Elephant Journal Debut

So, my most popular published article by a long shot has undergone a makeover [i.e., I've made improving edits] and is now on elephant journal: Stripping the Emotional Condom.

Of course, I want you to click that link. But, if you need me to sell it to you, it's the piece of mine that's had the most dramatic reception. In its original incarnation on Rebelle Society, I received a flock of flattering reader emails, it was added to RS's classics sidebar, and it was selected to be anthologized in their best-of collection.

End of pitch.

In other news, I just had a lovely few days in Sacramento.

Yeah, you read that correctly.

Sacramento is decidedly a shithole. However, I have one very good reason to visit; namely, my friend Jason Fassnacht, who is easily one of the most inspiring and generous people I know. Also, I'd be hard-pressed to find a more skilled or dedicated artist anywhere--and I've been around altogether too many artists.

His company defies the bounds of what we can gain through company with another human being: a natural anti-depressant, a treatment for writer's block, a catalyst for intrinsic confidence. I meant to spend one night there and wound up staying for three. This is a common phenomenon with his many visitors who'll often stay longer than planned--not upon his request, but theirs.

I could gush about him more, but since I'm working on an interview/narrative about him anyway, I figure I might as well save the goods.

Anyway.

I've got five days to get my shit together before my flight. It hasn't really sunk in yet. I haven't thought about packing.

This is what happens every time I embark on any kind of trip. I probably won't realize I'm going to Thailand until I board my plane.

So far I know I'm bringing a ukelele [courtesy of Alex's mom--she got one for each of us and told us we can sell them abroad should we go broke, though we're hoping it doesn't come to that], a GoPro, a small microphone. Was going to leave my laptop at home in case my shit got stolen or damaged...but I guess that begs the question of why I feel such a need to bring a GoPro and microphone.

Not exceedingly practical, but packing has never been my strong suit.

When I broke up with my last boyfriend I decided to adjust to the change by stomping into Yosemite's backcountry with a mason jar of whisky, a machete, a sleeping bag, a bigass garbage bag in case it rained [I rarely backpack with a tent], and nothing else. Oh, my stuffed white tiger. I brought him. I wore a wifebeater and boxer shorts, and Vibram five fingers [which aggravated my tendons after a while, so I opted to finish the loop barefoot].

It made for a description-defyingly incredible two weeks.

Call me dramatic, but deleting my Facebook feels like getting clean

There are a lot of people out there who don't use Facebook; yet, I've deigned to soapbox about why I decided to delete mine today, as if that's some unique course of action.

I'm not saying anyone else should delete their account—I wouldn't delete mine simply because I was told to, although I do highly recommend this article, which helped enforce my own decision. Also, it's much shorter than this ensuing blog post that I've written. [I've made a couple more recommendations at the bottom of this post.]

I'm asking if we can create an attitude towards social media and socialization in general that is less universally alienating. [Granted, to do so would take a lot more than reforming our use of Facebook, although I think it's a significant perpetrator in recent years.] But really, what is dumber than a society of people who feel simultaneously crowded and alone?

[As an obvious disclaimer, I don't use Facebook as a marketing platform—there are other pockets of the Internet that work better for me in that regard—so I'm not considering it in that context. If Facebook was simply what got me paid through its exposure, you can bet your ass I'd milk that cow.]

I. Why Facebook makes us interpersonally impotent

We all know the phenomenon.

You meet someone, you think they’re cool, you’re getting to know each other, you add each other on Facebook.

Then you not only never talk again, but the mere idea of contacting them seems irredeemably awkward. You may be interested, but you can't get it up.

Think I’m full of shit? Go look at your Facebook friends—not on your News Feed, but on your friends list.

How many of those are people you could contact right now, for no good “reason”, without either of you finding it weird? Hell, how many of them do you even remember?

And yet, every individual on that list is someone that you personally either deigned to add or accept as a friend. Granted, some people accept everyone who adds them—arguably, that begs even more questions about how we perceive others and how we seek validation.

Prematurely adding one another on Facebook, before you're actually friends, is a pretty good way to turn the odds against your ever becoming friends.

So why does this happen? I think I know.

In real life, if you meet someone you think is really awesome, you might deign to get to know them better, to talk to them, to hang out with them. You might push yourself a bit to be friendly or outgoing, you might initiate contact or be opportunistic in social settings. If you want to befriend someone there's an impetus to put yourself out there so it can happen.

But if you talk to someone and jump the gun with, "Hey, you on Facebook?" then you've just taken the pressure off. You can be complacent. They're on your friends list now—you can get in touch with them any time you like. Social procrastination. Time passes.

And before you know it, the idea of getting in touch with them seems really awkward because, after all, you weren’t really friends with them to begin with, and it's been so long that you can't use a recent interaction as context. There is no context [except, "Hey, I think you're cool and I want to spend time with you," but let's be honest—most people are not willing to be so forthcoming, and it's on the borderline of socially acceptable behavior for adults].

