Alina
When I mumbled, "What time is it?" this morning, Matt said, "7:30". I let my body wake up when it wakes up, so that five mornings a week for however long I have to do this (start work at 9 a.m.) aren't spent gaining consciousness to a repetitive sound at the same exact time every day. Feels like giving myself a bit more say in the daily contours of my reality, & that feels like putting a coin into my spiritual piggy bank. In small & what can seem like self-sabotaging ways, I often poke holes in compulsory or rote or lawful ways of existing, if only to get a sliver of autonomy back. Maybe that's my version of wealth accumulation.
Anyway. Despite my whimsical ass nature, I participate in traditional ass society. Usually, I'm awake between 7:30 & 8. Safeguards for oversleeping are my built-in anxiety & now Matt (my boyfriend), whose house I moved into three days ago. He almost always wakes up before me. Fifteen years of day jobs crossed with having the soul of a vampire bat has averaged out into the worst of the nocturnal vs. early riser spectrum. I can't hang late like I once did, but haven't evolved into a morning person. On days that I have to go to the office, I shuffle around speaking in monosyllables until I'm full of enough stimulants to present otherwise.
My work schedule is out of sync with my body in all ways: I'm not hungry, but try to eat something before I leave so I'm not spending more money later or beholden to what's portable. I cover an english muffin with cream cheese & chew until it's gone. Food as fast, compulsory fuel.
Matt drops me off at the subway even though it's just a 20 minute walk to the station. On the way, we pull out a big CD binder I've had since high school & rediscovered while packing for the move. I haven't owned a CD player in many moons, but Matt's Subaru has one, so now the binder lives here. I put in a mix & skip around impatiently to figure out what's on it: Elliott Smith, American Football, Appleseed Cast, The International Noise Conspiracy, Belle & Sebastian, The Microphones, other stuff I can't readily recall from this time capsule to my early-2000s consciousness.
The ride is one of those small but, once accumulated, acutely felt acts of tenderness— like "hey I'll make this easier for you, even though it isn't difficult to begin with." I try to access this awareness on otherwise unremarkable mornings like this one; sometimes, it even lingers as I scuttle down forever piss-scented stairs & past whatever mystery Septa juices are seemingly always dripping from somewhere, even when it hasn't rained.
The northbound BSL takes longer than usual to come, though usual is also not very reliable. I send a text about it so I don't get scolded later if someone notices my arrival at 9:07 or whatever. The semester is over; the campus where I work is cleared out. Even when it's not, I spend most of the day in my office, on a computer, doing emails & other tasks that have very little to do with the time or my location. My spirit can glitch out about this sort of logic in a thousand tiny ways if I let it, so I try not to think about any of this too hard. When I can't placate dread by reminding myself of the relative prosperity of consistent, full-time employment & health insurance, I think about how some people are born with a cop-like constitution & spending any time trying to understand how to reach them on a human level is a waste of energy.
I space out hard on public transit (okay, most places), so I rarely read on my commute for fear of missing my stop. I put on a Russian podcast as part of my irregular campaign to maintain heritage speaker fluency, since I rarely use the language with anyone besides my parents. Last week, I hired a guy named Ivan on Taskrabbit to help me take apart furniture. His whole demeanor shifted when I asked if he spoke Russian; he became visibly more comfortable & addressed me with an ingroup familiarity, calling out "Удачи! Всё будет хорошо! всё получится!" as he left. When I think about my "cultural identity", this is the stuff that feels precious. Meanwhile, I was mortified at my stilted, awkward phrasing, cut with English substitutions.
Podcasts are a way of returning the language to me, if only passively. This episode is about Russian heavy metal. The word for heavy metal in Russian is, apparently, heavy metal said with Russian inflection. I'm constantly being reminded that the Anglicization of my Russian isn't just a problem created in my brain! (The name for this language, I just learned while writing this, is Runglish.) The podcast introduces me to the band Ария (Aria) who've been around since pre-perestroika days in various lineups & sound exactly like what would happen if you copy & pasted Iron Maiden into Russian, which isn't an insult. The band's Spotify (I know, I'm weaning myself off—) bio states that their international popularity has been hindered by "poor distribution of their records, & their insistence on singing almost-exclusively in their native tongue." Good on them for not speaking Runglish.
