Subversive park rangers, national heroes

Rogue National Park Accounts Emerge on Twitter Amid Social Media Gag Orders.

The headline, alone, gives me hope.

The First Amendment is the cornerstone of what makes America great, and it’s beautiful to see these freedoms being upheld. In fact, maybe Trump–with his ironic platform and backwards ideals and misguided crusade against the very founding principles that distinguish our United States from the wider world–will, in fact, serve to unite us.

Maybe we needed to be grabbed by the pussy, these cold and chilling threats to our democracy bonding us together in the indestructible beauty of our nation’s moral fiber. Maybe that’s the audacity of hope. That we are great because we are good. That our destiny will be written BY us, not for us.

I’m a bad friend

This is the start of an essay for a longer day, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. Mostly because of my last essay on Gwyneth.

“Well, it’s not like she’ll ever see it,” Mr. D said after I posted it.

“No, she might,” I replied. “She knows about the blog.”

An hour passed. I felt anxious about letting my bitch flag fly so flagrantly.

“Do you think she’d be offended,” I asked Mr. D.

“Probably.”

I thought about it for a minute more. “Well, it’s not like we’re good friends. Plus I ruin friendships all the time.”

Mr. D laughed. “And now you know why.”

 

Mommy bloggers are arrogant

I’m obsessed with my high school Gwyneth Paltrow. I think she probably likes it that way.

As I toss chicken fingers in the oven, Gwyneth bakes cayenne and white cheddar casseroles with sautéed garlic and caramelized onions, roasted broccoli and a breadcrumb topping. And she “pretty much invented the whole thing as [she] went along.”

As Mr. D and I hit a two-month dry spell, she asks, “Have YOU locked your kids out of the room on a Sunday morning lately?” before adding a winky emoticon and a #doeet hashtag.

Last Thanksgiving, she and her family biked through four miles of lava at sunset, then hiked over another half mile, to “sit on the coast, on the edge of a sea cliff, and watch the lava pour into the ocean.” Biking home with headlamps capped off the adventure, and although her iPhone pics “definitely couldn’t do it justice,” she still managed to post 15 photos and an intentionally misspelled #Thanksgivin hashtag.

I relish the not-so-humble humblebrags. Maybe because she is at once everything I despise about mommy blogs (the irony is not lost on me) and everything I wish I could be.

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Cake bukaki makes me sad

We used to own the book 102 Dalmatians, and it was one of Big A’s favorites. We would read it all the time a few years back, one of those fleeting childhood fixations I had forgotten all about it until Saturday morning, as my stoner hands scrolled absentmindedly through the kid’s section of HBO Go.

“That one!” Little A cried, and navigated my cursor to not 101 Dalmatians, but it’s sequel.

“Are you sure you don’t want to watch the first movie instead,” I asked, and she remained adamant.

That one.

So on went 102 Dalmatians, and off to the kitchen I sauntered. I paid the movie only half an inebriated mind as I pottered around the house, but during one particularly evil exchange, I looked at the television and declared my hate for Cruella de Vil. I gasped as the word escaped my lips, and backpedaled. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I told Big A, preemptively, expecting her to call me out.

“You can say the H word,” she said. “Oh wait… you used it on a person.”

I could almost hear the wheels turning in her brain as she thought about it more. “Well,” she conceded, “Cruella is trying to kill the puppies.”

“Yeah,” I said, as I picked up some fallen toys, “She’s just a bad person.”

I felt wrong saying it.

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The altar of insecurity

No ceilings, motherfucker, good morning.

Dick in your mouth while you’re yawning, I’m going in.

That’s been stuck in my head all morning. Maybe because I woke up and gave Mr. D a beej. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke a morning bowl with me, which is something I never do, but I hadn’t smoked all week and figured, “Fuck it, it’s Saturday,” so now I’m high and Mr. D is the sober one.