I suppressed my grievances with Facebook the company and kept my account for years because I thought it was necessary for someone with my lifestyle; that is, nomadic and sporadic. For me, there's no externally mandated environment or routine that allows for casually getting to know people over time: no regular school, workplace, organization, or neighborhood. Sometimes I break into a social circle and make friends, but those friendships tend not to have any longevity, since I don't stick around for long. If I enjoy someone's presence in my life and want it to continue, I have to be proactive about it, rather than just assuming I'll see them around.

As a result, I have a lot of single-serving friends, and I’ve been a single-serving friend countless times. It's awesome, but it gets old. The people I really connect with tend to be as impossible to get a hold of as I am; the people who are easy to get a hold of may be lovely, but usually aren’t people I can relate to much [due to differences in our current experiences and values]. Catch-22. Hence, Facebook.

Except...on my friends list are a lot of people I used to be very close to, people I'm almost-but-not-quite actually truly friends with, people with whom I deeply connected for a short while, people with whom things were left off awkwardly or without closure...and people with whom I've never been close, but who like my photos and status updates and insist we "catch up sometime". As if there were some past relationship of value for us TO catch up to. As if we’d fallen behind.

Constantly, I'm sent hypothetical pleas to give someone a call, to make a return visit to their town, to crash at their new apartment. If I jot them down on my list of people to contact when I do return to their town, they act like I've crossed a social boundary somehow just for sending a Facebook message asking if they want to grab a drink. Hey, you told me to get in touch the next time I headed to Boston/Seattle/wherever, so I did. I'm not stalking you or trying to fuck you; the fact that I'm in your town at all means I had other reasons to come here.

Here's the clincher, for me: I probably get a hell of a lot less of this than others do. I'm a self-sufficient twenty-three year old female; people aren't so quick to deem me creepy. What if I were a bit older? Or male?

How much of this are other people getting—and is that why people do this kind of insincere-reach-out crap? Because they've gotten jaded and given up?

Meanwhile, online dating become increasingly mainstream.

Generally, when people sign up for those sites, they damn well intend to meet someone in person eventually. It's to be expected that you may contact or be contacted by a total stranger, talk a bit, and agree to meet up with hopes of getting laid, falling in love, killing time, or whatever.

Why is that widely acceptable, whereas trying to get to know someone you don’t really know already—but apparently know well enough to be “friends” with—and asking them to hang out is considered borderline creepy, invasive, or desperate? 

Moreover, it’s not being the one to suggest meeting up who gets deemed the creepy one—it’s the person who deigns to follow up. 

What I think is creepy is people who respond to one of your new photos out of the blue and insist that you need to hang out, and then find it weird when you say, “Sure, next week?”

I’m all for spur-of-the-moment reunions or self-imposed half-blind dates. But in many cases, being Facebook friends is not a sufficient springboard to actually interacting, even via Facebook chat or Wall post, let alone in person. 

Then why is it not weird that you can see each other’s updates and personal information—where you went to school, where they live, where you work, what their baby looks like, what your boyfriend looks like, how their new dye job looks? How is that less creepy?

We’re teaching ourselves that socializing is an ebb and flow of exhibitionism and voyeurism.

II. An army of self-inducing obscure celebrities

Maybe you don’t chew on that rock or that leaf. Maybe you don’t skip or laugh loudly in public. Maybe you suck in your tummy when you walk. Maybe you don’t pick your nose or bite your nails.

We’re all dictated by conditioned societal and self-inflicted pressures that we aren’t constantly aware of, though they may surface from our subconscious from time to time.

Today, in the form of a rather unflattering revelation, one of my own surfaced:

At times, I gauge the quality of my own life less by my own happiness and closeness to those I love and more by how appealing I can make it sound on Facebook. The moments that have made me the happiest tend to be ones I can't or won't share on Facebook, yet in retrospect I've come to dismiss those moments because they had no third-party audience.

I put my life on the Internet to be used as porn by the bored and unfulfilled who want to look at the greener grass on the other side.

I put my life on the Internet, and then what? I accrue meaningless likes and comments from people who aren’t taking part in it, rather than focusing on the people who are. If anything, the validation of strangers recorded on a public platform almost starts to seem more important. I don’t remember who’s “liked” what, and neither do they, but if the number is low then it almost feels as if some sort of judgment has been passed—like I lost the daily interestingness pageant.

The thing is, I don't consider myself to be someone who really cares what other people think. At least, I don't think I used to be.

And the crazier thing is, as far as seeking validation goes, I'm focusing more attention on how many people made fleeting, meaningless, instantly-forgotten acknowledgments of some post of mine [probably forgetting them the instant after clicking "Like"—do you remember what posts you've liked this week?] than on earnest validation from people that are actually in my life.

I feel like I'm in some removed position of mini-celebrity, with far more fans than friends. And while my heart/soul/better judgment despise the idea of dwelling on fans, my ego's been eating it up.

You know what's nice about not being a celebrity? Privacy, intimacy, and being seen for who you are rather than a glamorized persona. Keeping your toes dipped in real life. 

You know what's [er, arguably] nice about being a real celebrity? Fame and fortune.

