In Mt. Pleasant

Eating a mushroom and cheese scone that a temporary housemate brought home. They could become a permanent housemate, if they want me. And if I want to stay on this coast.

I finally made a pros and cons list for moving away. So far the biggest pro is: no more allergies. The biggest con: DC is so damn bikeable - anywhere else will probably be worse.

K still hasn't texted me back. Maybe asking about thanksgiving was the wrong call. Eventually I'll ask if he doesn't want to be in touch. It was an intense little affair that we had. It was hard to keep it light and easy to think about falling in love. And yet, it was hard to imagine how we would go about it - across the continent, with our strange history, with our recent breakups. The answer is not to go about it at all - to both move on and grow in our ways, and then revisit the question. We both admitted to thinking very intense questions, like about kids - at least we were both carried away, but where are we now?

I bought a lot of stuff recently. One thing I bought is going to the wrong quadrant of town - a rookie mistake. Hoping that either UPS will fail to deliver it or when I bike over to knock on Tuesday they'll give it to me. 

My COVID test came back negative, so I am free to roam the house without an N95. I was already being very casual because I took so few risks lately, and I was nearly the only one home. Almost a week of my 4 week stay here is already over, and the house is still pretty empty. I'm not sure I'll really have time to get to know people. If I come back for 20 days in January, I maybe I can do better.

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Forgot to hit publish. Now it's Monday morning and I need to work.

I called K last night, based on Edith's sage advice. We just chatted, and said it would be nice to talk on the phone sometimes to get to know each other better. He's been having some feelings about his breakup - it was a month more recent than mine, so no one should be surprised. Overall a nice conversation.

Edith says I should go ahead with the Creative Community.

Maybe a Google Form for interest and preferences is the first step.

 

In New Orleans

Shocked to discover I wrote on this blog in 2020 and 2021. They are lost years in a few ways; waiting to be rediscovered, perhaps.

I am more used to writing pen to paper these days, and I did try to spin up an alternative digital home a few weeks before SB and I broke up, but in the short interim between today's outing and this evening's I thought, for whatever reason, that this was the place to be.

I had a whirlwind of a day. As happens almost every time, I was betrayed by a microdose. I dismounted from my bicycle after a peppy ride talking animatedly to myself in French and wondered - "oh dear, am I really sick?". I was dizzy and a little nauseous walking into Couturie Forest. My throat, which has had a little tickle since Thursday, was tight. 

I wandered in, and up to the "highest point in New Orleans" - a joke I think, because the levee by Lake Pontchartrain is higher per my recollection. Three 9-year-olds lead me up (I followed them) and when I caught up to the laggard he warned me that his friends were up ahead. As he did, the friend yelled "scream if you can see us" down to my interlocutor. 

The top was anticlimactic and I wandered on, seeing a striking growth of wood ear mushrooms. Then I happened upon a triad of unreal live oaks and their unreality reminded me of the little pill I'd taken an hour before.

I laughed to myself later that my condition was "an accident, I forgot." Is it funny? I laughed to myself a lot today. I found myself terribly good company. I told myself jokes only I would get.

Oh, another great moment from before I remembered about the drugs! I came across this bird blind that just faced a fence basically. A big wooden wall with four cutouts, and little benches behind each one. And I thought, "how silly," as I walked around it, past the sign about songbirds. Then I paused and realized I heard quite a bit of song and thought to myself, "well, it works!"

Is that funny if you're not tripping? Maybe someone heard all of the birdsong and thought "it's coming from the fence" and so decided to build the wall facing the fence.

In addition, just to the side of the bird blind was this cypress tree that was bent over in a graceful arc, so that its top brushed the ground but it wasn't broken at all. I thought of it as a very dramatic tree, keeling over in emotion. I took a picture. Would sober me have seen a fainting tree? Maybe.

It was a blessed day, with bathrooms appearing at ideal intervals, never getting too hungry, never feeling tired. Early on I had a moment of fear, recognizing that I wouldn't have chosen to do drugs so close the breakup and thinking for a moment about whether I would be sad about Shelly but I managed to get myself off of that track - I'm sure I saw something silly in the forest.

A few other silly moments to record here or with a pen, but I want to get to the restaurant early. 

Tear

Tear is one of the hardest words to hear. It comes with unpleasant sound and sensation - the sound of an long stream of rrrrrrs propelling towards a conclusive crx -- the feeling of tension releasing with pain. A tear is when strength fails, and when an irredeemable fragility is revealed. A tear cannot be repaired the way a break can. 

Tear is also not the easiest word to read. Should I pluralize? Is tear two words? Of course, you should know from context in the first sentence which one is being written, because tear is a beautiful word. Tears are overflowing emotion. Tears are the clear blood that flow from your body into the world, bringing your insides out. Tears are for goodbyes and reunions, for all the love and beauty you hold and release. 

And for pain. Nothing is all good, and nothing is all bad.

This idea won't translate well. It's not really an idea anyways. Just a coincidence.

(It's tearrifying!)

(This pun has torn through the seriousness of this writing. Ouch.)

More life in years.

This post is from January 1 of 2014. Now it's November of 2021. There are a couple more years to fill in.

2015 - Fall in love for the first time. Graduate from college. Take trains across China. Move to the Bay. Start my first job.

2016 - Grow into a post-college person. Sort of thrive in my work, sort of hate it. Navigate the continuation of my first love; on and off, almost falling in love with someone else, and finally moving in together in SF.

2017 - Quit my first job! Raft the Grand Canyon, make clay in Cuba. Move to Santa Cruz and do improv and run through the woods and along the coast. Fall in love for the second time, and slowly end my first long-term relationship. 

2018 - Move back to Oregon, then to Washington DC. Self-study energy policy. In some ways, the most free I've been. Job hunting is a major stressor.

