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For Love of Words

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by marie in dear apples, everyday poems, fiction, for love of words, journal, writing

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Below are small excerpts and clippings that I’ve extracted from things I’ve read or re-read recently.

“I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie down” -Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Every morning he ties his shoes, packs newspaper inside his coat as insulation against the cold, and begins interrogating the world” -Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See

“Because it’s true: more than the highlights, the bright events, it was the small and the daily where she’d found life. The hundreds of times she’d dug in the soil of her garden, each time the satisfying chew of spade through soil, so often this action, the pressure and release and rich dirt smell…” -Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.” -Lemony Snicket

“That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing…That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.” -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful, her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty — a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room.” -Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

what help looks like

08 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by marie in dear apples, everyday poems, journal, writing

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“I can’t name it. Not to them”

“Why?”

“Because ..what if my own struggle looks appealing somehow?”

“Why would it?”

“I have no idea, but people are strange in their desires and jealousies.”

“And then?”

“And then…they would fall.  And maybe they wouldn’t get up.  And I would watch them spiral.  And the pain would crush me”

“Is that what will really happen?”

“…Well I guess no two people are alike.  I guess I can’t foresee the outcomes.”

“Has your own struggle taught you anything?

“Probably the most important things.”

“And why would that not be true for them too?”

“Because I’ve seen people who can’t get up.  I’ve seen people alone and defeated.”

“Have you though?  Have you seen their ends?”

“Not totally.  I can’t totally.”

“What happens when you yourself spiral?”

“I cry out.”

“And are you heard?”

“Yes.  A thousand times over. And it always catches me off guard.”

“Will they not be heard if they fall?”

Revisiting thoughts on criticism

26 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by marie in dialogue, journal, writing

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I am convinced there is a problem in contemporary academic settings regarding how we are taught to process the information we receive.  We are coached in schools and universities, to criticize everything, to deconstruct the information we hear and find the hidden fallacies and the political incorrectness and stereotypes.  Is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily, but it can be if it means that we no longer know how to listen.  I can think back to of all the lectures I’ve attended or opinions I’ve heard in which I pinpointed one phrase that I decided was too simplistic or generalized, and was then unable to hear the rest of the speaker’s message.  I enter into conversations with people from different political and social persuasions, and I immediately qualify them as rigid or narrow-minded, or lacking a certain amount of understanding of the larger picture.  This deconstruction allows me to bypass any real engagement with the “other,” and instead sit on a pedestal of condescension.

Yes, it is important to be careful with our words and our message, but it is equally important to be careful about how we criticize the messages we hear.  If criticism allows us to enter into constructive dialogue, then it places us all in the position of “student,” and allows us to learn from one another.  If, on the other hand, it becomes a form of cynicism that gives us license to ignore and look down on those we do not really wish to engage with, and then laugh about their foolishness in our superior (and insular) little circles, well this is just an ugly cowardliness in disguise.  It is important not to allow our egos to compromise our earnestness.  Real attention to another person demands risk, an openness and availability to people that may make us look foolish or place us in a vulnerable position.

In an age of accelerated intercommunication, we have a greater capacity to make our voices heard and come against instances of injustice, but we need to do so in humility.  If we are to criticize, we must also be willing to listen and accept criticism ourselves.  Otherwise, our voices become stale, antagonistic and unbearable to anyone but ourselves.

United Arab Emirates: Al Ain

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by marie in dear apples, journal, travel, writing

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United Arab Emirates

Well here we are in the desert!  C had a work trip to Dubai, and since my schedule is still fairly flexible and open-ended at the moment, I was able to tag along.  I travelled  through Qatar on Thanksgiving Day. During periods of wifi connection, I received pictures of turkey preparation, table setting, nighttime snowman construction, and my entire family sans moi grouped together with aunts, uncles, cousins and girlfriends.

We arrived in Dubai on separate flights, where C’s brother-in-law met us and took us directly to Al Ain, and thus my first taste of the UAE was neither in Dubai nor Abu Dhabi, but one of the lesser known Emirates.  IMG_4911 The desert weather is perfect in November.  It feels like a mild NJ summer with warm sunny days, cool clement nights, and 0% humidity. IMG_4912 The well-watered plants outside a balmy breakfast nook that served us plates of omelets and individual ceramic pots of coffee with hot milk IMG_4953 Exterior corridor leading to the pool where we spent lazy hours, while back in New York, crowds rushed into the cold for Black Friday shopping sales. IMG_4952 Al Ain’s starkly beautiful mountain that was once submerged underwater. IMG_4936 IMG_4946   IMG_5015   Trip to the Al Ain zoo. All the animals appeared to be quite lively and happy in their habitats. IMG_4960Driveway with gorgeous tiling against the backdrop of a cloudless cerulean sky.