Thanks to social networking, we subject ourselves to a manufactured notoriety that doesn't actually grant us any of the "glamour" that actual celebrities get in exchange for having their personal lives made into a public spectacle. Yet so many of us choose to do this to ourselves, more or less.

Right now, it's easy. I'm a reasonably attractive and articulate young girl from a first-world country living a charmed life and with energy to burn; the world is my oyster and right now I could afford to be shallow and frivolous if I so chose.

Right now, if I was lonely or bored and wanted attention, I could Instagram my cleavage. BOOM. False adulation.

If all that won’t teach a kid to feel both entitled and self-conscious and to devalue the meaningful relationships in her life, I don’t know what will.

And while my sense still has my ego reined in, I don't want to push it. I want to spend my time on things--and people--that cause me to look back and feel glad that they're what I chose to spend it on.

III. Generating social retardation, ambiguity, and expectations that wouldn't naturally exist

As I said earlier, I have a lot of single-serving friends. People who switch up their location [and hobbies, interests, and lifestyle] all the time tend to.

This used to be more than fine with me—in fact, it was a huge perk. I could meet people for a day, appreciate our time together, and then move on, knowing it had run its course and appreciating it as a beautiful moment. I got to experience such a variety of people!

Facebook's turned me into something of a people-hoarder, at least in theory, leaving me less sure of how to categorize the different interactions in my life.

Now I'll become friends with someone on Facebook, and they become a source of discomfort. In seeing their updates it may be hard to maintain my former illustrious opinion of them, or I may feel compelled to get to know them better and I may write them, to be met with an awkward response back, as if they’re saying, “Uh, yeah, that one time was cool, but uh—that was then?”

Which is fine. But then why the fuck are we friends on Facebook, if not to leave the door open for being in touch? If there's no possibility we're ever going to interact again, why the hell would I want to keep abreast of your whereabouts?

It's left me with an eerie sense of social ineptitude, of having no inherent knowledge of where boundaries lie. I've always been a bit awkward and bad at picking up on social cues [I could almost never identify sarcasm before about age sixteen, and the first time a boy asked me out I threw it in his face because I somehow interpreted it as him making fun of me...mwop, mwop], hence the high value I place on candor.

In real life? I'm groovy; no one intimidates me. I'll meet a person. The progression feels natural. There comes a time where it's obvious whether we want to keep hanging out—or wish each other well and move on along, regardless of how much we connected. Sometime it's all about the shared moment, no follow-up needed.

Facebook turns everyone into a big What if? and prevents me from either fully letting go of or progressing within a given relationship. I wind up sitting in limbo in a virtual stew of others' masturbatory exhibitionism. I'm nostalgic enough already without it being artificially perpetuated. [And for that matter, I get annoyed enough with people in real life without seeing the shit some of them post on Facebook as if they're personally trying to induce misanthropy.]

Here's how I'd see it: If you were on my friends list? You could contact me.

Even if things got weird with us, or it'd been a long time, or we didn't know each other well, I'd be receptive.

If I couldn't be receptive, you'd be off my friends list. Easy. Over the years, I've deleted hundreds of people. Anyone remaining could assume that I'd welcome correspondence, even if I hadn't recently been considering it myself. 

IV. In an actual friendship, Facebook is redundant

As I've said, Facebook houses my fan base and couchsurfing shortcuts. People I’ve collected in hopes that they may be of future use. People I met and liked and added, vaguely receptive to the idea that we may become friends, by chance, without being willing to put any actual effort into it, or initiate anything lasting. People who've added me for whatever reason, who sift through the details of my life and like every single one of my photos or updates, but are conspicuously absent if I respond to one of their comments. 

To quote the fox in The Little Prince:

“One only understands the things that one tames….Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready-made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.”

Facebook is not the means to a friendship. Rather, if a true friendship is preexisting, Facebook can be a potential supplement—like emails and phone calls. In the context of a true friendship, Facebook is never necessary.

Through my transient lifestyle, in an age of social media, I've had to re-learn what a friend is. 

They're people you get to know over repeated shared experiences—laughing, crying, exploring, getting scared, and getting fucked up in real time—not over a couple grand one-shot adventures and subsequent conversations that feel like an uphill attempt at connection. They’re people who become valuable to you, in part, because of the time you’ve lost to them. [That's my second reference to The Little Prince in this post—can you tell I just discovered that book today?]

A relationship is a process, it flows, fluctuates, evolves—probably not forever, but for a while. 

It’s not a solitary magical week in Portland, it’s not a single night of great conversation in the desert. It’s those things—plus a next time. 

I've had a thousand phantasmagorical, explosive adventures with new faces. That's how I met the boy I'm in love with, and a couple of my best friends. The difference is simply that all those other people were ones with whom I decided the connection could or should die with the adventure; we were supporting characters that had no place in one another's lives after the bells and whistles were taken away. However, amidst that tide of people were a few I knew I wanted to know—in the daylight, in our hometowns, while sober. I met him at my first month-long Burning Man stint, a land of lights and drugs and serendipity [and many other boys], and then we parted ways, thinking it might've just been the magic of where we were. Two months later, we met back up—in the context of suburbs and restaurants—and the magic hadn't diminished. We laughed raucously through the grocery store.

