Everything seems connected lately, like each moment is waiting around to be written. I just need to share the thoughts that bang around in my head like a laser shot in a metal room. My ideas plead to be heard and exist in a written, physical form—to make any sense. This piece follows my stream of consciousness, thoughts as I have them in a desperate attempt to show you all how they connect in my head. A search for understanding, a longing to share and inspire. I know I can’t be the only one. My goal is to find others who need their bouncing ideas to be freed and to express them here. To share the connections that not everyone sees. 

There is something about memorizing how to fold a paper crane. I didn’t know I had it memorized until I noted that I made one in every class, with any paper. There was a pack of Post-It notes on the table when I walked to my seat. I noticed a project for another class set up around the room where people had placed quiet baby blue and crying baby yellow Post-Its on giant white posters labeled in black Sharpie, probably as notes on a topic they were learning about. They needed the post-it notes for class—to take notes, the pastel squares’ function—but I wanted to make a paper crane. So I made a paper crane. 

There is something about how I can never write about what I want to. I never know what I want to write about until I have scrapped the bad idea I was working on, and a billion others. In class, we were told to be productive, but being productive for me means making an illegal baby blue Post-It paper crane while thinking about the 4 Non Blondes song stuck in my head and whether or not I can use it for parallel structure. 

There is something about the word ‘something.’ It can be as bland as “stuff” and “kind of” and “really”—the kind of stuff my editor kind of really hates—or it can be as all-encompassing as Everything and Nothing. Something is vague, and something is an absolute statement. 

There is something on your cheek.

It’s just something.

There was Something about her. 

It’s Everything and Nothing. And Always. And Never. 

There is Something about language. I have memorized one and am learning a few, but they are all the same, but they are all so different, but they’re really the same. It’s Peculiar—‘peculiar’ sounds like ‘película.’ In Spanish, ‘película’ means movie. In English, peculiar means weird. English is weird. The Japanese word for ‘English’ is ‘eigo,’ which sounds like ‘eiga,’ the word for movie. It has the same meaning as película. That’s peculiar. It’s all the same, it’s how everyone communicates. It’s Everything and Always. 

“I am feeling a little peculiar. And so I wake in the morning and I step outside and I take a deep breath and I get real high and I scream from the top of my lungs what’s going on?”

– 4 Non Blondes

I would have screamed, but I was in class being productive making illegal paper cranes, and they were stifled baby blue, not screaming baby yellow, so I didn’t scream. I wonder if my paper cranes would float like the birds they were crafted to resemble. Would they be something—as nothing—just paper floating atop the water? Or would they be Something—as everything—a fine craft slicing through the water with their razor-sharp folds, aboard their wings lying the ebullience and buoyancy of their origamic existence?

Paper cranes are Japanese. Japanese sounds like English and English sounds like Spanish and language is Everything. Paper cranes are Everything. Something can be Always or something can be bland. There is Something strange about how I never know what to write about until I get off task and follow my thoughts down a million winding streams of consciousness. That’s what the cranes float down. Is there Something about the word something? Or is it just more English that sounds like Spanish that sounds like Japanese? 

There is Something about 4 Non Blondes. Aren’t they just brunettes like me? Or are they silent baby blue? No, they must be screaming baby yellow because they want me to scream at the top of my lungs and ask the question everyone asks about my writing: “What’s going on?” Is it Everything? Is it Nothing? Will it Always be? Will it Never? 

Is it Something?