How to document this visit?  I have certainly never been so emotionally befuddled by a place before.  I hesitate to seal all the nubivagant thoughts that dance around my brain into concrete sentences here.  The convergence of interior experience and exterior stimuli is not something that can be measured, and so I question whether my response to this place is stirred up by fatigue or by the distance from my family and all that is familiar to me, and yet there is something uniquely isolating about this place that I have never encountered anywhere else. IMG_4954 Snapshot 1: We are at the pool.  The weather is perfect; we race underwater and come up to sip margaritas and let the sun heat seep into our bones.  All the guests at the pool are foreigners.  Many are young Americans and Europeans who come to party and sometimes make money teaching English.  A few have lasted longer periods.  It is comfortable and the money is easy.  The staff are mostly from the Philippines and India.  They are kind and cheerful and the service is excellent. The water mimics the hue of the sky, so if you sink down and let your eyes rest right above the surface of the water, you can look up and down at a seamless shade of blue.  Color is a miracle.  The lawn and palm trees  are so diligently maintained that the yellowing at the edges can barely be detected.  Still, there is that haunting glimpse of always-impending molder: the flowers that line the highways are replaced each month; the roots of the trees do not dive deep but spread out along the surface of the earth, thirsty for the moisture of the sprinklers; there is a constant red shadow of dust blown over the step-stones of the walkway: all these signs are small cracks in the constructed illusion of a tropical oasis, and I can’t help but wish the arid land were left untampered with.  The mournful wail rising out of a mosque in the distance echoes across the water and cuts through the superficial tourist utopia as a reminder of the primitive aridity of the land. The sound is somehow comforting.  It belongs here.  It is one thing that is not contrived. IMG_4957 Snapshot 2: We descend the duney mountain and drive towards the mall.  The mall is a microcosmic glance into the lifestyles produced by the rentier oil state.  Locals enter the overly air-conditioned metropolis of stores as a pastime of choice.  Both the men and women are covered head to foot.  As an outsider, I note the varying levels of the women’s niqabs: some faces are exposed with full make-up and heels peeking out from below the black fabrics, some have only thin slits for the eyes, and others disappear completely under a veil of black.  The air conditioning is for them then.  Their absolute shrouds call into question the very existence of the bodies below.  What power are women thought to possess that would elicit such fear that they must hide away so completely?  Some men are accompanied by three or four women.  Their children roam the isles until they find something that strikes their fancy, and for the most part I can see that they are at liberty to pull what they wish from the shelves for purchase.  No wonder the motivation is lacking amongst students.  They barely know what to aim for; everything is already at their disposal.  And yet I saw a poll earlier in the day that listed the UAE at the bottom of a Global Happiness Scale, if such things can be measured.  I was not surprised.  I am homesick here, both for Lebanon and New Jersey.  I do not think I could stay.  I imagine I would feel as though I were stuck in a suffocating golden room amongst men I am not allowed to speak with, and women who have no faces, and children who have never been taught to dream. These realities are so new to my first-hand experience.  Perhaps I am narrow-minded, but from this vantage point the oil wealth is a curse. From here I can appreciate the value of knowing want and dependency on the people around you and always the hopeful reach towards the future, and the net of support from the family and friends who surround you when you fall.

Goodbye you desolate stunning land.  I am off to Dubai, your touristic international sister city.

Lebanon: Settling in

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by marie in dear apples, Lebanon, travel, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

After a long plane ride with a stopover in Geneva and an expansive sky view of the Swiss Alps, I arrived in Beirut. IMG_4495

So here I am, and here is life right now.

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First night: a birthday celebration on a breezy balcony, with plenty fresh and warm dishes to fill the space left by all the declined airfare meals.

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Hiking trip and a first stop in a 400 year old palace

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Breakfast prepared by a lovely woman who runs a bed and breakfast in the palace.  Warm hummus with chickpeas from her garden, lebneh with olive oil, cheeses, homemade fig and pear preserves, grape molasses, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, olives, a pot of hot tea.  We filled up for our long day of mountain hiking.

