1996 (remix)

I.

When we first moved to Florida it was June, it was a jungle. My mother cried everytime she drove down belcher road, I caught lizards and wore them as earrings. I imagined writing to my friends back home, writing to my grandmother, I decided this was temporary. My father built a kung-fu school, in the third grade, I'd go with him after school.
The songs that were always on the radio were:
Boyz II Men- On Bended Knee, Des'ree You Gotta Be (You gotta be bad you gotta be bold you gotta be wiserrr) Eninigma return to innocense which then appeared in a movie with jtt who we were all in love with, Melissa Ethridge "I'm The Only One," Elton John- Can you feel the love tonight- remember when the lion king came out? I remember. I remember very well. Lisa Loeb "Stay", TLC "Creep"
This is right before I started listening to "Hey Jealousy" by the gin blossoms (very sadly age eight) and "Name" by the goo goo dolls, age 9. THis is when I bought my first cassettes. The Lion King Soundtrack, Ace of Base &Weird Al. Later on the next summer in Ohio, I got a Coolio cassette single and a sublime Cassette Single of "Santeria."
It was still exciting to go to disney world and since we had no family in Florida my father would take my mother and I to theme parks for all major holidays: thanksgiving, christmas, new years, easter. I liked it. On the drive home we'd stop and get checker burgers. I'd wonder when we were moving back to Ohio.

1994 was the Year of The Kennedy's. Not the Kennedy's you know, but the Kennedy's I know. Kim Kennedy and her adopted daughters who all came to take kung-fu classes from my father. What was his school called then? International Kung-Fu Center, I think. They all had to work for an allowance, Kim sold pogs out of the trunk of her car. For my birthday in the fifth grade, I received a set of OJ Simpson pogs from them. I was very pleased. I got my collection up to three hundred and fifteen pogs because my fifth grade boyfriend liked them. I didnt think things would always be that way, sometimes I thought I'd grow up different. The Kennedy daughters would come around with different bruises on them, I'd ask questions. Always had to ask questions. Before the fifth grade was over I learned a lot of things that people do, I learned why people were adopted, what it felt like to get stung by wasps, and why no one would ever care about my pog collection.

The summer between fourth and fifth grade and the summer between fifth and sixth grade were both spent in Ohio. My father had just had a very publicized affair and I couldnt understand why he was cheating on my mother. I couldnt understand why my mother still wanted to live with my father, I wanted to move to Ohio and stay in my grandmother's backyard with my cousins. I never had siblings, but I have cousins. My endless best friends, my little followers. From the age of four, when my cousin Michael was born, I realized it would always be my responsibility to take care of my cousins. Later on, when I'm eighteen and throwing up into a pile of leaves- Michael holding my hair back, I started to realize why my mother didnt leave my father, why we didnt move back to Ohio, why a lot of women, and a lot of men don't care about backyards.

In the sixth grade I had no friends. My parents made me go to Catholic school, I didn't believe in god, I didnt believe in anything. I'd hang out with older boys and everyone would make fun of me. The girls would hide my gym clothes and the boys would chase me down the hallway until my face was soaked in tears. I'd sit infront of the nuns and listen to math lessons. I believed in hell. Sometimes I'd ask long questions. I'd watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my mother, my grandparents came to spend the winter with us, I started faking sick all the time. I'd fake stomach aches and they'd bring me to the emergency room in the middle of the night. One day, I told my grandmother I was faking it, all of it. I didnt have the heart to tell anyone that I had no friends, that no one would sit with me at lunch, that someone threw a ball at my face during soccer, so I kept that all in. I was allowed to stay home. I switched to public school the next year.

The backyard didnt matter after that, there was no window to stare out of, after I got breasts and boyfriends and my own phone line. After I misplaced my Coolio tape and they cut down the orange trees. I remember all the songs that were playing on the radio when we first moved to Florida.





II.


The thing about the sixth grade that I didn't tell you before was, part of me liked it. Even though I was really sad every day, even though I felt empty all the time- I started to like it. I started to sit in science class and feel that I was in on some really big secret that no one else knew. I would make up long games in my head and play them to pass the time, long games about how my sixth grade class was going to start being nice to me. You know how those rules exist like, if you are going to make cupcakes you have to bring enough for the whole class- if you are going to pass out birthday invitations, you have to have enough for everyone? I got invited to a lot of birthday parties. The first was a pool party at a big spa, it was girls only, it was Erica's eleventh birthday and she was one of the most popular girls in class. I already knew that if I went to the party, nobody would be nice to me, but I became determined to go anyway- ah, yes, Daniela Scrima at ten years old, still thinking "If I just try hard enough I can win the whole world over!" I mean, it's like now, if I'm just nice enough to him, if I'm just selfless enough, if I just let him call me an idiot as many times as he wants and I keep apologizing for everything he has done to me- if I just go to all these ten and eleven year old birthday parties they will see that they really dont have to hate me.

