Category: Stream of Consciousness

Books · Stream of Consciousness · Writing & Writers

Indoctrinated As Straight

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Photo by Kamaji Ogino

“There ought to be a time in one’s adult life which is dedicated to rediscovering the most important readings of our youth. Even if the books remain the same (though they too change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we certainly have changed, and this later encounter is therefore completely new.

–Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics?

90s Queer

I came out as bisexual in high school. To my friends, it wasn’t a surprise. We were outliers, the damned. The wretched of the high school hierarchy. My whole life, I tried to give a name to what stirred within me, flowed through my blood, lingered beneath my goose-flesh prickled skin. How could I explain to my mother that the same butterflies that fluttered in the cavity of my heart, squirming through my guts whenever I stood near my best girl friend also rose whenever the pink-haired gay boy pushed his lips against mine during gym class–possibly the worst class to not be straight in?

I don’t know if my mother understood what I meant. Or if she did and simply chose to ignore it, as if it was a condition that might go away on its own. Maybe she understood and quietly accepted it as most Latine parents are wont to do. It wouldn’t matter, because by the time I entered college, I no longer identified as bisexual; although, it was clear that I was anything but heterosexual.

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Books · School · Stream of Consciousness

Dear Gloria

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What follows is a slight rewrite of a class assignment. The assignment was to write a response letter to “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” by Gloria Anzaldúa which can be found in the pages of A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, an anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Because I am a creature of habit, I did deviate from just responding to Gloria’s piece.

Photo by Kamaji Ogino

Dear Gloria,

I tried writing this letter in parts, hoping that it would sound more like a conversation. There was this urge to stitch your words with those of Cherríe Moraga as there moments in both that opened memories, conversations I had with others and those I overheard. 

I tried writing this in parts, subsections (more like fragments) that were laced together with an intention of making sense in the end. This is normally how I write these blog posts; they are written as stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes they stay a disorganized mess which aligns with the scatter-brain methods of my thinking. Other times, I make an attempt to put order to the chaos. My brain, much like your floor, is lined with fragments—sentences wanting to become paragraphs wanting to become stories. 

Maybe I write because I need the world around me to make sense. Or maybe because if I don’t, I may go mad with the voices that echo throughout my thoughts. 

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Stream of Consciousness

“They were all in love with dyin'”

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Back Pain & Dream State

Woman wrapped in plastic. Photo by Anna Shvets

I woke up with back pain this morning. The sensation seeped into my dream world, creating a moment in panic (both within and outside the dream) that my legs had given out. That they no longer worked for me. That sometime in the night, my spine had snapped and cut me off from my lower half of my body. As the waking world struggled to make sense of the information fed to me, creating a false memory – could almost remember the incident (accident?) that led to this sudden paralysis – the dream me accepted the news. Processed it. Understood it.

This is nothing new, though. You often speak of your condition. You have told stories of sleep paralysis since your childhood. Waking up while dreaming.

Identity

A couple of years ago, a coworker asked me for my pronouns. It was the first time I ever gave it any thought. In the time since, I have decided that being a “man” never truly suited me – long ago, I found comfort in my femininity, though I never longed to be a girl. I have an idea of how my masculinity should present itself. How I want to be addressed. How every time someone addresses me as sir, I reply – under my breath (or in my head) – “Don’t call me sir.”

“Are you trans?” a new coworker asks me.

Maladaptive Daydream

And do you often refer to yourself as a woman?

[I don’t often refer to myself as anyone, actually.]

But you’ve used a female moniker in the past.

[I have gone by many names in the past. A couple were female, yes.]

So you’re finally putting it together?

Hush now. It’s time to sleep.

It’s not that it’s a loaded question. Being an old queer, the word trans carries so much weight and history that it almost feels like appropriating the term. To my aging generation, to be trans means to transition from man to woman or woman to man. In the current climate, you are either cisgender or transgender, with the latter being an umbrella term for anyone who did not fit the role thrusted upon them or sees themselves outside of the binary.

But you can only be male or female. There are only two genders.

There aren’t even just two sexes.

Desert Highway

Mackie and Evelin sit on the hood of their car. The engine still running. Her rusty auburn hair catches the breeze. His scalp sweats.

Doldrums · Stream of Consciousness

Maybe These Daily Prompts Aren’t So Bad After All

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What bores you?

My son spins around on the extra wheeled chair in my office, staring blankly at his phone. Majority of his classmates are probably still in their beds, sleeping off late night excursions on Minecraft or Roblox or Fortnite or whatever games kids play on their tablets and phones these days. I can’t fathom the thought of me, at his age, finding joy in joining my parent at work. My mother, the food prep lady at a high school. My father, the mechanic. Still, my son finds some morsel of joy in spending an 8-hour day (plus one hour for lunch) with his father, the library assistant in the special collections at an academic library.

He doesn’t bore me, by the way. I realize opening my thoughts with a story about my son made it seem that way. No. Work bores me, though my job is fun and exciting. It’s just moments like this, when my son is not in school, I’m wasting time away from him at my desk.

Ok. Maybe work just frustrates me.

It’s not like my job is a slow-moving book. Or a meeting that “could have been an e-mail.” Or church – my gosh, I still wondered how I managed to go every Sunday and sit there, not letting my mind wander.

And I wonder if my son gets bored. We live in an age where boredom is a thing of the past. At least, it seems to be. Yet my son, like so many of us – me included – can find solace in his phone. Staring at the screen. Watching video after video. And while such a time-waste may bring the ire of any other parent, I noticed that he becomes inspired by what he sees. He wants to make content, remix others content, build a platform with his friends.

And trust me – I get it. The idea that my son wants to be a content creator had me exasperated for a while. But he enjoys it. He’s inspired to learn tricks of the trade. How to edit. How to speak to a crowd. What kind of shit parent wouldn’t want that for their child?

That’s it!

That’s what bores me. Being uninspired.

Photo by Hikmet
Stream of Consciousness

Maybe Trapped Mostly Pensive

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Cities familiar and unfamiliar

The voices come and go as they please. Some nights, I can hear them whispering inside my head as I struggle to sleep. My thoughts are a million per minute. Images flash behind closed eyes. Houses are empty. Vacant living rooms, cobwebbed and forgotten. A city where dreams wither and die. Street addresses that only exist once a week, or at a certain time of month. Former junkies wanting to tell their side of the stories. Superhuman beings wanting a chance to shine. An empty house. An empty room. An empty mind.

Some things I learned from someone who’s been to prison:

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Stream of Consciousness

An Atheist Christmas Special 2022

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He spends too much time watching TV. Staring at the screen of his cell phone. Sometimes, he does both at the same time. Wasting hours that he’ll never get back watching media he won’t remember the next day. 

Remember that one TikTok video you watched while taking a shit? You sat there for at least five videos before you wiped and got back to whatever you were doing before nature called. Five videos worth of time after your final push. You sat on that toilet for five more videos breathing in shit particles exhumed from your shitty ass. And you saw that one video—not a thirst trap, but you do tend to like those as soon as they start—and it made you laugh? 

Of course, you don’t. Nobody remembers what they watched.

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