Bucket List

Dec 29th, 2016

Dear Nisha,

I've been arranging a song for my aCapella choir. I was arranging "Rooftop - A Liberation Broadcast" but I recently heard "I Lived" which is far more popular in the US, and more easily arrangeable. I'd like to include it somehow in this arrangement, but it might be difficult. The song says everything I want to be feeling.

I love arranging music, and was musical director of a college group when I lived in Iowa. I say this, because right now, Aaron is on my mind, and rather than writing music for the sheer joy of it, which is how I would normally do it, a little voice inside myself says, "He's going to be there, at the next Techapella, and when he is, he'll hear your piece. Well, he'll have to fall in love with you then." I suppose by that logic there will be many people that will "fall in love with me," like that other gentleman from Steven's group that complimented my 'enthusiasm' and asked if I had a sister. After having watched the video Steven took, it became clear that my 'enthusiam' was centered around my top half.

Well, arranging these songs and remembering my talk with Aaron has reminded me of the time that Steven and I made a bucket list (which I promptly lost, because that's what I do) I'll make a new one....here it is.

My Bucket List:
Produce my own musical to be performed for at least 2,000 people.
Be on a TV, talking about what it's like to be a female muslim American.
Be a lead in a musical. (Frl. Schneider in Cabaret)
Do it again, but for a bigger audience! (10, 000 people)
Finish a 12 song album of music created by me.
Save the bats.
Get down to 145 lbs. without being depressed.
Finish my magnum opus of a video game (The White Knight)
Finish the choose your own adventure game that encourages diversity and women in tech.
Perform one of my arrangements at Techapella.
Get my own solo in Techapella!
Climb Mt. Fuji (with Mari is preferable)
Watch my baby's first piano recital/band performance
Look at my baby's first web page.
Beat Majora's Mask for the first time with my baby.
Travel to Japan, Austria, France, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Egypt, Jerusalem, Qatar, Poland, India, Russia (to see the Kremlin)...oh! and the little mermaid statue.

Oh! I want to make a blog where I travel to every location in Mario is Missing! (snes) and take a picture of myself dressed up with my SO and my kid as Mario and Luigi with pictures of all the lost locations. There's a game grumps version, but this one is much more informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_AOw6va93o

I've already seen all the places they mention in China, and I don't particularly like China, but if it's to take my future husband and child, I will definitely go again. Besides, like it or not, China is one of the biggest cultures in the entire world, and has a lot of influence. Appreciating the culture a bit more is a big priority.

Having sex with a Japanese guy (though I'd be willing to drop this if I needed to...Why can't I ever get with someone who is as physically affectionate as I am?)

I find myself feeling limited by the scope of my dreams. Can I dream bigger? Better? Will that help me fulfill my dreams if I can do so? Part of me doesn't want to put anything on the paper because I'm afraid I won't achieve it...

I added some numbers to my dreams to make them a little bigger, maybe that would be good.

The End of the Diary of Anne Frank

Dec 28, 2016

The first thing that happened today was I went snowboarding. Then I promptly lost Steven's Dad's keys. I don't know how I manage to loose things all the time. Steven wonders why I just can't fix the problem since it happens to me so frequently. I sincerely think that it's because I wasn't taught proper habits in keeping them. I want to read some books on memory that perhaps might help. You see, I forgot to zip my pocket up properly, and I forgot to attach the keys to my wallet that had a Tile attached in order for me to find them easily. I set up all these precautions and then forget to use them!

The last time I lost something was first my phone, then my keys on my last date with Aaron. I also managed to run over the median. The date seemed so fun, he talked about his relationship with his father and then his fake dad (who is his mother's boyfriend. It seems that he was basically raised by him since he was 10, and they might be breaking up because of the distance! How horrible!) But the disastrous underpinnings might have been enough, because that day was basically the last time he's ever spoken to me.