And it’s not just the exciting parts—it’s the kids you want to hang out with the morning after, while you’re all hungover.

These are subtle things that you can't evaluate from a distance, from an artificial platform like Facebook, where a person can show you whatever sides of themselves they want to. To know what a person doesn't [or does] mean to you, you've got to observe them in real time, and see how you respond to one another. [Hence my increasing confusion about what I think of different people since Facebook became a common denominator in my interactions—some people look really cool through my News Feed, and then I meet up with them and can't fucking stand them; others may be fantastic people, but not in a way that shines through their Facebook presence.] 

Besides, I don’t want to “catch up” or “go out”. Much less talk about doing those things, never to do them. I want to talk, and I want to play.

***

This is all just me. Perhaps I'm just a bit more neurotic than everyone else, but I have a hunch that some of you out there can relate. 

And again, I'm not calling for the end of social media—it's not going anywhere, and it's got a lot of good points [after all, I've been a loyal user for about seven years]. Maybe I'm trying to vouch for a shift in collective consciousness when it comes to how we approach it. It's a cliche now to mention that globalization has led to increased alienation and loneliness for the individual—but how sad that that's become a cliche observation. Let's do something about it. Remember how nervous people used to get when calling someone they liked for the first time? Remember taking the time to write someone an email—or a letter? To personally invite someone to something? Grow a pair; fucking reach out.

And hey, if that shift happens...who knows? I might find myself crawling right back. 8P

PS. Recommended things that are all shorter than this post [in order]

The Innovation of Loneliness [Video]

This video has won several awards; it's simple and poignant. It's less than five minutes long. Watch it, asshole. Then share it on Facebook. Nyak. 8P

The Little Prince

So...this isn't really relevant to my post [and also isn't shorter than my post], but it's relevant to me, since I just read it. If you haven't, you probably should [it's the length of, say, three normal children's story books, easy to squeeze in at bedtime, during breakfast, or on a lunch break]. I much prefer Richard Howard's translation to this one, but couldn't find it online.

How I Gave Up Facebook and Got a Life

In case you didn't click my link up top, this article's great. Generally I find e.j.'s content click-friendly but ultimately disappointing, mainly designed to tempt page views through recycled wisdom and topical kitschrather than content that's actually sustainably valuable [just calling it as I see it]—this may be their first article I've ever been pleasantly surprised by in that regard.

What Happens When You Deactivate 

Frivolous. 8]

Hometown Errands

The impeccable purgatory that is the Silicon Valley. In this current incarnation: hairy eyeballs, mermaid repellant, cyberpunk insects, free bourgeois s'mores, my first taste of mulled wine. Monologuing through miles of walking through San Francisco twilight along the shore of a twinkling underpass. The usual running-into-people-I-haven't-seen-in-five-or-six-years-en-route-to-the-dentist.

Forgive me, I may be riddled with nostalgia. This region has that effect on me. In particular, I can never hang around the South Bay too long for fear of getting cavities in my sentiment.

Or something: words.

Insomnia, again. Currently on my buddy's couch in Oakland with work tomorrow morning as, thankfully, I've scored a few zero-notice gigs practicing massage, modeling, editing, and so on.

The last time I visited this apartment I left it with a jar of coffee beans I'd roasted* myself after he'd taught me how, a volume of Hunter S. Thompson's letters [which I've just recently begun reading], a decorative stuffed dog for my sister, and a Colombian machete [which has chaperoned me during some of my more questionable excursions]. I've come away from other visits here with green tasseled-and-sequined nipple pasties I was gifted at a vendor booth when I went to see my first burlesque show, Hello Kitty temporary tattoos, and handfuls out of my Dominican cigar collection [a gift sent from Alaska by a one-day acquaintance], which he's been keeping safe for me for almost a year now. I'm down to my last eight-to-ten of them.

People are really good to me, a lot of the time, and I can't help but think there's not much reason for it. Not that I'm particularly undeserving, but I'm not particularly deserving, either.

It's gotten me thinking about the value of maintaining friendships. When you live in a particular town, when you've got a job or are otherwise part of some regular assembly of people, friends are a no-brainer. But running around plan-free, often leaving town as soon as anyone knows I've shown up, with diverse and inconsistent interests...it gets wonky, trying to figure out how other people fit in, or how they should fit in.

This year I've been so project-oriented, and alternately solitary and lovebird-ified. For months I basically forgot I had friends to begin with, and it was making me start to feel like a hermit/sociopath/ghost/asshole/etc.

So, I've been doling myself out for the standard social engagements, like introducing Alex to my high school paramour and his current ladymajigg over donuts at 3:00 a.m., running up and down the concrete slabs of a muddy reservoir with people I've known since middle school but only recently recognized as kindred spirits, that kind of thing.

Oh, and showing old friends and short-term strangers around an underground suburban gem I discovered with a couple of my homies-of-the-era when we were twelve.

