No matter how many times a boy grabs my hand, I can never get used to the touch and how I feel when he decides to join his palm with mine.
There’s this boy at home who I have sort of a thing with. He went to high school with me, but we never talked until second semester of senior year, around April. We only knew each others’ names. I knew he played tennis. He knew I sang. But somehow we ended up going to the same concert together in July and he came and sat with me there. We only saw each other one other day over the summer and then he left for college farther down the coast of California, but that day it was clear… we naturally just hit it off with each other. We have never had more than three legitimate interactions, but suddenly The Boy is my best friend. An eternal optimist, he feels things much less heavily than I do. I tell him about some of my frustrations and he always tries to turn them into beams of sunshine. That irritates me. I like that about him. The Boy loves a lot and is the kindest person I know. If he doesn’t like someone he won’t say it. Until he tells me. And from what I know, he only ever tells me and no one else. I like that about him. I like that he sometimes calls me beautiful without meaning to. I like that I secretly know he likes it when I smile. I like that he doesn’t know that I think about him a lot. I like his face and the color of his skin. Golden.
The Boy asked me the other day if I was coming home for Thanksgiving. I am. I was going to ask him the same thing at some point.
But he asked me first.
Now whenever I think of The Boy I touch something at the same time. It’s either the oversized hooded sweatshirt I know he will be wearing when I see him (because its a hand-me-down from his brother and The Boy hates shopping and loves his brother more than anything) or I touch his hair (which I know will be freshly buzzed) or his face (freckled) or his hand.
If I touch his hand, I don’t know what I’ll do. Because here it is…
I think when a boy touches my hand, its like he’s trying to touch his heart to mine. In one movement he says “being next to you is not enough.” The little pulses of our fingers, the little hearts in each of my five fingertips touch his and our hearts beat together. My romantic soul stops for a millisecond. It can’t deal with that kind of intense connection. And then it breathes to itself and I come back and my hand is still beating with a twin heart and time moves on.
I’m pretty sure The Boy is going to hold my hand. Writing this, I am preparing my easily stirred soul. I am also preparing to wear a lot of coconut hand lotion in the days preceding vacation. Just in case The Boy decides to give the Romantic in me a start and place in his palm in mine. I’m nervous as it is, the last thing I need is to feel uneasy about whether my hands feel like rose petals or sandpaper.
Deep down though the wonderful thing is that I know The Boy won’t care. He’ll just be happy to be with me.
And I can’t wait to be with him. He doesn’t know it, but I really like his oversized hooded sweatshirt. It’s soft to the touch when my five tiny hearts beat against it.
When someone tells me that they think that sex is the best thing in the world, or chocolate, or love, I assume they’ve never been to a really good concert.
I love music. I am only ever at complete peace when listening to it. I have tried yoga, meditation, writing, but never am I able to connect to myself through those mediums as well as I can when I suffocate my ears with music.
I love sound.
I love the way sometimes, when Eminem spits a verse right on top of the beat, everything in the universe, in my head, in my thinking aligns in stillness for those two or three seconds. I love that after listening to Florence and the Machine, I feel that the next time I walk out my front door I’m going to conquer the world with love and glitter. I love that after listening to Janelle Monae (seriously please look her up, she’s a breathtaking artist) I have at once found a part of myself I had forgotten about and have lost a part of me that I once thought was necessary.
I don’t even know why I love the way sounds come together in music. The closest I could come to explaining why would be to list off hundreds of examples like those above. Or to have you see the way my face breaks like the clouds for the sun when I talk about music.
I’ll say this: my heaven, when I pass on, will be a place that lives and breathes and is made of music. I assume I will float in an abyss that changes colors to reflect the sound that bounces off it’s invisible boundaries. This sound will flow through me like electricity and each song will bring me deeper into an emotional eternity.
Even negative sounds deserve love. They create variety. “I hate… This sucks… Fuck you….” Sounds and consonants that all create tensions that are cranked up or let go. And they are the result of emotion. Nails on a chalkboard. Screaming. It’s all interesting.
