personal essay, week 2

Frog prince twins sipping gin and snorting Torchy's. Mind meld magic in the grass outside the party. Sick so special man yr movie's really arty.

 We blew by SXSW. Full contrarian status, I refused the widely used abbreviation, "south-by," and ran around shouting for weeks,* "We're going to southbee! southbee!" Big business tech tycoon nightmare carnival took over the whole town. When I lived in Austin, I hated the whole racket -- the traffic, the tourists, the lines, the logos, the litter, the excess. Well of course I still hate it, so even though I was ecstatic that we had been invited, I was determined to fully embody anti-SXSW values whenever possible. I stayed up late making homemade paper business cards. I insisted our crew get matching jean jackets, the Ghost Fleet. 

 We trash talk, we lip lock, we jaywalk for miles. We dumpster, we long fur, we sweet meat and smiles.

 You know, of course, it turned out to be a lot of milling around, as is the case with so many conventions. We ate cole slaw sandwiches inside a massive, empty sound stage while the adults had barbecue. We became festival friends with a woman whose movie, in the “Midnights” category, was about a female necrophile. Before the premiere, we visited the new GOAT YOGA studio in same dang strip mall as the movie theatre. You can't make this shit up.** 

 While the world hurdled ever onward into the lie of neverending capitalist death show, I found myself surrounded by my best friends, my very favorite people, love bugs I've known for decades and buddies I’ve known only briefly, together, sharing visions, feeding on each other's passion, running from the juggernaut and WINNING. Day drunk, sun spilling in, what a ride. Somehow my favorite people, my best loves, all in one place at the same time. The overwhelm - the too muchness of it - the bigness of us made small by the drone. 

i have all this big glorious thoughts about reminding people about magic
but all of my actual ideas feel grotesque or at least dark

do you remember the children's book "frederick" by leo lionni?

the good feeling i've been riding took a dip last night and i'm worried it'll run away and i still won't have pinned it down at all. it's so hard to even believe it enough to say it, or if i manage to find the words, they'll become only that, and the feeling will fade. but now that it's a question it's better to just do it... right?

i can already feel myself overthinking this. that is the last thing i want to do. what do i have? i have these fast fast fingers and i can type my brain better than i think! i can write the words my mind makes up! i can sound like a real me in text! (i know because laylee told me that 15 years ago and rex told me so today and so i have to BELIEVE or what if i lose it or what if there's something important i could be doing that i miss because i haven't done anything about it. you know.)

it's so hard to believe. it's so hard to let myself remember what i'm good at.

BUT after xmas after snata craws and rodent carols and another round of GREAT GROUP i was near convinced, i clowned for myself in the mirror and i was able to get there which surprised me - but why should it? donna said not to look at ourselves to practice our turns and i totally understand that advice. but so often when i look at the mirror and i see this strange face and i think this can't possibly be me or be real or be anything at all, and i just shut down. for so long i have turned away i have pushed my nails into my palms to unsee i have gritted my teeth and pushed breath through to see to be anything else. now i find that in the times in the late night in the mirror i can explore and see what this body can do. i can see how to find the biggest expressions of the face, i can elasticize.


FORGET FORGET FORGET

i forget. i forget who the body belongs to. i froget we frog together. the mirror thing, with the perfect dissociative cocktail, surprises and delights. the mirror thing becomes elastic, electric, fantastic.

the thing that hurt to look at, the thing i could never understand how to belong to, i find this thing, when stared down, goes wild. it can't behave and doesn't want to try. it wasted a lot of toilet paper.

this is only partially a new discovery. the feeling is in the body, some of it is already memorized. it's burning embers in there all the time, even though i forget.

i guess i'm rambling now. the important part is -- i have gotten so tired of beating myself up for being bad at stuff. of course that sounds very reasonable written down in such a way. but the things i'm bad at are things that many people find necessary to function - eating, sleeping, organizing belongings, remembering information, simple math, wearing clothes, forming words, etc. i don't really want to care about being bad at all that mess. it happens or it doesn't. i can't remember the names of important people or pretty much anything i learned in school. i can't remember why i hate mother teresa until i look it up on wikipedia (and promptly forget the facts again, but i remember the feeling).

i remember the feeling i remember the feeling i remember the feeling

i am toying with the idea of applying to physical theatre school. i am considering how to make my body into a rubber band or flower. i want to be able to squeeze everything out of the present moment and explode it out of myself. i want to roll around and jump and shriek and freak and confuse the fuck out of people. i want to present another way to be.

if not me, then who? if not a someone with hardly any logical memory but great arches, then what am i even around for? surely someone out there is gonna do it. surely they could stand some company.

this was all made abundantly clear, several times in fact, right around the winter solstice. as it turns out, that was right when i was completing my first saturn return - and perfect timing to say fuck you everybody, i don't care what you think, i can see so clearly what is important. (reminder of what is important: friends, love, art, magic. this is an incomplete list but you get the idea.)