Erica Schienders Eleventh Birthday was held at some luxurious spa in St.Petersburg. There were fifteen girls from the sixth grade. I used my allowance money to buy her a make-up set from k-mart. We sang happy birthday, ate cake, waited thirty minutes and went swimming. All of us lined up on the edge of the pool and everyone told me at the count of three, let's jump in "one, two, three!" I was really excited, you know about my life, in this way that I have always thought, this way that was always too big for my body, all these thoughts that my brain can never hold. ONE TWO THREE JUMP. I was the only one that went in, the rest of them, walked away laughing. I stayed under for a few seconds, and I liked it, I liked thinking that I knew something they didnt know.

So there you go with your head underwater, not in the sixth grade anymore, still thinking- I know something you dont know I know something you don't know. And even though it hurts, even though it hurts like hell and feels terrible, Ill never be able to figure out what makes other people do the things they do to me. I always sit down and make spread sheets, analyzing it- the alignment of the years, the phone calls unanswered, the nightmares I have about text messages. And sometimes it's awful, but even then, part of me likes it.

I'd come home from school in the weeks following Erica's party and write "Daniela is fat," on the cover of one of my spiral notebooks. I'd then write short stories that paralleled the games I played in my head about Daniela being the most popular girl in class, about hte sixth grade dance being the best night of her life. Yes, Daniela was on top of the world, wide ruled notebook paper. I started reading books about the end of the world- I read this book called "Swan's Song," which my mother gave to me, it's still one of my favorite books despite the stuff I read now. It follows the outline of T.S Eliot's The Wasteland, telling a story of five characters and their lives after the nuclear holocaust.........."Once Upon a time, we had a love affair with fire...." it begins and then goes on to have pieces of the poem, "I cannot find the hanged man, fear death by water." In the sixth grade, in church, every friday at confession, I'd confess how I wanted the world to end, I'd calmly tell the priest that my sin for the week was wanting the whole world to explode. I'd get twenty hail marys and complete them easily. I'd go back home and read, I'd watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my mother, I'd go to more birthday parties and I thought I could charm everyone into being my friend eventually, that maybe after the first nuclear bombs were dropped, somebody would need me.

I still have nightmares about the end of the world, of the kids in the sixth grade making fun of me, of the way tears taste in my mouth, the way glass feels on my face. I still wake up, eleven years old giving myself a pep talk about how this is all just a really bad dream. But now, just like then, I kind of like it, part of me, kind of likes it. And part of me knows that in the end, we always float, we're always fine.

reason to believe

When At&t gave me my new phone number it was apparently not new at all. For weeks I have been receiving calls for a man named Jeff. Jeff works in Real Estate. "Jeff, return my phone calls." I never pick up, I never call back. Bob was waiting for Jeff at some point, last Thursday. Today everyone keeps calling to wish Jeff a Happy Thanksgiving.




Baby Buddy is here now. My true family on all holidays spent in New York: a 2 year old golden doodle. We will go for a walk after I make phone calls to relatives.

My roommate is making stuffing. Kari is coming over with Buddy's best friend, Doc.

Maybe this will become a blog about animals. As my mother used to say "Animals are our friends, we don't eat our friends."


I should just answer the phone and say I am Jeff's wife or girlfriend or mistress. I should say he is making the turkey and I am terribly bored and that Jeff doesn't care about the genocide of the Native Americans.


I will sob on the phone to Jeff's mother, I will find out he has no wife, girlfriend no mistress. His mom won't believe that I'm the sister.


&I'll leave you with this sweet, sweet song my little sweet potatoes









Jeff, whoever you are, Happy Thanksgiving.

park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor

1. This morning I read about the impending terrorist attacks on the NYC subway system, picked a fight with Jackson, did the Biggest Loser work out with Jillian (fitTV)

2.. Any night that I talk to Nick right before going to bed I have dreams that are all mashed up. We go to England but it's all wrong. We are in airports but it's all wrong. It didn't happen that way.

There is rarely a point in explaining dreams, it just bores everyone else. I guess it is one of those things that we cannot translate.

Regardless, I've always wanted some device in my head that could make home movies for me.

Last night before I went to bed Nick and I both agreed, unless there are videos, photographs, witnesses to testify, voice recordings and some recollection, then it probably didn't happen.

