a friendship that becomes something more, though they're both afraid to confront what that means, what it might look like when they're long-distance and one of them travels a lot for work — and i don't quite know why i'm launching into a summary of that story here, except maybe that it's a story that i love (and am currently unsure what to do with; it's in that weird limbo of being complete but still maybe needing some work before being submitted again).

that story wasn't about you, which maybe makes mention of it even stranger. let's try this again.

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in iceland, i'm constantly taken away by the colors, and i stop to take as detailed photos of flora as my iphone allows. i don't know anything about photography, really; i don't even own a "proper" camera or understand light or exposure or know any technical terms; but none of that clearly stops me from taking photos of everything and sharing them on the internet.

(maybe i believe that it's like something one of my few favorite bloggers/designers tweeted once: no one asks a chef what kind of oven she uses.)

given my penchant for oversharing, i wonder how much of us i might share with the internet. how public would i get? how much would i want to say? i’m not so good at hiding, so how much of how i’m feeling at any given time would leak out?

what are the benefits to being so public, anyway? about whatever it is — what i’m reading, what i’m thinking, how i’m dealing with depression and/or anxiety and/or type 2? why do i do this, and would i continue this with you?

how might you react to it?

how might you react to me stopping to take photos of everything, losing my breath over the sheer beauty of the world around me? would it amuse you, or would it irritate you? would you find it foolish, or would you find it charming? would you laugh and wait patiently as i pause for half-a-minute to get my photo, as i reach for you and proclaim my wonder at some stupidly beautiful nature that opens itself before us? would you share in that wonder?

how much of fiction originates in what we imagine for our own lives?

THE COLOR OF STONES

when i’m driving around iceland, i imagine us together, you in the passenger seat, blasting a playlist of cheesy pop and snacking on everything sweet and salty. when i’m hiking or scrambling up rocks, i imagine you reaching for my hand, lacing your fingers through mine. when i’m sleeping, lined up like a sardine in a tin can in our camper van, i imagine you beside me, your body pressed against mine for extra warmth.

sometimes, i think this is a peculiar loneliness of mine, or maybe just a peculiar antidote to loneliness, to imagine a person into being. sometimes, i think it’s kind of crazy, crazy in that i’ve-lost-my-mind sort of way, but, other times, i think the need for a fellow human being is a need so fundamental to all humans that i’m inclined just to shrug it off and run with it. i get good stories out of it, anyway, stories rooted in place, influenced by place, stories that examine this human want and need and desire.

that’s one of the fun parts of writing, i think, discovering our obsessions, and human relations will always be one of mine. Othering, binaries, fear of differences are others. depression and suicide — or, maybe, put more broadly, that complex human compulsion for self-annihilation runs under everything.

we’re talking about place here, though, how i’m writing this story about you in iceland, so here’s this: i’ve never written a story set in los angeles; i’ve never felt that kind of pull, that need to remember this place. my father comments on my sieve of a memory, my subconscious impulse to forget, and it’s true — it’s not intentional, this forgetting, but i have gaps in my memory of my childhood and youth, many things i don’t remember or maybe have chosen to forget.

sometimes, that scares me because i don’t want to be the forgetting kind. i mean, i’d want to remember everything about you.

THE COLOR OF WATER

i think about the unknowability of you, how much we can ever know about another. i think about the things i will never know about you, no matter how close we were to become. i think about the depths we contain, the shadows that pull at us unknown to others, and i think about what it means to know someone, anyway — how do we know we know enough to make that claim?

i think a lot about this in the context of parents because i think one of the weird things about growing up is realizing that our parents are fully-formed people with pasts and histories and wants of their own. they’re not just our parents, there to love us and provide for us and guide us; they have personalities of their own, flaws, desires. they have ambitions they gave up for us, and they have sacrifices they made and continue to make, and they exist as human beings outside the context of our parent-child relationships.

in similar ways, i think how parenting must sometimes be a constant process of letting go. when a child is born, i imagine her/his/their parents might have so many expectations and wants for her/him/them. the child grows, though, demonstrates an individual, unique personality and will all her/his/their own, maybe deviates from the life they might have wanted for the child, and i think about that struggle of coming to terms with a child’s individuality, with her/his/their exertion of her/his/their own self, maybe seemingly sometimes at the expense of a parent’s happiness and peace of mind.

and, so, i think about you and everything about you i will never know. you’re essentially a character in my mind, but i will still never know everything about you. that’s the way of fiction, though, because fiction is, at heart, about life, and life is complicated and nuanced and unknowable.

we try, though. we make the effort to know, and we make the effort to be known. i suppose it’s what makes me be so stupidly public about everything, even this you i’ve made up in my head.