There is only one sound I hate. I hate the sound that come from music elitists’ mouths.
Indie rock elitists who thinks Lady Gaga is a man in tights who can’t sing. Classical music geeks who think all music written after the 18th century isn’t really music at all. Musical theatre fangirls who only know “Don’t Stop Believin’” because Glee did “the most awesome version of it, like, ever” last season and think the Journey original “sound so, like, bad.”
And they all claim, “yeah/ oh yes/ Ohmygod ya I love music”
No, you don’t.
You cannot love music and hate on music at the same time, or think one type of music is better than another. No sound is bad. They’re all just different.
People who hate country and people who hate Top 40 hits are the worst.
“Ugh, country’s just so like boring and annoying.”
“Country has no real emotional value it’s just a bunch of hicks singing about nothing.” (such elitists are both discriminatory and hateful)
“I looovveee music! Except for country, I seriously hate country. But Taylor Swift’s sooo good!!!”
Actually, y’all, country music is not only important to economy of this country (TSwift’s new album, still considered a “country album,” by the way, is the first album since 2005 to sell one million copies in it’s first week) but country music also represents a culture. It is an art form, a type of storytelling that draws from folk and bluegrass influences. There are individuals who listen to country because it reminds them of home, or a loved one, or their family, who connect with it. Country music is important to them. It not right to demean it just because it doesn’t make sense to you.
And for the Top 40…
“Lady Gaga has no real musical talent.”
“Rap is stupid. It’s just uneducated, misogynistic black men cursing about the world.”
“All the songs in the top 40 sound the same. They’re not real music.”
“Popular music sucks.”
Popular music is a major American industry. Thousands of gay men have found an outlet in Lady Gaga’s music. She is important to them. [P.S. about that no talent comment - Lady Gaga was one of 17 students in the world to be accepted to Tisch School of the Arts for voice. I think she has perhaps a smidgeon of musical prowess.] Rap music (though it is quite aggressive, misogynistic, and materialistic) is just a different sound, a different way of viewing the world. In the Top 40, there is no way that every song sounds the same. That’s called intellectual and property theft and is illegal. Challenge yourself. There are subtle differences between even the most similar of songs that make them different and interesting as individual pieces. Try to hear them and accept them. Love them.
Love sound. Let it in and dissect it. Play that Tim McGraw song on your iPod, sit and chew on it as it enters your ears. What is he saying? Why? How does the guitar flow over the fiddle and violin? If it doesn’t sound good to you, can you enjoy that banjo that sometimes makes an appearance?
What is Lady Gaga saying when she talks about a “Bad Romance?” Have you ever had a “Bad Romance?” How does Gaga’s use of spoken word enhance the effect of the song?
Why does Lil Wayne let “her lick the lollipop?” Seriously, though. What in his life has shaped him to think that this is a message he wants to send to people everywhere? Do you want to change that message? Do you like the songs ending? Do you find Lil Wayne’s use of auto-tune interesting?
When you begin to appreciate little things, relate them to yourself, you slowly begin to understand others and their motivations. This is the basis for all successful forms of communication. Walking in someone’s shoes. Understanding where they’re coming from, perhaps listening to their latest single.
Hate starts wars and rivalries.
Music is just sound, people. Gorgeous, fantastic, genius, life-changing sound. I think we should accept it and love it and listen.
Sound good?
My roommate is from South Africa and it’s been very interesting to see how differently she does certain things. The one difference I noticed between the two of us right away was the way she tasted food. Mbali doesn’t eat. She tastes. She chews very slowly, considers each piece of food she puts in her mouth. I can almost see her mind working as she picks up a fork, and surveys her plate. Eating for her is more than a task, it’s an experience. She is slow in tasting, and each bite has a purpose. Because of this deliberate method, she eats much less and enjoys her food much more. I still shove as much of it into my mouth as possible in an attempt to silence my growling stomach.