morgan got back in town for the holiday and wanted to go out to the bar with friends. she picked the so-called irish pub, not knowing that a bunch of us had gone there for trivia the night before (don't worry, we lost) so many of our group didn't come along this time. and it ends up me & brett (& later kat) in the weirdos corner with morgan's most type A segment of friends all crowded into the booth on the other side and all i can say is "YEP here i am again indeed, oh and what now? i'm doing an in depth study of mental health, now that i'm back from the loony bin" and there's nothing like a night like this to remind me how much i don't want that life, with the husbands and the babies and the business casual luncheons. UGH writing that is so obvious i could just spit on myself but no no that is most of the world and i think i can be allowed to write it down occasionally. the important part here is that i maybe felt a little embarrassed at first and especially trying to explain wtf i'm doing with myself, yes back in memphis, yes living with my folks, yes again, but more than ever, i feel like answering this questions is more a nuisance than anything else. i don't really care if they judge me for the answers. i don't really give a fuck what they think, truly. are they judging me for being practically unemployed and living with my parents at 30 and oh ordering another drink this late? yes they definitely are. and am i judging them for being salaried breeders who always vote democrat? yes i definitely am. so we're even.

i'm tired of the waffling shuffling pretending i can play for both sides. when i lived in baltimore i felt like 2 people in 1 body-- a demure, polite, if slightly eccentric, part-time librarian with sensible shoes and nothing but patience, and a barefoot feral drunk at the local anarchist commune / urban farm (except not even totally that because i still had to make sure the bills got paid and be The Sensible One which is not me at all and was boring as fuck).

i'm tired of fucking around with that world pretending i can play along. i just can't hack it.
i know i know i don't have it. i'm far from it. it's been six months now since i got out of the loony bin and came home. it doesn't feel like that long but i know my folks are getting antsy for me to figure my shit out and get a move on. meanwhile i don't want to rush making a decision because that is what keeps getting me into messes, it seems like. but i think i'm getting somewhere this time. maybe.


when i was a kid we lived in a small bungalow house in the artsy neighborhood of town, before it got gentrified. the dining room in the center of the house had 8 walls, branching off to the front hallway, our bedrooms, the kitchen, the bathroom, the back yard. "the octagonal room" was the true center & the heart of the house. at that table, my mama accidentally served us inedible cake decorations at the table. at that table, we grew crystals for SIX WHOLE WEEKS on plastic toys & charcoal for a science fair project. and under that table, most importantly, we made our own world. no fort could compare to the one on the persian carpet, table cloth on all sides, and pillows snatched out of beds. what did we do under there? i'm not quite sure but it was all magical, always, because it happened there, in the secret sacred space.

that's the space i want to create for people. if i am not here to take people under the table, i'm not sure what i am doing at all.

***there are other worlds there are other worlds there are other worlds* and they are all around us**

now i've got 3 glasses of wine in me and i still haven't packed so. i'm annoyed bc i dont think i even said what i was trying to say. or it all come out wrong. fuck all. the point is, i am frederick. (or i wish i were.)

a cigarette is a standin for a moment where i do what i want. as long as i keep sitting outside smoking the world is mine. this is how i've turned the smoke into self care.
and i love to see the smoke.
and i love to love the drink that comes with.
once the moment is mine it's hard to give it up. keep the time, bring out another somesuch to consume.
you look out you i'll write you out the room

once i get to this point it's so hard to stop. by hard i mean - it's why bother why stop now? we might be getting somewhere! like i am still believing there's a place my brain will travel on alcohol and nicotine that's new or at least insightful. maybe sometimes it is. but i've been forgetting, for years forgetting, that i can go there without all that. and i'm letting myself im remembering and it's okay. tonight is an exception and i can't let this become normal again. let this remain the weird stuff. (there's weirder stuff to be had and i need to be "sober" to see it.)

and just one more okay just one more becomes a sneak attack becomes why am i still here becomes a trick against myself

maybe tomorrow no beer is best.

today i was in an okay mood. not super happy persay but confident and ready. i beat myself up a lot for not being good enough at one thing or another - my memory is garbage for one thing. i can't seem to remember all the world things other people do. but i can remember my friends and my own personal history pretty well and that makes me feel very self involved. so last night, today, i was saying, so what?? maybe i can't remember that stuff because i'm not living in the same reality as everyone else and maybe there's nothing wrong with that. maybe that means i'm egotistical on some level but it doesn't mean i don't care. maybe i just need to embrace that i'm comfortable over here and i don't need to try to memorize all the same facts as everyone else just for the sake of conversation. maybe it's okay to make faces in the mirror and try to be in my wiggle body.

