The Champagne Soapbox

  • duck pond

    The sweet in-between. My ghost succumbs the spiritual machine that supports both forward time and the traveling me. Life is losing the idealized time only to find a newer sense of keeping a winning score. It evens out, in-between the end and what’s more.

    Nothing’s gonna change my world.

    Nothing’s gonna change my world.

    Thoughts meander like restless wind inside a letterbox. They tumble blindly and collapse into each other still moving in-out-through chewy idea noodles, store bought sauce.

    Dried grass and tangled hair, both doors for the universal exhale. I turned the single-ply page and found greasy fingerprints through the thick layer of dust. I wake up falling asleep to his yesterday musk. Count his moles until the clouds wither and gently reveal dusk.

    I notice myself more when I’m just a person on a crowded street. Strangers behind tree trunks with prowling curiosity toward the beat of my slapping feet. Most of the time, it was time that I spent just thinking about me. Across the universe, there is an angel willing to live and die again to feel the hungry breath the mammals eat.

    There’s a man talking to himself on the street. He has clothes on and his haircut is clean. He passes by strangers that ask him for his food while he clocks his dry-cleaned-and-ironed pant crease. Most of the time, not all the time, a strict allotment of time is spent thinking about what other people perceive. Maybe because I do. All I do is think.

    Say thank you when the plate is balanced, when the fork scrapes the front of my teeth, when you’re aware of the flowers splitting the awkward space between you and me. The tasteless remain sit in the crack of the bones that want to be seen. I pick at the liminal noise, with my bitten nails, and wonder what other things you don’t want to tell me. Idleness directs sincerity, homemade sauce and dirty teeth.

    Something’s gonna change my world.

    Something’s gonna change my world.

    There’s a distant sound of a gun. A silvering son flipped the gold-rimmed eulogy pages. Careful handwriting, stone engraving. He would tell me stories about Alice jumping into the well. I want to fall asleep in the rain, just once, to see which (if any) part of me will rust. My steps are melting into the ground, and I wonder if this is the only way my words won’t wither and become rotten from worms and dust.

    I’m running and my eyes start to burn from sweat. I don’t run, I’m not the best. Pick at the eyelashes until the rooster had his sung his song from the chest. Not yet. I keep a jar of flies and watch the starven-one allow the full-one drain itself to death. I try to not be morbid, but my life is complete and I’m desperate to maintain the youthful mortality until my final unrelenting breath.

    A freckle on my foot, my neck. Between my chin and my lips, adjacent from my cheek. Someone missed. Ghostly lips once pressed, which is weird to think about the body I have and the bodies before who made my hair brown, eyes dark, and freckles blessed. Strange woman looking at herself undressed, impressed with how metamorphic love lingers. Greet the angels just to have them point out their past. So many mortal ones walk right past. I don’t notice.

    My aunt told me freckles were kisses from sun. I’ll look directly at the sky if it meant that my hazy fate is grossly polluted with passion. Sat there in a fluorescent bikini looking at the sky. I’ve practiced so much that I can float above the floor with glowing poise, allowing the world’s exhale push me into strangers on the street.

    Somebody’s gonna change my world.

    Somebody’s gonna change my world.

    Leather scars. I drive my car to the pond. Stare out into the dark, write words that might matter, probably not. Contemplate the marks my children might have and stain fresh paper with my depleting stardust. Throw thoughts into the letterbox. Allow them to purify while they tumble around, dodging strangers and allowing him to catch one (and read it) with his blood-blistered fingers.

  • wabi-sabi windex

    I clean my mirrors down to a clear image, being sure to treat it carefully because it shows a reflection of me. At my most desperate times, I would get up from my sunken warmth to look into that mirror and see a deserted mind. I would walk back and forth in the mirror in some socially relevant outfit to make sure the heels could last through the night. I hate being perceived, but I need you to perceive me in order to understand that it’s okay to be a million different things at once. I carry my cat to the mirror and see if he knows what a reflection is. As of recent, I tend to stare at the mirror just to disappear within myself. Kind of like how you stare at someone you think you might love. Hmmm. I look back at the reflection just now recognizing it’s alive, again, just older now and considering that I’ll devote my life looking after the younger versions of her. It’s so funny too, because I feel like the younger versions of myself had only worried about the older versions: writing down a list of hobbies in case I forgot to have free time. With all this worry, I’m worried that no one is worried about the one who is presently doing the worrying. Should I tap on the glass and remind her?

