The Quiet

Friends,

I hope you're all doing well. I hope you are sitting in your comfiest pajamas (or lack thereof) by the fire, sipping tea, reading your favorite book, smoking your favorite smokable. I wish you straight to Earth Heaven. Because I am not there, and someone ought to be.

I was there earlier. I attended the National Book Festival in DC with a fellow writer and dear friend of mine. We walked along Massachusetts Avenue, speaking of the errors of the system, communal P.T.S.D., and how terrifying fear could make people, relieved that at least in each other's company we were people instead of just colors.We shuffled through the halls of the convention center, swapping story ideas. We listened to poetry unravel from the tongues of masters. We lingered in the book dealers room, sampling the merchandise, and buying enough to keep us reading for months to come.

In short, it was a good day--and then I got home.

My boyfriend lost his debit card. We both looked for it to no avail, but he swears it's somewhere in the house. His bills are due. I do not have money for said bills. We don't know how long another debit card will take to arrive; if we cancel the card too soon, the car insurance won't be taken out and it'll get cancelled.

Then, my family came over. They were full of love--and suggestions. and social anxiety triggers.

Then, my boyfriend freaked out. Then I freaked out. We fought. I walked away.

Guilt set in. Blame set in. Nerves set in. Life set in.

The shoulds are pounding at my door: I should go help him look for the upteenth time. I should just offer to pay his bills with the student loan money off of which I've been living. I should have wrote that last sentence as "with the student loan money I've been living off of," because who the hell cares about grammar outside of academia anyway...?

In truth, none of this is earth-shattering. I can reconcile with my boyfriend. My family only wants the best for me. No one's taken money out of his account in the two days it's been missing, so the card probably is in the house somewhere. We can let the insurance payment go through, then cancel it if it doesn't turn up... Everything will be fine. Everything is fine.

As my breathing slows, I admit not all my shoulds are harmful. In fact, most aren't.

I should write this. I should be more sensitive to my boyfriend's feelings. I should look for work more lucrative than restaurants and retail. I should make the agenda for my internship. I should submit my work to more magazines. I should send out more applications. I should work, and then trust everything will be okay.

If I could just keep the quiet, only let in useful suggestions, and prioritize them without second-guessing, I would probably be fine. Most of us would be. The trick is to find that quiet.

For me, this is where yoga and meditation comes in.
If it does for you as well then let us together find our vinyasas.
If it doesn't, then find something that does.

However we get to that sacred quiet, once we get to it, let us listen. Let us pick one concrete, beautiful should and pursue it with love.
Namaste.

Buenas Noches

Belinda

News

It's been one of those nights to crave cigarettes when you don't even smoke. But the show goes on.

New things:

1. I had my intake session with my new therapist yesterday. She's a nun with a social work degree. I feel like calling up my old shrink to tell her I'm cheating on her with a nun, but it's not cheating because we haven't spoken in five years and "I replaced you with a nun" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

2. Lakeland, MD. It exists. Who knew? (besides, of course, the people who live there.)

3. I've decided not to procreate. Again. After struggling for most of my life to not fall into the third parent role, I've decided to spend a little time   the rest of my life raising myself. Then again, I love kids and, like most cradle Catholic cliches, am a sucker for martyrdom, so I might change my mind.

4. Baltimore is officially the poetry capital of the country. Slammageddon, the Baltimore poetry slam team, won the 2016 national poetry competition. I found out Saturday night during their first local circuit slam at Soulful Emergence Art Gallery on South Carey Street. I know a couple of the people on the team and they're all great. Check them out.

5. Chile Mocha coffee. Not technically new, but new to me, and delicious. Rich and bitter as mania on a warm night.

6. This poem:

The Devil ain't got no boundaries

I'm waking up every morning with snake bites on my soul

but he hides from my sigh because he knows

I am Shiva 

in a shakti bottle

Every breath in

I clamp onto the sins

Every breath out 

I drain the venom 

and if I go down

it is only to grow another set of arms

Every word is a mantra
Every gesture a mudra
Every step up, pranayama

Because I got purgatory burning in every chakra
Aching to sukhasana like Buddha
Rise like Yeshua
Say Ashe  like Obatala

But for now I breath
And asana out the poison.

