I used the word “complicity” a bit ago. I like the word. To me, it indicates an unspoken understanding between two people, a kind of pre-sense, if you like. The first hint that you may be suited, before the nervous trudgery of finding out whether you “share the same interests,” or have the same metabolism, or are sexually compatible, or both want children, or however it is that we argue consciously about our unconscious decisions. Later, looking back, we will fetishize and celebrate the first date, the first kiss, the first holiday together, but what really counts is what happened before this public story: that moment, more of pulse than of thought, which goes, Yes, perhaps her, and Yes, perhaps him.

Your parents never warn you about the right things, do they? Or perhaps they can warn you only about the immediate, local stuff. They bandage the knuckle of your right middle finger and warn against getting it infected. They explain about the dentist, and how the pain will wear off afterward. They teach you the highway code—at least, as it applies to junior pedestrians. My brother and I were once about to cross a road when our father put on a firm voice and instructed us to “pause on the curb.” We were at the age when a primitive understanding of language is intersected by a kind of giddiness about its possibilities. We looked at each other, shouted, “Paws on the curb!,” then squatted down with our hands flat on the edge of the roadway. Our father thought this was very silly; no doubt he was already calculating how long the joke would run.

Nature warned us; our parents warned us. We understood about knuckle-scabbing and traffic. We learned to look out for loose carpet on the stairs, because Grandma had once nearly taken a tumble when one of her brass stair rods, removed for annual polishing, hadn’t been replaced properly. We learned about thin ice, and frostbite, and evil boys who put pebbles and sometimes even razor blades into snowballs—though none of these warnings were ever justified by events. We learned about nettles and thistles, and how grass, which seemed such harmless stuff, could give you a sudden burn, like sandpaper. We were warned about knives and scissors and the danger of the untied shoelace. We were warned about strange men who might try to lure us into cars or lorries, though it took us years to work out that “strange” did not mean “bizarre,” “hunchbacked,” “dribbling,” “goitered”—or however we defined strangeness—but merely “unknown to us.” We were warned about bad boys and, later, bad girls. An embarrassed science master warned us against V.D., misleadingly informing us that it was caused by “indiscriminate sexual intercourse.” We were warned about gluttony and sloth and letting down our school, about avarice and greed and letting down our family, about envy and wrath and letting down our country.

We were never warned about heartbreak.

My students after the 6th grade awards ceremony. I was beaming.

warsanshire:

i give myself five days to forget you.

on the first day i rust.

on the second i wilt.

on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue.

i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day.

i try to replace your scent on the fourth day. 

the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate.

a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold.

the midas of cheap metal.

tinsel in the middle of summer.

crevice glitter, two days after the party.

i glow the way unwanted things do,

a neon sign that reads;

come, i still taste like someone else’s mouth.

Food blog in Ecuador. Just sayin.

(Source: cookyourdream.com)

“I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho, and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.”

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

San Francisco

Pacifica State Beach, San Francisco

San Francisco just got a whole lot better