Cate's Creative Content.
Art by Cate Twining-Ward
Creative Writing
These pieces reflect what's on my mind, in no particular order.
May 13th, 2020
Water
As I watched the water droplets glide of my hips and cyclically slide down the drain—I had a thought.
Does anyone else hate loofas? Loofas are demons. Loofas effectively obstruct an otherwise pure connection one has with oneself merely once a day (if that). Loofas are harsh, mesh-y, unwarranted interruptions to rare, personal, intimacy.
There is something utterly authentic about using your own ten fingers to coax dirt off of your body. The feeling you get cleaning your body, is one that is indefensibly intruded upon when a loofa is involved.
You cannot, for example, receive the same justification of your day’s exploration made by the delicate smear of dirt behind your ankle. You cannot, similarly, give your stained knee cap the undivided attention it has earned from a day’s worth of withstanding impacts from various soil types.
Perhaps now you sit beneath the showerhead, soaking these thoughts in, letting the drops weigh your hair down in front of your eyes entirely. Shielded by a thick hair clump, you listen to the muffled waterfall around you. I imagine you now tend to sludge between your toes—pausing to gently palpate the soles of each foot. So wonderfully yet subtly sore they are, a substantiation of your many footsteps. The sprinkle continues soaking your skin and it’s beginning to shrivel in retaliation. Flipping the wet mop of hair back, you open your mouth to the water pelting down, letting it fill with a steady splatter, and spitting to repeat.
Not to mention, loofas are totally gross too. Think about it—really think about it. Loofas are thick bundles of soggy odor, lingering with dead skin and loitering body hair. The fact that we nearly always approach them with extreme caution—anticipating their cold, slimy, oleaginous, surfaces that reek of residues from previous use—should sound considerable alarm. And on the unlucky chance you come across a foreign loofa… don’t even get me started. When did we abandon our functional body parts and settle for… plastic? An environmentally disastrous, marine-animal-choking, fossil fuel generated ball of filth is what a loofa comes down to.
Use a bar of soap and shut up about it already.
July 1st, 2020
Window to Wave Allusions
Peering through from behind a protective shield out at the big blue ocean, I see ripples in the soft waves that sit so many miles below the aircraft. Over and over, my mind plays with the idea of creatures who convincingly tempt my curiosity just beneath the surface. The creatures that I know exist there. The ones who breath liquids and send sound signals to navigate. I spot them from the window, emerging swiftly perhaps for air, on the verge of breaching, of blowing, breathing. Their slippery bodies provoking my imagination, creating the white foam on the water’s surface that my eyes keep catching. My heart flutters as I search the blue, quickening its pace whenever I see a sign of succinct movement. I swear I have just spotted, without a doubt, the side of a whale’s tail just to the left. And now—look. That was definitely a dorsal fin, belonging to whom I don’t know, but its presence was unmistakable. How incredible, over and over I spot them.
But, to my disappointment, it seems as if only I hold these wonderful happenings, unable to share them with those around me. No matter how fervently I describe what I’ve just witnessed to my compatriots. No matter my deftness in description of the movement’s location. To others, the sheet of water beneath us is all to huge, the distance felt is too inordinate to even consider the possibility of sightings below.
I don’t judge them; I just feel bad for them. Some instead choose to see the beauty in contemplating sunsets. Some feel most alive when practicing the art of watching the rolling mountain peaks soar past their windows. Some sense exhilaration when examining the runway abruptly appearing when we descend back to Earth. These phenomena, I agree, are also spectacular.
But with nothing but the ocean to stare out for hours upon hours, with nowhere to look to distract yourself from its overwhelming beauty, it’s inconceivable size, its unmistakable importance for the survival of our species—how can you not be mesmerized?
Nothing compares to nothing but the ocean in sight: so impossibly big and wonderfully mysterious.
Of course, what I choose to see outside my airplane window and in the ocean below is entirely real and marvelous in my mind alone. My sightings are not likely, but they are also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider, on what you let yourself believe. So, it is therefore my deep belief that it is the perception of impossibility that impedes other people’s personal sightings—not the fact that they are in of themselves, impossible.
October 2019
Something about Sierra Leone
Where heads seamlessly balance buckets
Where the rainforest clamors down to the sea
Where seatbelts are disregarded and
police are swayed with smiles, with Sierra Leonean bills
How far from wild are we
Where in the nearby forest lives so-called wild creatures
A deep green unknown
creepy and crawly but maybe just
misunderstood
Just a short bumpy drive away from the buzz and bustle of Freetown
Lives our closest relatives
The closer you get the blurrier the line becomes
between Wild and Civilized
Barricading ourselves from their humanity
Is in itself, pretty wild
May 26th, 2020
Reliable Rumblings: The Q train and what it means to me
It starts less like a sound and more like a feeling. You feel its reverberations first in your core, in the center of your being, before they work their way thighs. It tingles, the sensation travelling between your kneecaps and releasing from the soles of your feet.