[iceland] stupid beautiful.

i spend two weeks driving around iceland with my cousins, and we spend the two weeks in intensely close quarters, in a camper van, in which we eat and sleep and travel. we start in reykjavik and end in reykjavik — or, i suppose, if we’re being technical, we start at keflavik airport and end at keflavik airport, making our way around the entire country, stopping for hikes and waterfalls and breathtakingly beautiful landscapes.

iceland is a country that takes your breath away by being stupid beautiful and stupid expensive. it's a country of colors and textures, of water in all kinds of hues, of food that makes you cry every time you purchase it because, yes, it's good — the fish is amazing, the hot dogs addictive — but it's all so, so expensive.

gas stations end up being the bane of my existence, and i think how it's always the random things, the things you don't think about that catch you off-guard when traveling. in japan, it was small talk, the value of it; in korea, it was the weirdness of sharing a language and a culture but being so outside both; and, in iceland, it's gas stations. for some reason, i never have a smooth transaction at any gas station.

my cousins are on my father's side of my family, and, for the longest time, for so many years, my greatest "what if?" was "what if my father had gotten a job on the east coast and i'd grown up where i was born in close proximity to my cousins? how different would i be now?"

it's a “what if” that took me years, over a decade, to shake, and it's a “what if” i still sometimes think about, especially during family gatherings, when all the extended family (or as much of it) gets together during a holiday, exchanging our usual "hi"s and "how are you doing"s, collecting again in that strange space of familiarity and strangeness. i've always hated that distance, of "it's been so long"s, because i've always hated that sense of knowing but not knowing them, of my cousins existing in this space of myth where their accomplishments loomed larger to me than their actual selves.

my cousins are brilliant, and, because my father is the fifth child of six, i'm one of the youngest ones, a child who watched from a distance with something akin to hero worship as news of my cousins on the east coast filtered down to me through my parents. i grew up hoping i'd be like them, that my future would be ivy leagued and bright, that i would discover an excellence and genius within me that would vault me onto their level. i always felt a disappointment when i remained firmly on the ground and never learned to fly.

but, anyway, i don't believe in hero worship anymore, and i try not to linger on "what if"s or on regrets or hypotheticals. of course, it's all easier said than done most times, but there is still this, this refusal to be tied down to this kind of negative bullshit anymore.

and, anyway, so, my cousins are on my father's side of my family, and they're my youngest aunt's kids, and they're younger than i am, which means i remember them from when they were babies. the eldest is almost in her mid-twenties now, which is bloody weird, and the youngest is fifteen, which is even weirder. i remember her when she was a baby, when my aunt would make my middle-school-aged brother carry her on his back when we were hiking in canada, and i remember her as a child, laughing and laughing and laughing like all she could do was laugh, like she'd cease to exist if she stopped laughing.

she still laughs non-stop, from the second she wakes up to the second she falls asleep, and i love this about her, this mirth that bubbles from her core, that draws you into her world of joy and makes you see the world as a brighter place. i think we could all use someone like that in our lives.

at night, we sleep like sardines in the van, and we fall into a routine of prepping for sleep at night and packing up in the morning. it's not as bad as i'm afraid it will be, this sleeping in a camper van for two weeks, though i feel terrible for the eldest because the other three of us snore.

