I think I would mix my ashes with crushed red pepper flakes.
The idea came to me during a snowstorm. A snowstorm in which I occupied the passenger seat. I don’t trust myself to drive in the snow (though I know how. Once you nearly meet a pole via a three hundred and sixty degree spin out, your confidence is forever shattered.) In reality, the slip of a sentence came to me now but I wish I thought of it during a snowstorm. Strange moments should be memorialized in self-constructed (and indulgent) memories. Life feels prettier that way and there are enough ugly things. It’s an overdone idea (hardly medium rare) but there’s a truth in its chewy leather.
The universe contains Mod Girls. Complicated creatures. Unique in soul, similar in shape.
I want to be comfortably built. Easily deconstructed and easily rebuilt. That’s the curse of the early twenties post grad. The desire for uncomplicated self-awareness coupled with the need to live a grandiose and cinematic day to day. We want to be cynical TV characters (but not the slutty one, or the bitchy one, or the one who needs some dick (guy or physical part) to feel complete). But every modern girl has a back story. A series of younger selves populating the background.
Cue a romantic self-analysis.
My elementary school self has an urn filled with pages. Pages from Harry Potter, The Little Prince, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, The Missing Gator of Gumbo Limbo, and My Brother Sam is Dead. And so many more pages from so many more books. She was strange and quiet and very kind.
My sixth grade self is empty. She read a book every day. She dreamed herself into the clouds.
My middle school to high school self ran the gamut from happy to painfully moody to insecure to class president. She lost a best friend, grew to hate her body, won awards, casually picked up cross country, and crushed History of the World. How can a girl be so many things and feel so isolated? Teenage angst is a beautiful stage to explore. Fascinating to return to equipped with colder and distanced pseudo-adult eyeballs.
The college urn is a dark place. Spiked with strong, soothing whiskey and riddled with inside jokes. There’s London and Barcelona and that ratty couch and Sundays with the blinds tightly drawn. There’s midday (solo) drunk lunches. There’s the deepest friendships and the darkest nights. It’s an urn of many flavors. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Each evolution produces a modified exoskeleton. A familiar but newly textured body to occupy. You don’t leave behind past versions of yourself. She’s there in the background. A nuance in your every day shadow.
At a dinner party, I discussed a dream that had clung to me for months.
In dreamland, I entered an empty and glistening indoor swimming arena. I lowered myself into the pool, fully submerged myself in the water. Of course, the need to breathe didn’t apply. That’s a triviality in dreams. The pool was sanitized, tiled and empty. Up until a point. Hundreds of feet down, the pool dropped off. It expanded far past what was physically possible. I had seen the pool. It stopped. It had to be self-contained. I could have walked around it. This defied logic. Beyond the point of safety (I delineated to my dream self) there was seaweed, darkness, creatures swimming in the murk and—I squinted. There was a girl. Dark hair falling in front of her face (obscured like the girl from The Ring, how original my dream self snidely noted). Dressed in rippling, muddy white. Stumbling in my direction at an alarming speed.
And I remember feeling panicked. I remember knowing that I needed to haul ass out of the pool as soon as humanly possible because I did not want that girl to reach me. That’s the last thing I remember. Trying desperately to get out of the pool.
My new friend’s mother nodded seriously. She was charming and beautiful (the quiet neurotic one to her brilliant and magnetic husband). I loved where I sat. Eating steaming food with our hands. Drinking wine. Feeling close. She had cropped greying hair and a birdlike demeanor. And a list of accomplishments behind her calm, open face. A curiously understanding parent. An eclectic and exotic person for conversation. I adore these people and I need for them to find me interesting.
“Don’t feel this has to define your dream. In my dream group, we often discuss water as a symbol of the subconscious. Perhaps, and like I said, you don’t have to take what I’m saying as law or definite, your dream is pointing to the fact that superficially your mind and consciousness appear to be organized and cleanly spaces. However, digging deeper, it’s a frightening, vast and uncontrollable landscape. It’s wild and deep. And you’re scared to fully enter it. Or meet it.”
I remember sitting stumped. And drinking more wine to cover up how spot on her analysis felt. Textbook dream analysis pinned me down flat.
I’m terrified of the face behind the hair. The patchwork person composed of each bitter lesson and happy moment.
But I’d like to meet her eventually.
I think she’d understand my insatiable need for spice. I think she might be beautiful.
Off the Mod 