In high school, whenever I was interested in a boy but didn't know him too well, I'd try to bring him exploring through these tunnels with me, as a test. If they were weenies about walking a quarter mile in the dark through a couple inches of water, I moved on. By definition, all high school girls have to be fickle and, in some small and often superficial way, unyielding. No?

A. Actual appearance of the end of the tunnel...

B. ...and the same photo, with flash

Anyway. Over the years [at least since I figured out the truth about Santa Claus**], I've gotten to know December as that pesky month that besieges me from one side with drifting malaise and from the other with an irrational survival anxiety. Fortunately, I'm often [though not always] more articulate when I have to fight for my peace of mind--and often more compelled to make sense of things by writing, for "just as some people turn to religion to find meaning, the writer turns to his craft and tries to impose meaning, or to lift the meaning out of chaos and put it in order", or so wrote the preeminent Hunter S.

Why did I just write this? Thought Catalog just published this rambley doodad of mine, but why did I write that? Why do I write anything? Maybe if I write for long enough, I'll figure it out.

*when I originally posted this I'd written "ground", because my brain doesn't work anymore.
**that he's a Communist! Or have your parents not told you yet?

A Case Study of Cough Syrup's Effects on the Mind

Three weeks of vague bronchial sickery have gotten me on a bit of an existential bender...albeit not an intellectual one, since being sick makes me sluggish in the head. On the plus side, I guess that sluggishness helps put a ceiling on how much I can overphilosophize myself into a catatonic meatsack, which--when one is confined to a bed--is ultimately a blessing.

Case in point: last week I watched all three seasons of Game of Thrones in under forty-eight hours.

Nonetheless, I've been reading and writing a good deal. I finally pulled myself together enough to submit some new material, and my admittedly gimmickally-titled article 6 Ways to Transcend Your Conditioning has just been published on Collective Evolution. Feeling pretty groovy gravy on that front. 8]

I've gone to sleep no earlier than 4:00am in weeks. It's getting ridiculous. I tried the pull-a-one-nighter-to-reboot-your-sleep-schedule trick [ahem, three seasons in forty-eight hours], which was decidedly fruitless.

And here I am again.

Regarding cough syrup, I am imprudent in metering dosage, and won't touch anything containing active ingredients other than dextromethorphan, pseudoephedrine, or guaifenesin, depending. Fuck diphenhydramine, for instance. I mention this preference only in reference to the title of this post.

Uh, in other news.

Yesterday night I stayed up until 6:00am talking about superficial privilege, pyrotechnics, and bitcoin with one of my best friends in the world. We grew up together, are simultaneously nothing alike and everything alike, and I predict he'll become egregiously wealthy while I'm off climbing the rooftops of some beach town barefoot in pajamas.

Today I ate fresh handmade noodles and went to a choral concert.

Tomorrow I'll figure out when I'm flying to Thailand, and cram in some anatomy and Latin [a formerly useless interest of mine that's been reignited, thanks to today's concert] as a way to further preclude catching up with some other friends I've been meaning to see [ah, how sociable December makes me].

And now? I'm going to harass a certain inamorato of mine who's exiled himself to Ableton-land because he can't sleep, either.

For Now, an Uninspired Post on My Lack of Inspiration [But with Better Things to Come]

November 29^th, 2013

Grass Valley, CA

The problem with trying to write about my life [besides a vague feeling that I’m masturbating in public] is that it’s not only arranged along an axis of time, but also linked through recurring circumstance, mindset, etc. The events of my life don’t come in self-evident packages, and I’ve attempted to slice my life into “episodes” any number of times so as to be able to write about Something without it being torn apart in the vacuum of memory by every possible association I could draw—ultimately these “episodes” are as arbitrary as political borders.

I could chronologically work my way through a particular trip, or else catalog the experiences I’ve had with a prominent person, or in a particular place. Deliberating over how I should organize my writing has caused me to backlog the fuck out of everything, obsessively rearranging half-formed snippets of writing like Tangrams, trying to figure out how to present them together as composites, instead of just working to finish them. All of this has finally led me to one infuriating deliverance of a conclusion: Fuck it, this is just self-righteous procrastination.

So…I guess all that’s left is to write. Otherwise the unfinished .docx files will just keep piling up, as they have for years.

***

Quickly approaching is the last night I expect to spend in Gold Country for a while [which, of course, could just as easily mean a few months as it could the rest of my life].

Of course, with no one around except Alex, two dogs, and a declining number of chickens, I’ve been naked for the greater part of a week, except for a pair of moccasin boots a girl had forgotten in my car earlier that year, and a fleece blanket I’ve wrapped myself in in accordance with the setting sun.

Outside, a large pond [occasionally patronized by a river otter, supposedly], a hot tub [frequently patronized by Alex and myself, beer and cigarettes in tow], the best tree swing I’ve ever met, a massage-and-yoga-retreat-space-to-be, disc golf targets, an RV and a shed or two, ample space. 

The chicken issue has been bothering me—I’ve been stationed here with a very small set of responsibilities: to make sure the dog food doesn’t run out, and to make sure the chickens are let out of their run each morning and locked up again by nightfall.