(snoring is one of those things i feel terrible about, even though it's nothing i can control.)

the eldest is a study of patience, and she sees the positive to everything and everyone. i, on the other hand, often feel uncharitable for being unable to maintain such a view to life, and, sometimes, i wish i were a gentler, more forgiving soul. i'm irritable, though, and impatient and transparent about both, and i can be argumentative and moody and occasionally combative, despite being pretty non-confrontational by nature. 

i worry about these parts of my personality before leaving for iceland because i know my tendency to max out quickly on close human contact. i'm not someone who does well attached to a human (or a set of humans) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and i know i wear my emotions on my face, that my annoyance comes through easily, that i'm not the greatest at hiding my displeasure when it arrives.

it feels like a miracle that the two weeks pass without incident, with only one occasion when my temper comes roiling to the surface. it has nothing to do with my cousins, though, and everything to do with the sheer physical exhaustion that comes from a lot of hiking, constant movement, and anxiety-dream-riddled sleep. i don't sleep well in strange places as it is, and add my anxiety to it, and sleep — or restful sleep — is still that unicorn i chase.

it helps, though, that the eldest is so patient, the middle silent and stoic, the youngest so mirthful. it’s impossible to fester in foul moods or testiness around that combination, just like it’s impossible to lose time to anything ugly in a country that takes your breath away constantly. iceland is unreal, painted in colors that stun even the imagination, and our two weeks feel like a dream, like we’re suspended from reality, and it’s a place from which i’m loathe to return.

our second-to-last evening, we check into a hostel to sleep in proper beds in proper heating because two of us are getting sick and we all need showers.  i reheat cold spaghetti on the stove and cook the rest of our rice, and we sit around the table, eating, drinking the last of our rosé, and talking. i think, this is kind of what i envisioned from this trip, being able to sit and chat — which isn’t to say that the rest of the trip is a disappointment because it’s not. you don’t have to sit around a table to get to know people; you learn a lot just from being around them.

it’s a particularly nice evening, nicer because my cousins are older and i feel comfortable talking to them, being open with them. they’re all smart kids, smart and curious and ambitious and wounded and human, and i want to keep them with me all the time, am saddened by the fact that we’ll be in four different cities again, that an opportunity like this will be difficult to come by again.

we say, let's do this again. let's road trip around korea; let's go to spain — and i want these to be words we don't just say but things that can actually happen at some point in the near future, things that can be possibilities. let's go here, let's go there — i want this to be the framework of my life because i want to travel and see the world and eat everything, and i want to live on the road, to return to my home city for a few days, a few weeks at a time, before venturing on to the next city, the next country, again.

and maybe that's the hard part about traveling, that it cracks open that part of me that i keep locked so tightly because i don't have the financial means to travel as i'd like. when i'm back at the office, back at work, i spend too long looking up flights to barcelona, wondering if it's wiser to save when i can or just to travel when i can, and i try to quell that familiar ache blooming again in my gut — i want to go; i want to go; i want to go.

i have never wanted to be just here, wherever here is, and driving around iceland in a camper van for two weeks reminds me of that, brings all that rushing back and slithering again under my skin. i want to go; i want to go; i want to go.

[iceland] checking in.

hello from iceland! where i sit in a camper van on a campgrounds in a tiny town somewhere on the north coast. we’re just over halfway into our trip here and just over halfway around this country, and i thought i’d try to check in, say hello, hi, i haven’t disappeared, not permanently, sorry for leaving you without a goodbye.

iceland is a beautiful, magical country where the land changes within minutes, no gradual shapeshifting either, but sudden shifts in color, light, and texture. i’m obsessed with all the colors and textures here, and i’ve been taking hundreds of photos, just trying to capture the variety because, holy shit, i’m entranced. i’m such a sucker for color and texture and simply beauty, so it’s almost orgasmic, seriously, just looking around, wide-eyed, and soaking everything in.

this is a country i’ve wanted to visit for years, way before the influx of tourism; i’d had iceland earmarked as a honeymoon destination if i ever got married; and i’m thrilled to be here, driving around with my cousins in a camper van and going on random hikes and seeing so many waterfalls and listening to hamilton over and over and over again. my knees are sore, and i’m crazy bruised up and down my left side from falling (twice so far, once right by a giant waterfall), but it has been such a heady, hilarious week thus far, and we have six days to go! enjoy a few photos (or thirteen), and there will be more words and images to come!

gender traitor, mango eater.

ordinary, said aunt lydia, is what you are used to. this may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. it will become ordinary. (33)

hi! it’s been a whirlwind of a week-and-a-half, filled with emotions and time zones and sleepless nights. we went from los angeles to san francisco to cancún to san francisco to los angeles, and we watched my brother be wedded to my now-sister-in-law, the same weekend that i watched the hulu adaptation of margaret atwood’s the handmaid’s tale (vintage, 1985) and started rereading the novel.

which is a juxtaposition worth noting because it was a weekend of religious, church-y services, and it was a jarring juxtaposition indeed.