    Anyways, hello. I haven’t talked to you in a while. Life is a lot. Everybody needs you, then nobody needs you. Wake up the sun is going down. Stand up, you did too much, just sit down. Only open your mouth until you know what’s coming out of it. Want to see Nirvana but I don’t want to die yet. Want to hear God but she won’t speak to me yet. Want to be me but I can’t figure her out yet. Still. Ugh. I’m too extreme – wanting to know what scratches the deep parts of people’s brain and asking why they won’t tell me more about myself. We’ve only been dating (never been on a date) for two days, can you tell me what you see? It’s okay, I look at myself and reduce it to what I pay to keep it alive sometimes. A single bed and single bath. In the middle of a place I didn’t grow up but made home and consider running away from again. A concrete block built in 2017 to shove someone into for the corporate earning, for that person to work for the corporate earning, and live life completely yearning for more growth.

    If I grow: is my reward a house, a backyard of sand, and a dog your cat hates who can run in said backyard? Do I also get a boy who I fear I love too much? I found it easy to lose the love I had for myself by finding it in other people, at least the version of them that lives in my head. Oh to have your feet warm and to feel your head rise with the silent breaths of that boy you agreed you loved the same as yourself. Kids (maybe) who have your eyes and similar insecurities. The rushed plea to heal those insecurities before they discover them within themselves too. Rocking chairs and road trips where you look at the clock enough to obsess over the memory of you sitting on your couch in your first apartment alone, wondering if it became true.

    Hi. I haven’t met you yet, but I think about you all the time. I bet you have the same emotional dispositions, yet have become perfectly satisfied. You have my wrinkled eyes and insecurities that you are secure about. Nirvana is a state of being. God created the idea of being. How is it being, being you all the time? A silly thing about the universe is that it gives us the opportunity to imagine that scenario (manifest), live the scenario (look you made it), and take advantage of the scenario (what’s next). We spent most of our time imagine ourselves in different scenarios when really all you we doing is guessing ignorant bliss. You must learn how to keep walking with uncertainty; to avoid spoiling the universe’s gift by trying to guess the next one.

    Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to do the work to feel like myself again you know. I do something “so bailey,” and I contemplate for a few days why the action is so reflective of me. “Bailey is the type of girl to call boys beautiful or pretty.” Everyone won’t stop talking about doing the work and the amount of water you need and the early bird that needs to get the worm too. All you do is experience and heal and experience and experience because you healed once and that one mental breakdown you always mention when you’re drunk has become your shortcut to an easier life… however, you will still wake up with a hangover and think “I thought I worked on that already.” lmaooooo

    I’ve accepted that I will never stop healing. It’s because I will always want to keep experiencing.

    Do I have to keep treating my inner child and future self differently when they all look like the same reflection? Even if we don’t see them happy, we have this infinite imagination to picture them being that way. The body keeps score, but the mind always wants more. You’re existing between a perfect plateau of experience, so specific in showing microscopic milliseconds worth of highs and lows and leaps and bounds in growth. And why do we grow? The universe is expansion, you are the universe. Keep growing through the minutes. Stop growing up too fast. Is it too late or did we take a different route? I hate this road, and this car keeps getting older, and the billboard in the rearview said “nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

    The universe sends us exactly what we are ready for at the exact time we need it in our lives. I truly believe that, it’s like the only thing I devote myself too – like a thesis for life. I wouldn’t be 23 if I didn’t mention that it also sends us exactly who we need, and it takes them away. It sends us exactly who we need when we didn’t know they were coming back too – which makes you question if it’s up to you to heal or if the universe will force you to do it anyway. Ignorance is bliss, to live is to find bliss, so why do we try to find so many meanings to something so intricately simple? Being is easy, living is harder. In the most wabi-sabi way, I’m trying make peace with the emptiness at the core of human life by overfilling it with so much happiness.

