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hot cup of coffee and a smile

 

it’s been years since i read this and i don’t remember anything at all except the fact that dirty, one of the female protagonists, urinates on the carpet in the hotel room. must have impressed me back then.
ohchloe:

This is my great aunt Mary and although she is nearly decade younger than my grandmother, she’s gone through a series of health issues throughout my lifetime that my grandma has dodged. My grandma attributes her overall decent health to vitamins, while Mary thinks that her fading form is due to her (recently deceased) downstairs neighbor who is setting traps around their apartment in the middle of the night, amongst other things.
Mary’s lunacy is just a minor problem. One of the more stressful issues for our family, has been Mary’s dementia. She doesn’t realize she has it, and so her temper is usually very snappy since the people around her “never know what they’re talking about”. So when she fell off the couch, breaking her hip, after forgetting that she had trouble walking, it spiraled into a mess of confusion and frustration at the Lenox Hill Hospital. 
Her and I went there, and stayed in the emergency room for hours just waiting to be seen. The noises of people in agony behind privacy curtains along with the piercing tone of every unanswered land line, was relentless. Mary laid there giving false information to nurses, getting cut off by me correcting her, her not understanding why her hip seemed to hurt, and why these noises around her wouldn’t just stop! Nearly 7 straight hours passes before I realized no one was going to actually help her until the following morning. This was also about the time that the noises finally made her totally lose it. She hissed out curse words in her native Hungarian language and tried to explain to me, the conspiracy behind the constant beep of a heart monitor attached to the nearly comatose college student to her left. The noises were driving her crazy and it was breaking my heart. I knew that the next day was going to be physically, much more stressful than these invasive sounds were and that she needed to find just enough peace to be able to fall asleep for a few hours, in preparation for an impending surgery. 
I charged my iPad and ran across the street to buy the only headphones they had at the 24 hour bodega. I spent a fair amount of time begging Mary to try and stick those dinky little ear buds into her ears. After I finally convinced her that holding them there wouldn’t amplify the sounds around her, I played the album that is always with me in some form, because it reminds me of easier times with my small family of quickly aging women. Nat King Coles “Where Did Everyone Go?” album.
When i was growing up, Mary would play the cassette and teach me little helpful tricks. New ways to shuffle cards, the importance of drawing clean looking lines on paper, and how to comb her dog without hurting him. Nowadays, she can’t hold her hand steady for long enough to do any of those things nor would she be able to find the patience. But as soon as the sound of machines and screams were replaced with Nat King Coles naturally joyful velvety voice, she was able to effortlessly hold her hands still to hold on the headphones. It was the first time I had seen her at peace, not only within the time spent in that emergency room, but since I was young and we were both a little less jaded by health problems, loss of life, terrorism threats, and too many quick technological advances to keep up with. Her eyes were closed. She was humming to the bits of the song that she could remember, and  there was a smile was appearing without her own acknowledgement. 
It was the most beautiful moment that I can remember sharing with her and I didn’t want her to realize that she was listening to this record she loved on a piece of technology that she didn’t trust. I didn’t want her to open her eyes and remember that she wasn’t home and that it wasn’t 1961 and that everything that once made her happy is pretty much lost to a new generation. So as she found solace in a sad song about just that, I snapped a quick photo on my phone, to remember this moment forever. 
As I was putting my phone away, she half sang the chorus a little bit louder than she realized, but her voice faded fast as she drifted off to sleep in a big comfy bed at her home in midtown Manhattan, that has been occupied by several other owners since she’s lived there with my grandmother and their mother so long ago. “Where oh where oh where did everyone….” 

geminitactics:

so, it was a sunday morning, and a sick alabee asked to borrow my phone. She sat down and recorded this song right off the bat. I put it onto a film project the two of us worked on last fall. 

Signature moves.

Let’s just concentrate on drinking.

My Bucket List represented by famous authors. Weekly goals.

nzafro:

Spin cycle.
 
Light of my life.

"the year of letting go
of understanding loss, grace of the word ‘no’
and also being able to say ‘you are not kind’
the year of humanity/humility
when the whole world couldn’t get out of bed
everyone i’ve met this year says the same thing
‘you are so easy to be around, how do you do that?’
the year i broke open and dug out all the rot with own hands
the year i learnt small talk
and how to smile at strangers
the year i understood that i am my best when i reach out and ask ‘do you want to be my friend?’
the year of sugar, everywhere
softness. sweetness. honey honey.
the year of being alone
and learning how much i like it
the year of hugging people i don’t know because i want to know them
the year i made peace and love
right here"

- Warsan Shire (via bornreadygeneration)

(via beeftown)

lustik:

Juges -  Cyprienne Kemp - La nuit de l’estampe via Étapes