First the number dwindled mysteriously from six to five without my seeing or hearing a thing, and last night when I went to close up the run I came across just one quiet, wary bird, though I’d seen the other four puttering around only a couple hours ago. I’ve since invested a lot of anxiety into this.

Alex has been trying to reassure me, “This shit just happens. Free range chickens get eaten—sometimes a cat shows up. It’s not your fault—you’ve been here, doing everything you’ve been asked to do, everything they’d be doing if they weren’t on vacation. There’s no way to keep an eye on this entire property all day—it’s huge.”

Mostly my anxiety’s been in a lack of inspiration. We’ve been sitting around, watching movies and TV, eating, drinking, a bit of reading. Not the writing—or, failing that, the debauchery—I felt would do my stay here justice.

***

Fourteen months ago marked my arrival in Nevada City for the first time.

Five months before that, my friend Christina had given me my first Thai massage in exchange for my teaching her to ski. She mentioned off-hand that she thought I’d be good at massage and might try pursuing it myself, and recommended two schools.

I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but a couple months later I impulsively signed up for both—Ahern’s 200-hour intensive and Spirit Winds’ entire curriculum of Thai massage classes—which totaled to a $5200 whim, without seriously considering whether I’d ever get a return on the investment. It might turn into a new vocation or a new passion, or it might not. I had the money for the time being and thought it’d be better spent on exploring a new skill than on rent or more stuff and things.

***

I coax Alex to come outside for a cigarette, and suddenly the answers to my stagnation come pouring out.

“You know, my first impulse on that last day of class was to arrange when I could come back—to sign up to re-take some classes and deepen my training, and to return to Nevada City for little vacations from life, now that I’m familiar enough with this place to be comfortable, and have people I know I could stay with. Or just to take some more massage classes, in general. But, really, that’s what this whole year’s been, and my memory’s been vague. I’ve been living the same pinball life, but honestly, I’ve been on crutches.”

“So you think you just want to close up this chapter?”

“Yeah. At least for a long, long time—at least until coming back would feel completely new again. We’ve done so much cool shit this year, but it’s largely been things we both knew how to prepare for. Working festivals was a cool new experience, but it only takes doing one to know what kind of experience to expect on at least a basic level, so I don’t want to do it again. Even being on a Burning Man project where I’d learn new skills, like this year—of course it’d be a new experience, but not the same kind of new. I’d know some of the people, the sort of skills I’d be learning. Going to New Zealand, at this point in our lives, even though I’ve never been—I’ve got an idea of what we’d be doing there, and who’d be there. Sarah said when she went, it almost felt just like visiting relatives, since the trip was structured around people she already knew, doing things like what she’s already been doing. I want to go, but not right now—not when we’d have such an obvious itinerary.”

“I’m with you. That’s why I suggested we skip New Zealand. Southeast Asia’s something neither of us have a real concept of, except for stories we’ve heard.”

“Exactly. And I know it’s kind of the standard baby’s-first-backpacking-trip, it’d be new for us, and neither of us has any idea what we’d end up doing there once we arrive. And that’s when I feel alive, and when I feel inspired. And this week I came here to house-sit, all isolated and comfortable and hoping I’d be able to write. And all I’ve really done is looked through old writing I never quite finished, wondering where all my inspiration’s gone. Till today, now that we’re about to leave. And we’ve done so much cool shit this year, I couldn’t figure out why I haven’t been inspired by it. But now it’s obvious. This year’s been just as dynamic and full from an outsider’s perspective as last—but I always knew what was coming. I planned most of it. The times this year we’ve been happiest—in general, with ourselves, with each other—have been the times we were winging it and didn’t know what we’d be doing in ten minutes, two hours, two days. And times like that have been in the minority for a while. And it’s gotten me so lazy. Scared to go abroad because I don’t have tons of money—but really, I’ve got money for a plane ticket, and then some. I probably have enough to reserve as a small cushion for when we get back. What’s the problem? And yet I’ve been resistant. It’s just inertia, really….”

The town hasn’t changed, and Janice’s classes are all pretty similar in structure, but that internal difference in my approach is the variable that matters. It almost feels like a betrayal—to fall in love with a place, then slowly come to realize it’s becoming stifling when, after all, there are still more things to learn and do and see within it. I must just be fickle—it’s my problem, not the town’s.

And that’s true, in a way. But the point isn’t for me to chastise myself and try and force an effort to keep my passions for places, lifestyles, or experiences alive—the point is that my favorite thing about life is that there’s so much contained within it that I’ll never run out of things to sample, and that process of sampling is what’s shaped me.

Alex is looking off into space, shivering a bit, but I know he’s heard me. Most of the time, he’s figured things out the same time I do—or sooner.

I gather my blanket up and head inside, full of gratitude. “Let’s get out of here tomorrow and get those tickets, and keep living. I think I’m going to go write, finally.”

“Yes. Good. I like that.”

“Want to play in a bit? We should clean up around here soon, too.”

“Just finish whatever you start.”

