what i don't remember

i don’t remember coming into this world.

i don’t remember wearing the white booties on my bookshelf.

i don’t remember if i was in the orca group or the rabbit group in kindergarten.

i don’t remember what animals were on my glittery purple lunchbox.

i don’t remember the kind of sandwich my freckle-faced friend threw up at lunch.

i don’t remember the eyes of the bearded man who showed me his penis in the toy section of k-mart.

i don’t remember asking for my face to be printed on the dollar bill.

i don’t remember the look on my mother’s face as she said, this is your father.

i don’t remember saying goodbye.

i don’t remember which door was which.

i don’t remember how everyone found out our classmate was a foster child.

i don’t remember the words they said to crush her.

i don’t remember how many insects were impaled on pins in the fifth grade.

i don’t remember how many days that bee hung in there.

i don’t remember the ending to the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler.

i don’t remember how long after i got my period i waited to tell my mother.

i don’t remember in which department store we bought my first bra.

i don’t remember the circumstances in which i said i hate jesus.

i don’t remember what letters he punched into the calculator to make it say LOOSE.

i don’t remember the name of the substitute teacher who made me hate group work.

i don’t remember why i thought i was dying.

i don’t remember the music artist who sang, it’s like romeo and juliet, hot sex on a platter just to get you wet.

i don’t remember the first time i had sex.

i don’t remember what shoes i wore at my high school graduation.

i don’t remember how many times i changed my major.

i don't remember how many times i jumped off the dock at midnight.

i don’t remember how many dreadlocks he had.

i don’t remember how many drinks i have bought that i didn’t really want.

i don't remember what it was i said about spreadsheets.

i don’t remember the name of the boy who said i had hips like zsa zsa gabor.

i don’t remember the price of the pears i bought yesterday.

stripped

(an old college poem)

i want to lay in front
of your mack truck tongue
like a child who runs
into traffic laughing.

and when we crash

i want to lay naked
in the crook of your arm
as exposed and swollen
as a bruise.

and when i mend

i want to wear high heels
and strut in the front door damp
with cursive words dripping
down my cheeks.

and when you slip
i want to crouch down low,
cup your head in my hands,
and feed you phrases
of my confession.

and when you choke

i will be your nurse and
stroke your gold throat
coaxing down the nouns
and verbs.

every morning i wake up with a cold nose and ears from sleeping with my face turned towards the open window. it's consistently cold in here now. it is november sixth, two days after the election. i always think i don't believe in—or at least care about—politics. and i kind of felt like a fickle fan that showed up to cheer in the last game of the world series but was nowhere to be found when things were less sensational. but that was only an afterthought. during the hours when all eyes were the cast in the direction of the television sets, the unity in our little bellingham bar felt good and i pressed the night to my face like fleece.

i'm in my second week of being unemployed, or as i've started calling it : being employment-free. weekdays always remind me of being ten and waking up in a dark room to see telltale dim and pinkish light pouring in from behind the blinds that signaled a heavy snow had fallen overnight. i no longer run through the house on little legs shouting with glee, but the freedom of an empty, unscheduled day always feels the same.

i have no idea where these feet will land when they come back from mexico. but here's some advice i'm lapping up from a saucer like a thirsty cat:

make a career out of living a happy life rather than trying to find work that will produce enough income that you can do things with your money that will then make you happy.

because otherwise i can't do this. otherwise i'm out. if it's possible to scream my way out of undesirable destinies, i did it the last month of working at the law firm. there are some things i will never understand. and it's taken me 25 years to consider the possibility that maybe i can let these things exist, look the other way, and go on to having a happy life. i just don't want to spend anymore energy wishing i could shake the programming from the heads of business lawyers, corporate restaurant managers and other arbitrary-rule-enforcers. because i think eric hoffer just might be right in that when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

in other news, what the fuck is up with love?

p.s. tim, i wish you could have been with us on election night. it would've been nice to have a third person in the room to catch the sam cooke references in obama's victory speech.

to say i peeled fifty cloves of garlic last weekend would be an understatement. i spent the day canning, or as they say in the county, putting up food, at my old professor's farm in acme. we washed, chopped, blanched, and boiled our way into vast amounts of tomato sauce, pickled jalapenos, and vegetable broth. she showed me her vegetable-dyed silk and her dream pillows, and her little daughter showed me her little dreadlocked doll. she even walked me through her fields and pointed out all of the possible places for my yurt when the time comes.


this is to say, my professor and i are becoming friends. we're transitioning from student and teacher into just two individuals who see insanity and redemption in many of the same things. i've been feeling like salinger felt when he said, i'm sick of just liking people. i wish to god that i could meet somebody that i could respect. i forgot how good feels good to respect somebody, like reallllly respect somebody. it feels like restoration. like opening a long-lost letter from the universe that says: you don't have to walk your walk alone.