i had been excited about the concept of dell arte, then i looked again at the curriculum and the tuition and quickly became intimidated and overwhelmed. then i got settled into this new years mood and felt like so what? why should i be worried about having to perform something new every week and my ideas not being good enough? why am i already putting so much pressure on myself? can't i for once become some silly puddy? haven't i always known what to do? that i could do it bigger, better, more more more? i can see it so clearly sometimes. sometimes i forget, sometimes i remember i've already been doing it all along. i can be allowed to do more. i love to overdo it. i love to make people laugh. i love to be as stupid as i can. i love to forget and reinvent and remember and forget. i want to make it happen. i don't know what else i can do. if not me, then who??

and then and then it falls apart. i don't want to write it now bc writing the first part made me feel better and i want to hold that while i sleep. maybe tomorrow. maybe not. (short version - family is hard.)

riled up write

EVERYTHING IS RUN BY BUREAUCRACY. PEOPLE ARE TURNED INTO ROBOTS BY THEIR JOBS, INTO CYBORGS BY THEIR SCREENS. EVERYONE IS TRAPPED IN THE RAT MAZE. we know this we know this we know this. we know we know we know.



i am sick of being made to feel bad for not being productive.
i am sick of the stigma people assign to "indecision" and being "wishy washy."
i am fucking sick of the "natural" trend telling us that medication for our mental health is evil and unnecessary.
i am so so so fucking sick of cliche statements about "this is exactly where you are supposed to be" and "everything you are is perfect." shut the fuck up. first of all, i am probably looking at my phone when i am reading this, which should be the first clue that it is a damn lie. second of all, reading that while enduring an abusive relationship is toxic. reading that while at my worst makes me feel like i will never be better. all these "self care" words on my screen about being loving yourself and being one with your body and i'm even more full of shame.
chronic pain and trauma force us to separate from our bodies, even from our own minds. reintegrating can be a long and painful process. cliche self help demands that we "connect with our bodies" in order to be truly happy, healthy, good. i say, fuck you. i say, we don't have to. or i'm gonna do it my way, hopping around to punk music alone in my room, not yoga posed on some gorgeous green hill in brand name exercise gear. (these pictures always make me wonder - do these women make their friends/partners come with for the photo shoot? or do they carry tripods and fancy cameras with timers? can you really be "one" with your body and the earth while you're thinking about the shutter click of the camera? and it seems each one of these photos begets ten more. their number is unfathomable. i am beyond ready for this healthy wealthy white lady appropriation of yoga trend to DIE.)
i am ready for many things to die. i have an evergrowing list i'm writing of things that have become intolerable. does this make me hateful? no. shut up telling me i'm negative and hateful because i have strong opinions. there is nothing hateful about having a vision of a beautiful better world based on egalitarianism and love. my world has no room for cultural appropriation, labor exploitation, or a gender binary. our current culture/existence is deadening, it's already destroyed us. every piece of it is harmful, is hateful. if you're offended that i say i hate hollywood, heteronormativity, breeders, you have to understand that i hate the harm they're doing, have already done. what have we created that we can point to and say "this is nothing but good" that is a common and sanctioned element of our culture? I CAN'T HTINK OF ANYTHING. 
here is a list of things i can think of that are purely good--cats--trees--community gardens--books--honest and heartfelt communication / sharing feelings--friendship--love--curiosity--collaboration--i want to say "art" but that is a slippery slope because our definition of art has become so fucked that it's become conflated with entertainment and capitalism and it's a huge mess. i will have to work on creating a list of GOOD ART. this is a big project.--CLEARLY THIS LIST NEEDS SOME HLP.
the point is that society does not value any of these good things. and yet i can't think of any thing else that actually matters???
on the other hand, my list of things that have become intolerable is growing and growing to the point that it is clear that i am simply for the abolition of all institutions, especially the government. if you take a few steps back and look at our political system in the context of the last few hundred years, you can see what a backward mess we have made. our country was founded on oppression, exploitation, and genocide, and it has no intention of changing that model. laws will change just enough to give the appearance of evolution, but the structure just shifts and settles into a different kind of oppression. same old shit with a brand new look. if even that??? and the laws only change at the point in which the people have become riotous, have demanded that the government uphold their rights. things change juuuuust enough to keep us quiet for a little longer until we see that really nothing is different. (a great example here would be the movement from slavery to indentured servitude to second class citizenship to post-civl rights prison-to-pipeline to capital punishment). 
meanwhile the only real change is being affected by grassroots groups and non-governmental organizations whose entire deal is pretty much just cleaning up the messes the government makes. i am always in awe of the amount of labor that goes into the work of putting out (figurative) fires -- think of what we could accomplish if we didn't spend all this energy working on ending homelessness and hunger, if everyone had access to abortion and healthcare, if people had any kind of sense of autonomy over their own lives & bodies and didn't feel like their worth was dependent on their productivity!!!!!!!! WHAT A WORLD WE COULD HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it seems so simple to me, so clear and obvious. dismantle the systems, kill the patriarchy, smash the state, etc. done deal, wash our hands, move on. (in fact, i even feel silly writing all this down because these are all things that i assume everyone thinks about & knows already.) however the more i talk to folks the more i am made to feel TRULY INSANE for holding these ideas. and why???? because it's "not realistic" or i'm being "too negative" or even just "it'll never happen so why bother." WHAT THE HELL PEOPLEEEEE WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL. WHAT. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH YOU.
blaguhhhhh
but for the rest of us, if you're still with me, i have a new strategy to avoid mental meltdowns and total burnout. our culture is killing us. the way we live and die is a line already drawn, we are given the illusion of choice but everything has already been decided. everything about the way we exist comes out of a place of hate, of exploitation, of the death of spirit. we have no options. we are already dead. THEREFORE we have become ghosts. now that we are ghosts, we have the liberty to do everything we wanted to do when we were alive. we can be our true, free selves. we are made of magic. literally anything is possible.
do you get me? i'm still having a hard time putting this into words. when i had this realization, i may or may not have been slightly manic. i have described it to some people who said they followed me to a certain point and then got lost. i have other friends who screamed "I'VE BEEN A GHOST FOR YEARS!" or told me other stories. even my therapist had a story - she knew a veteran who said the only way he was able to make it through the war was by telling himself he was already dead, gone, a ghost. the point is, this is not a new strategy. it works! we just have to spread it, and believe in the ghosts of each other as well as ourselves!
i asked my ghost buddies to help me flesh out these ideas by offering their perspectives and i will include those HERE HO HO HAVE TO DO THAT.