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Down one mountain, up another and back, all in a day.  We arrived home happy with tired limbs.

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IMG_4667Morning sun greeting on the balcony off my bedroom.

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And daily coffee downstairs with the grandparents.  Teta always busy in the kitchen, this time making a huge batch of yogurt.

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Stop in to a coffee shop during a long day in Beirut.

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And back down through the American University of Beirut to the Corniche for a good long stroll amongst fisherman and alongside the midday sounds of traffic horns.

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Soccer game onlooking 🙂

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Beginning to take the first steps to prepare our home.

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Sunday mountain drive through the clouds.

I am quite well. I take many walks here and observe the stray cats meandering about lazily, hopping in and out of large green tin garbage cans, and I can’t help but admire their ease and effortless presence. I never set out with the intention of considering the cats, and yet they always mosey their way into the peripheries of my consciousness, and then gradually my mind takes hold of the idea of them and takes a good look at it: “Why the fascination with the cats, Marie?” Well, I realized that what I am really mulling over when I think I’m thinking about cats is actually the distance between the familiar and unfamiliar. These cats are natives, while I am a transplant, and they look nonchalant and carefree amidst whizzing cars and jutting turns because they are. They know no other reality. I, on the other hand, am almost always in a state of heightened awareness of my surroundings because I am again outside the sphere of what is familiar. Of course I am returning to Lebanon and have lived here before, so really the unknown of the place is hardly as dramatic as it was before, and I love the comfort of roads I have taken plenty of times before, and tastes which bring me back to so many memories. And yet the greatest challenge is still sitting on the outside of a language. I now hear the breathy hills and gutteral valleys and tones of Arabic and can distinguish between most words without knowing all their meanings. If there is one item that is most essential to the proverbial expat suitcase, it must be patience. Patience with the self above all. Learning a culture takes time, and assumptions will want to rush in to fill the gaps caused by a million questions, but really its better to remain open and let the answers slowly work their way in through experiences.

I am an observer here more than a participant at this point. One thing I’ve always noticed, which I think you will appreciate, is the beautiful co-existence of past and present. Leave it to an American to marvel at how Lebanon extends one arm to the future, while the other keeps a tight grasp on the ancient past. This is something American culture lacks. Here, the generational continuity remains strong: children often grow up near their extended families and cook dishes that have been passed down for generations.

Cedric and I went for a hike and walked down the side of a mountain on an old stone staircase that had been welded into the crags of the rock face, and eventually came upon a Roman-era bridge below it. I looked up to see a yellow bulldozer resting on the bank of a hill. I could hear chants coming from a nearby church, and the whole scene came together quite unassumingly. Here, even the battering sounds of construction sites comply seamlessly with their ancient surroundings in such a way that it would seem entirely believable that the man in the pick-up truck had been driving that same truck over those same cratered paths since the dawn of time, while the prayers lifted up week after week after week from mosques and churches will continue to rise forever. There I was in a single moment in time, clutching Cedric’s hand and grateful for the sense of relief that comes from standing in a place brimming with visible tangible proof that the world has gone on for millennia, and so it still goes, with people still loving and hating and pushing existence to the moral breaking point and recovering and sauntering forward again.

Here we are in our own small pocket of time calling out to each other from the spaces we occupy, two voices among the billions, and yet how good it is to be alive!

Short Fictions: Alissa

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in fiction, writing

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fiction, writing

Annie couldn’t quite shake the sense that there was something unnerving about Alissa. It wasn’t anything she could really put her finger on; Alissa was certainly all the right things, and everyone seemed much happier since the day she arrived from the airport for the exchange program. She was quite likeable and sweet, she always agreed to push Annie’s little brothers on the tire swing even if they asked a million times in a day, and she was far more helpful to Annie’s mom than Annie herself was (although Annie always behaved similarly in other people’s homes as well, so that her friends’ mothers would often remark that they wished their own daughters could be more like her, and Annie would feel quite embarrassed about it). Alissa’s goodness was creative in a way that sometimes gave Annie a twinge of jealousy. She had a knack for motivating people to get on board with her ideas without them noticing.