Now your mind catches up with the sensations that were at first submerged beneath your skin. Pulses that have traversed from the tunnels deep below, up through your floorboards. Ones that have bounced back and forth between even your most fragile bones. Oftentimes unnoticed these steady shockwaves come and go, your body expecting of their comforting hum. For newcomers in your home, these rumblings are far from reassuring, however. They see only the metal toaster trembling; they feel only personally attacked by a noise pollutant. They believe the tremors belong solely in the confines of dingy subway stations. The shudders in your home to them resemble that of a chained dragon purring in your basement. But I see it somewhat differently.
Alone at night, when my sleep hormones are underworked and stress hormones overworked, I would count on my trusty team of Q trains below me. Beneath my bed, working hard late into the night, always on cue. After 11pm, I hear them every 22 minutes, their soft grumbles giving me a steady comfort: I am not the only one still awake.
When morning comes at last, my insomniac thoughts are jolted into gear thanks to my knowledge of the Q train timetable. Unpublished anywhere official except in my mind, my mornings were once defined by the decision of whether I’d ride the 6:57am, 7:03, or 7:12 train. The fleet of my choice reliably lands on the earliest possible, simply allowing me the fast route out into the world, bringing me one step closer to the rest of my adult life.
As I descend below into the 7th avenue station, others around me fret and fumble their cards as the slow but flourishing sounds of an oncoming train decimate the station. All that thundering makes it impossible for me to explain to fellow over-worked and under-slept Manhattan-bound riders that the noises they hear belong not to the Q or B train they anticipate. But alas, here I am, and I watch the daily commotion with slight amusement.
Flinging themselves down the first flight of stairs, hurling their hips violently the at the turnstile, pausing to initiate swipes of precision (by most—not all), and then off they go again, footsteps skillfully fluttering fiercely down the last flight only to realize… shit. Wrong side of the tracks.
Playing it cool, as any New Yorker would do, with one swift shake of their business-casual attire, they strut down the platform, a pang of embarrassment tickles their septum perhaps, but it is only felt on the inside. Not a second of hesitation in pace illuminates the fact.
Here I am now, at my trusty tile, towards the very end of the platform. My tile loyally marks the precise spot the second to last pair of Q train doors will open, beckoning my arrival. It’s 6:56am and 25 seconds and I begin to hear you coming, right on time.
Rush hour calls for less delays than usual, but you have a mind of your own—I like that about you. You aren’t too reliable; just when we get too comfortable in your timing or consistency on you send a mad magician telling us all about the Mussolini infiltration of the Pentagon. Or maybe today it will be the women in the long green cloak who releases her three pigeons with little hats and dyed feathers. Most often though, if you’re in a bad mood, when you’ve had a long day, you will refuse to aid our departure with the purposeful placement of a stench so unimaginable everyone who catches a whiff is sure it calls for legal action.
Then the grumbling grows closer still, and steadily this symphony builds up and up, sending its vibrations with a velocity strong enough to shock the foundations of my nearby home. The sounds of screaming tracks bounce behind dirty pillars, stirring communities of residential rodents. Your headlights peak out at me, the glare growing and half-blinding as I cautiously lean out to confirm what I knew long before this tunnel, this station, this hour, this day. The air changes, my every muscle tightened, stance wide, anticipating the biggest rush of the day. Five, four, three… BAM. You roar out of the tunnel with an epic blast of warm air shooting my hair furiously behind me. In a spilt second, all my adrenaline has rushed to my cheeks, my eyes are blinded with a flash of light, then silver. Car after car flies before me while my eyes and brain try to keep up, at first one silver ray of color, then, slowing, my pupils begin to recognize each individual carriage, and the stern commuters within them, and I can count down to the second to last. Ah, you’ve arrived. Faithfully, your doors open at the tile, accompanying a satisfying click and inducing my smile.
May 23rd, 2020
The Art of Adaptation
Like a chameleon, I adjust my demeanor to suit the specificities of a person’s character. I’ll do this if I know you very well, and I’ll do it well if I really like you. I don’t change myself because I am insecure in my own skin; rather I shift my actions accordingly in a way that is sensitive to the feelings of others. I think I do this not only as a means to make others more comfortable, thereby easing any potential tensions, but also as a reflex, as a subconscious reflection of my own pink sensitivities.