alternately do you ever have this thought train ? i'm getting old and my body is falling apart. my [insert part of body] is hurting/breaking/sick and soon it will be totally useless and then gone. and next my [another part of body] is gonna go. and then, and then, and then. it's all gonna fall apart and there will be no point in continuing when my body doesn't work. i might as well die. but i'm practically there already since my [body part] is messed up, so i should save myself the trouble and die now. i'm basically already dead. BUTyou can stop yourself from having that thought train all the time if you admit that YOU ARE ALREADY A GHOST ! maybe you're having some phantom pain from back when you were alive, like amputees who can still feel pain in their missing limbs. don't stress about it! take a deep breath and treat the symptom like a living human being would - think of someone you really admire, and what they would do, and then do that. and then you can get back to your ghostly business!



i was born with a rare genetic mutation that has rendered me physically and mentally "different." i have chronic depression. i have social and general anxiety. i have attention deficit disorder. i have experienced abuse and violence. i have post traumatic stress disorder. i have experienced chronic pain that i often ignore because i am so used to it. i have been dependent on alcohol and relationships to cope with the trauma of existence. i am not my illnesses but it is impossible to be separate from them. before i had the diagnoses and the names, i had the symptoms. sometimes others saw before i knew them myself. i was teased from a very young age because of my appearance and because of my mental differences. 
at age 5, i was already committed to making friends with the class weirdo - a baby "bully" (as my mom remembers) named rio. i couldn't stand the idea of anyone being ostracized or made to feel "wrong" for being different; i already knew those hurts. 
have i been a great friend? no. i have been bossy and demanding and selfish and mean. but i hope i'm getting better.
i was born in the 80s to two librarians and raised in a world of gorgeous images and fairy tales, surrounded by shelves & piles of books in every room. in our house, magic was real, pizza was a vegetable, stories were worth more than money, and love was the only thing that mattered. it really was a beautiful little fantasy land my parents built for my sister and me. but of course things got darker and harsher each year as we became more exposed to the realities of the world beyond our block. i learned very quickly that my experience was not a "normal" one. i constantly felt judged and ashamed. by 1st grade i had altogether stopped speaking in class. when it became mandatory to present papers or projects to the class, i would skip school or take a 0 rather than open my mouth. if i couldn't avoid it for whatever reason, it was a huge source of anxiety & stress. i could focus on nothing else. i was consumed. this lasted through undergrad and is probably the main reason i will never go back to school.
THUS BEGAN MY UTTER HATE FOR INSTUTITIONS! the public school system was set up for me (and many many others) to fail. the system didn't care about the way i learned or thought or created. it crammed me into the square of the scantron anyway. i became a silent fury, constantly filled with rage at everything that was wrong with what was happening and how easily it could be changed to support students like me. the further i sank into my silent feelings, the more i became targeted by "the popular kids" aka everyone's favorite bullies. i learned that i was ugly, smelly, stupid, gay, loser and that nobody likes a loser. thank the gods that losers come in packs. i gathered us up together and made new realities for us. obviously we weirdos were the actual "kool kids" (quote by me, 1996-1999) and we would not let anyone control our world or dictate our feelings. i wanted to take us as far away from their ugliness as i could, and keep us joyful and united. i wrote songs and made my friends learn them at recess (because we were a band whose instruments were sticks, trees, and voices, duh). i got dan ying and jenny luo to watch sailor moon and then hosted trivia at our lunch table. i found the lyrics to all the best disney songs online and printed them out so we could sing them together, loudly, to cover up the voices that wanted to hurt us. i led games of tag and four square where we made up our own new rules. i wrote ridiculously silly stories in secret notes passed under tables, try to read that one without laughing and getting caught. at our after school program, my friend circle combined with my younger sister's for the first time, and i now had a whole cohort to play with. we somehow co-created a mythology about a sacred cow who had sacrificed herself for us, the cheeses, and now we roamed the country in our RV (a jungle gym) singing her praises and converting new cheeses. i was cheddar, the leader. we were fully committed to our characters. together, we weren't afraid for the other kids to see our silliness. when i was cheddar, i even found the courage to stand up to a playground bully. i suppose i didn't recognize it at the time, but i had found freedom and power in the act of being something other than myself -- in order to create & believe the new identity, you have to kill your self (even temporarily). somehow all at once i had become a performer, a clown, and a ghost.
