Love's Weight

The belief that the human body loses weight, 21 grams to be exact, upon the moment of death was popularized in 1907 in the published experiments of Dr. Duncan MacDougall. His theory, although unproven, states that the soul leaving the body after death is the direct cause of the weight loss.

Just last week my boyfriend, who I looked at as the most lovely creature, someone who allowed me to feel pure comfort is his presence, decided to end our relationship. Two days later I went to the gym only to find that I had unexpectedly lost 3.5 lbs. I immediately thought of Dr. MacDougall’s theory. However, it seems that the weight of the heart is significantly heavier than that of its counterpart the soul, and my weight loss only further supports MacDougall’s theory of why I feel this gaping, bottomless, hole residing in my chest.

Ramblings in Dis-lek-see-ah

Many of you may not know this about me, but if you’ve ever taken a look at my handwriting, or even worse, my spelling, it’s apparent that I’m a major player in team dyslexia. Dyslexia, in fact, is an odd creature and a polymorphic one at that. Just as each brain is unique to its owner, no two cases of dyslexia are exactly alike.

It is believed dyslexia is a learning disability or “difference” (P.C. junkie) that one is born with, and manifests during the primary years of education (K-12) when the foundations of cognitive reading, grammar and spelling are introduced.

The typical symptoms of dyslexia that educators are told to be aware of are:

• poor reading skills, despite having normal intelligence
• failure to recognize words
• poor spelling and writing skills
• difficulty finishing assignments and tests within time limits
• difficulty remembering the right names for things
• difficulty memorizing written lists and phone numbers
• difficulty with directions (telling right from left or up from down) or reading maps

As it goes, I didn’t quite fit the mold of the standard symptoms. In fact, my story is a little “different” indeed. According to my mother I was a precocious child and a bit of an oddity, which is probably why I remained sibling-free. I talked before I walked. My first words, “Hi sky!” emerged as I waved to the sky from my stroller. As you can imagine, this greatly disappointed my mother who was hoping to hear “ma ma” instead. By age two I had learned to do an uneven-bars flip and dismount from my crib if the desire to leave my room called to me. At age three I was reading independently of my parents. Yet I can also remember my Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Duncan shaking her head as my chunky Crayola crayon colorfully drew the majority of my vowels backwards… at least i and o were a little hard to mess up. Reading was never the issue. I remember reading Jane Eyre and Watership Down at age six, but by the third grade I was enrolled in AP Reading and remedial Spelling. Something was up!

You’d think this apparent teeter-tottering of skills would have stood out to someone in the educational system. But my symptoms of dyslexia, like everyone else’s were unique, and not exactly textbook. Instead they go a little something like this:

• above average reading skills
• recognizes words mainly as symbols
• poor spelling/grammar skills
• difficulty finishing tests within time limits, yet no problem finishing assignments
• difficulty memorizing written lists and phone numbers
• smarter than the average bear at remembering the right names for things
• fucking awesome at directions (telling right from left or up from down) or reading maps
• difficulty memorizing or processing information not associated with an image
• the ability to memorize anything at any length if it is sung with a tune

Until my freshman year of College I remained a dyslexic in waiting i.e. knowing something was wrong but at a lost as to what. Even more perplexing was how I could fix the problem. I would spend hours, and hours, and hours studying for a test, know the material inside-out, and end up with some bullshit grade like a C+. A quick thank you to Dr. Bhat is necessary at this moment for calling me out and sending me to the tutoring center.

In today’s world it’s much easier to be a closet dyslexic. I’ve come to know the functions of Spell Check and Grammar Check on an intimate level; closely interfaced late at night, alone in my bedroom, half clothed, and putting the finishing touches on making my paper as dyslexia-free as possible.

Unfortunately for us, society isn’t known for jumping to the cause of educating dyslexics, useless they are lucky enough to be born into a high socio-economic background and a stellar school system. Instead,most dyslexics are doomed to wander the earth with poor handwriting, messy note-taking skills, and the inability to remember things in proper sequence. The irony of dyslexia is that most dyslexics carry a High IQ. According to the WAIS-III (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) my IQ is high enough for me to join the ranks of the International High IQ Society. But I don’t really think I’d fit in there. I imagine the conversations to go something like this. “I won the Nobel Prize.” I won a Fields Medal.” "I have dyslexia… my brain is just compensating.”