I get to work & discover one of those benign & cartoonish indignities of being an office worker has transpired: the yogurt I brought to eat at my optimal breakfast time (unlike the english muffin) exploded in my backpack, certainly as a result of leaning back too hard on the subway with my backpack on. I try to get the yogurt off, but it's everywhere & seems seeped in. Fortunately, since I prefer to not associate stuff I like with work, the backpack is a boring gray one that was free-with-purchase at DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse. RIP.
The morning is a slow blur. My coworker Jordan & I overlap an in-office day on Wednesdays, which makes the vibe way more tolerable, as do the food trucks that stay open through summer. We eat on the roof of a building that used to be an empty expanse where I chainsmoked as an undergraduate & has since been renamed after a different wealthy person & converted into a 'green roof' with tables & grass & various plantings. It's close to 80 degrees &, kind of miraculously, not humid. Wispy cloud drifts. A few people are sunbathing in the grass & their repose makes me wistful.
I try to prevent my one known special power in this life (entering & maintaining a heightened state of awareness, training that awareness onto creating something— mostly, poems) from atrophying by noticing things around me with a sort of eager desperation to be present, but today just isn't it. I can't summon the inner resources. Slow blur, afternoon edition. Work tasks, texting friends about near- & far-range plans, reading about & thinking about & moving funds toward & grieving over the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Cognitive dissonance of work-self vs. actual-self dialed up even more.
Back on the subway, southbound. Call my mom to relay truncated versions of what I've been up to, as I do most days. She calls me Alinochka. Walk to meet Matt & his son at Whole Foods. We've just started using an app called OurGroceries to keep a shared shopping list &, I admit, it's efficient. I used to be so afraid of giving up autonomy (perhaps you sense a pattern) in romantic relationships & ending up on an irreversible downward slope to the 'we/our' mode; it feels good to stop clinging to rigid, binary logic about what I want & what's counter to it. Sometimes it's just not that deep. Like now, shaking out a plastic bag to put my (our) broccoli into. I can shadowbox vestiges of the hetero-monog relationship industrial complex another time.
I offer to make food so I can go into a sort of cognitive cruising altitude. I love the process of cooking; it helps my brain redirect its many-various anxieties into something purposeful. Gestures & thoughts start to glide in an almost reflexive way. Today it's just baked potatoes with broccoli & cheese. By the time I get home & get around to preparing food (right now, it's almost 6:30), I tend to lose momentum on the inventive meal front. But it's still calming to chop stuff.
After dinner, I walk to CVS & pause for fiery orange-ringed clouds over Washington Ave. Think about taking a photo & don't, as if I'm gesturing respect to the sky-gods. Pause again in front of Ray's Happy Birthday Bar. Again contemplate a photo & decide the list of today's birthdays isn't that great, except for Melissa Etheridge. Return with filled Rx & berry granola. The next few hours are spent ambiently puttering— a favorite weeknight or anytime hobby, now imbued with the more discrete & legible purpose of getting my stuff out of boxes & off the floor. Whenever I move, decisions around how to arrange books in a way that makes sense organizationally, but also allows for optimal tchotchke distribution & a pleasing but not over-curated aesthetic, takes longer than it should. So too tonight, but moving the same hardcover Joe Brainard biography by John Yau to 10 different spots on my bookshelves keeps me away from alerts & notifications. A little pocket of flow, as with cooking. I wish I could get into that mode more, especially with writing. I start to hang things on the walls & the room, which I get to have as just mine, feels more like I'm in it— or at least the version of me that I most enjoy being when left to my own devices.
There's a Russian idiom, Как выжатый лимон (like a squeezed lemon) that accurately describes my vibe today. By 11:30, I've skipped bedtime reading but not bedtime skincare, & have foregone the possibility of bedtime sex. Total steps walked according to my Fitbit: 8,970 (under daily goal.) Total seltzers consumed, according to me: 5.5 (daily goal limitless.)
Alina Pleskova is a poet, editor, & Moscow-born immigrant turned proud Philadelphian. Her first full-length collection, Toska, was published by Deep Vellum in June 2023 & is nominated for a 2024 Lambda Literary Award. You can find her work in various places, & her spirit in the astral realm. IG: @ahleena