on tuesday, in the span of 3 hours, i managed to spill a bottle of sparkling water in my bed, step squarely into my tv dinner, and lock myself out of my room in my towel. also, when i tried to pick up a prescription, the pharmacy told me i was no longer covered under my health insurance. yes, when i let my thoughts paddle furiously upstream, my tangible world tends to fall apart too. and these events snowballed nicely into a full-blown anxiety attack that included treats such as uncontrollable crying, tightening of the chest, and nausea. luckily, it was eventually mellowed out by an obscene amount of olympia genuine draft, the honeyed vocals of sharon jones, and the oddly encouraging words of a friend:

you've got to make your shit work for you.

shit's not working for me at work. the beige file cabinets, the cliched shiny friday donuts, the sheer number of black slacks in the office on any give day, have become too much to take. i've also learned that wills, trusts, collections, leases, prenuptial agreements—they're all the glorified pushing of money from one person to another, and ultimately one and the same. i imagine the attorneys schlepping wheelbarrows overflowing with gold bricks and rubber-banded stacks of cash around the office. everything is transactional, even our verbal exchanges: how-are-you-good-how-are-you.

i got weepy as i explained all of this to an old professor of mine over pumpkin spice lattes. she doesn't think i'm unreasonable for being unable to find redeeming qualities in working at a law firm. (sidenote: she says she often tells her students about her unwavering idealist. that's me!) she also thinks my temptations to go back to the city would be running in the wrong direction; she sees me out in the county. and she's right. for what i care about, i am right now in the perfect place.

and tonight on my walk home from a pizza date, i kind of fell in love with bellingham all over again. as i walked past that big welcome to bellingham sign on state street, i remembered how i used to watch the bay from cold storage's webcam when i lived in seattle, and how i missed the slightly brighter colors, the slightly colder winters, and the exponentially higher quality of life.

(i gave my notice at work. here's to making my shit work for me).

i had a bomb birthday weekend that began with a massage from a sprightly 70-year-old woman who liked to talk about her sex life, followed-up by a day of fun with my mom, and ended at a party in a vancouver mansion with like 50 improvers— and myself. i also treated myself to some beautiful kick-ass towels (see picture) from value village that i will turn into scarves. i am 25 now. this is the first birthday that actually feels different. it feels like, fuck this is it. which is a good motivator to get on with the good things in life. things like following that little thing called bliss. to keep on with e.e. cummings's battle of being nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else. and more than anything, to stay true to my motto of living life as if i had cotton candy in my left hand and a bukowski poem in my right.

i also received a text at 1:20 in the morning that said happy birthday! i love you soo much and i'm pretty sure you know! you're my bestest forever. xoxoxo. it pretty much washed away my loneliness because i realized that as long as i have my core people by my side, i will never be alone, even if none of them are in bellingham. a friend told me that getting married is like saying fuck you to everyone else. i just want to marry my core people for richer and poorer, through sickness and health, through shitty jobs and confusing relationships, and all of our naysayers can go to hell.

the air has turned itself inside out and is making itself known. it's fall! it's mitten and scarf season! it's pumpkin spice latte season! eeeeeee!

on being a bland radical

a friend and i were talking about how, though there are dozens of potential true loves for everybody on earth, people tend to only fall in love with one “style” of person. this shed light on my pseudo identity crisis of late. see, it turns out that a chronic inability to commit to a lifestyle paired with a scholarly fascination of subcultures, is an unfortunate combination resulting in the tendency to research everything to death without actually doing shit.

sometimes i wish i was a hardcore rock climbing girl that could impress boys by throwing around words like “belay” and “traverse,” neither of which i’m familiar with. and sometimes i want to be the freckled organic girl that doesn’t shave and sweetens her tea with stevia, the kind of girl that wears hemp skirts and is too pure for lip gloss. and when i get depressed—when i let the zombies at work get me down—i want so badly be the kind of girl that cares about nothing more than weddings and shoes and feels accomplished having read the devil wears prada. the kind of girl that fits in and shuts up.

but none of those girls are me, christina ann cusolito. i guess i just don’t have a “thing.” there’s no dominating interest or opinion that defines me, and sometimes i wonder what people possibly have to say when they describe me. deep down, i know that life is a la carte, and that the world is just one big beautiful catalog from which to pick and choose. and ideally, we’d all combine hobbies and philosophies in hopes of coming up with something new, something unique to only us. like a fingerprint of sorts.

so i’m going to grant myself to permission to, in five years time, raise chickens in my backyard, yet shave my legs. to write poetry without being a poet (or vice versa). to subscribe to glamour magazine and the sun.

and hopefully, someone out there, will fall in love with my style of girl.