In the end, I believe the high IQ of a dyslexic is nature’s way of evening us out so that we have a fighting chance against the poindexters and brainaics of the world. And true to nature, I’ve followed in the footsteps of most dyslexics, embracing my creative side and working in the arts. But I've also learned to embrace/keep an eye out for the quirky aspects of my dyslexia too. For example, I have to watch myself because, like clockwork, I always flip the second and third number in any sequence of three. Like so…

You see $1.89
I see $1.98

You see 917-123-4567
I see 971-132-4567

You see AIG Royal Alliance
I see AGI Royal Alliance

You see “Life and Death”
There’s a good chance that I will remember it as “Death and Life”

This has made for some interesting mix-ups. For instance, I’m always offering people the wrong amount of money when I pay for things. I wonder how many have kept the change… at least it’s only the change part that I switch. Before cell phones, dialing was a little difficult. It usually took a few shots to get the number completed correctly. Not to mention the numerous charges to unknown cities when dialing mistakes went unnoticed. One of my best relationships almost never happened because I wrote JS’s number down in my flip-flop style. Thank god he was listed in the phonebook. But all in all the dyslexia "difference" doesn't lean so far left from the rest of the thinking world. And, for me, it now seems more like a creature of habit than a disability.

So there it is… the unabridged truth about my learning hiccups that I’ve worked so hard to disguise. Instead, today, I’m going to say it loud and proud. I’m a visual-learning, poor-spelling, astute problem solving, grammatically deficient, highly creative and artistic dyslexic. That’s my flippin' story and I’m sticking to it!

XX and XY: Mitosis vs. Fission

In my past entry “The Ballad of XX and XY”, the decision of calling my friends XX and XY was purely for the sake of retaining their anonymity, which i.e. is a little silly since separation and divorce are hardly anonymous acts. However, since I wish to remain anonymous in my own blog, I would assume the same for XX and XY. Therefore, the choice to define them separately as chromosomes was born from the desire to create a universal communication. XX equals female and XY equals male… we can all relate.

As the ballad of XX and XY continues I’ve been trying to comprehend for myself what divorce really is, what it looks like on a cosmic level, and how to visualize something so simple and yet complex at the same time. From an elevated perspective it seems very basic. A unit of one slowly begins to shift and change in shape, until its desire to separate becomes physically evident, and terminates in the radical act of pulling itself apart into two autonomous units. The two newly-formed units then continue to move forward in the world on their own. They will forever be marked by their union, but will learn to function independently as well. Coincidentally, the image that has come to mind, offering me an odd sense of comfort, is mitosis.

I wonder, is separation simply mitosis on a grander scale? And if so, if you never divorce, have you managed to create the perfect cell that never feels the need to replicate? Maybe mitosis is a better image for marriage and children and not for divorce? Or is mitosis more about the self, defining how we change and grow, placing more of our selves into the world? Maybe it better defines how, as individuals, we grow to touch others? Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Maybe I take it all back; maybe the image that I am actually looking for is nuclear fission, the ripping apart of an atom’s nucleus and the explosive aftermath that it causes. In fact, XY even used the metaphor of an atomic bomb in describing his current situation. Unlike mitosis, the separation in nuclear fission isn’t so clean and pure. Instead, the split spews forth a mess of subatomic particles that release tremendous amounts of energy. Energy that is negative to those who come in contact. And speaking as someone who remains in close contact with the original atom, I have experienced its truth. It seems that radiation really does burn the flesh, and even more so, the heart. I look through old wedding photos, I ponder memories of feeling safe in the presence of XX and XY, I have become aware of how adult marriage feels and how humbling and returning-to-ones-selfish-twenties its counterpart divorce can seem. I don't know how to deal with this. It makes me feel like giving up, but what I'd be giving up on I have yet to figure out. I wonder how many others are also experiencing fission's fallout?

Ex Ms.

I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas songs. The second Thanksgiving is over Christmas songs seem to find their way into every retail nook and cranny, and proceed to hang around for what feels like an eternity until Christmas day finally arrives. And let’s face it, there’s only so many to choose from. It’s as if the world’s worst mix tape is stuck on repeat and just happens to be omnipresent in every possible listening device. On a good day you may catch me humming to the tune of NFG’s “Ex Miss” which, at least, is somewhat catchy and speaks the truth. But for the most part I spend the month leading up to Christmas plugged into my iPod.

One of my least favorite of the nauseating, yet traditional X-Mas song options has always been “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. It happens to contain the type of repetitive melody that people with epilepsy are told to avoid for fear that it will bring on a seizure. I’m not epileptic, but there have been times when “The Twelve Days …” has sent me fleeing from stores, drained of any patience I may have had to wait in the concert-ticket-length line for the register.