I was thinking of him now especially, since I just finished Anne Frank. He's Jewish and his grandparents were on holiday during Kristallnacht. A friend of theirs notified them not to return, and instead they made their way to "America" (or the US as I usually call it, to honor the Southern Countries.)

For a moment, when I reached the end, I was seized in terror thinking that perhaps my grandparents had something to do with Nazi Germany, as I just today read in the Afterword of Anne's Diary (funny that a thing should be capitalized) that Auschwitz was in Poland. But why Poland should give me such a start when I'm just as German as I am Polish. But my grandparents' grandparents had come to America, and my grandfather had served in the USArmy during WWII. Both of my grandfathers had! My father's father as a Pakistani general, and my mother's father was something.

I actually don't know what my mother's father was.

I realized then, lying in bed, trying to get myself to sleep with thoughts of Aaron and Anne and my parents that I didn't know much about my mother's side of the family. Did any of us stay in Germany? Did we participate in the slaughter? What an odd history I have? To be muslim, and so obsessed with Judaism from a young age, and then perhaps to have had a great grand uncle who might have hurt someone else in Aaron's family? I want to know my genealogy now. I'm obsessed now. There are so many people in the world, but really, there aren't that many at all, and I want to know how many people I pass by with ghosts that know mine.

I also breezed pass this, but I realize...I wrote that I was obsessed with Judaism, but when did that happen? I can't seem to remember. And it is m sister that is obsessed. More and more these days, I seem to catch glimpses of similarities between us. Am I turning into her? Or was I always like her and never knew...


Steven laughs beside me and asks if I'm keeping this diary because I'm afraid Trump will send me to a concentration camp. The thought did cross my mind, but I think it will be an internment camp and I spend my days thinking of what life will be like inside Steven's very cramped attic, where he has promised to keep me.

I know I'm ridiculous, but I often wonder if Aaron will miss me while I'm stuck there. Most people think I'm being silly, and I don't think I will win any bets on such a thing happening, but it's better to have made precautions than to be kicking yourself later. I should know; I've made that mistake far too many times already.

Carrie Fisher

Dear Aaron,

I'm sure you know this, but Carrie Fisher died today. I keep thinking about you; I was hoping to see the Episode 9 with you when it came out. I don't know if you think about me. I don't know if your promise to call me later was real or not, but it feels real, so I keep waiting.

Did you get my present? Did you understand the song, and the memory that song held for me? When you sang it to me the first time, I was scared that the song meant more to you then you were letting on. I was scared that I was just a rebound. But you asked me to learn the harmonies, and so I did. Why did you have to pick that song? It has eternally bound me to you.

I feel so silly, to be writing to someone in my life so fleetingly. Only a week, and that week was enough. I'm sure you must see that I will probably move on. That someone else will come into my life that I feel so connected to, and trust so much. But right now, somehow all I can see is you.

I wish you would tell me how you feel! The days that go by, waiting for a text from you to know how I should feel; to know if I should keep holding on to some small hope. Lost in your brilliant brown eyes.

Please, reel me in or let me loose. I live in agony biting on this line.

絹スミレ

Boredom

It's like, day 5, 6, I don't know. I'm stuck at Steven's house in Maine. I can't drive anywhere, and all Steven wants to do is work on his stuff on his computer. I want to go out and have some fun. I hear Stephen King went to high school with Steven's family. I know why he writes the books he does; staying hear is driving me nuts.

Every day my eggs are falling apart into nothing but particulate matter. Why are you nothing but a price to pay for innocence, Aaron, why?

I will not be an obsessive, horny, emotionally dependent loser.

I will not be an obsessive, horny, emotionally dependent loser

I will not be an obsessive, horny, emotionally dependent....I texted him a one liner after watching all of Rick and Morty for him.

Who am I kidding?