    To live with the universe is a treasure, genuinely. Maybe I’m just a to get emotional about how lucky are we to learn each other, and love each other, and kiss each other, and feel each other, and see a glimmer of humanity in each other. To connect with the universe through other people and find that same humanity in yourself. To look into the same souls you forgot to remember again, until you do remember them again, and realize you will never forget them. God I miss you already, always. To people who I’ve seen experience all emotions, to people I hold hands with, to people who let me the opportunity to count their pores, to people who I’ve listened to sigh, to the greens and blues of the world living in black and white.

    Put both of your hands out and grab the hand of your youth and the hand of the oldest you. How critical it is to balance yourself within the present and not have them drag you back and forth. I look in the mirror about a month later (now) and feel complete knowing that I’m a balance of so much unknown and too much known. Being the same girl I’ve carried through life, I guess with some over-saturated soul that will last me past this lifetime. Time is limited and yet endless, take it in by second and heal everlong.

    I wrote this because I was cleaning my mirror. Do you ever just sit and stare at yourself, not because you’re doing your makeup, but you can’t believe you’re alive? You like wait … it’s not just me, it’s the universe (at least, just 5’4” of the universe). Adding to what I said in the last blog: although there are so many versions of yourself you have yet to meet, try not to forget about the one living now.

  • mirrorball

    I move apartments this week. Nothing too major of a move, only 15 minutes from where I spent three years and maybe 25 from where I started. I’m losing the comfort of a home I spent four years making in exchange for the person I’m evolving into. I grew out of this place and the deconstructed roads that my car bears scars from. I grew anxious waking up to the same painting I bought discounted and is way too colorful for my taste. An empty room holds a crowd of reflections of that girl who was just simply growing up. Through a pandemic, she sat alone staring at the TV watching the election that could bring chaos to her neighboring areas. Through a flood, she threw together a small box and a manila envelope labeled “important documents” with her fathers handwriting to her neighbors house- now also vacant. Through an ice hurricane, she ran her heating bill too high knowing someone else would be taking care of that charge. Through friends she grew out of, friends she grew up with, she’s a jagged tapestry of experiences and interactions she hopes someone new would want to lay down and get freckled in the sun. The thing that I’m stuck on the most is the newness of it all. The stark smell of packages don’t wear my pheromones, instead a smell of cardboard much like a teacher moving classrooms. Except, I have little to teach and a whole lot more to learn. It would be funny to compare myself to that wall I stared at every morning for the past few years, until all of those years become the final night. I guess now I’m blank and bearing the scratches and holes of the decorations I never assumed to become semantic or worthy of emoting for. Those pieces are in a new place, waiting to be hung in a different way. Carried from a home to a dorm to an apartment to a place those other places were meant to set me up for. Nothing is me, at least quite yet.

    I’ve been here for a month or so. In my bedtime monologue, I kept wondering if I’m stressed or not. The weekend gets closer and my mood changes, dreams more focused on having my plans together during free time rather than the bought time I sold myself to make a living for. Sometimes (only a few times), I find myself holding my head with my camera off seeing how full my lungs can get until I let out the most unsatisfactory blow of anxiety. I run out of breath, especially when stressed, and I hate the feeling of drowning from littered responses. I’m fresh out of the water, being perceived as the fresh out of college girl who is optimistic and excited and not bound to responsibility (her parents probably pay for everything still) (they don’t) when really it‘s the personality pack the corporation finds interesting to keep. I’m what they expect me to be, I’m glad I’m what they want me to be, I’m glad that I’m me throughout the whole thing. Actually, I am the most focused and inspired I have been, but I am scared to become blind through the layering drops of water that narrows between my eyes, blurred between outlook lines and meeting times. Stakeholders and goals and budgets and morning meditation meetings you never make because you’ll talk to them in an hour anyway for something more relative to your concerns. You never really outgrow the achievement complex the college institution created you with. I’m just scared that I’m becoming one with the institution now, just a stereotype and constantly proving myself to stakeholders that I am more than a bright eye and bushy tailed 22 year old, still trying to find the difference between us all. And maybe there isn’t, but I hope I’m able to retain this excitement and optimism and fear that I will lose those things. Maybe in a decade or so. In a funny way, this is the most me I’ve ever been. Blind to the recognition I already receive because it’s nothing special, just nice.