Nano-Rhino

In 2012 I participated in National Novel Writing Month for the first time, on a friend's suggestion. Hoping to finish early enough to leave time that month to reunite with a boy I'd met at Burning Man, I cut off all other activities [minus taking a Thai massage class--which, incidentally, is what I'm doing this week as well] and isolated myself in trendy coffee shops, surviving on quiche and biscotti in an obsessive fervor.

It paid off. I finished in just over two weeks, partied that night to celebrate with some of those people I'd been militantly ignoring in the pursuit of raising my word count, then went on a loop around the Southwest that played out like an absurdist's wet dream with the boy I'd then just met and am now still disgusting-twitterpated over.

Yeah, though, NaNoWriMo. I'd recommend it to anyone vaguely interested in creative writing, but especially to writers [or would-be writers] held back by an edit-as-you-go neurosis [like me], which can be paralytic to those who'd rather not write at all than risk writing something bad. It's all about quantity over quality.

Of course, busting out 50,000 words of fiction in two weeks means a lot of what I wrote is irredeemable garbage, and some of it is probably beyond comprehension--but I figure that's kind of the point. And eventually I might even go back and try to tie it all into something that makes a little more sense--that's both the luxury and the daunting pressure of writing fiction, for a change. I can edit people in and out on a whim, change the ending, all that jazz--but then, of course, I'm completely responsible for it, whereas real life I can just buff up and relay--BAM!

It's November again, but I'm not ass-cannoning a draft this year. However, in the spirit of what I think is a really awesome idea, here's an excerpt plucked from last year's:

---

I don’t love a city for its seafood restaurants, its commercial avenues, its people. I don’t love a city for its fashion sense, it’s street fairs, its local haunts. Not for its level of criminal activity, and for neither its cheap taco trucks nor its fine dining. Not for its music scene, its job market, its housing prices, its public transit, its prevalence of free parking. Not for its street performers nor its lack thereof, not for its office buildings nor its historical districts, its Chinatowns, its nightlife.

            What’s left?

I love a city for its rooftops, its sewers, its abandoned warehouses. For penetrable structures that were never meant to be penetrated, and never designed with aesthetics or comfort in mind. I love a city for its shut down buildings. I love those taggers who are artists and historians more than vandals, whose marks on such relics are like a nod “hello” from across a crowd too dense for you to swim through in order to reach one another. A nod “I see you.” A nod “I know.”

            Just as I love a person for their disgusting idiosyncracies, the momentum of their bodies—a biological autonomy their minds can’t veto. Not for their “unique sense of style” or their “quirkiness”, or the bullshit traits they construct and exaggerate with the hopes of seeming interesting or mysterious.

            I love a person for the way they cry when there’s no more holding back, some variety of viscous release oozing from every hole in their blotched head. For the silent pleas they make to themselves when they wank off—not the bullshit moans they make to convince their partner that they’ve given themselves up to the experience when they’ve done anything but. I love a person for their insomnia. I love a person for the things they’ll never admit to me: their neurotic fascination with vomit, or their habit of occasionally eating their earwax or boogers or scabs when no one’s around, or of smelling the insides of their piercings or biting off their toenails, or their fetishistic attraction to whatever. For the way their smell changes as they get older, that subtle fermentation. For their private rituals and traditions so deeply ingrained into the clockwork of their lives that they don’t even realize they’re secrets, for the private superstitions that they deny humoring. For the things they might look up, the Facebook profiles they might sift through of their long-gone-someones from five relationships ago, the pictures they might save so long hoping no one else will ever know. For the way they handle the unspeakable indiscretions—accidentally running over someone else’s cat, accidentally shitting in someone else’s shower, accidentally sexting someone else. The momentary freezing, followed by the dichotomous fight-or-flight, and whatever cover-ups their overloaded brains can cough up. For the way some of them might sit up at night, alone, stricken by some secret terror, some grand Question that suddenly makes them feel as if their entire life is a worthless sham and what the hell can they do about it so that they don’t sit up at night feeling that way?

Riding the bus I could see our reflections in the scratched-up windows. We matched. Dark oversize hoodies and jeans, hair covered in dust and cobwebs, faces worn out and stretched thin from the abuse we’d been subjecting our bodies to, extra-gaunt under the fluorescent light, which gave way to blemishes that would be invisible during the daytime, under the more forgiving light of the sun. On the back of the bus slept a crumpled man in a crumpled suit, but otherwise it was empty save for the two of us.

As if picking up from the middle of a conversation, Kai asked me, “Why didn’t you go?”

“What, why? Because I’m sick of being elected Mama, and I don't want to hear about Gary's dog's bladder infection or about how he's getting fat or his dad died eight years ago or his rent. He's sent me pictures, too. The dent in his car, himself drunk and crying. He's been drunk all the time. Hence all the bitching." 

“Passive-aggressive, much?”

"Fuck off--I've told him to stop calling so much, and anyway who has the energy to be on-the-table all the fucking time, with fucking everybody? So, I’ve been harboring a bit of resentment, yeah. I guess that part's my bad, not his.”

“Everybody? I thought you guys were hooking up?"

"Ha. You're cute."

"If not, you should consider it—that’s generally the easiest way to get rid of him.”

“Whether or not I could stomach that anymore, he won’t even.”