2019 - Find my first energy jobs - a startup that implodes 6 weeks after I join and contract communications work at a trade association. 

2020 - A pandemic starts and I start a contract with a very influential energy policy person. I run through the cemetery, and play Age of Empires. In the Fall, I get a full time job with said influential energy person.

2021 - I work a lot. I finally go back to Oregon for a spell. The pandemic wears down my sense of self and time. I finally start working on regaining it now, through occasional therapy, reading, career coaching, friendship-building... 2021 is almost over, but I still think I will need to rewrite this in 5 years with some perspective. It is not a lost year, but it's about as close as I can imagine getting. My allergies destroy me for multiple months in the spring and fall. I can't let that happen again. I will move to the ocean if I have to.

"That would have been the advice to my younger self: be naive and open-minded."

This is a quote from an interview with Daniel Craig doing promos for his new Bond Movie.

I finished On Freedom this morning. Maggie Nelson writes about how exploring freedom meant facing down anxiety - that rang so true. I spend so much energy looking for what is essentially a system of constraints: my own value structure. The task that should follow, but that I instead have to do in parallel, is to build a meaningful life around it. This is to mitigate the otherwise boundless freedom that I feel I have, and the lack of purpose or connection that I feel if I exercise it.

Another feeling I had when reading it was how thrilling it is to think about big ideas, but how rarely I do it. I don't give my ideas their proper value; I worry about them being wrong; I worry that thinking them through will be unpleasant, when in fact it is the most thrilling thing that I can do with my life! 

I could have such beautiful ideas. My ideas could inspire other people. My ideas could create new systems and institutions. My ideas could be prescient, or off-base, and they would still have had value.

Yesterday at DnD, Grace asked what I did over the weekend. I drew a total blank. I had nothing to report. I couldn't picture a single moment from the weekend. A few minutes later I realized I had seen Dune with two of the other people at DnD! I had gone to a housewarming party! I had walked across town with Rennie talking about how we value and struggle with our long-term romantic partnerships. These were all really nice experiences, from deep interpersonal connection to excitement and awe to the sun on my skin and a drink in my hand. Even riding my bicycle to the party was a blessing. Getting dressed for the day was a pleasure (lately it is frustrating, because my boobs are so big and many of my clothes don't fit right anymore, but that day it was a pleasure!).

It's so frustrating that I had lost all memory of that in a matter of 4 days! The good things! Gone!

My job is so draining these days. I start the day stuck in my bed, feeling that if I leave it (even if I have two hours before I would start work!) then the obligations begin. 

I end work with nothing left in my tank; I lay on the couch and watch TV or Age of Empires (or I play Age of Empires, which does give me a feeling of having creative energy without having to tap any internal reserve.)

I find myself frequently thinking that I should delete Instagram and Twitter, but they are the main way that I procrastinate on work, so how can I do that?! If I go out for a walk for 15 minutes I feel so much better than spending 15 minutes on Instagram. 

Welp, I just deleted Instagram and Twitter from my phone, so that should help. At the very least, if I want to waste time on my phone, I'll have to practice Chinese on Duolingo. Or I'll go on LinkedIn or Facebook but I don't waste that much time on either - I think we can live with those.

I really need to use this blog more. 1) I can try out my big ideas 2) I can remember what the fuck I did two days ago 3) it scratches a vague self-actualization itch, probably by doing 1 and 2. Maybe there are just two reasons.

So strange to start this writing-and-thinking moment saying "I'm so free" and end it by saying "I am a slave to social media and work!"

But, like working on freedom invites anxiety, to be anything is to be sensitive to its opposite, I think. We simply deal in contradictions constantly. Life is discovering new contradictions to inhabit.

"struggle against all that creates harmony by elimination"

 This line in a letter by Elena Ferrante reminded me of when I would paint new graffiti on a bathroom every night in college for a while.

I didn't even take pictures (and maybe the paintings weren't much to be proud of) but the fact that it would all be painted over later made that not-so-important. They just had to be good enough to form the first layer of another twenty years of art, if the school ever stopped painting over it.

People got a little frustrated with me - they said the fumes from the paint leaked into the student store; but of course it wasn't the fumes from my paint, it was the fumes from repainting.

Then some acquaintances went to to try to help and made a gross mess of the place - splattering paint everywhere, gumming up the grout, writing "redrum" across from the mirror. I lost my taste for the project.

Anyways, a good line by Ferrante, congratulating her publisher on 15 years of business. 

I forgot a good/bad friend's name

 He changed it on Facebook to his middle name, and I couldn't remember what I used to call him.

I looked through pictures of him for a comment or caption that would have it, but none of them did.

And I looked at another and another and finally I remembered.

I don't remember if I gave him an alias here. I'm forgetting the aliases anyways - sometimes I have to read them in multiple posts before I remember who they are!

Anyways, he did something very bad at the end of school, and then did something that would otherwise have been fine, but because of the very bad thing, this second thing was basically unconscionable.

I never told him that, because even years later I loved him. I was on acid a year after we graduated and I wanted to call him and tell him that if he really needed me, I would be there. That I would always be there, even though I haven't been, even though I never even told him why we aren't friends anymore.

He likely knows why. When he messages me on Facebook (the last time was May 2020) I respond, like a friend. But if he hadn't done those very bad things we would have seen each other since we graduated. I would have talked about my life and my decisions with him. 

If and when I see him, who will we be to each other? Should I write him a letter, telling him that what he was to me in college was very important, one of the most important, but that what he did at the end is a huge problem?

He hurt my best friend. And then nearly came between me and her. And the fact that I haven't fully cut him off is a testament to what he did for me sophomore year, and how much I appreciated it. But I might as well have. I basically have, without telling him. Does he know what he lost? I know what I lost.