(there will be no spoilers for the hulu adaptation in this post. i’m waiting for the halfway point to write about that.) (all quotes in this post, except for one noted below, are from the handmaid's tale.)

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it’s the usual story, the usual stories. god to adam, god to noah. be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. then comes the moldy old rachel and leah stuff we had drummed into us at the center. give me children, or else i die. am i in god’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? behold my maid bilhah. she shall bear upon my knees, that i may also have children by her. and so on and so forth. we had it read to us every breakfast, as we sat in the high school cafeteria, eating porridge with cream and brown sugar. you’re getting the best, you know, said aunt lydia. there’s a war on, things are rationed. you are spoiled girls, she twinkled, as if rebuking a kitten. naughty puss. (88-9)

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if you want to spend a week feeling terror, read the handmaid’s tale and chase that with rebecca solnit’s the mother of all questions (haymarket books, 2016).

if you’re not familiar with the handmaid’s tale yet, you should be. the novel follows a first-person narrator who is named as offred, though that isn’t her actual name, simply her designation as she is the handmaid assigned to a commander named fred.

a handmaid is a class of women in this city of gilead, and handmaids are women who are still able to get pregnant and bear children, a blessing in this time when the birthrate is down and pregnancy is rare, which, of course, is a fault that is borne entirely by women because men cannot be held to blame.

gilead is a hyper-conservative, hyper-religious city, and, with her novel, atwood gives us hyper-literal interpretations of the bible. handmaids are monthly subject to “the ceremony,” in which the handmaid lays between the legs of the wife, who holds the handmaid’s wrists, while the husband fucks (read: rapes) the handmaid, a literal take of the biblical passage, genesis 30:1-3.

there’s a lot in the novel that takes the bible literally.

given that, unsurprisingly, this is a world in which women have no rights, no money, no property. instead, they are property, and it is illegal for them to read, write, think even, i dare say. it doesn’t matter whether they’re a wife or a handmaid or an aunt — and one of the things atwood does so brilliantly in her novel is to show how women are complicit in enforcing and reinforcing the patriarchy and misogyny and sexism.

gilead needs the aunts with their cattle prods and indoctrination to force the handmaids to submit. it needs the wives to call handmaids sluts and whores while requiring them for childbearing. it needs the handmaids, too, to spy on each other, report on each other, keep them in place. the patriarchy doesn’t keep itself in power simply by the participation and force of men.

and, if you think this is some far-fetched fictional world, think about this — we hold each other to impossible standards; we shame each other for dressing provocatively, wearing too much makeup, acting “inappropriately.” we blame victims of sexual assault and tell our girls that boys are being mean to them because they have crushes on them and encourage each other to stay in abusive relationships for the sake of our children. we tear each other down and keep each other in our proper place, scoffing when one of us tries to break the glass ceiling, wants more than we should, tries to be different and wants more, even if it’s something as basic as equal pay and the right to make decisions about our own bodies.

and think about this — women voted for the cheeto. women held hillary clinton to an impossible standard, despite the fact that she was qualified for the job at hand. women defended the cheeto’s horrific statement of “grab them by the pussy” by dismissing it as men’s locker talk. women voted for him. women did that.

after the wedding, my extended family — all my aunts and uncles on my father’s side — goes to mexico. it’s hard to say we go to mexico, though, because we spend the entirety of the time on a fancy resort an hour from cancún, in this little bubble enclave of wealth and pampering.

while i’m in transit, in these sleepless in-between spaces, i think about a lot of things.

i think about the bubbles these fancy resorts are, the drive from cancún international airport to the resort, this one hour traversed on a highway that crosses through trees and exposes little of the world around us. nature, here, is meant to hide. i think about the stuffy privilege of all this, of cloistering ourselves away on these all-inclusive grounds, our every need being met, greeted with smiles and friendly holas and can-i-get-anything-for-you,-miss-es? i think about the hypocrisy of being uncomfortable about all this but receiving the services, anyway, of enjoying the comforts of my privilege, of my family being one that can have.

i think about complicity, how we’re all complicit in something. i’m complicit by simply having said yes, okay, to this vacation with my extended family. i’m complicit by partaking of these services. i’m no better than anyone else just because i feel guilty — maybe i’m worse because of it — and i think, what can i do about this? what can i do instead of simply feeling badly about it?

