An Assortment of Not-Rights

A new year and I don’t feel any different. In fact, I feel years younger than I really am. Of course, when somebody asks how old I am, I say 18. 18 is monumental. Voting! Legal! 18 is one of those checkpoint ages; in my head, though, I hesitate. I say 15, because that’s how old I am in actuality. I suppose it’s because 15 was so harrowing and troubling that I became fossilized, unable to move in pace through the passage of time. I wonder what age I’ll be hardened next, but things don’t feel the same way that they did when I was younger. Maybe I’ll be 15 forever? 

Sometimes I always feel like a child, despite doing adult things. I cook my own food & live by myself. I take the subway on my own and pay my own tickets to the movies and sit alone. I walk the streets and the police don’t ask if I’m lost, but still I feel as though everyone towers over me the way the adults appear in Peanuts- you only see their legs. In other ways, I feel like I’ve grown. I can no longer read anything that revolves around high schoolers: I LIKE books with 35 year old protagonists, now (back in middle and high school, I would be caught dead before reading something that wasn’t YA). I feel like an 18 year old in a 15 year old’s body, except I look 18, too, and I act 18 (self-proclaimed. Pray that is true). Really, there is nothing 15 about me except my essence, and with that, I’m an imposter! And now that I’ve written 15 & 18 far too many times that they don’t seem like numbers anymore, 18 seems pretty young, too. 

I recently started reading Kafka on the Shore; I haven’t read a book in a long time for multitudes of reasons, but since I was traveling during Christmas, I read on the flight, which brings me to my theory that all books are more beautiful when read on a plane. Something about being closer to space than Earth and the tingly white noise of an aircraft working and a singular beam of yellow light shining on your book sets the perfect environment. That is why bookstores in airports seem more enticing. That is why you read faster in a plane. That is also why, for many years, I came to the conclusion that The Maidens by Alex Michaelides was a good book when in fact it was utterly terrible and anybody could have seen that ending coming from miles away if they weren’t stuck on a 16 hour flight with no Wi-Fi and forced to read the only book they carried with them. Anyways, I read Kafka on the Shore on my flight, and with this book I’ve been given some opportunity for clarity- the flight was only 3 hours and thus I was able to read ½. It was exquisite, and with Murakami (I know he has a bad rap among, well, everybody, for his peculiar portrayal of women that sometimes I crave that! Let me feel weirded out and disgusted. Controversial.), I always love his works. I will review after I’ve finished. 

I have been writing fiction and almost done with a piece – will post once I’m done. Will laugh at the bad writing in a couple years. All a part of growing. Wish I had more to say here.