by the time we got to sixth grade, the teachers had sussed us out and the four optional classes were divided by type, which, as are as i can tell, are as follows: Ms Sullivan got the brains, Ms Ward got sportos, Ms Buck had the populars, and Ms Spain's class was "Other." we were ally sheedy in the breakfast club. we were the wastebasket of the school and we loved it, and we were hilarious. we were poor students, kids from trailer parks, immigrant kids, bad spellers, mess makers, and jokesters. it wasn't just us - 6-04 was the bottom of the barrel every single year, just as the other kids were sorted into their appropriate boxes. i like to imagine the conversation between the 5th grade and 6th grade teachers as they divvy us up, separating the alphas from the betas, and what name must they have used for what we were? "creative" types? were we supposed to be good writers? (since after all, Reading was Ms. Spain's subject.) or maybe she just waited it out while the others picked teams, and she just got whoever was leftover. 
i have kind of fallen in love with identifying as a leftover.
but even in that environment i was too shy to be a jokester with the rest of the class. maybe i hadn't quite realized yet how we had been sorted so i didn't feel as free as i could have. our class put on a play based on the myth of Hades & Persephone and i was cast as Farmer's Wife with a total of two boring lines, "oh no all our crops are dead" and then at the end "grass and leaves!" this was one of the first times i can vividly remember wishing that i was allowed to switch roles - literally and figuratively - and show everyone how good i could be. "see? when i'm not myself, it's easy!"
then middle school happened and everything fell to pieces. i had zero friends at my new school. i had horrible acne and a frizzy triangle of hair that people liked to put staples in. i think i was developing symptoms of ADD by this point and started doing horribly in school. i was hugely miserable. i became suicidally depressed for the first time. i retreated into words and wrote pages of emo poems that i shared on my art website with about a dozen other poets.
i can't remember why i'm writing about that. i think i've gotten off track. maybe i'm trying to get you to relate to me. (it feels really good to lay it all out in a timeline like this. even if no one else will ever read it. i feel like there was part i was gonna say but i forgot what it was.)
the point is it was all very soul crushing and i started to feel like there was truly no way out. looking toward the future became increasingly impossible. by the time it was time to apply for colleges i had lost my grip on "reality" thanks to the hell of high school, the side effects of hormonal birth control, and a long distance romance, following my first experience of sexual abuse at 17. i was doing the thing people always tell you to do when you're struggling - just take it one day at a time - but i never figured out the next step. the feeling of  "how did i get here? how did i survive this long?" has never gone away.  
in some ways life is much harder now because the institutions are so invasive that their lines get fuzzy and their shapes aren't clear. it's easy to talk about their problems but much more challenging to physically resist them, as opposed to being fenced inside a cement brick called school and every act can become resistance -- playing with the boundaries of the uniform, hugging "too long," lingering in the hallways until the last last minute bell, kissing girlfriends & grabbing each others' tits, unshaved legs in the locker room, sitting in the grass as far away from the building as possible at lunch, developing handwriting so absurd that no teacher could read it, simply NOT LISTENING to teachers. our group never got into any  "real" trouble, though. our grades were fair to middling which made us essentially invisible -- not good enough to pamper, not bad enough to hassle, we just didn't stand out.


i never had my senior picture taken, so i wasn't in the yearbook. i like to think i became a ghost in the minds of most of my classmates - if they remember me at all, they wonder, "did she even exist?"