i don’t yet have an answer to that.

i think about passports and borders and the privilege and protection my US citizenship grants me. i think about that time i was driving across the country, and i was in new mexico when all traffic was stopped at border patrol. i sat in that queue, wondering where my passport was, if i’d need it, if my california license would be enough to prove my citizenship, but, then, i got to the kiosk, and all the man asked was, are you a citizen, ma’am?

i said, yes, and he said, thank you, ma’am, and waved me through, and i thought how simple that was, how all i said was one word and that was sufficient.

on thursday, i leave cancún to return to the states, and, as i go through the airport in mexico, i think about how my US passport might be considered more valuable than my person. as i land at LAX and head to immigration, showing my passport to security who direct me to the line for US citizens, i think what a privilege this is, to be able to know that i can reenter my country of residence without trouble, that this little book of paper is enough for me to stake my claim.

i think about what krys lee wrote about borders in her novel how i became a north korean (viking, 2016):

i often think about borders.  it's hard not to.  there were the guatemalans and mexicans i read about in the paper who died of dehydration while trying to cross into america.  or later, the syrians fleeing war and flooding into turkey.  arizona had the nerve to ban books by latino writers when only a few hundred years ago arizona was actually mexico.  or the sheer existence of passports, twentieth-century creations that decide who gets to stay and leave.  (lee, 60)

and i think about how borders are lines on a map and passports are books of paper, and yet, and yet.

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over the past week-and-a-half, i think, too, about gender treachery, about passing. passing is not something i do intentionally; i happen to be very femme; and we live in a heteronormative society that assumes straightness, especially when one fits into the expected visual of gender norms. i think about that privilege and how it’s not one i necessarily want and isn’t one i’ve pursued, but that makes me think about privilege overall and how privilege doesn’t tend to be something we’ve actively pursued — that’s why it’s privilege.

the other day, my father asked if i considered myself an activist, and i said, no, i don’t. i don’t consider myself an activist at all. just because i like to talk about things, because i believe it’s important to talk about mental health, sexuality, heteronormativity, body positivity, feminism, that doesn’t make me an activist.

what makes an activist, though? i’m loathe to align myself in such ways because i don’t think my talking about things makes much of a tangible difference. i’m not here trying to change policy or trying to advocate for more equal rights or anything; i write these words mostly in the hopes that someone out there will recognize them and maybe feel a little less alone and, in turn, will help me feel less isolated. i hardly consider that activism. 

in mexico, i eat as many mango halves as i can.

the mango halves are only available during breakfast and lunch, so that means i’m eating, like, four mangoes a day because i’m eating four halves at breakfast, four halves at lunch, and i’d eat more if i didn’t think that would be overkill. maybe some people might think four mangoes a day are overkill, but i don’t — i love mangoes, though i didn’t always.

in mexico, the mangoes come sliced the way i like — cut in half, grids cut into them, the fruit still in its peel. you flip it out, so it makes for easy eating because a ripe mango will come easily off its peel as you bite into it, juice dribbling down your hands and wrists and arms. it’s sticky and messy, but it’s mango, and the mess is part of the fun.

it’s kind of like pizza; i’ll never get people who eat pizza with a fork and knife. you fold the slice in half and bring the whole thing up to your face and bite and chew and swallow. likewise, you flip the mango out, bring it to your face, and enjoy the mess it makes, just like you do with ripe, juicy peaches.

i wish i'd eaten more mangoes the two-and-a-half days i was on that fancy resort.

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it was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the congress and the army declared a state of emergency. they blamed it on the islamic fanatics, at the time.

keep calm, they said on television. everything is under control.

i was stunned. everyone was, i know that. it was hard to believe. the entire government, gone like that. how did they get in, how did it happen?

that was when they suspended the constitution. they said it would be temporary. there wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. people stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. there wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.

[…]

things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. the roadblocks began to appear, and identipasses. everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful. they said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. the thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual. (174)

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the handmaid’s tale reads like a warning.

do not normalize this president. do not normalize violence against women, the taking of women’s rights to make decisions about their own bodies, the denial of consent. do not normalize discrimination and hate crimes committed against people because of the color of their skin, the gender with which they identify, their sexual orientation, the god they worship. do not normalize this administration’s lies and manipulations.

do not normalize. the nightmare of the handmaid’s tale begins with normalization.