    I grew up in a town where people came home miserably rummaging the back of their fridge for a bud light. I went to a college where students find more validation in LinkedIn likes than good grades, because those are expected but social praise is an additional reward. I’ve always been a hard worker, but through successful advances to pursue career, I felt awkward. I pictured myself 45 and miserably reaching for whatever beer is left from my last gas station visit and scrolling through Facebook. Coming home to check the mail full of bills and complaining to my significant other that we need to do better. It’s a very masculine approach to take considering that if in fact I do have a family, my inability to maintain a work life balance would also affect my children’s care, or even worse- my sanity. I’m not sure how single girls my age fantasize about marriage, being given away by their father as if there’s a land contract involved in the marital transaction. Nowadays, it’s all I hear about. It’s all I’m asked about. It’s all that anyone ever mentions to me. It’s all anyone ever tries to get out of me. Between spilled drinks and slurred words, I revisit members of the past in my mind and consider plan b. In those moments, they are definitely plan a. In sobering moments, it’s me in a remote location with a rotating direct deposit. In an ultimate way, none of those are me.

    I guess this is where I draw a line between 1. perception of self 2. desire of self to be 3. perceptions I’ve adopted from others and 4. desire to be something else. The problem is that I have no way to understand the difference. I think I’m someone who finds it easy to romanticize life. I spend a lot of time thinking, which is a consequence of having to rely on technology for communication without much effort. I think about how my body tossed around all night for me to wake up increasingly more comfortable in the morning, how I have such an affiliation for writing when it takes an academic requirement or insecure attachment for me to read a few lines of text, or even how one ingredient can change the taste of a meal and I know I screwed it up with the salt this time. By default- this makes me a hopeless romantic for anything. it’s just a thing that impacts the self-reflections of myself that make purpose out of novel tasks. I’ve always said that I hate being perceived and limited, but really I just love being perceived as unlimited. Secretive, mysterious, sometimes way too open and revealing. Casual, urgent, sarcastic but serious. I like to think all of those things are me.

    I think my hope is that I’m everything they want me to be, just so I can go to sleep at night without pre-meditating my dreams with a decade of experiences ahead of me. I see it very clearly, on the front porch scratching my heels into the chipped paint of the floorboard. I want to be the girl being chased in the field of flowers. He wants me to be that girl too, but I get too tired chasing after a sun that’s already set- barely energized to make it but comparatively more enthusiastic about waiting for it to rise again. I want to be the girl at the bar who orders the same vodka cranberry as the next girl, but when she does it- it’s cool. At that point, I’ve already committed to an all night investment of creating the most chaotic storyline for memory purposes (if memory can handle it) and rummaging through potential plan a’s. I want to be the leader with glasses and free-styled speech, casually mentioning clauses just like they’re written in business textbooks. They know me as someone who is learning to be that girl, coupled with the reality of stuttered pauses and a very gen z way of literally, actually, maybe, like. It’s hard to be truthful to reality when all you are focused on is desire and dreams. Feeling grounded but still reaching above reality- it’s all very me.

    Working with people who have the majority of it figured out gives me the impression that I too have it figured out. In a very deep way, the struggles I have are evolutionary bindings between me and the versions they once knew themselves as. I’ll show them every version of themselves between 9-5, being that shiny mirrorball of a fresh face. After hours, I am simply the daydream of a girl I imagine myself to be instead of the physical representation of every bright eyed and bushy tailed 22 year-old fresh out of college corporate female. So there it is. Finally, I am different- at least in my head and on the other side of the coin. The difference between me and the rest of my simulated corporate entanglement: resisting numbness. Allowing myself to be painted as colorful, excited, decorative with many labels similar to those that were gifted to me in much more societal-binding contents like college. Those pieces are in a new place, now hung in a different way. A jagged tapestry carried from a home to a dorm to an apartment to a place those other places were meant to set me up for. For now, it’s placed in an weirdly lighted cubicle made comfortable again by my daydreams during day shifts. A trapeze artist balancing growing maturity and accepted immaturity. It takes a bit for me catch my balance sometimes that’s all, but the performance itself is still beautiful, it’s still me, and once the meeting ends it all goes still.

