hi i am still a functioning human being (despite how i treat myself)

Hello, internet friends!

The Substack app is still really new and doesn’t let me do anything fancy. It’s just you and me and words; it reminds me of text edit notes on the family computers. A Quarry of Thoughtless Ponderments is a tradition that I started in many notebooks when I was fourteen and started journaling. I wanted the most accurate name possible for “a collection of thoughts swirling around in my head that may or may not be related to each other and i won’t know until i write them down.” Obviously you can’t write that at the top of a page every night before bed.

Welcome to my first public AQOTP while I try to remember it’s okay to balance myself out.

* Taking a break from treating myself like an adorably exploitable automatron. Why am I acting like this isn’t an enormous amount of work. Hi hello! I am moving very slowly tonight. One day i will return to writing poetry but for now i drink honey with ginger and cosplay as an essayist.

I have essays written and I do not post them. How much can I say about state sanctioned genocide safely in public? I have anxiety! The only way out is through!

* I am drinking ginger tea at 1:12am with the man my father caretakes. He is aged enough to always move in slow motion. He moves like he remembers what it was like to be graceful as he moved throughout the world.

* I have watched my grandmother grow up beside me. I really loved living in intergenerational households.

* The same people that think bearing children should be a class privilege are going to put their parents in an old folks home. I just don’t understand how y’all do not see yourselves for what you are.

* ...all the same victims of the carceral state. What, did you think that would be a gotcha? All of us are locked away and told to see care for each other as burdensome. Of course you want to give your parents to old people jail! it’s the only kind of care you know how to do! There’s better than this!!!!

* Old people are like… middle aged children. Present and very confused and present enough to be aware that they are confused. He’s (more or less) cleaning the kitchen while wading through time and space he’s avoiding my dad. He’s sick of always having someone to tell him “no, be careful, don’t do that.” It’s honestly like watching myself as a teenager. Or myself as a seven year old. Because me as a teenager did not accidentally put foil in the microwave lol

* Listening to a queue of Smino verses right now and this so disrespectful. and so smooth while doing it. This is just his features!! You give that man one verse and he runs laps around you and that’s YOUR song! You PAID him to BODY you! Nuts.

* I cannot hide from my life in poetry and I am like... almost back down to earth. You know? Right now I’m just floating as a cute, disembodied consciousness. Watching myself through other people’s screens feels like when Peter’s shadow sneaks away from him. I’m not quite ready to be all conjoined again. I’m having fun as a little shadow without that big-eyed hero character. Mischievous and bad for myself was such a fun era.

* Like this old man cleaning the kitchen stove by licking and thumbing the food off. You get that crust girl yas

* Today I was having a normal day and then a waiter asked me what I do for a living. “oh I’m an ex grad student stripper. Wait. Grad student ex stripper. Lol. Neither of those things make me money right now... ? So I guess I’m an... influencer?”

* *i just lie and say I’m a therapist. Because I am. Or maybe I should say I’m a writer. .....?? Is that worse somehow oh my stars

* I am watching this man clean his kitchen in preparation to run away. He woke up at a smooth midnight thirty and was making himself breakfast. I’m like... hey :) whatcha doin’?

* Him: oh I’m making breakfast. You know. Taking a break.

* [me, a child who also compulsively cleans in the middle of the night because it’s the only time my parents are not In The Kitchen]: yup.

* [amicable silence]

* Him: do you know where any good motels are?

* Me: huh?

* Him: good motels? Like down Saints Street?

* Me: oh I… don’t ahah. Are you going on vacation?

* Him: oh yeah. A mental vacation. I can’t take this anymore.

* [me, a child that also tried to run away but was easily distracted into not doing that]: …i… don’t know of any motels but I’ll sit with you and have some tea! <3

* *amicable silence*

* So now I’m drinking tea thinking about how important inter generational households (and inter generational third spaces) are important to me. Do you know why I’m on TikTok? Because kids at my work were like “teacher you should be on TikTok.” Old people and children are the same flower in different breaths! Kids are the blooms, the seeds, and our elders are the fruit. I learn the same things from them both: the value of patience; the process of opening and dying to ripen again. The endless tumbling in and out and towards and with your body. It is wild how much this man reminds me of myself as a seven year old. I really used to give my father hell just like him.

* Ask him about the time i hung up the phone on him when i was three. it was literally over two decades ago. African Dads are so dramatic. and also you were wrong in the first place! What provoked me to that? Why were you beefing with a three year old hang it up!!

* A thought: old folks witness the decay of their bodies and it shocks them too. Like in the same way children learn their hands belong to them and it surprises and delights them. You age and sometimes you’re conscious enough to witness yourself do it and it isn’t always a joy.

I finally sat down to make beads with my grandmother; she kept postponing saying she didn’t feel well enough. I was like why are you being a haterrr (because sometimes old folks would sincerely rather nap than talk to you and if that’s the case you should just say that). I get this to thread the beads with me and her hands have a tremor now. When she came to this country she could walk miles at a time. In a day. That was also... nearly twenty years ago. Between 2020 and 2022, she needs assistance to write her name. This woman was a seamstress. She’s the reason I have such beautiful cursive. She remembers what her steady hands feel like.

* He just wants to be grown enough to make himself breakfast! Mr. Runaway. He knows he’s confused but it’s his kitchen dammit. I will most definitely sit here with him to make sure he doesn’t accidentally leave the gas on tho :)

* I loved childhood. I cannot believe I have lived until adulthood. Wow! We really lived, Bitch. I have had so many names in this life. Did you ever read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli? Like that.

* Old people and children are so shamelessly locked away and oppressed because they’re they two people groups best suited to remind us (1) we should be revolting and (2) telling/showing us the tools we have to do it we are all in manufactured like prisons. Humans are domesticated.

* Okay that’s enough big brain thinking this evening! And this is why a bitch is suppressed on TikTok right now.

Thank you for just... reading with me. I have to put an audio version of this up on a separate post (and up at a later time because my voice is so [sol raspy in the middle of the night).

See you all for essay three**.

Ismatu G.

**did I mention that in addition to handling an international fundraiser and also the launch of my social media career i am also writing my thesis and finishing class? “I’ll just need another cup of tea” is my current “a hoe don’t get cold.” I appreciate your patience with me <3