i still have to remind myself that "myself" can change. i start to feel so trapped about who i have become and what is possible and if only and blah blah. it's hard to remember to allow myself to play, but i'm getting better at it.
some things that help: --close your eyes and visualize yourself as the ghost you want to see in the world
--feel yourself filling up with infinite possibilities--put on a hat or other garmets that helps you to feel you've transformed--go to a shop or restaurant by yourself, in character, and see what happens - it helps to start off going somewhere you won't run into people you know--change your voice, or try not talking at all--give yourself a prompt or a mission, like "what am i bringing to my ghost friend's birthday party?" or "find 3 ghost amulets in the next 30 minutes" or "make someone smile" or anything you want--try not to question yourself. don't think. just do.
actually i try follow a lot of richard pochinko's clown rules, including "GO TO YOUR FEAR" and "CARE ENOUGH NOT TO CARE"

fuck it all.
you are supposed to be an artist.
you are meant to do it and you know that.
quit comparing yourself to other people.
quit trying to figure out where you fucked up.
just DO.
you gotta start reading more first and taking it all in.
you gotta start practicing writing. that 3 pages a day thing. just go wild.
you gotta start carrying around a notebook.
and probably actually leaving the house so that you can get out of your own stupid thought cycle.
maybe practice with an adaptation. turn a book into a play. or write a dream into a short story.

a dream of a cult of vampires, or something almost like it.
the kind of dream where me and it are taking turns telling the story, drifting in and out of sleep.
the whole crew silently filed into town overnight and somehow i saw. they seem to not have particular powers, no pointy teeth, only marginally violent, definitely terrifying, dangerous. i'm drawn right to them, or maybe i can't leave. they take over an abandoned building and its all ours.
i should've written it down right away. it's all gone now.
another weird fucking day. back in memphis. tonight dad wants to see star wars.

my former friend has agreed to meet with me when i'm back in austin, with the condition that we don't talk about what went down at the coop.

my long-distance girlfriend is so overwhelmingly pissed about that that she referred to me as her "friend" on twitter but has been dating so many other people she didn't think it was worth it to tell me about them.

my long lost ex best friend/lover has finally written to me something that means something. but I'm too dead to know how to respond.

i'm lost in a sea of online window shopping for xmas gifts, one of my least favorite activities in the whole world, but something i get sucked into every year. when will i be adult enough to say "i'm not fucking doing it" and push a little further out of the consumer cycle?

i'm lost in general and i don't know where i'm going, except that it's in baltimore. 

night call

i have a lot to say and a lot of need to say it. it's hard to make myself make time for writing down words. i usually write the first nugget of an idea, intending to continue later, and just never do. half the posts on this blog from the last year are unfinished, you can probably tell.

i've just been sucked into an internet wormhole for the last 2-3 hours. my latest "hobby" is obsessively saving websites i like on the wayback machine so that they are PRESERVED FOREVER by great mother internet. this evening, the category was livejournals and yes you have to click through the whole journal to get every page archived, but there's a big chunk on the screen there so you can't do a whole lot of reading while you're saving, which is very irritating and not productive.

first of all, i miss livejournal. which is blasphemous, i know, since i held out for so long and never really got so into it, always solo floundering about over here instead. but i miss the whole concept, people sharing such small thoughts and writing mostly for themselves-- for the exercise and for the document and for the hell of it. facebook has never been remotely close to that, and never will be. (that very thought makes me want to delete fucking facebook right now, but what am i gonna do, sit over there and be the only non-russian person on livejournal? no.) i wonder if people are still writing somewhere... online? on paper? word documents? and, are these people, are my friends and peers still writing at all? (other than the ones who are being paid to do it, the lucky beautiful bastards) or is it really just something that young people do? and i dunno, i guess i'm old, aren't they all on snapchat? or is there anything at all like lj for these kids nowadays. i'm saying.

and also just seeing these quick flashes, each page a new season, the ups and downs, stresses and excitements, everything so huge and overwhelming, the passion, the potential. and what are we doing now? some of us took off like rockets, having seemingly always known exactly what we wanted. but the rest of us (the real "us") seem to roll along and dip and fall and land and roll along some more. maybe i'm mostly talking about me, but it seems that it's just hard to do the things we're meant to do and harder not to hate every day. i know we're living in a broken world within a spirit-crushing, oppressive system, but to remember so clearly, to look back at all your bubbling words and feelings and the THRILL and maybe you didn't know exactly what you wanted to do with your life, but you knew what it felt like. and we none of us could make it happen.

i'm tired of blaming myself for not being good enough, for fucking up or feeling like one, for not having things "figured out." actually i do have it figured out dammit and what i figure is that this culture wasn't built for us and that's why we're broken. it's time to take it back. and i don't care if you think it sounds stupid because it's fucking true, and if you know it's true, you won't think it's stupid. so let's fucking go. i'm tired of seeing my friends with tense faces and old news and it fucking kills me and i'm so sad that you're not loving your life because you're the best and i want you to have everything and i want us to build it beautiful together.