You see, I am a very sensitive person in a secretive way. I think and feel a million shades of pride or pain but will share only a sliver of that outwardly. The inbetweens lie in the shadows of my unspoken thoughts, secured away safely high above the seas of vulnerability.
But beneath my skin and inside my skull, I am endlessly splashing in the waves of sensitivity. I let myself get pulled back and forth by the converging currents of vulnerability. Often, I am wrestled by whirlpools, dragged down by blue undertows, and all at once choked by grey saltwater that is determined to sting my raw skin.
So, in a way, in my reconfigurations to suit the surfaces of others, perhaps I am saying, softly, not through explicit terms, “hey, I understand.” My warping colors eye-catchingly disguise a subsurface longing to be seen. It’s a subtle shift, but if you look closely you may notice the fading shades.
May 12th, 2020
Border pt.2
Don’t get me wrong, I like travelling. But there is something about long-distance flights taken alone that propel me so deeply inside my own thoughts, that I come out feeling folded both metaphysically and literally.
I oddly began to crave this exact experience—potently feeling my emotions at the departure gate—after hearing a particular song I listen to whilst experiencing this phenomenon.
There exists an interesting symmetry between the international borders I cross via air and the reconfiguring of borders in my head. Under no other circumstances do I feel the depth of my emotions in the way I do when I fly. There is something deeply lonely about cutting through space and time on your own, in your own world entirely, among dozens of strangers doing the same. Yet, I find a particular comfort in its isolation.
Planes are my favorite place to fall into the dark holes of my feelings; ranging from memories rooted in darkness to stratospherically stretched solaces. Playing out various combinations of imagined happenings, alongside a perfectly chosen soundtrack is immensely satisfying. I am far more entertained by my in-flight fantasies than by whatever reoccurring film is playing on the flimsy screen in front of me.
Something about Sierra Leone pt.2
I have travelled near and far
but never have I travelled beyond my fears quite like I have in Africa.
Sticky with guilt.
I have seen blankets of forest and groups of wild animals
but never have I questioned my ability to save them
quite like I have in Africa.
Nauseous with fear.
I have known of strong minds and unthinkably kind people
but never have I watched civil war amputees skillfully kick footballs
or create their own nonprofits
or give me their only pair of gold earrings
or wake up at 4am to boil water for orphan chimpanzees
quite like I have in Africa.
Exasperated by the unfairness. By my privilege.
Overwhelmed.
Here I am now standing
in Brussels airport watching so many new faces pass me by
Standing and watching
And suddenly crying, what
Why am I here
and why are they there
why do I get to leave
what does this ticket mean to me in comparison
to what it could mean to someone else
to what it would mean to James
whose biggest dream is to attend engineering school
but he can’t afford the $20 fee for the entrance exam
May 22nd, 2020
Perceptions of Pain and the Persistence of Parenthood
“Just—Cate, remember this, please. If you are ever cleaning out a fish tank, you need to make sure that the water temperature in the bowl you move the fish to temporarily is exactly the same temperature as the water in the dirty tank. Otherwise, you will shock the fish and it may die.”
I remember you blurting this out as we packed the last of my desk supplies to ship to college. “I just wanted you to know.” Suddenly, the impending reality of my nest-leaving was imminent, and there were all these shreds of wisdom you needed to teach me before I fluttered off into the world.
As I am only nineteen, mere fledgling to the world at large, I cannot imagine the albatross of responsibility that is felt by mothers. It must be an overwhelming double-burden: to not only teach their new generation everything meaningful they’ve soaked up from years of life, but to moreover ensure they understand the lessons revealed by them. This task causes me much trepidation, but there is another, slightly more absurd opinion that I struggle with too.
My impractical hypothesis is this: when I have a child, I want them to feel and to experience hardships the way I have. I hold the notion that it is of utmost importance that my children face difficulties similar to those I have endured myself.
This is not because I am horrible, or selfish, or a pinch of both. And not because I think that for one person to understand another, the same experiences are required. It is rather because of what I have come to understand through circumstances of misfortune.
Coping with the complexities of family imperfection, and the occurrences thereafter, has largely shaped the person I have become. Everyone, at some point, no doubt becomes acquainted with suffering. And the degree to which we endure pain is painfully relative. Yet, it is thanks to my darkest memories and most boiled and burned emotions—now having cooled— which have distilled down into the person I have become. And in a way, pain is necessary for learning.
Learning is composing oneself in the presence of detestable disagreement. Learning is choreographing calamity in the midst of chaos—it is not crying, even when crying feels like the only safe reaction. Learning is serenity, self-worth, poise, when being ridiculed, taunted, or provoked. Whether what you heard was in whispers or in screams. Whether those whose caused you pain were cognizant or ignorant to the fact. Learning is gratitude in grotesque unfairness. Learning is being competitive, but learning is also losing. Learning is navigating freedom, fear, favoritism.