    This was written in a span of a month, between new places and a new job, a very exciting job. It’s a very pivotal time in my life, and it was a response to feeling different from the majority of the very impressive people I work with. And if you get anything out of this, I hope you find this short essay entertaining and at best relatable. Short note: I love my job, but all simulation shifts can be stressful to manage. Also, sorry for not writing sooner. It’s funny how when I only write when I feel awkward with myself. It’s a very me thing to do.

  • champagne-filled fountain

    i wouldn’t necessarily call myself a productive person, maybe a distracted one at that who can distract herself with social events or impulsive thoughts concerning my fate by becoming completely engulfed by the desire to achieve better outcomes- for herself, for her friends, for her parents, and for the little girl she once was.

    when i applied to college, i assumed the role out of necessity. the whole matter was completely written out for me given the expectations of my family and myself. over time, it formed to be a goal of mine, graduation and all, though it was certain that the pursuit would be more of a social formality rather than a wavering expedition. it’s a very privileged perspective, and i almost despise myself for it. being the first born of a small family, i assumed any goal to be my responsibility to set the tone of achievement- whether not those were extrinsically motivated was not my distinction to make. in some easy way, i also never considered the life of a housewife. even though i watched my mom play the role effortlessly for some time, i quickly understood that my father would want me to wear the pants and the skirt. i agreed, and i collected a sum of scholarships and made a grand move four hours away from the refineries.

    in the good “arguing over politics, embracing differences, introducing feminism” way, i appreciated my parents pushing me to join only a few other extended family members in their collegiate status. in a bad way, i felt captive to institution, expense, and expectations of the world outside of my family. it was always what if i don’t, but not in a serious way, just in a “i bet i could do without” kind of way knowing that wasn’t an option.

    every moment was an attempt to satisfy the rebellious teenager that felt too loud in a quiet town. it’s hard to not think about the dramatic nature of my first year away from the house i felt was home. riding a lime scooter in the pouring rain only to spin out and miss class because the health clinic needed you to get a tetanus shot. studying on campus with people whose last names you don’t know and romanticizing the whole thing. hoping that the bartenders assume your vodka whatever is just water. this was the typical college experience, sort of sneaky and relatable if you’re reading.

    sophomore year was a glimpse of that very whimsical spirit, though covid took away a chunk of that experience. i remember the moment we found out school would be canceled, amused with my friends that our break was extended and hoping that my boss wouldn’t expect me to come in that week. it soon developed into many under-stimulating nights that would introduce me to the extent of what most of my classes discussed- mental health. although that experience taught me loneliness, to be frank, i soon learned how to enjoy it. it was somehow bartering a bottle of wine and finishing a book about self improvement. redecorating your apartment for people to understand, just a little bit, how colorful i understand myself to be. it was trying to figure out how to keep yourself entertained alone in a 2×1 living space while wondering how much time you would have to steal back from a crisis of political turmoil, violence, and pain before internalizing all those negative projections into your own.

    before i knew it, my favorite professor for a class i anticipated during the entirety of my college career was announcing that she was glad to have had us experience what she had to offer. i walked home, and realized it would be the last time i would exit that building. for being a notoriously fast walker, always looking to the next task, my feet dragged behind me like a lost puppy who felt abandoned by herself. that’s it? i was almost driven by anger, wanting to steal back that lost time before i had to defend my experience behind a desk of a future employer. even for the next few days after that, i made excuses to visit campus and sit in that very library cubicle where freshman year, i silently carved my initials. it’s hard to not contemplate where you left your mark, if you even left one at all, so i sat there and hoped that another confused freshman may ponder who those initials may belong to, ignorantly unaware to the fact that i too am just as confused.

    in that particular class, i was taught that happiness is not achieved through the satisfaction of reward, but it is more so achieved momentarily through a byproduct of your input in regard to the personal and cognitive effort you may apply to your health, relationships, and overall well-being. This concept of application explains that goals are the precursors of happiness and your commitment to the goal is the rewarding output. in turn, it is much more difficult to identify your goals rather than achieving them. in the same way, it is much more satisfying to succeed in an effortful pursuit rather than to contemplate their outcomes, even if the pursuit is defining your short-term and long-term goals. even if those goals are socially constrained. even if they are not really yours.