One day mom came in all frazzled after a meeting with Lukey’s teacher. Apparently he had been missing some of his classes and homework assignments, and mom hadn’t even been checking his work because she’d had to stay extra late at her nursing shifts in the hospital so many nights that year. Alissa made a quick assessment of the situation and organized after school study sessions complete with flashcards, prizes and charts. Lukey loved the attention, and soon both his grades and his confidence levels soared. Alissa even managed to turn the whole production into a major ego boost for mom, who after all, was responsible for raising such a gifted son. She made sure Annie was involved too, and somehow imbued menial tasks with a sense of pride and ownership. Annie would read out quiz questions that Alissa composed for Lukey, and every time Lukey answered correctly, Alissa would shoot Annie this look of admiration as though Annie was personally responsible for Lukey’s progress, and it made Annie beam inside.

Alissa was always busy with projects like this. She enlisted her friends to help her build and paint a small ramp to cover the step of old Mr Henry’s back door stoop so that he could wheel his chair in and out of the house on his own. They all felt wonderfully altruistic and pleased when they finally set it in place and called him out to try it for the first time. He was a rather lonely soul, so the sight of a whole neighborhood group of kids gathered together just to surprise him with their gift caused him to tear up and beam the most adorable gappy wrinkly old smile.

Annie herself could never manage to pull such efforts together. Even if she had ideas like that (which she never did), she doubted she’d have any success persuading others to help her. She could just imagine how Lukey would react if she asked him to help her clean out mom’s broom closet for example, or fix the wobbly table leg in the kitchen that always drove dad crazy. He would just laugh at her and run out to play in the empty backyard lot with his friends. They’d probably ruin the whole operation if they attempted it in the first place. With Annie’s luck, the table leg would pop right off for good. It wasn’t that she was envious of Alissa necessarily, although she did admire all her talents. No, it just made Annie realize that she shouldn’t waste her efforts trying to keep up.

And still, there was something mildly disturbing about Alissa. Whenever Annie tried to pinpoint it, she came to the conclusion that she must be crazy; it was just silly to harbor any suspicions towards such a kind generous girl. She wondered why the feeling came to her in the first place, and realized that it was because Alissa almost seemed too good. Her emotions were always perfectly suited to the situation at hand: she was sad when there was bad news, she empathized with Annie when Annie was having a bad day and assured her that everyone felt grumpy at times; she was angry over injustices, like when she heard that dad’s co-worker had received the Physics Society Fellowship that he had been working towards for so long.

But it was as if all these reactions were too well matched to everything that happened. Annie realized she needed to see someone’s flaws to know who they really were, not in a bad way, but just in a human way. For example, she’d never regarded Miss Flynne as anything other than her teacher until one day Annie had walked into the classroom to find Miss Flynne all alone at her desk, crying and tearing one of the student’s essays into tiny little shreds. Annie walked right back out before she was noticed, and the next day when all the graded assignments were passed out, Miss Flynne apologized to one student for “misplacing his excellent essay.” It was a small incident, but after that, Annie paid more attention to her teacher and wondered about her life and what her interests were and whether she was happy and what excited or scared her.

Alissa never let her guard down like that, and it almost seemed strange to imagine that she had any guard to let down in the first place. Despite all the do-gooding and the sweetness and the concern and the socially appropriate flares of temper, there was something a bit spurious about Alissa that almost reminded Annie of the Flat Stanley cut-out that had been mailed around the world when she was in second grade. Not quite though. No doubt Alissa was far more complex than the two-dimensional paper man, but in what ways exactly? And when would the complexity show itself?

Annie schemed about ways to force Alissa to mess up, to rumble her right out of the textbook Boxcar Children perfection that couldn’t really be who she was all the time. Or could it? Were some people just that good? Actually, Annie’s Polish friend Sophie did seem to be just that good, and there was nothing alarming about it. What was wrong with Alissa then? Maybe Annie was just mildly jealous. Maybe it was the fact that Annie had finished reading East of Eden last summer, and the thought of Kathy still sent shivers down her back. Maybe it was the empty look that Annie thought she could detect in Alissa’s eyes just after certain more convincing shows of understanding. Whatever it was, Annie vowed that she wouldn’t let it affect her friendship with Alissa, but then again, she wouldn’t be entirely surprised to come home one day and find the house burned down.

Short fictions: Therapy

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in fiction, writing

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fiction, therapy, writing

Most days he loved his job, and enjoyed the feeling that he was putting together a human jig-saw puzzle. His patients entered his office in various stages of assembly, and he would guide them to find the missing parts and match them to their proper places. Some had probably lost certain pieces for good and would always have odd holes that could only be patched up at best, but for the most part, he enjoyed the challenge of coaching them gently towards empowering self-discoveries. The brain was a marvelous masterpiece.