---

this was a travelogue.

[travelogue] eat eat eat eat eat.

i do regret leaving the south without eating fried chicken. and i also regret not eating more grits.

back in los angeles, at my parents’, and here’s a last travel post, a few other things i ate, a few things i’ve been thinking about since i left new york ten days ago.

01. we carry heartbreak in our bodies. i feel it literally in my heart, the way it feels like my heart is physically trying to squeeze itself out of my body. i feel it in my stomach, too, the way it churns with anxiety, wakes me in the morning with nausea, reminds me of loss by making me want to vomit all the time. heartbreak is not simply a matter of emotion; i think we forget that we feel with our bodies.

02. as i was driving, i thought a lot about borders, about spaces. i thought about how things started to feel different once i crossed the virginia border into north carolina, even though maybe that was more in my head than anything else. i thought about wanting to drive through north carolina without stopping because HB2 has yet to be repealed. (i similarly thought about wishing i could avoid texas because of SB242 and a similar bathroom bill and restrictive abortion laws.) i thought about being in charleston and feeling my asianness, my queerness, and i thought about being in the south and experiencing that southern geniality and hospitality but constantly having that fear underneath my skin, wondering, what do you really think of me? i know i pass as very straight, so what would you think if you knew who i was, what i was?

03. here’s a truth: that i know that we can’t make sweeping generalized statements about any region, any group of people, anything, really. that i know that there are open-minded, loving people to be found everywhere, that there are allies in hidden spaces, that we speak in code that’s there to be deciphered by those of us who speak the language.

04. and here’s another truth: that we must learn to speak these languages, that they are languages we carry, too, in our bodies.

05. and here’s yet another truth: that i know i can’t make sweeping generalized statements about the south but that my uneasiness was, is still a real thing. maybe it’s more easily explained in the context of religion because religion makes me very uneasy, and all the churches and the billboards blasting bible verses and the trucks done up in declarations of god’s existence made me queasy. it started once i crossed that virginia border into north carolina, and it’s something i wasn’t able to shake all the way into california. i don’t know why it surprises me how religious this country is.

06. like, when i was driving through mississippi, en route to new orleans, i exited the 10 west once because the sign promised a sonic. i ended up going 2.3 miles off the freeway and passed no less than six churches, no promised sonic in sight.

07. i am not, do not want to be the type of person who gets limited by my fears, who is afraid to head into spaces that make me uncomfortable, that make me look at the people around me and wonder, what do you think of me? do i make you as uneasy as you make me? if you could, would you throw the first stone?

08. i thought a lot about safe spaces, too. i thought about the criticism we sometimes face, that we live in these liberal spaces on the coasts (or on some body of water) and fail to see the rest of the world. i thought about the criticisms voiced after the election that went the wrong way, that we would have, should have, seen this result coming, had we only thought to look outside our liberal bubbles. i thought about the smugness that sometimes comes laced with these criticisms, the sort of, ha! all you liberals are getting what you deserved!, except that makes me sad, and then it makes me angry because, yes, maybe we congregate in our liberal bubbles, but do you understand this fear of walking around with a target on your back because of the color of your skin, the non-christian religion you practice, the orientation with which you identify?

09. that made me wonder, though, as to what makes a safe space. because, like everything else, spaces are complicated, too. a city can be liberal; it can be open and committed to protecting the diversity of its citizens; but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be safe for you, for me, for everyone. we all have baggage, and spaces that should otherwise be safe become fraught with other things. it’s like me and california — this should be a safe space for me, but it’s not. i’m still afraid i’m going to die here.

a. before i came back out to california, i kept reminding my parents: don’t take it personally. this is not about you. my depression is a real thing, and it’s something that i have to live with — and it’s also unfortunately something you have to learn to live with.

b. and how do they learn to live with it? how does anyone learn to love and live with someone who struggles with suicidal depression? a few tips: remember that it’s not about you. it’s not in you or up to you to save us; you can’t. remember that we will have good days and we will have bad days. we will have days when we seem “normal” and “okay,” and we will have days when we’re catatonic, when every tiny little task seems like a giant, impossible thing. we will have days we do nothing but cry. we will have days we laugh without sadness tugging at our eyes. all you can do is take it in stride, treat us with patience and tenderness, and be present. just be present. always be present.