Bipolar

I watched Next to Normal today on YouTube. It's my next dream role, to play the mother in that musical. The references to her bipolar disorder of course remind me of my aunt, but more than that, they remind me of myself. I don't think I have full-blown bipolar, but I do sometimes feel the waves to depression and mania hit me. They go quickly and are attended to my own monthly cycles and aren't nearly as aggravated as my aunts are, but it feels like small waves in what could become a tsunami.

Today was rather depressing, but I've trained myself to become numb to the sadness. Two other things had led up to the event that eventually "broke the camel's back" as my mom used to say.  The first was when I went to Church for the Christmas eve surmon. My favorite thing about going to Church was hands-down the music. I am happily a non-practicing muslim, but if I were to ever have doubted my religion it would have been to join the Church choir that all of my more musically inclined classmates had joined. Well, in my zeal to fit in and to make a good impression, I had ended up embarassing Steven to no end. "Can't you ever just fit in?" he asked me as we made our way to the communion line. I thought it was because I had respectfully bailed at the last minute. After all, only Catholics are supposed to take communion. I had a very lively aunt that had been divorced five times and as divorce was prohibited by the church, she couldn't take communion. Hell if a muslim was allowed to take commuion. Well, it wasn't because of that. It was because I sang too loudly.

The next incided was that, while trimming the tree for (arguably) the first time, I had broken one of Steven's glass ornament. It was one of those chintzy glass and plastic ones that are prone to cracking, but this one had a B glued on in kindergarden glitter. Boston Red Sox paraphernalia from some teacher or neighbor or something. Suddenly the world stopped and it was of utmost importance to fix it for everyone in the family. I was left decorating the tree for myself, while Dad and Nanay doted on Steven nostaligia. Steven is always placing great importance on all sorts of trinkets, but too many things have broken in my life to place much on sentimentality. My siblings destroyed my belongings, my parents destroyed my childhood, and my divorce destroyed my heart.

Maybe I'm sounding too morose. There are a lot of things in life that are worse than my lot. My parents provided for me, my siblings are my best friends, and I still am young, witty, and attractive enough to make a family anew. But I hope you will allow a little sorrow from time to time.

Anyway, the next day, Steven was showing off this ceramic baby boot that he's shown me for the third time already, and I lifted it to look at the writing that curled around the bottom. And he started, very forcefully in my opinion, to put it down. I felt rather embarrassed about it, and rather than conceding, I made sure to carefully hold it close and over the shelf, so no amount of klutziness on my part could break it. But still he persisted. Over and over again, he wouldn't stop. I could hear his dad prattle about him being the next Steve Jobs and whatever arguments I had gotten into with him, he was obviously right. I had just about enough, so I put the boot back and went upstairs, making it clear that I was going up there hurt.

Steven didn't come up to follow me, like my family would have. Instead, I just fell asleep, exhausted from the poor schedule that we've been on. (We had stayed up until 6am singing the music of Hamilton) I had been asleep for a while, when the next thing I know, Steven is coming upstairs and crying. I jerked upright immediately upon hearing his sniffles. After prodding and rubbing his head in the crook of my arm, he told me what was bothering, his mother thought I was overly sensitive and "just wanted Steven to be happy." Apparently I had ruined Christmas.

I don't know how to feel really. I'm a muslim, and I had ruined Christmas. It would have seem cliche if there were any TV shows that addressed how muslims spend Christmas, which as far as I know, is complaining about Christmas and then going to fancy dinner parties with friends. Occasionally we all get piled up in the car to check out the Christmas light show at Lincoln Park Zoo, and because we definitely needed a tradition as far as I was concerned, I started taking the family that was my age and younger sledding to McHenry Mound and then for Sushi. Sushi and Sledding. Was there fighting, hell yeah. But we talked about, and we made sure everyone was cool afterwards.

The creepy silence gets to me here. Steven, just waiting to come and cry to me for something he could have just come up and talked to me about in the first place. The silence of his mom, her ability to push her feelings so deep that I can never tell what she's thinking at all. People talk about this exoticism in silence, but I am beginning to realize that it is a soul-crushing numbness that perhaps even I'm succumbing too.

