Oh, hi. I am Meaghan O'Connell.
if you need to email me, that's fine (depending), just send it on over: hereissomeone@gmail.com
I have been writing and reading here since 2008. (For proof: see all the Tumblr posts I've liked here). I actually worked at Tumblr for awhile, in the early days.
Here are some of the more, er, extensive things I've written.
For more extensiveness, you can buy the Coming & Crying e-book, which is a thing I spent a long time co-editing and -publishing and -rallying around in 2010, here. If you like sex and feelings and have $8, well, you're in for it!
You can also follow me on Twitter if you want, you pervert.
Ha. I bid two whole American dollars to get this stupid embroidered flower thing. The woman REJECTED my bid! I did not know that was a possibility. There was no minimum bid!
So I think the only logical response is to increase my bid slowly, by 50 cent increments, until she caves.
The other day I was running around the neighborhood before work (yes, one of those people) and I saw this CHAIR someone had put out on the street, leaving it for the taking, and I found myself starting to make a mental note of where it was swearing that if it was there on the way back we would come back for it. I don’t actually remember what the chair looked like, or if it was even a chair honestly, but I do remember thinking we should come back for it and then realizing all at once that I totally understood this whole other, human person aspect of my mother that I never got before: running. This was it.
See, my mom was always that mom that was telling us about some great chair in some person’s trash pile, and we were always laughing about it. She would regularly take detours on the way to other places, all of us in the car groaning while she got one more look. She’d circle the block and if we were lucky, swear that she and Dad would go back once it got dark. We’d say nooo and act embarrassed but we must have admired her resourcefulness. I say we must have because I feel that same giddy excitement she probably did then, and now understand that conspiratorial tone she would lay under all of it, like we were getting away with something, or getting the better side of some deal. Like winning. But now, running under tree branches and around people walking their dogs, staring at all the trash lined up at the curb, I started to really know my mother and her geography of houses and old chairs and dogwood trees and for sale signs. This was how she knew — she ran past all of it, before any of us were even out of bed.
We’d wake up to notes on the counter, cereal left out. She would be back and stretching on the carpet by the time we were on the couch watching cartoons, the dog rolling around near her, licking sweat off of her forehead. I remember the way she smelled when she was all sweaty: like dirt. I remember her lacing up her shoes and saying she’d be back and how it would take so much effort to peel our eyes away from the TV to look at her and nod. She would be gone but still around somehow. We’d have her notes and the knowledge that she would be back. Sometimes she’d be gone longer than we thought and I would privately worry. My dad would say, “Where the hell’s your mother?” and my heart would beat fast. I’d play out the scenario of her death and practice going through the different emotions. How would be find out. What would we do that night, the next day, and so on. At what point do we say, Okay, she’s been gone too long, where is she? And I never did figure that out — how to hear, “Where the hell’s your mother?” and think, “Oh she’s probably fine.”
So now I go out in the mornings, much later than she did, carving out concentric circles around our little apartment. Sometimes with him, sometimes alone. I am away but still around. No one knows where I am exactly but I am also at a finite distance, one that I will have to travel back myself. It is a distance the nuances of which I study three times a week. What side has more shade, which intersection is less busy, which buildings creepy guys hang out in front of, which sidewalks slope downward or feel like too much of an expanse. I look at everyone’s trash. I think about what is waiting for me at home. When he would start to wonder. I start to think about all the ways he could be lying dead in our apartment while I am out running for no real reason other than physical fitness. I keep running anyway, just faster and back in the direction of home. “He was dead and she was going for a run.”He has never run without me but if he did we would be in trouble because while I run with a cellphone velcro-ed to my chubby bicep, he runs without one. He is the one who carries the keys. Someone is probablynot pointing a gun at me right now, ready to shoot and kill me, but they could be. I don’t allow myself to turn around and look back. I know if I start I won’t stop.
She always showed up a few minutes later.
—
Oprah on one of her favorite passages of Wild.
OMG. You guys. Oprah basically is tumbling her favorite quotes from Cheryl Strayed’s book. OPRAH RESTARTED HER BOOK CLUB FOR CHERYL STRAYED. I watched that video and literally got goosebumps all over my body. I’m not sure why. I know it’s fucking Oprah and she is choosing this memoir of a white lady’s journey to enlightenment and it’s not all that revolutionary, is it? But still! She chose Sugar! She chose our person we love! Can you imagine what Knopf did? Probably shat themselves. And Cheryl Strayed — can you imagine?!?!!?! Guhhhh. It’s so strange. I love this book so much! And I’m sorry but I LOVE OPRAH. THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY.
This is the worst photo, through the window screen, of the cat couple that comes and hangs out in our yard. I hardly ever see them but this morning looked out the window and there they were. They snuck under the twine and between the posts that D strung up around our little GARDEN of sorts, and were lying amid our tomato plants, just as we imagined they did when we weren’t looking. I was so thrilled to catch them there, all stretched out and probably just finished peeing on the radishes and digging up some freshly-planted seeds.
Through their garden terrorism these cats have become things of myth to us, invisible little demons whose handiwork we find the next day. Everything all dug up and shat in. We’ve felt powerless against them. We, or at least I, had this strange realization about things like this — you make something and leave it outside and anyone who wants to can just go tromp around in it. Of course. Why hadn’t I realized it sooner?
My mom says cayenne pepper but D isn’t buying it, not for cats, he says. I still don’t know. All the books suggest inserting a bunch of tiny posts all over the dirt, like popsicle sticks or something, which seems unnatural and mean. It would make me feel spiteful, like we used an unfair advantage to defeat them. D says once the plants grow more, get past seedlings, the cats will leave them alone. Instead of rolling my eyes at this I laugh a little — hell, maybe he’s right, maybe cats do demur once they see your endeavors are already fully underway. “Oh, these plants are really growing, nevermind then, I’ll shit around the corner!”
So when I caught them it was like seeing a famous painting in person for the first time. There they are! The whole yard to stretch out in and they squeeze through into our little marked off area, leaning on the most precious and most fragile of the plants! But they also looked so darn cute out there, like they were enjoying it for us while we had to go be at work. All I could think was that I HAD to get this on camera so I darted across the kitchen for my phone but as soon as I could open this window with the broken lock the cats saw me and walked over, their tails intertwined, waiting for something. We looked at each other, they ambled around side by side. I debated giving them some of my cereal, but did not. I tried to remember they were the enemy. I took a few pictures of them, but as soon as I lifted the screen, they untangled. I wondered if they would jump in. I closed the screen and the striped one went and laid in the patch of budding wildflowers. I took a picture of that too, but it was too far away.
— my sister’s getting life insurance!
To the people who don’t see why this is sad:
He put his sunglasses in his little cloth drawstring sunglasses pouch thing —
then he put them in a hard case.
Are you with me now?
Typed this into my phone today mid minor emotional breakdown on the L train platform (which was experiencing a 30 minute delay — all I could think was, Someone better have died). Anyway, holds up.