What are some new things of yours?

Peace, friends
Belinda

Wake up in the morning feelin' like P Diddy...

Too Tired for Titles

Hello everyone

My self-love day went well. I stayed home, did yoga, watched anime, and ate guacamole.  The day following was less than fantastic. Made bad decisions. Went to worse places. All the usual stumblings.

This is going to be the last "daily" blog post I write for a while. I'm going to be writing fiction and nonfiction and trying to get published and chase childhood dreams and believe I can fly and all that jazz. Given the rate of success for publication, however, I'm sure I'll return to this blog to rant every week.

Before I go, though, I wanted to explain my pen name since most of you can now see my last name isn't actually Rosetti. Rosetti is a misspelling of Rossetti for Christina Rossetti. She was a Pre-Raphelite English poet who wrote Goblin Market. I read the poem in an English Lit class and was immediately struck by the complexity in the contradiction between the sensual tone and the intended meaning. On the surface level, it's a purity poem, a narrative denouncing sexuality outside of wedlock, but when when one considers the luscious descriptions of the fruit (symbolic of sex), the behavior of the goblin men,  Lizzie's graphic assault, and Laura's resurrection, the poem takes on a much more complex, gendered undertone.

In the shortest of shorts, the poem's full intended message as I interpret it:
Sex (the fruit) is not evil--it's beautiful. When offered by toxic people (goblin men), however, it may as well be heroin: deceptive, addicting, and poisonous. Do not go looking for it with just anyone. Do not confuse or mistake it for love.

As a young, recovering Catholic, this united the puritanical view of sex I had been raised with and the love of pleasure I had as a human sexual being. To some degree, I still feel like the paradox of that poem, but I suppose everyone is some mix of sacred and profane. In any case, that's the reason I adopted her name.  


I'll try to update this once a week instead of once every couple days. I'm aiming for Mondays, but knowing me it'll turn out to be more like Wednesdays and Thursdays. I don't know. Just keep checking. It makes me feel special.

Happy living!

Tonight's full moon as captured by my camera phone. 

Belinda

goddesses in burlap

i used to burn my hair and paint my face
so i could pretend to be a woman
with all the other girls

now i shave my arms, my vulva, my legs
so i can pretend to be a girl
with all the other women

i carved my soul, my hips, my wrists
pretending to be something better or worse
with all the other enoughs

and to this day
i got wandering eyes traveling Vegas over my Montana mountains
twisting into queasy lines beacause i
never put up their neon
i got dollar signs aching desperate to my ageless face
starving for a vacant vein
i got knife-eyed dolls searching for a sparkle in my exhumed soul
waiting and willing me to breath wrong
if i breath at all

you get real good at holding your breath living
buried
                    but

my streams still babble back ageless under the dirt
so i sit with the rocks and i say
don't ask me to break like stanzas i'm not a poem
i was not born with cotton between my legs don't call me a lady
i never even knew your name don't look at me talk at me grab at me like i'm yours

and my hair silvers
and my veins ichor
and i do not
and i can not
pretend
that I am anything less than Gaia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friends

I'm a huge advocate of self-actualization. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being myself. I've decided to take a break from that today. If you want, feel free to do the same.
For this whole day, let us be as patient and kind to ourselves as we are to our friends and loved ones. This might be bad news if you are kind of an ass to your friends and loved ones, but that's a other blog post.
However, assuming you treat your friends with love and respect, treat yourself like friend.
I will let you know how my day goes. Please let me know how your day goes. Email me at sincerely.sarcastic@gmail.com

Good day, friends!

Give yourself a good scratch!

Belinda

P.S. This is a pinterest picture. Valerie, my little sister, thought you should know.

The Unfinished _________

Friends,

Today I woke up to wallow in misery and self-pity. I have no job. I have no school. I have no structure to keep me sane. I have no published works in a literary magazine outside of my high school's. I have no self control. Every time I try to finish a story I start to have a panic attack, Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, cries into corn flakes.