Every now and again, however, the process drained him. This occurred on days when his systematic capacity to separate work from personal life was not as sharp. Thank goodness it didn’t happen too frequently, or he might be tempted to leave his practice altogether. It was on one of these rare days that he had a post-lunch session with a girl who’d been coming in for months now without many signs of progress. He knew she was there because she needed to be, but she had yet to reveal anything substantial enough for him to work with. She was of the type that masked her thoughts in vague general terms. He usually reveled in the particular endurance required to assist this barmy sort of introversion that surely shrouded her deeper insecurities, but he was weary today, and paranoid that his usual patience was wearing thin. Even worse was the fact that her words seemed to be echoing his sentiments. He decided to opt for a Socratic approach in hopes that she would reach useful conclusions on her own.

“Sometimes I am so tired and my body feels like a trap”
“A trap?”
“Yea, like I am prohibited from floating away somewhere safe. I have to stay here, in this chair, and then meet my sister in the city and walk around—and sometimes my sense of self is too wobbly for it.”
“To be with your sister?”
“It’s actually worse with her. With most acquaintances, and friends I don’t know too well, I’m ok with keeping quiet. I don’t feel the obligation—as I used to—to entertain them or engage with them. Maybe its selfish, but it’s true. With my sister, I think I love her most in the world—or at least she’s in the category of People I Love Most, but sometimes we need to reach across chasms to find each other. Sometimes not.”
“So you’re not close?”
“Well I don’t know. We can keep quiet together. We trust each other. We know the same things about our family together. But family is weird.”
“Weird?”
“Yea. This collection of random males and females that live together and share everything. And then move out.”
“Does that make you sad?”
“Sometimes. It used to really get to me. But now I’m more accepting. And I see how much we all return home and that says a lot I guess.”
“Why are you more accepting now?”
“Umm I’m not sure. Because it’s a way to keep content. And probably because it’s part of my genetic coding or something. But…” Her eyes drifted lazily to the edge of the carpet where the sun was falling through the window in slanted rays. He followed her gaze and considered the amount of floating dust particles revealed by the afternoon light.
“But what? Are you concerned you don’t get along anymore?”
“Not that we don’t get along. Just that we have no meeting ground. As if we’re just floating spheres, but no Venn diagram. I hate that.”
“What do you hate?”
“I don’t know. Dissonance. Indifference. Can we stop talking now? I know I paid for this, but I’m tired and I prefer to just sit for a minute.”
“Sure, sure.”
He wanted to say that he himself was tired as well, and also preferred to just sit for a minute, but reasoned that such a comment was not very professional of him. He mustn’t let his patients perceive him as anything other than their shrink. And why, he wondered now, did he have a sudden sense of confusion on the boundaries his profession required him to maintain? What was their purpose if not to further the dissonance, really? Why couldn’t he just tell her he was tired? He shook off the thought and only entertained the question for a moment. He checked his watch and decided to ask his wife out to dinner that night.

Short Fictions: The Peacemaker

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in fiction, writing

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fiction, writing

The floor seemed a good enough place to sink, as it was the bottommost spot that gravity would allow. The buzz of the room sounded familiar: Bob Dylan Thomas and the Leopard Skin Pillsbury Doughboy Hat now, later Rufus Wainwright and how he could never eat just one jellybean, but wanted everything all at once. She remembered also feeling that way before—insatiable—but now it was the tiredness that dominated and sat like a thick-roped net over everything. At some point it all became too much, the din of anger and a dancing coffin, the swelling black crowds shoving her against the wall, the ricocheting opinions of opposing sides, the homelessness of refugees, the obstinate counting of costs. There were no more efforts, just the inevitable point of surrender. Even that word, “surrender” poeticized the fact that she believed she was just quitting. So it was the term she had used in that utterly empty stone space, because even in there, where her soul and body could be bared, she still had some shards of pride.

Now the drone of a record-voice woman wailing over the perfidia of her lover permeated the room. She internalized the sounds without energy to drink them in analytically. Just enough breath to let them be. Many things need to be done, much progress to be made, impossible decisions requiring enthusiastic determination, miles to go in order to wake. All she could do was wish up a small prayer, push it out by desire, lift it against the knotted gravity off the floor and out to the atmosphere, where, perhaps, it would be caught in the fingers of two hands older than time.

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