Party in the USA

Whenever I reach the anniversary of moving here, I think of a stranger.

Photo by Anna A. Victoria

We’re supposed to seek comfort in the constant of change, but I’m getting fed up of being in flux. Six years ago I had just moved across the Atlantic with two suitcases and open arms for a man who would hurt me more than anyone. I stayed with granny first, and we lived a beautiful bachelorette life for close to two months and then three weeks into this new year, I stood in a CVS trying to pick out nail polish for her open casket hands while Party in the USA blasted through the speakers. The universe probably has the best sense of humour of anyone I know.

Whenever I reach the anniversary of moving here, I think of a stranger. It was an hour before I would be getting a tattoo to—not cover up exactly—but change a piece that needed shifting. The original piece was rooted in the crossing-the-Atlantic man, and because I already felt scarred by him, it didn’t make sense to hide it. I decided to take it from black and white into blooms and vines and colour. To prepare, I walked my usual loop around my village, listening to songs that conjured some sense of safety or joy. At the crosswalk, a mouth motioned towards me, the owner I didn’t recognise. “Sorry?” I said, pulling the headphone out of my ear. “Do you see that tree?” She turned, leaning on her clearly-trusted crutch and pointed across the street to a large trunk labouring over the stone wall of the county court building. “You see all those broken branches? That big crack down the center? Every year I drive up from Poughkeepsie to see if it still blooms and every year so far, it does. Do you see that pink?” The traffic had already come and gone several times, and still we waited on the other side. “I do,” I said. We stared at it for a little while longer. “Thanks for sharing that with me.” “Thanks for listening,” she said and walked to her parked car, smiling before she slow-motioned into the seat. Later, as the tattoo artist drew vines growing from the original image, I thought of the universe and her ways.

We’re always looking for hope, or home, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s only a one letter difference between the two. I think, as with all the selves we try out, there are many places and people that are home, including the selves we can always return to. My childhood best friend’s dad passed away a few months ago and she told me of the crockery and wooden spoons of that childhood kitchen that now sit atop a counter her toddler calls his own. I buy a Baby Spice poster and movie soundtracks on CD from 20 years ago, scream-singing them out of my 1999 Nissan Altima. “I think the worse things are in the present day, the more we retreat into the past,” A says. Another friend is pregnant and hanging pictures on the wall of a new house. Flowers gather in a vase on this alien dining table. Elsewhere, a friend gave hours and hours of her time and anxiety to computer screen faces to be told, in less than a minute, you didn’t get the job. My parents, having lived in the UK for close to 30 years, are now trying to move back to my Dad’s home state of Georgia. “I need to go home,” my dad croaked over the phone as I stood outside of some venue, in some city, in the rain. In No Other Land Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham speak of the Palestinian genocide reaching mainstream media. “So people see something, they’re touched and then what?” Adra asks.

Of course these examples are absolutely not one and the same, but in these every day instances, these glimmers of searching and safety, I see all of us. I see the struggle for survival. I see all of the people I’ve been. I see those I have found a foundation in, and I hear the cracks and creaks as it begins the shake. I look in the mirror and see everyone in my life reflected back at me. I’m trying to find comfort in the collage. Hopefully I’ll find the time to admire it every once in a while, even if I can’t always piece it together.

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Here’s a few things that have brought me joy recently:

Gliff by Ali Smith: Two pre-teens search for home in a world that wants to forget about them.

Cadillac by Colin Miller: Maybe you were born to run that red light. Baby, you were born to run that red light.

Asking Ben Lerner how to write about loved ones without upsetting them. “You can’t but you’re welcome to join my group of those who do it anyway.”

Monster Trucks on a torrentially rainy day in Albany. I didn’t know how much I needed to see Sparkle Smash and her confetti.