Nick and I decided long ago, in the back of Ashley Konrad's Jetta, that the way things happened isnt really what matters. Nick told me just to kiss him &I said that I could not. I don't remember if I did or not, but I remember that I said I couldn't.
I am sure that I said I could not, but I don't know what actually did.
Ashley played "for the price of a cup of tea" over and over and over again. It was next to those college apartments that everyone lived in. You know everyone who was wise enough to stay in state for school and pay three hundred dollars a month for rent.


But that's a real story, not a dream. It's just that everything that we dreamed about and joked about also came true. Even lies become the truth eventually.

3. My friend Jhordan just moved to New York and he already wants to push me in front of a taxi


4. In case you didn't notice, I am dropping names again. All bets are off. Here we goooooooooooooooooo

oh good-bye babylon

Tonight the train got stuck while we were underwater, the woman next
to me, she started screaming about how we were going to drown, "we
gonna drown like this, we gonna drown." Everyone does this thing on
the subway, pretending they are mute, blind, deaf, dead, no
acknowledgement. I nod my head in agreement, We gonna drown like this,
yes ma'am, we gonna drown. It's gonna flood right on in, the glass
will break and everybodys body is gonna float up to the glass, a mass
death on the L train, and no one even took it seriously. We gonna
drown like this, we gonna drown.
I should have listened to my horoscope this morning, should have read
it straight through and walked around with it, word for word.
Tomorrow, maybe, yeah tomorrow, with my stars and my signs, maybe I'll
try and bring the fortune myself these days.
Tomorrow; I'll bleach everything I own, I'll walk the five blocks to
the Korean laundromat, I'll throw it all in. I'll rescrub my hair,
examine my face, fall asleep standing.
There were all these things I meant to do the last time I was in
Florida and I feel like I did not do any of them. They were little
tasks, put my cds on my computer, print out some things, mail things
to myself. Activities that did not happen or occur, I do not know what
I did instead. We gonna drown like this, we gonna drown.
My fan broke. I don't know why. It did not provide great comfort
anyway, but it did provide some. And I am going to act like it will
all come out in the wash, that I just need some bleach, some fabric
softner, air conditioning- if I can make it sterile, it will turn out
well. Even though, that's all it ever was, for so long, it was just
very sterile. So you find things that are not. You go places where the
air is not freezing indoors, where the tile is not white &the walls,
they arent either. You get a fever and you give it away, you walk
around with the same taste in your mouth so you start spitting into
other peoples, "open up open up open wide," and you just go for it.
And I do not know the part in this story where we learn to save
ourselves again where we have to reborn for the millionth time, where
he comes along and tells it to me like it is- like it really is, how
bad it really hurts, what it's really like. And the train is full of
water, now everybody is looking and screaming
but God, we are just singing, I can see your face and I can just sing,
the water fills my mouth and everybody is floating but me and the
woman next to me- we hold hands, we rejoice. We saw it coming.

And I dont know why it never clicks, why the connection is not made,
why I stay awake and I just cannot shake it off. The window wont open
any more, the air isnt doing any good, I do not know who it is raining
for but I didnt ask for some kind of thunder storm. So I hope it goes
well, since I have no idea, since I aint got no clue baby, since it's
not how I make it out in my head and all the baby honey darling
sweetheart baby baby. And I wont say anything that I have said before,
because now everyone is screaming, banging their hands, making so much
eye contact- God they are all staring, they cant even stop, and I hope
they are all thinking- since they cant speak, since their lungs are
filled with water, I hope they are all thinking, Oh lord, we gonna
drown like this, we gonna drown.

acrobats

Well, I guess it is kind of like this: I am Dolores Price and I am telling Dante the truth while we sit in a McDonalds. I am telling him that I've known who he is forever, that this was all calculated, all planned out. I moved next door on purpose, I decided to love you long before you were a living, breathing thing.

I am Dolores Price saying all of this because who can even care this far in? After so much has happened you may as well tell the truth. Dante, it is kind of like you ruined my life because you did all of these visible things like ruin our marriage by fucking your student, but really, I've ruined yours too. I've known you all along. This has been my master plan.

Do you like your french fries, baby? Do you want a chocolate shake?. Because this far in all we want to say is "oh baby, look at you! look at you blowin' my mind."


What I really mean is, I shelled out thirty dollars for the new Wally Lamb book yesterday. It is one million pages long &I have no idea what it is actually about. I am not going to look it up or ask amazon.com or make any attempt to find out. I am just going to let it happen. Even with books now, it just has to happen. I don't like knowing things before it starts or before it ends or before it's over.