It’s very American, I think, to eat and not taste. To chew and not savor. I think it might be the reason obesity is a major killer in our country. We want and want and want. And so we eat and eat and eat. As much as possible. I think if we just stopped to think about what we were eating and why we’d see the problem… and we’d see that food isn’t the only thing we over-consume. We shove the media down our throats, too. We heap technology onto our plates. We sprinkle everything with expletives. We push so much at ourselves, we don’t have time to see what we’re consuming, much less think about why we’re consuming. That’s why Mbali is able to eat so little and enjoy it so much. That’s why France has “skinny bitches.” Those bitches think about what they’re eating. They enjoy food and the media and life with purpose. They taste it, they don’t put it in their mouth chew and swallow.
I smell alot of questions.
I smell a change in me
soon
maybe
we’ll see.
But.
I don’t smell food. I mean I do smell food. But smell means almost nothing to me.
Scents are different. I smell scents.
lavender
coconut
the haze in the air that lingers after a match has gone out
I smell scents but I don’t smell what makes me tick.
what makes me tick I hear and I see.
I wonder what it is like to be one of those people that smells things all day. There is a name for that time of person that has super-amazing olfactory abilities. But I couldn’t tell you what they’re called. and, unfortunately, neither can the internet.
smell must mean so much to those people.
all they do all day is sit and smell wines or cheeses. or perfumes for celebrity fragrances…. That’s a lot of sniffing. And a lot of inter-sniff coffee beans.
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I smell things for a living.”
Huh.
My father once told me this story about his eyes -
When he was in middle school he sat next to a boy who wore glasses. My father was always straining to see the board and could never understand why it was so hard to make out what the teacher was writing up there. Then, one day, the boy lent the spectacles to him. My father had never worn a pair and he thought the glasses were magic. Suddenly the world looked completely different, and I can assume it was a world he had never before seen or even been able to imagine. His family was poor and had emigrated from Mexico; he probably didn’t even know anyone who wore glasses.
And so, he refused to give them back to the boy.
My grandmother went out and bought Dad his own pair, once she had saved up enough money. Since then my father has had surgery on his eyes. He now has perfect vision.
I myself have glasses and contacts. I have inherited the squinting stares at the board, the awe of how different the world can look if viewed through two square pieces of glass. For those of you that do not have vision problems, I am deeply envious and simultaneously saddened that you might never experience sight the way I do. To naturally see the world in muddled shapes and colors is like eternally walking through a piece of abstract art. I see things differently than other people because I do not have 20/20 vision. But I am able to have crisp clarity if I so desire. I can choose detail over non-distinction by putting on a pair of glasses.
I bring my father’s story up because in the recent weeks, in the whirlwind of work, deadlines, missed meals, forced smiles, stress, and confusion, I have been thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to deal every morning with how I choose to view the world.
——- ———- ——— ——— ——- ——— ——- ——— ——— ——-
Should I wear contacts?
No, they might aggravate my tired eyes.
Okay then maybe glasses… but yesterday when I wore them my eyes were strained.
All right I’ll go with the contacts. But I have to wash my hands before putting them in or else my eyes will be irritated all day.
Now I have to run down the hall to the bathroom.
And now I am late for French.
——- ———- ——— ——— ——- ——— ——- ——— ——— ——-
How different would every morning be if I just woke up able to see the world in perfect clarity?
It sounds pretty good.
But then I went to a concert in a little black box theatre.
The lights casting blue and pink against the black back wall, the glint of the performers’ guitars as they swayed to the music, the lead singer’s indigo shirt…. without my glasses on it all looked like another world, an ethereal parallel universe where colors melded and lines didn’t exist.
“Why do I want to lose this separate way of seeing, again?” I asked myself.
Now I am looking through new eyes - those that appreciate my perspective on life. Perhaps I wasn’t cursed with bad vision…. I was blessed with two different ways of seeing.
————————————- Elizabeth de Luna ——————————————-