c. and how do we live with it? how do i? i eat; i cook; and, when i can, i read, and i write. i carry books with me like habit in the hopes that i will want to pick them up and lose myself in them. i think about what i’m craving. i think about what i want to cook. i keep my eyes open to the beauty all around me because the fact that i can see beauty at all is an indiction that there is a part of me that is holding on. therapy is good and all, but habits and routines are what get us through the day-to-day, and i cling to what i know has worked in the past and continues to work. i eat; i cook; and, when i can, i read, and i write.

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01. the only novel i took with me cross-country (at least in easy access) was rachel khong’s goodbye, vitamin (henry holt, forthcoming, 2017). i read it in pieces while on the road, a few pages here and there when i had the energy and needed words to refill my brain. i loved it, loved the prose, loved the way it seeped into my heart, loved the comfort it surprisingly delivered, loved the warmth and tenderness it fairly oozes.

02. in the novel, the narrator’s father has been diagnosed with alzheimer’s, and, so, she returns to her parents’ house in southern california for a year. she’s avoided visiting as much as she could, not wanting to encounter the realities of her parents’ problems, realities that her younger brother was privy to because he was still a teenager at home to witness them while she was away in college, in the bay area, in her own life.

03. the novel is told in short sections over a year, and the narrator is thoughtful and honest with a wry sense of humor (and offering many mentions of food). at first, i thought i might not like the short sections because, sometimes, that style drives me a little crazy, not being able to dwell in moments and being whisked into next scenes too quickly, but goodbye, vitamin thankfully works its rhythm deftly. the pace works; it takes a story that could be heavy and bleak and excessively dark; and it gives the novel a lightness, space to breathe.

04. there was a lot familiar in this novel, too. in 2012, my paternal grandmother passed away from alzheimer’s. we cared for her at home, and the novel brought all those memories to the surface — the ups and downs, the unpredictable sway of my grandmother’s emotions and actions, the struggles and pains and heart-wrenching sadnesses of watching someone you love deteriorate. also, like the narrator, i have just returned to my parents’ house in southern california under not-so-positive circumstances. in a way, all the familiarity was comforting, especially during that 3,400-mile drive across the country. i don’t know if maybe that’s a strange way of putting it, given the topic matter, but i miss my grandmother intensely at times, and i was glad to remember her while reading this novel.

05. in the novel, there are little bits taken from the father’s journal when the narrator was a child, and those may have been my favorite parts, even if they left me ugly-crying in public spaces. i’ve been thinking a lot these days about how much hope parents must have for their children, how sometimes all that hope is for nothing and how we disappoint the people who have loved us and cared for us and wished so much for us.

06. writing about books again feels really fucking good. and it also makes me laugh because all this reminds me how disappointing it is when questionable book decisions happen to good people. like the cover of jonathan franzen’s purity — i’ll never let FSG off the hook for that bizarre cover, especially given that the designer was the fabulous rodrigo corral (what the hell happened there?!). and, now, the title to kristen kish’s forthcoming cookbook because, come on, clarkson potter, the cover is beautiful, yes, though i was hoping she would not be on it, but, god damn, you can do so much better than that title.

07. next, we’ll be reading naomi pomeroy’s taste & technique (ten speed press, 2016) and ronni lundy’s victuals (clarkson potter, 2016). and hwang jung-eum’s one hundred shadows (tilted axis, 2016). look out for khong’s goodbye, vitamin this summer; holt is publishing it in july.

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x. do i need to mention that rachel sent me the ARC to her book? that has no bearing on my thoughts, though, except for gratitude that she sent it to me to read. i’m always grateful when people send me books; it surprises me that they would want to do that at all.

x. the grits on the top are from callie’s hot little biscuit (atlanta); the shrimp and grits in the middle are from surrey’s (new orleans) (and easily one of my top three favorite things i ate; seriously, it was so fucking good); and, below, we’ve got hawaiian food (or hawaiian-inspired?) from solid grindz (tucson) followed by breakfast from king’s highway (palm springs).

x. eating my way across the country was great, and i’d do it again in a heartbeat. hopefully, i will get to do it again soon, just the other way, back home.