Lost Portraits

There is a woman I knew in Chicago who I met through school- either the regular school year or, as I suspect, over the summer at our campus in Michigan. I think that I remember she was a grad student and I think I remember she had blonde hair, but I could be mistaking her for another woman I knew then. As it's often been my habit to know more people less well than a few people very well, many friendships I've made have been lost to time, lost in my memory. In fact, were it not for Facebook, Instagram, there are many more people I would have never known I'd known. Even though at the time I thought I knew them well. We would laugh, divulge secrets, cultivate jokes, go to class, get drunk, cry, pay for each others meals, bikes to each others houses at all hours, make art together.

This woman came to my house several times in my last year of college, and she took my portrait. I remember this. I think it was a large format camera, because it was a vey big to-do to get this photo taken. I would have been at the time more beautiful than I am now, although I would have despised myself anyways, not knowing that the looks I had would degrade even more as the years went on. I honestly thought I could only get better, but I know now there is no rock bottom. You can always get fatter, duller, worse. But I was 21, and I was strange and brown and some kind of pretty. I would wear flowers in my hair and long, perfect symmetrical wings of black eyeliner which made my big eyes bigger. And this woman took my portrait on my deck, on the third floor of my house in Chicago, on Kedzie Blvd where my rent was $425 a month for a room slightly bigger than the one I'm paying a mere $800 New York Dollars for now. My room then was green, my hair was black, the deck was wood, the woman was earnest and sure she would print the photo soon, it was just so hard to organize everything.  I saw her a couple more times; she hadn't made the print yet, and soon I forgot entirely who she was. I don't know how to look her up, we didn't have yearbooks and the college's internal computer system experienced a full rehab 2 years after I graduated. My password doesn't work, my email doesn't exist. I have no way to look at the classes I took, the teachers I had, proof that I got an education. I'm locked out. 

I hope somewhere out there there is a picture of me, youthful, hopeful, happy. I hope it's better than I remember. I hope I'll walk into a gallery one day and see my face smiling at me. And I hope I'll be in a good place, that I'll be smiling back.

Mac Cheesie

Every year, for seven years, I've made my dad's mac and cheese for thanksgiving. Pretty sure I haven't skipped a year. Maybe the last year I was home, actually. He had already been diagnosed I think, and we were cleaning up his diet, and ours, hardcore.

He started the email that he sent the recipe to me with that ^
Been calling me tigerlily since I can remember.

This has turned into a "remember my dad" blog, but it feels like the only place to let these things out. When you talk to people they make sympathy face at you. I don't know if there's a reaction I could even deem ideal. I don't think I want to really talk about it. I just want to put this feeling, this memory somewhere for someone to see it. Probably no one. But I can come back here and see it myself, no matter where I am. "Okay tigerlily let's fly."  Okay dad.

I had to go through all of emails to me to find the recipe. Gmail never wants to bring it up when I search for it, even though I know- it's mac cheesie, not mac cheesy. I had to go through all of his emails to me - SEVEN YEARS of emails- and, no, I didn't have to click on them all, but some I couldn't help. God, I should have talked to him more. I should have! I knew he was dying, even if they insisted he wasn't, I knew he was. The tension in my neck and shoulders is back. I can feel it rise when I think about him. These memories are hurting me.

Dad and me in Paris

I had a party last night -

-and at some point I made my roommates coworkers come into my room and feel my pillows to see if they could tell the feather down one from the not feathers one when they both had bed bug covers on them. Then I had them look through all my books and talk with me about them.

Life of the party.
Part of the lifey.

Dad is so dark in so many photos

This is from Paris, in 2014. Look how happy, how in love. 

In film, in digital, dark people are always too dark. I've lost so many of my dad's expressions to this. 

This was going to be about something else

I have been missing my dad a lot in the last week, I keep thinking of his last days. How weak and thin he was, how he couldn't talk. How he reached for us again and again to just hold us to him, like holding us was the only way to say I love you. I love you, goodbye. I love you, let me fill up on you before I go. I love you, I want to hold you. For minutes upon minutes, heart to heart. His heart beat really slow, and I could feel it more than I've ever felt anyones heart. There was almost nothing between his heart and me. Skin. Some bones. His hands were so strong, arms so strong. How? Just pure need to hold us?

I used to sit on my dad's lap all the time, or next to him on the couch. He said I leaned too much, flopped on people too much, but I'm glad I did now. His voice is already fading a little. My memory is so bad, I can barely remember anything I've ever done, my life is just small memories strung out along a highway, each one miles from the next. But I remember how his hair felt, on the top of his head. He was balding, and the hair at the top was so soft. I would just pet him. He'd take it for a while and then shake me off. "Teetee, stop it!" I remember how his hands felt, soft also, skin smooth, nails neat and manicured. Miraculous cuticles. Chubby veins sticking out on top, but not veiny. His calves had almost no hair, I was always so jealous. I know how his nose felt, I would trace it from the space between his eyebrows to the tip of his nose, a little jelly roll nose. I was always trying to figure out which parts of my face I got from him, and which I got from my mom. I annoyed him, I know, always touching. Like a little monkey.  But now I have all these tactile recollections. Wirey eyebrows, wild and corkscrewing. Meeting in the middle a little bit. I got that from him. And soft fatty earlobes. And a lump on the back of his neck. I was worried the lump was the cancer, but no. That was hidden inside.

I'm stressed, I'm stressed. Lately I'm so stressed. And I'll just be sitting somewhere and the memory of him reaching from that hospital bed in the living room for us, to hold us, weak with hunger and sickness, it will just smack me in the head. And I just start crying. I've gotten pretty good at stopping crying. I didn't want to cry in front of dad, he. I couldn't have done that, he didn't want us to be sad. And for so long it was like we were all in denial that he was dying so you couldn't cry.  So I can sort of stop on command, I can sort of just swallow up the tears, and like shake it off. But I can't stop it from coming in the first place. It comes, quicker and quicker lately, a heavy wave smacking upon the shore.  I feel guilty for not having called more. Talked more. Emailed more. And I can't anymore! I can't even call his voicemail. It's been disconnected. I can't even call and get a stranger on the line, just to tell them, "This used to be my dad's phone. He died, and I miss him."

I want to show him my new house. I want to show him music I found that I know he'd be so delighted by. I would even be happy to have him yell at me, ask me what the hell I'm doing with my life. I want to hug my dad, I want to pet his head and feel the fuzzy hairs holding on for dear life. Even have him question me about my weight. I hated that. I'd welcome it back for a little more time.

The new landlords, they sold the house, or they got an offer. My home is going to be gone, sold to some millionaires that had never even heard of the jungle before it became Silicone Beach. Fuck tech bros. My father died in that house. I cried in that house. I got my first period in that house. Learned how to paint in that house. I was the most me I have ever, ever, ever been in that house. Will I ever be as at home as I was in that house? Home home home. Gone to the highest bidder.

"Of all the Kazakhs who sing French songs on Chinese singing competition shows, he's my favorite"