As I was flailing for control over myself and my life, my boyfriend came home upset over childhood traumas I cannot even begin to explain. Beyond "I love you" and "it'll be okay," I had no idea what to say to him. However, I had to do something; I hate seeing him in pain, so because he's a gamer and his favorite method of coping with things he can't control is escapism, I gave him a hug, sat down with him at the PS4, and started playing The Unfinished Swan, a game he recommended to me months ago. In the game, players play as Maxwell, a young orphan whose mother was a painter. As Maxwell, I walked around the inner world of her unfinished swan painting.

At first, I was frustrated and confused, because when the game first starts, you cannot see anything but white. You are living inside of a blank canvas. The only way to find out where you are and where you are going is to paint. However, the more I painted, the more I discovered, and the more I ventured through the world of the game, the happier and more wonder-filled I became. I began to remember why I fell in love with drawing and writing in the first place. I began to remember my worlds.

Entire worlds are birthed from the tips of pencils. As creator, you are both god and citizen of them. However, as you grow, you find they develop with or without your recording them and you are less of a creator and more of a mediator. Still, you scribble everything down because if you don't, no one else will know the worlds and they were created to outlive you. Naturally, you also have the "actual" world to worry about. You will have to put your work down billions of times to pay your health insurance, work your day job, do your laundry, call your mother.... When you return to the work, you may find it's not as eloquent or complete as you thought, but that is only opportunity to explore deeper. If you never cease, you never lose.

E.L. Doctorow once said, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

And so, my fellow creatives--and if you're human, you are a creative--for five minutes, let us forget our plans, our deadlines, our responsibilities, get out some paper, and explore our worlds. Write. Draw. Paint. Fold. Sculpt. Sing. Whatever you do, honor your world. Honor yourself.

God bless you, friends.

Belinda

P.S. What is an interesting encounter you've had with a squirrel?

Grandmother

Friends, family, countryman, country ladies,
 howdy.
I seem to have let this day grow into a goofing off kind. It's about 6 in the evening now, and I just sat down to write this.

It occurred to me, as my mother and my grandmother conversed over their tea and I sat typing next to them, how incredibly strong my grandmother is.

My mother said, "Mom, how about I give you a shower? You smell kind of ripe."
"Oh, really?" She wrinkled her eyebrows. "Okay. Well, wait until later when I can get into my nightgown. It's too early yet."
"I won't have the energy later."
"Well, Okay." She said, getting up from the table. "You wanna do it in the bathroom down here or upstairs?"

She's 94 years old. She shakes all over, has no sense of smell, and forgets everything--names, dates, conversations-- in 20 minute intervals. She's aware of all this and even more aware of how dependent it makes her. Yet she almost never loses her sense of humor about it. When my little sister Valerie talks back to her for calling her the wrong name, she laughs and teases. When she, not remembering what day it is, has to ask me, she smiles and says, "Oh, don't mind me, hon. I'm 94. My brain's gone." When I ask her how she's doing in the morning, she says "Still here!" Then, dead-eyeing me with mock gravitas, "I can't go until I find that lost sock."

When she can't bathe herself anymore, when her youngest child has to be the one to tell her she stinks, when she can't even pick when she showers, she concedes with dignity.
Granted, she has bad days too.
 I've watched her cry after wetting herself, saying to my mother, as she led her over to the bathroom, "Just take me out and shoot me, Kathy." I've heard her yell at my sisters whenever they try to tell her not to use the good tomato knife for cutting up boxes.

However, more often than not, she's still laughing and smiling. I can't help but admire her. I don't think I could be so patient with myself or the loss of control that comes with aging. In fact, I know I couldn't. I sit at home moping most days just because I don't have an office to drive to anymore. Despair engulfs me over the lack of a routine and paycheck, never mind the loss of health and autonomy.

Then again, who's to say the two aren't connected? If my grandmother still had a place to go with a group of peers to talk to and a task that kept her moving every day, maybe she would be doing better. It's so easy to feel useless when you've got nothing to do. Maybe that's why we've been bonding so much more than usual. I suppose every situation manifests some silver lining.

But I tire, friends! I'm afraid we must part. Go hug your grandparents (unless they're abusive assholes. Then go hug someone nurturing.)

Good night!

My Grandma, Mom, Dad, brothers, uncles, and two of my sisters at my grandma's 91st birthday party. You get a gold star if you can guess which one she is.