I hate the prelude, I cant stand the preface-- it's nothing personal, it's just not for me. I guess it hasnt always been like this . My favorite part of going to the movies is seeing the previews and I will read the sequels and pretend I am going to give them all a fair shot, but apparently at some point I started refusing introductions. Apparently at some point they started to make me sick.


Other treasures I purchased include: rollers for my hair and Virginia Slims Superlims Lights. I don't smoke (not from lack of trying) but after I heard Weekend Update make jokes about cigarettes being marketed toward teenage girls I figured they were for me too. If I can blow o's does that mean I can inhale? Does that mean I am a thirteen year old girl? What does ten years me? Is that regression or just an introduction?


It seems like everyone is skipping town for Thanksgiving. I am staying put. I've been thinking a lot about 2009 and what I feel like doing. I think I just feel like being myself, I think that is what I want to do even if I have forgotten how. I will not get a real job unless anyone will let me work in a beauty salon again, I will not 9-5 it and I won't beat myself up about not being a "real person" maybe starting right now I can think of myself as a real person. Human beings.

I will take up piano and learn to tap. I adore my course schedule so maybe I should just take it one step further and learn how to use my whole body when I play the harmonica.

If you can do a back flip, Dante, then I can do one too.

&this will be our year, took a long time to come

Obama just walked off the stage, Bruce Springsteen is playing and Oprah Winfrey is crying. I am wiping tears from my own face. My best friends keep calling on the telephone and hearing their voices has never sounded so good. My parents call, I look at the sky and I talk to my dad grandparents and I think about January, what my life will be like just six days after my 24th birthday, less than a week after the birthday of Dr.King.

The first time I voted I was 18 years old and going to college in Ohio, the second time I was 19 and living again in Florida. I cast my vote for Kerry and starry eyed I felt defeated. I collapsed on the floor of the Public Library where I was working, a boy I loved had called me had asked if I was sitting down. When I cried on the ground I could see the Gulf of Mexico, it was November and 80 degrees, the sun was shining and I didn't understand how anything could be okay.

Even though I have lived in New York for the last two years, I did not get residency. I wanted to vote for Florida, and I did in the primary (which did not count) and I did two weeks ago with a ball point pen in my head. I wanted that ballot to represent every soul that ever touched me, my parents moving to this country so that someday they could have a child and their child could have it better than they did. My dead grandparents and great grandparents who never voted because their hands were too bloody, their stomachs to starved.

When anyone talked about this being a landslide victory over the last week, I didn't want to hear. It's not that the faith or the hope wasnt there, but I just wanted to know when I knew. So I kept calling the swing states, making the phones calls to everyone I knew in Florida and Ohio, taking buses to Pennsylvania and meeting people around all this country.

Friday afternoon Oprah looked at her audience as I sat on my couch and she said "Everything is going to be fine America" and I wanted to believe her. But even today my fingers were shaking, my nerves were acting up.


And when I saw on the screen who the president was, I just wept. Everyone was standing and screaming around me, but I just cried. They were happy tears of course, but I could not hold them back, I had no yell in my voice I just felt so much love in my body, so much love in New York and so much love in the other two states that raised me.

I would do it all again a thousand times. I'd have the arguments, I'd spend the hours on the phone, I'd go to your state or mind. I would do it one hundred times.

And I feel like today is a new day for you and me, for The United States, for the world. I want us all to feel the way that we have felt this past years. I want us to keep our hands in it-- to remember that this is ours, that we CAN make a difference that our votes CAN count. From the time I was fifteen years old and I saw my state paralyzed by a recount, I learned to be discontent, I learned to not trust my leaders, I became sarcastic, I rolled my eyes. By 19 I changed my tune while everyone chanted "four more years" around me, on November 3rd my body produced more water than the entire Gulf of Mexico which I saw through the glass windows. in 2006 I turned 21, I took my shots legally for the first time, I decided to get out of Florida, I moved to New York and somewhere in this whole process, I thought we could get it all back.

Now I am 23, alone in Brooklyn and I have never felt so surrounded. I know that we havnet gotten it all back, but we can get what we want. We need to stay involved as much as the people who founded our country did. We need to choose our leaders and help choose our policies, I want to remember everyone that died so I could sit here today and have the luxury of typing this out. I want to remember everyone that died so that men, immigrants, women and all skin colors would have the right to vote. I want us all to remember how we got here, and I don't want to take any of it for granted anymore.

We have the books on our shelves, our appliances on digital, the pen and paper is there somewhere and we spoke out, we spoke out hard and strong and I have never seen such happiness.

I don't want us to ever forget what life has felt like, or what tonight feels like or that tomorrow is up to us, tomorrow we can decide to feel however we want.

And we will tell this to our children, we will tell this to our grandchildren. We will always have this to tell. This is all us.