    i’m at the difficult point of identifying my goals, like… legit goals that i now have time to execute and have the freedom to pursue regardless of their underlying cultural value.

    for the next few weeks, and even now, people ask me how it feels to be graduated. simply, it’s lonely. it’s realizing that your friends are stilling working for the grade while you practice interview responses in the mirror. sometimes even facial expressions in fear that your worry is easily translated. it’s midnight scrolling through linkedin and saving potential job offers considering “am i ready to move away from the city i made my own home at?” it’s debating with your parents on how much responsibility you will take on the following months. it’s realizing that you knew less at 22 than you did at 18 and that all you have worked for, technically, depends on the next step you take. a wide-eyed, abnormally pessimistic, fresh out the pond college graduate who has the world in her hands but doesn’t know what to do with it.

    i embody a completely different woman from who i thought i was freshman year of college. my accent is now thin and only introduced after a glass of wine. country music resembles Christmas music through nostalgia and only tolerated at a specific times. the high-school knock-off amazon boots now replaced by a nicer pair of leather skins that bear the cracks of endless steps made through the medians between campus roads. the same girl drives the same backroads home, and every time, realizes how small her room is and how big the world is- especially now.

    in this way, graduation was like grieving the deaths of those previous versions of me all while giving birth to a more mature, socially expected, and classically conditioned woman. the best way i can explain my position is that she is still at the funeral and please expect her to be late to the birthday party.

    i could tell you so much about the value of negative emotions, the cognitive process behind attention and how to optimize performance, how polarization is the death to community, and other psychological phenomenon. i could also describe to you how write grant proposals for issues you somewhat understand the necessity for, how to care for your apartment after it floods in snowing weather, and how to nurture the damaged ego of an abandoned cat.

    however, just because i can tell you what it’s like to survive doesn’t mean i can tell you how to live. i think that’s what i’m racing to do now, which notes the exciting part of graduation. although it feels like i’ve reached the finish line and my reward is another marathon, i realize it’s because our culture is oriented around doing. it’s silly to admit into the electrical abyss that now i just want to focus on living now that i have the option to do so.

    and, the real world is scary. how crazy of a feeling is it to feel like you have more time to make money to buy more time. being bred under a roof of expected achievement makes me contemplate the roof i spent 4 years building for myself, troubled by a disillusionment of teenage rituals and now disoriented with responsibility for my own livelihood. i want my name to exist beyond a printed name on a paycheck, a degree, and a blog. i hope that desire is understandable.

    i’ve never been interested in exploratory hallucinogenic drugs that enhance one’s definition of being part of the earth, though i have heard stories and developed an interest in understanding psychedelics and the refractory period of induced euphoria. in every anecdote i pondered, i realized that users achieve something i naturally experience: a sense of belonging to a higher purpose of existence and appreciation of surrounding presentations of life. in turn, i naturally experience an ignorance to the moment. i can tell you what i want in about ten years, just because i understand that we all feel secure in the adaptability of the future. i can tell you what i want six months from now even, but now? like this second? how about some water or a breath before the starting line ribbon hits my waist. even better, can i retire from surviving and simply live instead?

    a little heavy for an exciting post about graduating? sure. in a way, i discount the positive outcomes of this moment for me. lonely, yes, but the solitude of the pandemic taught me how to be still in the storm of chaos. in a funny (haha, really funny) way, those nights spent journaling about my cognitive dissonance or spiraling staring at the same damn ceiling prepared me for the loneliness of graduation. they taught me to appreciate this abstract concept of unknowing, labeling your reality, and to understand that it begins again (and again and again) until i reach the final finish line.

    i would like to thank my parents for tirelessly pushing me to get the job done. my friends for keeping me sane or introducing me to my insanity, either or. all the people i connect with on LinkedIn for showing me what true jealousy is. myself too, for finding stability in the unknown but also being determined to refuse offers that don’t correspond with my experience and accept those that project growth. and my cat, for no particular reason.

    i know i’m late for the birthday party, but i will be there in a minute. I’m leaving the funeral as we speak.

    cheers bailey!