My “other” on the “other” hand claims to be a fan of Jingle Bell Rock. He won’t admit to this and denies it every time I’ve brought it up in the past, but knowing his crush on Lindsey Lohan from her Mean Girls days, I’m quite sure he associates Jingle Bell Rock to Lindsey’s rendition in the movie. Needless to say, Lindsey was clad in a sexy little Santa outfit while slapping her inner thighs during a high-school-passable dominatrix/stripperesque choreographed dance routine.

Getting back to my main point, is there a reason why some ingenious person has not created and marketed a “Revenge on the World’s Bad Christmas Music” mix? The perfect way for others to get through the holidays and still retain a bit of holiday sentiment. Any suggestions?

The Ballad of XX and XY

Over the past week I’ve encountered a new and unexpected turn in the ebb and flow of finding stable ground. As many of you know, living in New York places you on a precarious edge of either going off the deep end, or trying to surround yourself with others who perpetuate normalcy in your own life. For me, XX and XY were two of these individuals that just happened to be married one another. For over 10 years XX has been one of my best friends. And dealing with an unstable family of my own, it was so nice to have a sense of what the word family actually meant. XX and I lived together for several years in college until we split off on our own to explore the world at a larger scale. And in that short amount of time, XX gave me the first-hand experience of knowing what it must be like to have a sibling. She was my sister.

Then one day XX met XY. Before I met XY I was a little worried. Once people get married it’s no longer a solo show; they come as a unit. And sometimes their “better half” turns out to be more of a dud than a welcomed addition, an accessory, if you will, that you have to put up with until the honeymoon phase is over and your friend is willing to hang out solo again. But in this case XY was lovely. So funny, so kind, so welcoming, and so demonstratively in love with my XX that I couldn’t wait until the unit was official. I wasn’t losing a sister; I was gaining XY.

All of this time, 5.5 years to be exact, I found XX and XY to be so in love, so thoughtful of each other, supportive of one another, a role model for what I would one day want in my own marriage. It was only two weeks ago that I couldn’t take my eyes off of them as they sat at a dinner party, hands embraced, kisses being placed on cheeks, apparently still so aware and acknowledging of each other’s presence. I was in awe, and at that moment XX and XY once again affirmed my sense of stability in the world on a grander scale.

Then, out of the blue, XX calls me to deliver the news. It’s over, she’s leaving XY, she’s moving away, it’s ending, and my heart sank into a place that I’ve yet to find. I’m still trying to retrieve it from the hallows of my chest.

The question is what do you do when married couples that you know and love and somewhat depend on in one form or another, stop loving each other? I’ve found myself in such a predicament and have to admit, I’m having a sincerely hard time coping. Is it normal to feel this devastated? Is it right to think that XX and XY are making a mistake and wanting to tell them so? Is it selfish to feel such things? Is it possible to let them go? At this time I’m just at a loss for answers.

XX and XY, I love you both. I wonder if either of you know how much you mean to me?

Memories of Baltimore

I remember the playground in South Baltimore where I used to spend my summer afternoons as a child. It sat at the top of an endless street of red brick row houses. And even though the walk from the street to the playground took only a few moments, once you were up there it felt as if you were on top of the world. The view encompassed the entire waterfront area of South Baltimore. Merely a chain-link fence separated me from the mysteriously shaped steel structures that made up the factories of Sparrow’s Point, Domino Sugar, Western Electric and Crown Cork & Seal.

I would curl my fingers around the chain-link, pressing my face tightly against the fence in an attempt to close the distance between me and the objects that evoked endless adventures in a child’s imagination. But eventually the playground always won my attention. It was one of those glorious old playgrounds from the 1960’s; a sea of awaiting splinters and tetanus shots now deemed unsafe by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Although at the time it didn't matter. Some of the greatest moments of my childhood took place on those chromate copper arsenate-treated sea-saws and lead paint-covered merry-go-rounds.

The intense heat of a Baltimore summer combined with the lack of trees warmed the metal of the merry-go-round to an almost intolerable temperature, leaving the crisscross pattern of the steel branded onto the backs of my legs. And in the moment of spinning there occurred a dangerous seduction between the speed and the blistering metal that heightened my awareness, as the rest of the world around me blurred into oblivion. When the blur finally slowed to a clarity I would stumble off, running to the edge of the playground in an attempt to continue the dizzying effect. Only to find stability once again as my fingers grasped onto the chain-link fence that separated me from the unknown world waiting below.