my life is a goddamn wreck. OR IS IT??? the world is a goddamn wreck.
i have experienced beautiful wonderful terrible things.
i know there is a whole lot more out there than the tv would have me believe.
i just ate a whole bunch of delicious dumpstered goat cheese and avocado on wheat toast and it was delicious and i loved it. the whole fridge is full and all of it was free.
i've met real life witches and i've seen what's in the cupboard and it's amazing.
i know i have to make the steps to change myself.
first i'm moving to baltimore free farm, for the garden and the sweet gentle people and the warehouse event space and the evolution and the egalitarianism, and for john waters.
but the moving, as i've learned before, is not enough. i have to craft a space for myself and my community, i have to create the things i want because they don't exist, i have to make it good.
probably this means i will have to cut other things out, which will be hard, but it's long overdue.
i'll jump off that bridge when i come to it, and i'll let you know how it goes.
there are so many things i need to learn and if i don't start now, i'll be dead soon.
i really do want you all to join me, i want us to go together. it'll be so much easier, and much more fun. and if not here, then where? what does the good life look like to you? how do we get there? what's stopping us?

this is the end of the black cherry cider, and the end of the night, almost dawn. if i can sleep, i'll try for some good visions and if i remember, i'll write them down.

don't trust other people with your ideas.
don't trust other people to know better than you about your things.

i would've ordered a new charger, i would've shipped the old one to east wind.
i knew the package would never make it in time, we'd be stuck here waiting or have to leave without it.
we waited an extra day and we're still leaving without it.
so i finally ordered new goddamn gear this morning, which i should've done immediately when i realized my idiot self left the charger in ohio.


if you had told me you shipped the whole thing back to acorn, i could've ordered a new battery as well as a charger. now i'm down to one.
yes it's better than nothing.
yes really there's no one to be mad at but myself.

and then why am i SO upset? what makes me take this SO seriously?
(and yet not serious enough, i could've done so much more.)
((and yet so serious that i build it up and up until i'm too paralyzed to shoot))

3 and a half months after i've started this journey and i feel totally unaccomplished and broken down.
at first i had a lot of ideas for what i wanted to capture, my vision of my role.
you all wanted heads talking with your own ideas regurgitated. nothing new, nothing true.
after i adjusted to the reality, i still had lots of ideas-- what i thought would capture people's attention, funny videos and zines and things.
you all crushed my ideas and i went ahead and finished killing them off.

so where am i now?
i felt so good about what i gathered at the midden. not great, but okay.
i felt so good until alex said "let's do another interview once you've fleshed out your thoughts more."
i felt so good until rejoice asked if i got exterior shots, after we'd left the state, after knowing that they took the house tour without me.
i felt so good until my dumb ass left my battery and charger in the kitchen, right there in the wall, right where someone else plugged it in.
i felt so good when i found mike's phone charger and packed it for him, how thorough i am! (a lie, i felt irritated that dustin had taken his phone and left the charger here, full well knowing this was mike's because he borrowed it, this is part of our party, this comes with us. and even now i feel irritated, surely someone in our crew saw the battery there in the wall, someone knew this thing should not stay in ohio.)
i felt so good when this journey was an adventure, when i had a purpose, how i was alive and living.

where am i now?
i'm so mad at myself about the battery that i'm not present, not engaging, not actively asking questions or trying to learn new people.
and i'm feeling like a grump, irritated by everything, constant frown.
i feel myself faking it trying to let loose and it feels awful.
i hope i don't have to go back on meds.




back on the road, we arrive at Possibility Alliance just in time to catch a tour with a student group from Truman College. we're just a couple minutes late, so a visitor walks us out to a patch of grass where the rest of the group is gathered in a circle, popcorn-sharing the things we want to change about our world.
Ethan wears a red baseball cap and leads animatedly, barely able to keep up with himself and the long strings of ideas he wants to share. some of the kids seem already bored or jaded, or maybe i just can't tell what people are feeling anymore.
it feels good to sit in the grass, in the sun, to watch the cow and feel the eyes of other humble humans who are not (yet) communards, with a whole different kind of jadedness.
as idealistic or radical or "crazy pants" as ethan might be, i'm still drawn into his words, jogging along after the chasing thoughts, i'm feeling this.
"we look at screens more often than we look in each other's eyes. humans spend more than half of their waking hours looking at screens."
i'm wasting my life, it's clear.
ethan is adamant that we shouldn't feel too guilty about our own habits up to this point; that will only lead to more suffering, more pain. self-hate is not the solution.
this is a hard one to remember.
i can feel the others in my party are not so sold. rejoice has gotten this tour speech twice already and dustin's already checked out and "hopeless" (his words, his goal) at 22.
as much as i'm feeling the impact of these stories, of being here, i can't get rid of the nagging consciousnesses of the other side.
it's funny what impressions i have of the different communities before i get there. i guess i thought i wouldn't be interested in this place -- why, exactly? i can't recall now, and i can't remember details, just a vague impression.
maybe because they have a "gift economy" which in Point A world is not as interesting or radical as income-sharing and therefore is null.
maybe because it's just a small farm with one family in the middle of nowhere, missouri.
but being here, maybe it's the college tour, i get the sense that they're engaged on a broader level than most of the other communities i've met. they host quaker meetings, craft nights, work days, straw bale building workshops and permaculture trainings. they just got back from a rally (??) in detroit for water rights.
and they've done all this with ONLY a landline telephone and no other electricity.
so what do we think we're doing???
at every community i visit, i consider living there, if only for a moment. on this day, in light of all this mess, i wonder what my life would be like without electricity, without screens. how important are they and how much do i need them, really?
maybe ethan is a crackpot and an idealist but isn't that what i've always wanted to be too?
he asks us this question i've heard a lot lately-- if you could do anything, be anything, if someone waved a magic wand and you could have your dream, what would it look like?
i never do know.
i think that's a major part of my problem.
it changes on the daily or it floats just beyond me, a shifting shape in the fog.
what would happen if i cut it all out, the distractions and the phoneys and the plastics? would i find any answers?
what if i learned all new arts, what if i learned a whole new way to be myself?

