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the inside of frannie’s body.

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I’m trying to get into grad school in Scotland.  I wrote this story for the application process. 

even the way they say our name.

“Are you happy?” Tomak asks me.  In the cave of the blankets his words are muffled and almost lost.  But I can hear him even with my ears pressed into pillows.  I can hear him even when he doesn’t speak.

“I’m happy,” I say.

“Are you sad?”

“Also sad.”

“Can one be two disparate things at the same exact moment?”

“I think one can,” I say formally, and giggle.

“Tell me why you’re happy.  Then tell me why you’re sad.  We’ll try and find a middle point.”

“I’m happy because we’ll get married soon.  I’m happy because of Peter.  I’m sad because the ocean is grey and they said it would be blue again by now.  I’m sad because my parents are dead.  I’m sad because half of the world is dead.  I don’t think there’s a middle point to that.”

“There’s always a middle point,” he says, and he kisses me on the middle of my forehead, in the crease above my nose.

“Then what is it?”

“Every beginning stems from an end,” he says after a moment.

“That’s not true,” I reply immediately.  It is one of my favorite things: to prove people wrong.

“In this case, it’s applicable,” he says calmly.  It is one of his favorite things to do: to insist.

“Explain it to me.”

“You’re sad about endings and you’re happy about beginnings.  In the middle, there is a continuance.  A sort of eternal continuance.  A continuance of eternity.”

I’m giggling and he’s smiling smugly like he’s half joking and half serious.  It’s a weird feeling, when you realize that you love this person in front of you.  Love is strange.  Love does not last forever and so it must be practiced quickly and with heat like a fast burning fever.  And at the end of it you are tired from the sickness but one day you will grow strong again and you will regard your time together as one regards a fever dream.  It couldn’t have been true at all but there is truth in everything.  There is truth in every lie and there is truth enough in this.  If we lived forever no one would stay together forever because we would all fall out of love.  But since we do not live forever some love lasts forever because we die before we reach the point where we can no longer stand the other person.  When everything they do is like a slow torture to us and even the way they say our name is unbearable. 

a new year.

Tomorrow I leave to spend time in Los Angeles and San Francisco, then to New York for the first time since I’ve left, where I’ll board a ship that will take me to some islands I’ve never been. 

2011 is wrapping up.  I’ll turn 27 on the first of January. 

I’ve written a book in the interim between New York and California, a lonely month spent in a Connecticut that refused to welcome winter.

I quit my job and started writing full time, for as long as I can sustain myself or as long as I can stand it.

I seem not able to keep up my blog anymore.  I’m not sure if the feeling will pass or if it will continue seeming an arduous chore.

In the meantime, send me messages or email.  katrinaleno@gmail.com

Be safe in the new year.  The world is a crazy place.

someday you’ll come back to this.

You take for granted waking up.  Going to school, talking to your friends.  Watching a show on television or reading a book or going out to lunch.

You take for granted going to sleep at night, waking up the next day and remembering everything that happened to you before you closed your eyes.

We take it for granted.

We forget stuff along the way, sure, but mostly it’s little stuff.  We forget where we put our keys or we forget to turn the curling iron off or we lie awake in bed in the middle of the night convinced we left the stove on.  Convinced we left the front door unlocked.  Convinced we forgot to set the alarm.

And as we grow up we accept that our memory gets worse.  Sometimes we can’t remember what day it is.  Sometimes we can’t remember if we washed our hair already.  We stand in the shower dripping, unmoving. 

We forget to put deodorant on.

We forget our sunglasses on the kitchen counter.

We run out of the house without our car keys.  Without our purse.

Older still and now names go.  We cannot remember our children’s names.  We call them every name we can think of until we get to the right one.  We know we’re right because of the expression on their faces.

We put our blouse on backwards.

Maybe we wear two different socks.  Two different shoes.

We get into the car and we forget where we’re going or we remember where we’re going and we forget how to get there.

And then one day maybe we forget everything altogether.  We forget how old we are and we forget our names and we forget when to eat and when to sleep and we lose weight and we get big circles under our eyes.

This kind of forgetting, this is almost OK.

Because it is expected.

But when you are young.  When you are my age.  You take it for granted.

You get up.  You have your day.  You go to sleep.

You remember everything you did. 

This is normal.

We remember.

We live and we remember.

You live and you remember.

But me.

Me, I live and I forget.

Except now.

Now I am remembering.

And I’m not sure what I liked better.

Being in the dark or being thrust, unceremoniously, into the light.

i’m stuck here waiting for a passing feeling.

I have been absent lately because I quit my job and I finished the first draft of my first book and as much as I sometimes entertain the idea that these things are not related, of course they are related.  And the only thing harder than writing a book is finishing it because you stare into your half-empty cup of coffee or your half-empty glass of wine (time of day depending) and you think to yourself, what do I do now.  Five months of my life are gone.  My grandfather is still dead.  Writing this book did not bring him back to life.  And you wished him dead, anyway.  Those last few days in the hospital, you wished him dead because he did not recognize who you were and he said such hurtful, delusional things to you.  And even though it did not hurt and even though it does not hurt it still surfaces in your mind as a reality.  Someday everyone you love will die and they will not recognize you and perhaps they, too, will tell you to go to hell. 

I have finished the first draft of my first book and I have realized that no amount of writing can write away the pain of living.  The pain of breathing.  The pain of turning off your alarm clock and getting out of bed and feeding your cat and putting on your clothes and doing your makeup.  Those things will always be there and the pain of doing those things will always be there. 

Maybe a week goes by and you listen to the same song on repeat as you walk through Brooklyn and you move your car from parking space to parking space and this marks the passing of another block of time.  You put your books into boxes and your apartment empties out and you tell your boss you’re not coming back and you tell yourself you will not put so much into your body.  You will not keep so much out of your body.  You will do the right things.  You will not be a writer anymore.  You will go back to school.  You will have a good, healthy relationship with yourself.  With this life.  With other people. 

And then you’re driving in your car and you are alone and suddenly you are not alone.  All these people flood into the car with you and all these things that do not belong to you and all these ideas you do not mean to have and all these memories you do not remember.  And there it is.  The next thing you have to write.

And so in that way, we are never free from it.  I am never free from it.