Or maybe I’m not high anymore. It’s been, like, three hours. I made pancakes, watched a weird bukaki scene in a Disney movie, did the dishes, had a “red light, green light” dance party with the kiddos. Brainstormed possible essay topics on the relationship between ambition and arrogance, and then another about how the bukaki scene was really a metaphor for feminism, and why we must take the hate our of our hearts for the sake of our fart-cracks. (The A’s invented that word yesterday, and it’s my new favorite. Superthathu must be wiping a heavenly tear with pride).

In my stoner reveries, I thought about how we all worship different gods and how I don’t want to worship at the altar of the God of Technology. That I love the gods of sex and food and love and intelligence. I think my love of education comes from the belief that god exists in knowledge.

My mother used to make me pray if my foot ever touched paper, and even as a child, I knew there was divinity in the written word, in books. That they carried knowledge, and therefore power.

Obama wrote Dreams from my Father when he was 33. He is a beautiful writer. He would have been brilliant in any career.

Tina Fey has been offered mother of the year awards by working-mom groups and mommy magazines, and she declines because “How could they possibly know if I’m a good mother? How can any of us know until the kid is about thirty-three and all the personality dust has really settled?”

That’s what’s so magical about 33, I think. It’s an age of coming into one’s own. With confidence.

Is arrogance perhaps a manifestation of insecurity? Does confidence radiate, while arrogance takes away?

My parents don’t read my blog. They know about it, and they knew I was a writer when I was in seventh grade. They still have my first essay. But they don’t read my writing.

I’ve always believed that if there was something I couldn’t tell them, then it must be something bad or illicit or wrong. I didn’t tell them about the holiday party. And they’re in India now, so I can’t even talk to them about the job offers and all of the work-related questions that have me wallowing and pining. I don’t know if they’d think I’m too brazen, too dangerously subversive… Or if they’d trust me.

Is Lil Wayne wrong for saying he’s the best to ever do it, motherfucker, he knows it, no ceilings, got dammit, now the fuckin’ sky showing, uh? Was Ariel wrong for wanting more than life beyond the ocean floor? How much more are we allowed to want?

On second thought, maybe I am still high.

What’s on the other side?

I wonder. I imagine all of the people we loved are there, waiting for us.

I bet the other side isn’t as exciting.

I bet it’s more peaceful.

The most powerful, even over Zeus, were the three goddesses of destiny. “They were the three Fates, and they decided how long a mortal would live and how long the rule of the gods should last.” Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it, Atropos cut it at the end.

Thathu used to wear a thread. He lived to be 92.

“You know what Drake says,” I asked Big A in Colorado.

My then-five-year-old  rolled her eyes. “No, mom. What does Drake say?”

“Everybody dies, but not everybody lives.”

That was when we were still in the hotel. It looked so grey and miserable, but flowers don’t need jackets in the rain, as Little A pointed out. Then we hiked up the mountain, cutting straight up like a dollar sign.

All we have is time.

Mr. D, would you move with me to Hawaii?

Super Thathu

Thathu, my grandfather, has been ready to “pack off and go” for decades, his morbid fascination with death just part of his 92-year-old charm.

Back when he was healthy enough to make the days-long flight from India to the US, he would sit on the sofa with our mutt beside him, pondering which of the two would “win the race.” Not sure what exactly he meant, but our dog died 11 years ago.

He likes to wrap up in a blanket and moan, “Yenna mo pandra da.” (“Something is happening to me.”)

His children describe him as a crafty old man who always gets his way. He has no qualms resorting to blackmail.

When he came to Minnesota to meet his youngest grandchild in 1991, he spent a few hours alone with the crying baby before threatening to jump in the lake.

He once screamed, “You’ve given me AIDS” in the middle of the hospital ward, as terrified patients wondered what the fuck was going on. My grandfather didn’t/doesn’t have AIDS.

He hates all religion and thinks Islam is a scam. Upon being introduced to his daughter’s pious Pakistani friends, he offered some unorthodox advice: “I tell my children, ‘You’ve left behind a shit place.’ But you’ve left behind a shittier place. Now that you’re in America, forget all this non-alcoholic nonsense you learned in Karachi.”

Thathu could toss ’em back.

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