i might want some of my modern things.
i might want a manual typewriter.
i might learn to build creatures and make worlds and take photos on film to tell my stories.
i certainly will need my cat.
i don't know what to do about that.

for that moment when i imagine myself in whichever community, i can be anything, i have a whole beautiful life there for myself.
and every life, in every land, is always different.


i listen so much, it's one of the few things i'm really good at, that i value about myself.
so often i hear you before you've spoken. sometimes i can answer before you've said it -- and then you interrupt me to tell me your thought and it was exactly what i thought. why can't you hear me??


"Pandora was pretty dopey dude, she had pretty simple instructions. just don't open the box! stupid bitch."

make this man stop butchering this song.

stick it to the m-a-n, man

anyone want to drive to houston to see modest mouse on the three-day weekend? of course you do. now if you WILL, it's another story. ho hum. i tried. had a nice weekend. a lot of at-home time that didn't bother me. i got a lovely knit hat from brittany in the mail. what a great birthday present! it's so soft and nice. friday was a half day. i learned a LOT sitting in the gym while the beauty pageant happened on the other side of the school. puhlease. i can't say enough about how much i hate that bullshit. so brock and i people-watched (trevor, where are you?) until jeff wagner introduced himself to us. after school, sallis, katherine, brett, eileen, lena, and i went to (east) memphis pizza cafe. i love that shit. then sallis, brett, and i had milkshakes at java. mine was cinnamon and, of course, glorious. then sallis took me home and i sat around. brett showed up at our house right before we left for the play. i got a chai at starbucks. mom got coffee so that she could stay awake for the play haha. she didn't even get to see it, though, because she had to run the house and didn't want to come in late. it was fun though, i had a nice time. afterwards no one could decide what to do, so we just danced at theatreworks for a long time. i came home and bumbled. on saturday i had a hummus pita and a grilled cheese for lunch with my lovely mother. in fact, i bumbled quite a lot. at 5:45 brett came over and we bumbled simultaneously. finally we called brock to make him decide what to do. he was about to see finding neverland with alice, so we showed up for that, although we couldn't sit with them because we got there so late. the movie was good although brett and i nearly starved to death. and then, of course, alice and brock had already eaten, so we starved some more. we then drove to theatreworks in the rain and, after (to brett's dismay) some dancing, we got together a group of 11 people and walked over to ihop. when i discovered that over half of our company wasn't going to eat, i ordered THE BIG BASIC to make up for it. despite everything, our waiter was very sweet and patient, and we had a lovely time. then i came home and bumbled. a late night phone call made me happy. today was nothing at all, i've forgotten it. except for spending two hours at the library hanging out with lauren d, my favorite person. we got chais and she checked out some books from the classics section, for fun. it was nice and we didn't even attempt the math project. ho ho ho. nothing else happened. june bug ate my fucking shoe, and chewed up some computer cables so now we only have the internet on one computer. DESPAIR. proving thoughts are cyclic, i've again been thinking about how much i hate fake shit. especially when people pull that stuff. it has just been bothering me more than normal. almost everything seems forced, even most music that i usually like. so mostly i can only listen to pixies and kristin hersh. in an attempt to better my world and yours, i ask you to PLEASE DON'T BE FAKE AROUND ME. for one thing, i can't handle it anymore. it's really trying on my emotions, to be constantly puzzling over what people actually think about me. the past few months have been rough sailing, partly because of that. i don't want to be someone who's super concerned with what people think about me, but i'd like to be certain that my friends like me. when i don't feel like my friends like me, things are not good. if you don't like me, go away. that's something i can deal with on my own. actually i'd rather have no friends than false friends. it's a really sad thing to witness... i guess in a lot of groups there's someone people don't really like, and just keep them around. everybody's too fucking insecure. anyway i know that i'm a really irritating person, so i guess i don't really need that pointed out so much as i need people not to pretend i'm not. if that makes any sense. mm i want community, not selfishness. i just want reality, nothing false anymore. as keats once gushed, "beauty is truth, truth beauty." i used to have a big purple button that said "beauty is truth" but it broke. i loved that pin. i tried to keep the pieces, but i lose everything. ooh i just found an arrowhead in the deep clay dirt of the computer desk. is that lucky?