It’s naïve to long for a perfect world for our children. I find those who seek to shelter their babies beyond infancy into adulthood slightly infuriating, adults who are effectively imposing afflictions that will be felt only years down the line. Sheltering your child is in a way selfish. It’s sad, but some knowledge can only be learned through struggle. Parents should not assume absolute authority to insulate their children from a world lurking with imperfection.
My putative perception of my motherly tendencies will probably change with time. Perhaps the more I learn, the more pain I endure myself, the more I’ll realize that I was wrong all along. That my perception of what is painful was spectacularly privileged. That I should have been more pessimistic. That pains unimaginable have only been planted and have yet to fully flower.
How does one possibly cope with both the responsibility of protecting a child and with the burden of bestowing to them a bounty of knowledge about the world and how to navigate it? How can I feel so enticed by this particularly unimaginable task, by the almost inevitable blame and culpability inflicted by an unborn child?
While I am fascinated and terrified, and yet determined to tackle this treachery, what I am most dizzied by is raw fear, as many of us are. I have many abstract fears about motherhood. But far beyond the prospects of pregnancy panics, or the imagined agonies of labor, comes the far more tangible fear of goldfish.
The fear of having untold stories, unspoken realizations, lessons left lingering in my world, and my world only. Pains with no purpose. Hardships without hereditary justification.
In other words: I am afraid of temperature-shocked fish with fins unfunctioning, lying belly up, because of my carelessness.
July 7th - August 11th, 2020
Archipelago Ancestry
My family is an archipelago.
All parts of the same whole, but separate and alone. A group connected at the core, deeply alike in our ways, but yet inadvertently detached, fully able to prevail independently.
“Archi” stems from the Italian word for chief, and in a way, each member of my family rules over themselves and those they care about as any high-ranking chief would.
The origin of many islands belonging to archipelagoes, like those in Hawaii, are the result of a series of eruptions. Some of these eruptions began over 80 million years ago and are still active. While red-hot magma may not have spluttered out of us, and there lacks the volcanic ash to prove its occurrence, long ago, violent emotional activities of this kind did take place between us. Mayhem exists in our history. These phenomena act as the genesis of where we stand today.
At one time, we were all bound to one another, just like the tectonic crust of pre-archipelago formations. We were connected both above and below water; analogous to a continental archipelago. Now, we remain joined at our roots, but water floods seamlessly between us too—over us, lashing at our sides, slowing washing away our outmost layers.
Over time, we are not only distanced by the ever-changing tides, but perhaps also by the unreliable winds, the unknown lurking creatures below and between us.
Sometimes, as archipelagoes often are, we are defined by political boundaries.
But do not fear, this does not make us weak, nor does it make us incapable of whole heartedly caring for one another. In fact, it is our ability to exist independently on the surface but remain attached underneath, that makes us uniquely durable.
Nevertheless, although we are foundationally the same, we will never stop drifting from one another. Drifting either towards or apart, that’s up to us. That is simply the nature of our type.
May 15th, 2020
What Then
What will happen when I have nothing left to write about?
When longing for inspiration feels insipid
and my own tongue recedes from tedium
tumbling, tremoring
full of trepidation
Will I revert to vulgar vocabulary?
Or surrender into slang
Will I probe passionate—potentially pretentious—linguists with improper phrasing?
Jargon that jumps way above their inflated identities
How will I untangle my own convoluted cogitation?
Or calm the reoccurring questions ricocheting in my mind
I fear a desert of discourse
Dry with words, deadly with dispassion
Defaulting to meaningless dialects
What then
When I grow indifferent to distinguishing “then” from “than”
When Foster Wallace feels more exhausting than exhilarating
When my cranium is crawling with only ill-conceived conversations
I suppose I will sink
and I would rather be left untouched
Leave me be
so I don’t run the risk
of repeating
banal
platitudes.
May 12th, 202
Border
I seem to build up borders
Borders that zig zag across my mind
and through my heart too
Boundaries that exist because of time—because of timing
Times that have cemented or degraded the blocks which build
Blocks of pain or blocks of love
breaking down barriers of connection,
carving up insecurities,
perhaps blocking in betrayals, keeping them buried.
Borders built by trust or mistrust
Sometimes stacking up to sooth uncertainties within
Of unexplored feelings
Or uncertainties still unfelt
The possibility of pains
On the borderline of feelings
Bordered in but not boarded up
Bored of my hesitancy
To just jump the fence already