Belinda

You Should Read This

Hello all

I hope your travels have gone well. Maybe not according to plan, maybe even quite kerfuffleful, but in all the chaos and frustration I hope you found and adopted something golden, even if only spiritually. That is the highest prayer I can pray for you right now.

I would like to speak for other people, because I do not believe I am the only one with the following problem and because I still get a small, reflexive knot in my gut when I type the word "I" too many times--possibly Catholic Guilt, possibly internalized sexism, absolutely unhealthy--but I can't speak for others, so I'm just going to let this post get a tad narcissistic for a minute... or hour.

All day, week, month, year long, I am assaulted by "should's." I should wake up earlier. I should stay up later. I should eat less. I should eat more. I should finish reading that novel. I should finish writing that novel. I should apply to more places. I should waitress. I should freelance. I should market. I should get a hotel room. I should stop wasting money. I should learn more Spanish/Japanese/Korean/German. I should get better at English. I should spend more time with my grandmother. I should rescue as many people as I can from their negative emotions even though I can't even handle my own. I should get help. I should stop writing this and let my mother know where I am. I should

on

and on

aaannnnd on.

Taken one at a time, most of these shoulds could be quite healthy. Unfortunately, they never come one at a time. I wake up, schlup over into the kitchen, open the fridge, survey my breakfast options, and as soon as I let in the tiniest little "maybe I should eat eggs," BAM! I'm overrun. It's like that scene in a teenage sitcom, where, after the parents have left town for the weekend, forbidding any parties, and the kids decide to invite just a couple friends over, but come the night of the get together,the whole fucking school breaks down their door and proceeds to destroy the house. I got shoulds drinking my liver to death. I got shoulds jumping up and down on my kidneys until they burst. I got shoulds playing my spine like a xylophone. I got shoulds beating the back of my skull like a kickdrum. 

In short, I get attacked; I get dizzy. I never know which should to pick, so I end up attempting all of them, and failing. In the case of breakfast, my kitchen ends up a sopping, eggy mess and whatever I tried to cook burns, spoils, or lays forgotten until I stumble across it hours later. (Luckily, this morning, it was only a baked potato. FOREVER YUMMY!!!) 

I've been told this Traumatic Should Syndrome is a symptom of my A.D.H.D., a side effect of cradle Catholicism, and/or just plain thinking too hard. There are plenty of people to blame, but I happen to love every single one of them. Besides, my own shoulds are enough trouble. I don't need to mess with other people's.

I said earlier that I don't think this problem is mine alone. I've watched my dad, my mom, my sisters, my brothers, my best friends suffer through it. I'm sure even you have experienced it in various stages and I'm sure you're every bit as sick of it as I am.

Therefore, let's all together close our eyes, take a deep inhale, a deeper exhale, dead-bolt our doors against the shoulds for one minute, and ask ourselves what we need.
A cup of tea. A journal entry. A catnap, perhaps. Whatever it is, for fifteen minutes, let's let that need be the only should we follow.

Peace, friends.

Belinda

What if?

Hello, boys, girls, and squirrels

My name is Belinda and I have too many feelings, so I've decided to put some of them on the internet. I've recently graduated from college with an empirically useless degree in the love of my life (creative writing) and my daily anxiety attacks have included such fun questions as:

1. What if only retail places ever hire me?
2. What if no one ever hires me?
3. What if I have to get a Masters?
4. What if no programs will accept me?
5. What if I live with my parents forever?
6. What if I get a job, but am so terrible at it they fire me on the first day and clog my every online representation with hate and disapproval?
7. What if everyone's all secretly speaking a different language, but my hearing is so bad, I hear it as English?
8. What if the N.S.A. is watching me type this naked through my webcam?
9. What if my cell phone isn't actually ringing and I've just gone partially schizophrenic?
10. What if I don't even own a cell phone?
11. What if the cake isn't a lie?
12. But what if it is???

I'm not totally sure what I'll do with this blog. Based on past experience, sometimes there will be poetry. Sometimes there will be essays. Sometimes there will be silly pictures of wolves in hats and foxes in bow ties because I'm flip-flopping sick of internet cats and mine is way cuter than any of them anyway.
There's also a good chance the blog will just rot in the innermost zeroes and ones of the internet until the world ends.
But probably not.

Ciao for now

Belinda