“’Won’t even…’? Have you seriously tried and failed?”

“I used to think I liked him or something, before I learned he's an energy vampire.”

Kai raised an eyebrow at my non-answer answer but allowed me to divert the conversation, so I did.

“Like, the whole sucking blood, only he tries to drain my well-being. He doesn’t just want to confide in me—he wants to get under my skin and make me feel his pain, but constantly. Like he can outsource his shit and feel better. So he wants me to be on fucking call, to feel guilty when I’m happy and he’s not. I don’t know when he decided I owed that to him, but there you go.”

“That’s a side of him I’ve never heard of, and I’ve known the guy for years. Also, you don’t seem like the maternal type. You're not the right mode of bitch.”

“See, that’s what I think, too. I keep getting elected without running. Like I said."

“I don't know if I buy that. You make yourself out to sound all innocent, but it's not hard to picture some very conscious manipulative tendencies in you. But what do I know? And anyway, I've never seen you in action.”

“You just never put my boot to your skull. And you’re probably right, on some level. I’m just a disenfranchised girl caught in a web of disenfranchised men caught in my web.”

"Now you're just romanticizing yourself. I never said that." 

The bus reached its last stop and we reemerged into some forgotten infrastructural corner of the night, the air smelling of smog and promise.

I lagged behind a bit, taking it all in. It’s not that there was a whole lot to see—industrial buildings and warehouses, a monochromatic network of steel pipes and concrete. Dark unlit streets, the shadows of the part of the city that is a part of the default world. Pavement looking like the teeth of someone who’s been making out with a sledgehammer.

But there was a thrum to these neighborhoods, a dark pulse. The pulse of the former, the never-beens, the long-dead. The negative space, the pause between places.

If all the world’s a stage, then these places I sought out were backstage, collectively forming a subtropolis of which I was the sole citizen. That citizenship wasn’t defined on a physical level, and I was never the first or only to walk across the thresholds of these places—but when I occupied them, the former residents or employees, the builders of these places, the taggers, the teenaged summer flings craving heated solitude, the strung-out shadowselves, the other explorers like me, even Kai, were all as incorporeal as ghosts. 

Anyone home?

After almost three months, I'm back. It's been a while since I've had regular Internet access.

I've spent the day scrounging up some more miscellaneous writing [old and new], which I'll be posting over the coming little-while [i.e., I'll have another post up within a couple days], but thought I'd throw up a quick scatterbrained update just to assert that, yes, I'm still here, and no, this particular blog hasn't yet been hucked into the virtual landfill of countless abandoned webpages.

Oh! For starters, I've been published by Rebelle Society again. A poem this time. I actually wrote the poem when I was seventeen, but hadn't submitted or shared it until now [it's taken me a while to get over my poetry-sharing jitters and biases]. And here it is! Bam!

Otherwise, in case anyone's interested, this is a brief summary of where I've been:

--On the playa for a couple weeks--the first of which was spent working exhaustively on Skyler's Escapade: the big, bad fire-shooting monstrosity built mostly by our five-man crew, that was to sit atop the sixty-five foot bamboo Control Tower [pictured below]. At one point, this involved my getting on top of the Tower in nothing but a climbing harness and hard hat [not pictured below]. Then, of course, there was the whole Burning Man thing itself.

Control Tower at sunrise; photo by my friend Miko

Dancetronauts party in front of the Control Tower.
Not pictured: the flame effects crew [which included myself] gleefully pushing buttons while yelling cathartically.
Photo: Jason Mongue

--Hedonistically decompressing, first at a snazzy oceanfront property in Capitola, mainly with friends from overseas, then in Reno for a week, where I was overloaded with decadent cheese and beer and stayed up past sunrise nightly talking and laughing with good friends, clearing some deadwood out of my life.

--Up in Oregon with my co-person, where we spent three days at a new intentional community/boarding school: a huge post-apocalyptic wonderland comprised of several huge-former-Christian-camp buildings--among them treehouse cabins a la Peter Pan's lost boys and a large auditorium--being reclaimed by a Rivendell-esque rainforest; garnished with a meadow-turned-edible-garden and two lakes. Then we left and headed vaguely southward governed by our whims, which led us to prodding at farm animals, skinny-dipping on a private beach after dark, geeking out over Salvador Dali originals, late-night-shitty-motel-acrylic-painting, and so on.

--Working hard on a friend's farm, having good clean scatological fun [like landing on top of a tampon-pooping dog while attempting naked acrobatics], read my first book in a while [Haruki Murakami's novel, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle], reclaimed my sense of personal power through some rather uncomfortable introspection, and had a great Halloween fueled by lipstick, whisky, and the sunset.

So it's been a good run. I look forward to having a bit of time to organize my thoughts and work on some writing and music. Been laying low, visiting family and some old friends I haven't allotted enough time for. Next week marks my very last Thai massage class, which I imagine will be somewhat bittersweet.

Etc. 

Alex is right; I ought to get a camera and start taking more photos, rather than relying on whatever it is my smart-phone- or camera-wielding friends elect to record.

Etc.