May I forever have my voice.

The here and now

This happened more recently than the events I have relayed previous. My current boyfriend is not stupid, but still I feel like the title of this diary is in fact appropriately named.

Stuff has been happening. I've just started reading Anne Frank and the voice that she has so naturally employed began trying to speak inside my head. It is my fortunate lot, though, that I don't have any real human interest story to tell outside the mundane, yet uniquely complex entanglements I find myself in.

Anne began writing happily she says because she had no friends with whom she confided. But I would happily confide my deepest secrets to a stranger if given the chance.

And I did.

Her name was Mary and she was on a plane headed to Philadelphia, as Steven and I were on route to Maine.  She, like you, will get to hear all the sordid details of my follies and my fantasies. Steven showed a video today of his aCapella group, and there Aaron was, singing is little Dreidel solo. My heart became fire and started searing my lungs. Why must my destiny be to feel so deeply? I feel like Storm, from the X-Men, and how she spends so much energy controlling herself, knowing that she had the power to change the raging winds of the world into chaos and calamity. I too had that power, in my words and my passion.

Or maybe I wished I did, then some good might come from the burning I was feeling right now. Aaron had become my true love. It was only a week that our lives had become synonymous. We couldn't stop kissing each other, feeling each other, dancing with each other in the street. We'd text for hours before bed, desperately needing sleep, but unable to tear each other away.

But one night, after our second date, he went home at 12:30, which seemed rather early for what we were normally accustomed too. He sent me a text, telling me his cab fare was worth the time we spent together than night. And I never heard from him again.

But he came back, in Steven's photos and videos. Did I plan poorly? Was it because I accidentally hit the curb? Why did he leave when it seemed we had loved each other so deeply? It was a weekend romance, that ended before it had begun. But it effects still remained, like the burn from a stove that leaves a permanent mark.

Bass Guitar - Part II

She was actually a dancer, but had done tech for a number of shows, including running the lights for one of his. I asked her about him, and she said that he was a good director that was serious about his work. In my reluctance, the draw of the theatre and it's promise drew me, of love from an audience that perhaps could replace the love from a husband lost.

I was a Technical Assistant at the university computer lab, where I helped students build web pages that purported their teaching skills. It was built from a template, but we used actual HTML, made actual web pages, did for all intents and purposes actual web design, and I was a problem solver that could help people navigate local storage vs. remote drives, and figure out why your divs weren't properly aligning. 

On the avacado-shell carpet and chocolate colored lamine wood desks, I sat every night after classes. On a black dell computer the size of an enyclopedia with an inch-thick LCD facing out into the rows and rows of identical computers, up popped the email, and I slowly wrote my reply.

I slowly sealed my fate.

There were five of us at auditions. Five actors I mean. There was also the playwright: A waify blond sprite by the name of Louise, and the stage manager, a stout but velumptous black haired beauty that I've forgotten the name of. There might have been a few more, but I can't say I remember. And of course there was Patrick, in light blue jeans that seemed just a tad to big for him, and a farmer-plaid red button down that was obviously hanging to cover his belly. This part of him was what he felt most uncomfortable about, and for obvious reasons. He had well-defined, tree trunk calves that matched his broad shoulders and arms. His hair was the color and shape of Harrison Fords and his eyes were a typically beautiful blue. But his belly floated in front of him in a way that needed loose pants and a long shirt to make it conform to the rest of his body.

We all stood in a circle, as we often did for warm-up games, and I was told,  or maybe I just came to this conclusion, that we were just trying to see who worked best for which part. It was nothing to stress about. We started by playing the alphabet game. We were supposed to sing the ABC's as different characters. Teacher and preacher were easy for me; seductress harder but I played coy and innocent and I felt satisfied after. One of the actresses auditioning